I don’t care if you are for or against the proposed health care bill. I just ask that you make your decisions based on fact.
I read an article today that points out the fallacies in a chain e-mail that opponents of the health bill have been passing around.
For the purpose of full disclosure, I support this healthcare legislation. If you do not, that is your prerogative. I would prefer that you don’t insult me personally for seeing things differently than you do. Maybe I’m growing more liberal than libertarian these days.
But again, don’t base how you “see” things on lies.
Among the myths busted in this article are free healthcare for illegal aliens, rationing, the “death panel” (though not referred to as the “death panel” in this article), and the idea that the “public option” will put private insurers out of business.
Re. illegal aliens:
“Jennifer Tolbert, an independent health care analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan foundation that studies health care reform … [says] the claim that the bill provides free health care for illegal immigrants is particularly egregious … ‘No one’s provided with free health care. That’s ridiculous.’”
Re. the public option outcompeting private insurers:
Page 124: “specifically states that health care providers do not have to accept patients under the public option” and page 127: “Again, there may be a broader case to be made that the government can outcompete private insurers through the public option, but this section of the plan only applies to payments to doctors for patients who are part of the public option. The government does not set wages for doctors because doctors are free to decline to see the patients.“
I think the public option would only put private insurance out of business if *all doctors* had to opt in. But they don’t. I believe you’ll still likely get better healthcare through private insurance — as long as they can’t drop you, and will pay out.
This isn’t as in-depth as I’d like to get, b/c I’m only sneaking a few minutes at work while our system is down.
But it just drives me NUTS to hear people like my father-in-law repeating everything he hears on O’Reilly and Hannity. “The media tries to tell you how to think,” he says, of the ‘liberal’ media. OK, so Fox doesn’t???
I love the man, don’t get me wrong. But for all the conservative complaining about paying taxes for public benefits, I’d just like to see what they’d do if the gov’t tried to take AWAY their Social Security and their Medicare — two “socialist” programs.
Another good article I’ve read on healthcare is here. The author outlines how one reason it’s so expensive is b/c it’s so much BETTER than it used to be. He also points out how smokers and the obese actually end up costing us LESS in the long run b/c they die sooner.
Last month I finally paid off a $1,000+ emergency room bill that I received *three years ago,* when I had health insurance, but it was such crap insurance that it didn’t pay out anything. It’s no laughing matter when you have no insurance and have to go bankrupt (I didn’t, but I didn’t go for anything really serious).
If you have ever suffered any sort of financial hardship due to your lack of health insurance, I don’t see how you could *not* support healthcare reform. The fact is, we need universal healthcare, healthcare that you don’t lose because you lose a job or get sick. Whether this universal healthcare is handled by government, or can somehow be supported by the free market — well, that’s up to *us* to decide, based on FACTS about what works here and what works in other countries … and what DOESN’T work here and in other countries.
APPENDIX
I first posted this as a FB note and immediately drew the ire of some folks to my right. I think I made some more pretty good points, so here they are:
I do agree we need tort reform. Malpractice insurance raises doctors’ costs, which are passed on to patients.
I also think we should ban direct pharmaceutical advertising, starting with TV. Is that anti 1st amendment? I don’t know, but I hate those stupid ads. They cost tons of money that could go into *supplying* people with drugs – that their doctors inform them about – not the TV.
I don’t think the gov’t would necessarily do a stupendous job running healthcare. I don’t WANT the gov’t to completely take it over. I still think we should have co-pays (sliding scale). The best insurance I ever had was an HMO, Kaiser Permanente. I just believe we need a health *safety net* for all, whether it’s provided by private or public entities, the fed gov’t, or state & county gov’ts. Sometimes people can’t help it if they get in a horrible car wreck or give birth to a child with severe birth defects, and they can’t afford the bills, just as example.
Second comment:
Since we live in a country where people make varying levels of income – janitors make little, doctors make less – which I *agree* with b/c it takes more training, skills and smarts to be a doctor – the current system also provides varying levels of health care, based on what ppl can afford.
Everyone can’t be a doctor. Someone has to be a janitor. A janitor shouldn’t make what a doctor does. But if said janitor, with little/no insurance, gets in a horrible wreck or suffers a similar unforeseen health disaster, he likely would *get* the emergency health care he needs, thanks to the Hippocratic Oath, but he would also get stuck with thousands in medical bills, and if he can’t pay (how could he?) he may have to file bankruptcy, lose his home, ruin his credit, etc, thus keeping him mired in poverty.
I just think we need a safety net. Which we don’t have now.
Third comment:
Yeah, tell you the truth, I don’t know where the money will come from either. We can’t afford what we have already, be that Social Security or Afghanistan. Not that I’m against those things; just that we already have such staggering debt.
I will be first to admit I don’t have all the answers. I just hope my husband keeps his job; if he lost it we’d be up the creek b/c I’m an independent contractor and don’t get benefits through *my* job. BUT here’s a more libertarian thought – if businesses are *forced* to provide health care to employees, there will be fewer employees, and probably more independent contractors like myself.
1. As I pointed out, malpractice insurance is only 0.6% of healthcare costs. Trivial. Tort is a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America, and it saddens me that there are some people who would sign away a right guaranteed by the Constitution in order to save 0.6% of healthcare costs.
2. Businesses have already pushed out as many employees to be “independent contractors” as is legal to do, and more — see the various settlements by various major computer industry companies (Intel, Oracle, etc.) with the IRS for failing to pay payroll taxes for “independent contractors” who were for all intents and purposes full time employees of the company complete with company name badges and time cards. We have laws prohibiting employers from just arbitrarily pushing out employees to be “independent contractors” who aren’t… thus why if you’re a contractor today, you’re likely going through a contracting firm. Your contracting firm is your employer in that case and will be responsible under HR3200 for your health insurance. I don’t know about your contracting firm, but the health insurance offered through mine when I was an “independent contractor” was useless, that will also be prohibited by HR3200, which will require contracting firms to offer real health coverage to their employees.
3. HR3200 is actually similar to a bizarre conglomeration of the German system (non-profit sickness funds and for-profit insurers) and the Swiss system (all insurance is individual). In all three cases — HR3200, German, and Swiss systems — the government is involved in setting minimum standards and in providing subsidies for those who cannot afford health insurance, not in providing health care itself. Government-run health care like in Britain actually has a pretty good record — e.g., the British mortality rate from prostate cancer (24.3 per 100K men) is actually better than the U.S. mortality rate from prostate cancer (24.5 per 100K men) — but it also tends to be somewhat inconvenient and overcrowded. We’re spending 17% of GDP on healthcare here in the US. We can afford better — and should.
4. Finally: Yes, we can afford it. Private insurers are currently providing 35% of healthcare spending in the USA. Governments provide 48% of healthcare spending, the rest is out of pocket. The percentage of GDP consumed by private insurers is thus 5.95% of GDP. So even if we paid 100% of health insurance costs — which *nobody* proposes — that would only be a 6% tax. According to OECD statistics, the USA is currently the least-taxed major economy on the planet, paying an average of 28% of our income in taxes to government at all levels from local school boards to the federal government. We pay less taxes than all OECD nations other than Turkey and Mexico, and we all know what kind of paradise Mexico is (hint: Mexicans are fleeing *here*, not the other way around!). If we hike taxes by 1.8% to pay for health insurance for the 30% of Americans who are either underinsured or uninsured because they cannot afford good health insurance, we will *still* be less taxed than all of our major global competitors.
In short, we can do this. And we should. People who claim this will allow government to kill granny — when government isn’t even involved except to set minimum standards for coverage! — are talking nonsense. This is a modest enhancement to the current system to patch up a couple of gaping holes — access to the system and illegal rationing of care by insurers who deny coverage arbitrarily based on nonsense in order to weasel out of paying for the care of expensive patients — and honestly, I can’t figure out why any sensible person would be against it, knowing the facts. Which, of course, is the problem… far too many people willing to believe outrageous lies about “death panels” and such. Do these people go to bed wearing tin foil hats to keep government mind control beams from programming their minds while they sleep? GAH!
- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin
Of course the current healthcare proposal does not cover illegal aliens. But there are two problems there. We are already providing a massive amount of free health care to illegals through emergency rooms and until something happens to deal with that, insuring every legal resident will not stop the hundreds of millions in medical costs that the illegals are running up yearly. I’m not saying we should turn people away, but there are substantial indications that many illegals are using our ERs as their primary care vehicle – not just for emergencies.
Of course the other thing is that Mr. Obama has stated he wants an amnesty program for illegals, so if they are made legal and then covered, technically they can say (and not be lying) that they are not trying to cover illegals.
Just a little food for thought.
If it were up to me, I would put a big whack of money into reviving and expanding our nations county and state health departments. When I was a kid, a county health department typically offered “safety net” medical care. That’s one part. They did it before and they can do it again. If every Walgreens can make money running an urgent care clinic with a nurse-practitioner staffing it, there is no reason why the health department an public hispitals can’t do the same or better. Then educating people about the fact that they *can* purchase major medical insurance to cover catastrophic illness or injury.
And doing a few tweaks like making COBRA payments tax deductible for people changing jobs, etc. would help without going into another massive welfare state major program – because you know, the war on poverty has gone so very well.
There’s one other aspect that no one is talking about – getting people to use the health care they have. I have a former co-worker who – despite having coverage – didn’t see a doctor for 5+ years until the night he was taken to the hospital with congestive heart failure secondary to kidney failure which was caused by untreated high blood pressure, because you know, he hadn’t had his BP taken in 5 years. (Now he’s on Medicaid and dialysis and hoping for a kidney transplant at public expense – yet his condition was preventable and the only bar to his treatment was HIS failure to see a doctor.)
Another coworker who has coverage has huge visible cavities in his teeth and there’s a massive link between dental health and overall health, especially cardiac. Several of us have even offered to pay the dental copay, but he won’t go. So if he ends up with a damaged heart because he wouldn’t see a dentist when he had coverage – who is responsible and why? There’s no law against stupid and shortsighted and no constitutional mandate to endlessly protect people from the consequences of their own stupidity.
And just FYI, I have a chronic auto-immune illness and I have had to struggle with insurance issues and coverage since I was diagnosed. So I’m speaking with some experience here.