So Barack Obama wrote and Op-Ed in The NY Times pushing his health care plan (I thought they didn’t like when politicians published advocacy pieces that don’t expound “new information” in the Op-Ed section?), and with his usual rhetorical flair manages to publish complete crap, wrap it in niceties and feel-goodness, and make everyone cheer for it.
While there’s an enormous amount of crap in the entire piece (about how great he thinks the protests are and how everyone will be covered in Shangri-La), I’m going to stick to the four points he highlights because they’re typical half-truths about the plan that I’m getting a bit tired of hearing.
Half Truth #1:
First, if you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of high-quality, affordable coverage for yourself and your family — coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job.
Wow, what a great idea! Who would’ve thought such a thing could happen! Health care that follows you everywhere. Why, it’s almost as if you bought it yourself! Ummmm… Wait… If I did buy it myself, it would follow me everywhere…
The reason people have become panicky about losing their jobs and, by extension their health care, is because we’ve arrived at a place in the existence of this country where health care is considered an inalienable right, and that it should be provided for us, usually by our employers. When the time comes where we have to provide our own insurance, we’re stymied by the idea that anyone would dare suggest we pay for our own.
Will you be able to take your plan with you? Obviously because you’re covered by the government, not your employer, but private insurance offers the same benefit. This isn’t revolutionary or reformatory.
Is private insurance expensive? Sure it is. Sometimes overly so. But do you think it’s free when you don’t pay for it? Of course, talking about costs leads us to…
Half Truth #2:
Second, reform will finally bring skyrocketing health care costs under control, which will mean real savings for families, businesses and our government. We’ll cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that do nothing to improve care and everything to improve their profits.
Insurance is a profit-driven industry. I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise. When I see “we’ll cut hundreds of billions of dollars and inefficiency from Medicare and Medicaid” I laugh. Why?
Because since the beginning, the President has been touting how the plan wouldn’t be single payer, and more akin to “Medicare for everyone.” That sounds great on paper, but that’s where it ends.
You see, Medicare’s operating overhead is approximately…
Ready?
2%.
Medicaid? Roughly the same.
Of the $454 billion budget in 2008, that would leave approximately $9.08bn of “inefficiency” that can be cut from Medicare and $4.2bn that could be cut from the $224bn Medicaid budget. Nowhere near hundreds of billions of dollars. Now you may, of course, argue there are other areas of the Medicare and Medicaid systems that could be cut. Fine, but if they’re so inefficient that you can cut billions of dollars from them to finance billions of dollars in new spending, why not make those cuts now instead of deficit spending?
Simply put, the President has no intention of making those cuts; if they could be made they would’ve been made already. There isn’t hundreds of billions of dollars in the $682bn total Medicare / Medicaid budget to cut. Sorry, Mr. President. You’re either lying, or uninformed.
Half Truth #3:
Third, by making Medicare more efficient, we’ll be able to ensure that more tax dollars go directly to caring for seniors instead of enriching insurance companies. This will not only help provide today’s seniors with the benefits they’ve been promised; it will also ensure the long-term health of Medicare for tomorrow’s seniors. And our reforms will also reduce the amount our seniors pay for their prescription drugs.
If Medicare could be made more efficient, it should be done right now. The truth is there’s nowhere near the amount of money in that kitty that he thinks there is, so when the time comes to keep this promise, out comes the old tax hike. Or a panel that advises a bunch of old folks to pull their own plugs (Remember those? The panels that didn’t exist that were removed from the Senate version of the bill even though they didn’t exist?). Whichever is cheaper.
As for enriching insurance companies, why shouldn’t they be enriched somehow? Are we forgetting that 85% of people are happy with their current plan, coverage, and company? Does that sound like people clamoring for a change? Not to me.
Secondly, we already have a system to take care of the elderly. The entire health care system in the United States need not be scrapped to fix what’s broken about part of it. That’s just illogical in every respect. Of course, tossing out a whole system in the name of reforming it is right at the core of…
Half Truth #4:
Lastly, reform will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable. A 2007 national survey actually shows that insurance companies discriminated against more than 12 million Americans in the previous three years because they had a pre-existing illness or condition. The companies either refused to cover the person, refused to cover a specific illness or condition or charged a higher premium.
We will put an end to these practices. Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick.
Most important, we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups, preventive care and screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end. It makes sense, it saves lives and it can also save money.
I don’t know if you know this or not, but the insurance industries are regulated both on the state and the federal level. While the President would have you believe that this “reform” plan will usher in a new era of insurance company oversight. My question with this is the same as my question about Medicare: why not do it now?
Get on the regulating agencies and state regulators to do their damn jobs! If insurance companies are as out of control as we’re being led to believe, then it’s because the people responsible for oversight are failing. Miserably. Maybe it’s time to reform that!
Insurance companies don’t operate in an unregulated bubble, despite what our President would have you believe. If they’re harming consumers, punish them! If they’re profiteering on people’s pain, punish them! Regulate them with the same boldness and swiftness that the FCC went after Apple for not approving an App for the iPhone! Pretend it’s Microsoft, and that they must be stopped!
Number four does not require the entire scrapping of our entire system to occur, but the President would have you believe it does. It’s us vs. them. In this case, “us” is the private citizen, and “them” is the evil insurance companies. Of course, despite it being us versus them, he also points out if you like being taken advantage of by your evil insurance company, you can keep your plan, a myth I handily debunked a few days ago with the bill he obviously hasn’t read yet.
I’m gonna close this with the biggest outright lie in the op-ed piece.
This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance.
If it wasn’t about that, Mr. President, you could start working on it right now and we wouldn’t have to have 3 1,100 page bills to give you authorization to start.
