Thursday, January 13, 2011
VILIFYING HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM
For more than a year now we have heard the health insurance reform program passed by Congress vilified by those with political bias against it. Often called “Obama Care” by republicans, the enacted legislation is really a mere shadow of the proposals made by Mr. Obama and his advisors. After all the compromises made in the course of getting enacted, the bill did not represent the views of mainstream progressive democrats very well at all, and left many longing for something better.
The “health care reform” bill enacted simply corrects some of the past abuses of health insurance companies against the public, and particularly against their own policy holders. Then it also sets up a plan whereby health insurance might become accessible those 40 or 50 million people in this country without any coverage at all.
This is not a “government run” health care or insurance program. Medicare is a government run insurance program. Most progressives would have much preferred “single-payer” government run insurance resembling Medicare for everybody. But that is not what was enacted.
When citizens were polled on the individual provisions of the law, the results were always 60% to 90% positive for the various components. Yet with the constant vilification of the law by republicans, its overall support has dropped from 60% to about 40% in this past year. One must conclude that this negative political effort has been successful. But when those citizens opposed are asked to specify what provisions they are against, they are often unable to do so. Some provide answers showing lack of understanding of the program’s contents.
So, a lot of people are opposed to the health insurance reform plan, but they don’t know why. But they have been told it is bad, and they believe it.
Perhaps the rhetoricians, such as Mr. Boehner, have colored their judgment. He always calls it “the job-killing Obama health care plan.” That is scary enough. When persons like Rep. King of Iowa spends 58 minutes on the floor of the House, as he did this past week, with assurance that God does not want the insurance companies regulated, things are going from scary to weird.
Republicans were autocratically bringing the bill to the House for repeal in its unitary entirety (although the Tucson tragedy may cause a change in schedule). No effort is made to identify the good from the part they don’t like. No effort is being made to amend any parts not liked. No opportunity is being given to debate the different features. One can only conclude this is a political game and not an effort to improve legislation. It is a political game played with no thought to the harm done to people affected by repeal of patients’ rights and protections granted in the program.
The court system is being utilized for part of that political game. States are suing to stop the law. Their main legal objection has been “forcing individual citizens to have insurance.” In other words, it is something similar to our auto insurance requirement and for similar reasons. Persons who don’t have health insurance are parasites on the rest. They get expensive emergency room visits, surgeries, and some expensive acute care anyway – at the added costs to all our bills and our insurance premiums. Why would we not want to have some sort of planned universal coverage if we are all going to have to pay for the uninsured some other, more expensive way?
This repeal effort is based upon fallacies and lies. No one involved is actually trying to improve anything for the people.
We are suddenly told that this bill will increase the deficit. When confronted with the facts that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has calculated that the program will actually reduce the deficit by $230 billion in the next ten years, Mr. Boehner says, “Oh, they can have their figures, and we have ours.” That is a silly, stupid answer. No sensible person says such things. But it typifies republican tendencies to ignore facts when it pleases them.
Mr. Boehner’s “job-killing” accusation needs examination. His idea, of course, is to reduce labor costs for all of the nation’s businesses.
The fact is that some of America’s industries are handicapped in global competition by worker wage levels and by worker benefit costs – particularly the cost of health care. Health care costs are hurting our economy in that and other ways. Too much of our GDP is going to the health care sector. Health care costs MUST be reduced. The Obama bill tried to do this, along with increasing access to basic health care to reduce expensive emergency and crisis care. Reducing excess profit margins of insurance companies was another goal.
There is no doubt that health care costs need to be controlled and reduced, but is this goal to be achieved by denial of care for those unable to pay or by denial of benefits and wages to workers? Do we want to cut the standard of living for our middle class and starve the poor? Or, is it better to reduce the flow of cheap goods made by cheap labor into this country through tariffs and other controls.
Would it not also be better to have a single-payer, government run health insurance program like Medicare for everybody? Through such a program real constraints could be placed on escalating health care costs. It would be fair to everyone, and everybody would benefit. There would still be a big “Medicare supplement” insurance market out there for the insurance companies, because no government program is likely to have first dollar, deductible free coverage. American industries would still need some protection, to maintain our standard of living.
It is time to be honest and to stop playing political games with the health care of the people of this country.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard
The “health care reform” bill enacted simply corrects some of the past abuses of health insurance companies against the public, and particularly against their own policy holders. Then it also sets up a plan whereby health insurance might become accessible those 40 or 50 million people in this country without any coverage at all.
This is not a “government run” health care or insurance program. Medicare is a government run insurance program. Most progressives would have much preferred “single-payer” government run insurance resembling Medicare for everybody. But that is not what was enacted.
When citizens were polled on the individual provisions of the law, the results were always 60% to 90% positive for the various components. Yet with the constant vilification of the law by republicans, its overall support has dropped from 60% to about 40% in this past year. One must conclude that this negative political effort has been successful. But when those citizens opposed are asked to specify what provisions they are against, they are often unable to do so. Some provide answers showing lack of understanding of the program’s contents.
So, a lot of people are opposed to the health insurance reform plan, but they don’t know why. But they have been told it is bad, and they believe it.
Perhaps the rhetoricians, such as Mr. Boehner, have colored their judgment. He always calls it “the job-killing Obama health care plan.” That is scary enough. When persons like Rep. King of Iowa spends 58 minutes on the floor of the House, as he did this past week, with assurance that God does not want the insurance companies regulated, things are going from scary to weird.
Republicans were autocratically bringing the bill to the House for repeal in its unitary entirety (although the Tucson tragedy may cause a change in schedule). No effort is made to identify the good from the part they don’t like. No effort is being made to amend any parts not liked. No opportunity is being given to debate the different features. One can only conclude this is a political game and not an effort to improve legislation. It is a political game played with no thought to the harm done to people affected by repeal of patients’ rights and protections granted in the program.
The court system is being utilized for part of that political game. States are suing to stop the law. Their main legal objection has been “forcing individual citizens to have insurance.” In other words, it is something similar to our auto insurance requirement and for similar reasons. Persons who don’t have health insurance are parasites on the rest. They get expensive emergency room visits, surgeries, and some expensive acute care anyway – at the added costs to all our bills and our insurance premiums. Why would we not want to have some sort of planned universal coverage if we are all going to have to pay for the uninsured some other, more expensive way?
This repeal effort is based upon fallacies and lies. No one involved is actually trying to improve anything for the people.
We are suddenly told that this bill will increase the deficit. When confronted with the facts that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has calculated that the program will actually reduce the deficit by $230 billion in the next ten years, Mr. Boehner says, “Oh, they can have their figures, and we have ours.” That is a silly, stupid answer. No sensible person says such things. But it typifies republican tendencies to ignore facts when it pleases them.
Mr. Boehner’s “job-killing” accusation needs examination. His idea, of course, is to reduce labor costs for all of the nation’s businesses.
The fact is that some of America’s industries are handicapped in global competition by worker wage levels and by worker benefit costs – particularly the cost of health care. Health care costs are hurting our economy in that and other ways. Too much of our GDP is going to the health care sector. Health care costs MUST be reduced. The Obama bill tried to do this, along with increasing access to basic health care to reduce expensive emergency and crisis care. Reducing excess profit margins of insurance companies was another goal.
There is no doubt that health care costs need to be controlled and reduced, but is this goal to be achieved by denial of care for those unable to pay or by denial of benefits and wages to workers? Do we want to cut the standard of living for our middle class and starve the poor? Or, is it better to reduce the flow of cheap goods made by cheap labor into this country through tariffs and other controls.
Would it not also be better to have a single-payer, government run health insurance program like Medicare for everybody? Through such a program real constraints could be placed on escalating health care costs. It would be fair to everyone, and everybody would benefit. There would still be a big “Medicare supplement” insurance market out there for the insurance companies, because no government program is likely to have first dollar, deductible free coverage. American industries would still need some protection, to maintain our standard of living.
It is time to be honest and to stop playing political games with the health care of the people of this country.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard
