The State and the State run Media have been whipping up a frenzy about the uninsured, the "Crisis" of millions of Americans without health insurance (implying it is caused by greed and heartlessness of business, of course).
The health care system can be improved, and we should endeavor to do so. There are no perfect health care systems out there, no matter the media and the administration presenting government run health care as nirvana, or Michael Moore's love affair with the Cuban health care system (now overwhelmed with foreigners flocking there for treatment after his glowing review). There are, however, three huge myths about our health care system being foisted on us by the State and the State run media.
The first myth is that 45 million Americans are without health insurance because they can't get it (due to being unemployed, or their employer doesn't offer it, or they are denied because of pre-existing conditions), or can't afford it. But this is just flat untrue. Approximately one-third of all of those 45 million uninsured are eligible for government health insurance (Medicaid and state programs) and almost 40% of the children are eligible. This data is reported as roughly the same whether you check the Census Bureau, the CDC, or the comprehensive government sponsored Kaiser Commision for Study of Medicaid and the Uninsured. (Please note, these are all government or government sponsored data...no "right wing" or conservative group info was used (or else the data would be even more damning)). Another 20% of the uninsured earn over $50k per year, and have employer plans or private plans (Which average less than $5k per year)available, but choose not to pay for them. Granted, paying up to 10% of your income for health insurance is not fun, but it is certainly a viable alternative. By the way, almost half of those people earn $75k or more per year. The Kaiser study estimated that 26% of the uninsured were not U.S. citizens, but it was not clear how much overlap there is between the unisured who are medicaid eligible, plus those who earn over $50k/year and the 26% who are not citizens. I assume there is a very large overlap, but it is certainly not 100% overlap. Therefore, over half of the 45 million uninsured are eligible for government insurance, or should be able to afford it, or are not citizens. Interestingly, the Kaiser study found that health "90 percent are in health that can be considered excellent or good". This is more understandable when you realize that 60% of the uninsured are under 35 years old.
A 2005 study by BlueCross Blue Shield showed very similar data...of 41 million uninsured (in 2005), 14 million were eligible for government health insurance,but not enrolled, and another 13 million earned over $50k/year (in 2004). That's right, about 60% of the uninsured were eligible and just hadn't signed up, or were working and should have been able to afford insurance.
The second myth is that the goverment will lower health care costs and insurance costs (by being a big, efficient provider). That's almost laughable. We have a big, government health care program. It's called Medicare/Medicaid. It costs more than private insurance (approximately $9,600 per patient compared to approximately $7,100 per patient for private insurance). And...Medicare/Medicaid just added prescription drug coverage (included in almost all private plans) in 2006...it's going up from here!It's projected to go bankrupt! Are you people crazy?!....the Government in the same sentence with low cost or efficient? The government who says we have to spend One Trillion Dollars to save money?! But the government won't have the paper work and bureaucracy of the insurance companies...right?
The third myth is that we'll all be healthier when the government runs health care...why?..."cause Obama say so". Every private insurance program I've been in had "wellness" programs. There is little or no evidence they work, because people are so reluctant to change their lifestyles. Do you really think, as the most obese nation in the world, people who should lose weight to improve their health don't know it? I'm all for education and promotion of healthy lifestyles, but not for the government telling people what their choices should be.
Yes, the health care system can be improved. But it is a myth that there are huge numbers of people who can't get or afford health insurance (at the most 6% to 7% of Americans), and it is a myth that the government will make health care less costly and be a more efficient provider (it may well lower cost to some by shifting that cost to others, or just running at a deficit, butthat's not efficiency or lower cost). Instead of spending a trillion dollars to give control of health care to the government, we could do two things quickly and much less expensively. Spend more money to reach the one-third of the uninsured who are eligible for government insurance but not enrolled (which by the way, points out that as a percentage the government is much more delinquent in signing covering eligible patients than the private sector). Second, as mentioned earlier, we have a government healthcare/insurance program...Medicare/Medicaid. If the argument is that insurance is available, but too expensive for working families earning $40k per year, expand Medicare eligibility up to 2 times the poverty rate (instead of 1.33)and Medicaid would cover another 20% of the "uninsured". These two steps would solve as much of the problem as the CBO says the government's $1 trillion plan(or $1 1/2 trillion, but who's counting)would solve.
But that wouldn't accomplish the real mission...give access to and control of the hundreds of billions of dollars in the health care system to the State.
The Old Man
And is there really a 'crisis' when 86% of people are actually happy with their current healthcare?
ReplyDeleteI suppose borrowing a trillion dollars from our kids and grandkids will bring that number up to perhaps 90%? Well, that makes sense!
ReplyDeleteWhy The Rush to Pass Healthcare?
ReplyDeleteWHEN Barack Obama pilfered Martin Luther King Jr.'s line about the "fierce urgency of now," he wasn't kidding. The line has come to define his presidency. His legislative strategy moves in two gears -- heedlessly fast and recklessly faster.
As with the stimulus package, Obama's health-care plan depends on speed. More important than any given provision, more important than any principle, more important than sound legislating is the urgent imperative to Do It Now.
Do it now, before anyone can grasp what exactly it is that Congress is passing. Do it now, before the overpromising and the dishonest justifications can be exposed. Do it now, before Obama's poll numbers return to earth and make it impossible to slam through ramshackle government programs concocted on the run.
Do it now, because simply growing government is more important than the practicalities of any new program.
The stimulus partly drives the rush on health care. The program was so ill-considered and so festooned with irrelevant liberal priorities as the price of hustling it through Congress that it becomes more of a drag for Obama every day. So health care has to be rushed through before Obama pays the full price for the failure of his previous rush job. Haste -- and waste -- makes for more haste.
Obama cultivated an image of cool during the campaign. Unrattled. Deliberate. Cerebral to a fault. Who knew he'd be in a panic to remake one-sixth of the economy by the first week of August of his first year in office?
Normally, the larger and more complex a bill is, the longer Congress takes to consider it. With the stimulus and cap-and-trade, Obama and the Democrats upended this rule of thumb by passing Byzantine, 1,000-page bills that no one had the time to read. When the work product is indefensible, deliberation is dangerous.
There's a touch of the guilty conscience about Obama's terrible rush. As if he knows he was elected as a moderate-sounding deficit hawk last year, and if he's going to pass an ambitious left-wing program, he must do it before the opposition builds.
Why else the mad dash? Obama noted in an interview with ABC News the other day that his health program won't be phased in until 2013. That's four years from now. The problem that Obama describes of rising health-care costs bankrupting the government is also a long-term issue, one that needn't be addressed in pell-mell fashion over the next two weeks.
But the longer Obama's health-care program marinates in the sun, the worse it smells.
Obama's signature line that anyone who likes his current coverage gets to keep it has been shown to be untrue in recent weeks. His rationale of passing a $1 trillion program to reduce costs is undermined every time the Congressional Budget Office analyzes a real Democratic proposal.
No wonder Obama wants to close down the debate before his rating on health care -- down to 49 percent in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll -- drops any further.
Ramming through legislation without any assurance that it will work doesn't seem pragmatic or far-sighted. But for Obama's purposes, it is. His goal is nothing short of an ideological reorientation of American government. Putting in place the structures to achieve this change in the power and role of government is more important than how precisely it is accomplished.
The stimulus might not do much to stimulate the economy during the recession, but its massive spending creates a new baseline for all future spending. The cap-and-trade bill might not reduce carbon emissions during the next decade, but it creates a mechanism for exerting government control over a huge swath of the economy. ObamaCare might not work as advertised, but it will tip more people into government care and create the predicate for rationing and price controls.
Obama is an ideologue in a hurry. He wants to put American government on a radically different path. And he wants to Do It Now.
We need to save our country! Wake up America! Our freedom and our rights are being taken away from us in the name of progressivism. We need to march on Washington and make our voices heard. What happened to all you 60's/70's radicals - when did you become so apathetic. Why did you care about freedom then, but you're willing to let the government take control of you and your children's lives now?
ReplyDeleteHey anonymous - I missed the latest episode of Glenn Beck, so help me out here: what is one specific freedom/right that is being taken away by the proposed health care reform bills?
ReplyDeleteSo for example, are you referring to the freedom to be denied coverage due to a so-called "pre-existing condition"? I happen to know a hemophiliac or two, and frankly they weren't so fond of that freedom anyway. Perhaps you are referring to a person's right to have no choice but private insurance. Or do you refer to the long-cherished liberty to be charged out the wazoo for life-saving, cost-reducing, preventative medicine?