The Great Health Care Deception
Conservative think tank Heritage Foundation published a fantastic post earlier this year, in which the grand deception of Democrats regarding health care reform is exposed. This “grand deception,” of course, refers to their lie that the public option is not meant to push private insurers out of business over time in America.
Watch and listen to Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) telling a friendly audience that the public option is nothing more than a trick to replace private insurances with one public insurance:
Why would Democrats lie about the true goal of the public option if, as they tell American voters time and again, a sizable majority supports their efforts to reform the health care system?
Simple. Because they know Americans are pretty happy with their own insurance and wouldn’t want to get rid of it for a million bucks… says Ezra Klein, leftist blogger and columnist:
Or, in President Obama’s own words:
The scale of the deception is absolutely stunning.
h/t to reader Doomed.
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The existence of public insurance will not push the insurers out of business since business is driven by profit motive and personal gain is very powerful force. Instead, it will result in insurers having to change and this is why they are lobbying with hundreds of millions of dollars. Change will cost them so they, like any business that is currently successful, will fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo. With public insurance, they will lose much of their profit margin on procedures covered by the public system so they will have to work to cover procedures that the public system doesn’t cover or offer additional benefits such as a private room or special meal plan, etc. They aren’t going away, they just have to change.
Wow.
What I find amazing is that people really believe what Wellescent just said.
Question for anyone.
How many health care plans compete with Medicare?
Anyone?
How many health care plans compete with Medicaide?
Anyone?
Why is that do you suppose. Here we have 55 million people willing to pay 96.50 up to around 136.00 dollars per month for health care. Why doesnt a whole bunch of insurance companies fire up and go grab all those premiums?
Here we got a whole bunch of poor folk on Medicaide. Why doesnt the insurance fire up a bunch of policies for them as well.
What is annoying is that the Insurance industry actually got on board with Obama and was willing to work closely with him to get things done and then the democrats were loosing the battle so in one fell swoop they changed tactics and began demonizing the Insurance companies.
They needed a boogey man. So the insurance companies was it.
Their main problem is that 80-90 percent of Americans love their health care coverages in America.
So create a crisis…..perpetuate that crisis……….solve that crisis. Democrats operating manual.
The answer is clear and they’ve never been secretive about it. They won’t act on individual plans until there it is mandated that all Americans have insurance.
The insurance industry has wanted it for a while.
Wellescent;
I work in the business and I don’t know where in the hell you’re getting this?
Doomed;
As to one of your points. Yes, its clear (and frankly, was expected within the industry) that the health insurance companies would be demonized. They’re an easy target.
I’m getting a sense of deja vu though. One of the biggest endeavors of the Bush administration was done for 1) WMD or 2) to fight terrorism or 3) take out a vicious dictator or 4) establish a beacon of democracy in the Middle East.
So far health care reform has been to 1) address the crisis of the uninsured in America or 2) reform the insurance industry or 3) save our long time financial crisis by reducing costs to America or …..
Question for anyone.
How many health care plans compete with Medicare?
Medicare Advantage, which the admin proposes to kill in order to pocket the money.
Wellescent;
I work in the business and I don’t know where in the hell you’re getting this?
From the sparkly-unicorn-fart and fairy-dust land inhabited by leftists. Their goal is single-payer, controlled by government. The current Trojan viruses for this are the Giant Wooden Rabbit of Public Option, and the Giant Wooden Badger backup of “co-ops.”
Oh, and reading betweeen the lines on “Wellescent’s” comment, the real message there is that the public option WOULD take over ALL basic insurance functions, leaving the private companies to scrabble for business by offering supplemental coverages…if permitted. Sound familiar? Think UK.
IOW, read closely, it confirms the accusations that “Public Option” would in fairly short order become single payer.
Rather, think France.
Come on, accusations of leftist leanings and living in the land of the fairy, hardly. Businesses adapt to change very successfully, but they hate that change will cost them profits so they will fight it. There is nothing wrong with that as they are attempting to protect their interests, but not recognizing that they are doing so is living in a dream world. Assuming that they will all wither and die is also naive.
As far as who is competing with Medicare, why would insurers do that when there are currently more lucrative areas to target? If a public option is in place and the companies have to adapt, some will compete successfully with the public option and others will seek to fill the very large gaps in coverage that will exist in a public system. Others will offer variations on their more premium coverage to satisfy the desires of those that want a better experience. Keep in mind that a public option will be rudimentary in nature and won’t meet everyone’s desires by a long stretch.
Lastly, the public option won’t “take over” all basic insurance functions, it will provide people a competitive option for the basics which will introduce cost pressures on insurers to become more competitive in those areas for which they compete directly with a public option. Again, what is not covered will still be significant and open for business.
There are plenty of countries with basic public coverage and the health insurance companies in those countries are still thriving.
Interestingly Bill Frist came out and endorsed the current health care mess floating around capitol hill. He replied that he would vote for it.
Do not misunderstand me. I believe totally that health care reform is needed and I would like to see everyone in America have some form of coverage.
My problem is this.
IN the last few weeks we have seen a myraid of new taxes proposed to pay for this health care. Well nothing is free. We all had to know they were going to tax the crap out of us right?
Fine. New taxes….translate to health care.
Now for my problem with health care reform.
1. This is the US government. If they say something is going to cost 1.1 trillion over 10 years you can bet it will be 2.2 trillion or 3.3 trillion or 4.4 trillion. So the health care fiasco is simply going to add another humongous public entitlement to our already simply ridiculous mountain of debt.
2. Because we have used up and abundant part of our ability to raise taxes to pay for health care that leaves very little left to pay on the debt or at least balance a budget. Result….We will continue to run deficits until this nation is literally and figuratively broke.
Every economist that I know, and I know quite a few of them have indicated to me that the sole reason that we are 20 months into this recession and it shows zero sign of letting up is because of our staggering debt. Both Public and private.
Typical recessions last 15 months. I have been told by some really smart people that this will most likely be a prolonged recession that will still be destroying our economy in 2012.
But thats okay…lets add cap and trade and a national boondoggle health care entitlement program on top of our collapsing economy……because if we dont do it now it might never get done.
I wished people would understand this. Everyone on the healthcare bandwagon has put blinders on and said damn the potential collapse of America…full speed ahead.
Folks when cap and trade hits this country will be knocked from her knees to the floor and the world will start a 10 count.
Doomed, I have to agree with your commentary on the risks of the government spending associated with health care reform. Governments are very good at exceeding expectations with respect to spending. However, with 16 to 17% of GDP spent on health care in the US compared to approximately 10% in other countries with equivalent or better health care programs, the system is already ridiculously inefficient. This means that there is a very real possibility that a moderately competent government bureaucracy could do better.
At the same time, with small businesses being such an important part of driving the economy, allowing them to be competitive in obtaining insurance and attracting talent, in part, through access to good health plans will increase their competitiveness and that should have a net benefit in terms of revenue generation through taxation.
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2009/sb20090721_906996.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32766627/ns/business-small_business/
In my mind the risk of government involvement with health reform is far less than increasing debt astronomically by being the world’s police force…
I cannot agree with that. We already know that gov’t bureaucracies are anything but efficient stewards of our tax dollars. Take any gov’t program you would like to. Amtrak, Social Security, Medicare, Education, etc. And point to any one of those that have reduced expenses on it’s own; returning unnecessary funds to the source. All indicators point to a worsening scenario under any Gov’t run instance. And no matter what the outcome -it will be far more expensive if the Gov’t is in charge.
We all know two overriding factors.
1) While any organization has no desire to cease to exist or limit it’s exposure – all for-profit ones will self-trim due to market forces.
2) We already know exactly what is wrong with health care. We’ve all sat in public hospitals and waited for hours for a doctor to see us as we’re rushed out. Some of us have also experienced good and bad for-profit hospitals, and normally been impressed when we see efficient service with little waiting in those for-profit hospitals.
We also know that we’ve all gotten tests that are just not needed but are done for the wild shot in the dark chances. We also have all read about the ridiculous claims against hospitals, doctors, nurses – we’ve also read about the justified ones.
And sadly while some have experienced bad outcomes with for-profit health care, more than a few have seen the bad outcomes from gov’t run health care (Medicare, VA, Military).
owever, with 16 to 17% of GDP spent on health care in the US compared to approximately 10% in other countries with equivalent or better health care programs, the system is already ridiculously inefficient.
OKAY……STOP.
I’ve floated this by some really, really, really smart economists and their response is literally to laugh.
EXPLAIN to me what this means I ask to them.
They put it in perspective. Fast food eats up 7 percent of our GDP. Should we do away with McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell? Walmart eats up 2 percent of our GDP in spending by American citizens. Should we get rid of Walmarts.
Folks this is a bizarre and twisted talking point by Single payer advocates to drum up support for getting rid of health care as we know it today in America. Fast food industry adds 7 percent to our GDP but provides millions of jobs for that percentage. Walmart eats up from 1 to 2 percent of our GDP…running them out of business is not going to help our bottom line at all.
The fact that health care is 15-20 percent of our GDP is providing millions and millions of jobs. Health insurance companies, Hospitals, Clinics, drug companies and the list goes on and on and on.
The reason the percent of GDP is a problem for the government is because the US partakes in health care at all……MEDICARE and MEDICAIDE. This is why they are both broke. WE as a nation cannot keep up with our own created inflationary pressures. The rising prices created by a consumer driven free market system speaks volumes against……
Against the lefts argument for a government option that will drive down costs.
So in the end. Health care reform that does not offer a government option is a superb idea. Secondly if the US government would simply fund Medicare, Medicaide and Social Security we would not have the massive deficits that we have now.
Adding 47 million more people to the rolls…..will only increase the amount of GDP that is eaten up by health care…..Not reduce it. You have essentially added 20 percent to health care thus drastically increasing the percent of GDP eaten up by health care. Does anyone seriously believe that health care costs will come down 20 percent to simply OFFSET what you’ve added….let alone another 30 percent or so that the government is predicting with their public option driving competition?
Essentially by adding everyone to the health care rolls we are demanding that health care prices be slashed in 1/2 to reach the savings the government is projecting.
It will never happen or even worse if it does happen which is what the left wants….it will drive all those insurance companies out of business and leave the American tax payer once again lied to, deceived and holding the bag.
I am totally in favor of health care reform. Its needed. I am totally and 100 percent against a public option. Heres my analogy.
When I was a young man in collge I had this hair brained scheme that if I went out an bought a motorcycle I would save money by not having to pay so much in gasoline costs. Yes I was in college when the Arab embargo hit the USA. So I did. I went out and added a 53 dollar month bill to my family household for the motorcycle payment and then had to buy insurance. For a 22 year old kid that amounted to somewhere around 22 dollars per month.
But I kept my car and the payment I was making on it. The insurance payment I had on the car was still needed. But I did save money….yes I did…I saved about 12 dollars month in gasoline at the cost of 75 dollars per month.
Thats exactly what the government option is going to give us. Yes we might save 500 billion………at the cost of 1.2 trillion or 2.2 trillion or 3.3 trillion.
@Doomed
You certainly like to label, pulling out the terms “left”, “leftist” etc. every time someone disagrees…
The fundamental analogy to McDonalds, etc is deeply flawed. The fast food market has real competition, unlike the health insurance market where some states have only 2 providers. At the same time, people can avoid eating at the restaurants if the price is too high in order to provide feedback to the market, whereas avoiding surgery or medications for a medical condition is far more difficult.
If you are arguing that 15-20% of GDP spending on health care is good vs 10% in other countries simply because it has created jobs, then you are saying that inefficiencies are good if they are created by the private sector. So in other words, US global competitiveness should be hurt because the country is able to employ far more people than it should due to its inefficiencies. I can’t agree with that.
@Interested
I would agree that governments are rarely efficient, but given the 70% (17%/10% of GDP) of inefficiencies that exist in the health care system now, I would argue that the government could do better than that if “moderately efficient”. This is more the case if one program exists instead of many programs that must all be administered. It is only because of how bad the overall system already is that this option is a possibility.
For all of the government distrust, I have to ask why you think that the US government is so special in regard to being more inefficient when governments in countries such as the Netherlands, Britain, Canada, Japan, etc are able to operate their health care systems with equivalent health care to the US for only 10% of their GDP? Are they somehow able to be more efficient? I seriously doubt that given that citizens in any of these countries also complain bitterly about government inefficiency.
Given that market forces have been in effect for so long in health care in the US and have produced the fractured inefficient system that now exists, relying on these same market forces without any additional impetus will change nothing.
Wellescent
I have repeated over and over and over again that I am in favor of reform. There are many, many things that can be done to reform health care and insurance. YOU are absolutely right….red tape by government keeps health care companies protected and if you eased these restrictions and allowed companies to sell everywhere that would bring prices down.
Regulations demanding.
1. Arbitration boards set up to arbitrate malpractice instead of litigate.. Reductions in malpractice insurance. People could still sue for malpractice…they just sue the Arbitration board and not the doctor. Both the feds, Doctors and 1 percent of health care premiums are paid into this agency much like the FDIC.
2. Allow health insurance companies to sell nation wide.
3. No loss of coverages.
4. No preexisting conditions.
5. No denial of payments and coverage.
6. People could shape their own policy. No maternity for example if Im a 55 year old MAN. Later if you decide to marry a 21 year old chick you could add the coverage and your premium goes up. This is very similar to how we do our auto insurance.
7. No mental coverage. No drug coverage. No alchohol abuse coverage. Why pay for these if there is little or no reason they will ever be needed.
8. Cobra for everyone who loses their job.
9. Any health care needs that exceed 1 million dollars would be paid for by the US government as part of health care reform.
10. Uncovered Americans who visit emmergency rooms are paid for by the US government at a fixed rate of pay, which would force Hospitals to not charge huge costs to cover losses in Emmergency rooms. This would come out of the governments pool of monies set up to cover the 1 million limits as well as emergency room visits by uninsured.
The governments portion of covering this would be a sliding scale tax on all healthcare benefits adjusted each year based upon the amount they had to pay for malpractice and how much of the 1 million plus they had to cover.
Additionally a national VAT is established to pay for health care and balancing the budget as well as reducing our national debt.
The national VAT can NEVER ever exceed 5 percent.
Additonally Social Security and Medicare is funded by simply raising payroll taxes by the mere 5 percent demanded to pay for these programs
Once these programs are in place and working then look at covering the uncovered.
There NOW IVE fixed the health care crisis in America. The problem is that everyone knows that Democrats simply want a government run health care program and that nothing else will suffice.
http://www.property-casualty.com/News/2009/9/Pages/Agency-Tells-Humana-To-Stop-Its-Portrayal-Of-Health-Reform-.aspx
And Now Bacchus is threatening Medicare Advantage insurance companies from suggesting that his plan might cut some seniors benefits.
Which it most certanly will. But we cant have the Democrats seen as cutting health care benefits for seniors now can we. That perhaps is why many people at AARP including me has torn up his card and joinned another Seniors organization.
http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2009/10/02/the-most-squalid-reform-deal-yet/
See Dick Morris take on this.
The democrats did not learn from their destruction of Bush and the GOP using the internet and the FACTS……..they are now the victim of their own success. The same internet and wealth of information on the internet is now being used against their secretive and twisted plan to destroy Insurance companies in America.
I have to ask why you think that the US government is so special in regard to being more inefficient when governments in countries such as the Netherlands, Britain, Canada, Japan, etc are able to operate their health care systems with equivalent health care to the US for only 10% of their GDP?
Um, the OBVIOUS. They don’t HAVE “equivalent” health care. Apples and oranges. Compare cancer survival rates. Compare legal systems. Compare waiting times. Compare availability of new technology. Compare different national cultures and ethnic compositions…and don’t forget to compare the ways in which those other nations actively ration health care to the elderly to avoid those end-of-life costs (g’night, Granny!), or to other groups on various criteria. The list goes on.
We’re ALL “in favor of reform.” But first, define “reform.”
@Tully
I thought that the obvious was so obvious that it actually wouldn’t result in a comment… Of course the US is different because it doesn’t have health care, but that is central to the question being asked. Given that, what makes the US government “so inept” in comparison to these other governments that would prevent it from being able to attain anywhere hear their efficiencies?
I would argue that comparing any of the four countries mentioned involves comparing radically different cultures, legal systems, ethic groups, waiting times and technology. Yet they are all able to do things about as effectively and yet more financially effectively without the “active rationing” that is being tossed out there.
To your point, the one key difference is wait times, but this is not resulting in a measurable number deaths that any study has published. With regard to cancer survival rates, Canada a country at the other end of the political spectrum with respect to health care methodology, is close behind. http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/10/closer-look-at-cancer-survival-rates.html
Even Cuba, with almost no resources can beat the US in some areas.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080716/cancer_statistics_080716/20080716/
If the 70% inefficiency in the US system is the impetus to support “drive through” medicine, I would suggest that most people would wait if they knew they wouldn’t die in line.
Talk about a trojan horse-pig Matroyshka doll with lipstick!
check this out!
“According to the Heritage Foundation the plan is for Senator Reid to then move onto an unrelated bill HR 1586, which concerns taxing the bonuses of evil, greedy TARP recipients. After coercing 60 votes to act on 1586, Reid will do a bait-and-switch, moving to an ottoman a little closer to the royal target. Furtively, Reid will “offer a complete substitute bill purportedly including the combined Senate HELP and Finance Committee products.” In other words a single payer, public option health care amendment will be stuffed like a bomb in the rectum of a TARP bill no one would suspect to have anything to do with health care.”
this should help congress’ approval rating…
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/asinine_amendments.html
another case for the “read the bill act”
that is why this McChrystal thing is the democrats way of taking the heat off the Health care debate and put it on to something else so that were not watching whats going on under our noses.
Keep the focus on health care. Nothing else matters right now. NOTHING>
Doomed, I went here:
https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/114
(Campaign to restore consumer controlled health care)
Which allowed me to write a letter to my Congressional Representatives, basically, I wrote that I have read that Harry Reid (or someone in congress) may integrate unrelated bill HR 1586 with a healthcare bill. After coercing 60 votes to act on 1586, Reid will “offer a complete substitute bill to include the combined Senate HELP and Finance Committee products.” In other words a single payer, public option health care amendment will be stuffed into the TARP bill. If they know /hear that anything like this is in the works, I urged them to please oppose this dishonest action as well. Of course my Representatives are John Kerry / (temporary Senator Paul Kirk) and Ed Markey, so it will most likely fall on deaf ears, but I’m hoping I’m not the only one in my State doing the same this, and that they can’t claim ignorance when/ if they approve this.
Then there is this version of how it will go down:
“Your esteemed Senators have so little respect for you that some of them are willing to vote in favor of legislation which does not exist because THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL. The actual legislation will be drafted in secret by Harry Reid and a few other people, including staffers whose names and political connections you never will know, and the resulting legislation will be rammed through the Senate and House before anyone gets to read and analyze it.”
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/10/there-is-no-baucus-bill.html
What is going on here!!