Reform Debate Not About Healthcare
The sad truth about the current debate over healthcare is that it has little to do with real reform while there is little informed debate going on, says NU Associate Editor Mark Ruquet, after attending a local town hall meeting this week.
I’ll leave it to Mark to recount his experience and conclusions in his own words:
On Monday evening I attempted to attend a town hall meeting of Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. in Piscataway, N.J. He also happens to head the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee. The meeting was to start at 7 p.m. I arrived at 6:30 p.m. I didn’t get in.
Around 1,000 people were lined up to enter the municipal meeting hall that only holds 150. To the congressman’s credit, his representatives told the crowd that he would hold several one-hour sessions until everyone had a chance to enter the hall. Anyone who couldn’t stay could find a representative of the congressman and leave written questions or concerns for him.
From where I was in line, I estimated I wouldn’t get in until 1 a.m., and abandoned my effort. But I didn’t miss out on the show.
There were plenty of protestors, including a table was set-up by LaRouchePAC.com with signs calling President Obama “Nuts” and photos of the president with a Hitler mustache penciled in.
Handmade signs dotted the crowd (one of which is pictured with this blog)–some supporting reform (“HMO CEO, Thank You, Obscene Profits”) and others opposed (“Our Health, Our Business, Not Obama’s Business”).
Then there were the loud voices and finger-pointing as individuals and groups began arguing. The exchanges were intense and the police were on hand to keep an eye on the crowd. From my vantage point, I could see pat-downs before people entered the building, and there was a metal detector set up for everyone to pass through.
I once attended a town hall meeting of Rep. Pallone’s a number of years ago. I’m not sure there were 10 people there. This event far surpassed anything I’m sure his staff has ever experienced. In fact, a second meeting held the next evening was switched to a larger venue in Red Bank, N.J., in anticipation of a larger crowd.
What I learned from all of this is that there are three camps attending these meetings: supporters, opponents and those who want to learn more. What I also learned is that of the three, the most vocal, angry, nasty and disrespectful people are those who say they are in opposition of reform.
However, from listening to them, the opposition has less to do with the subject of health care reform than a deep-seated suspicion about the government’s competence.
The suspicion is fueled by inaccurate information that many in the opposition has grasped onto as truth and won’t let go. Their minds are made-up, and they are using these lies as a bludgeon.
I listened to a housewife and a history teacher discuss their differing views, but it soon escalated, in the housewife’s mind, as an attack on her conservative beliefs. What was more confounding was that through their entire discourse, the subject of healthcare came up only twice. The housewife’s argument was that the government’s actions were unconstitutional, and she became flustered when asked to “show me where it says it in the Constitution” that Washington can’t get involved in healthcare.
When the history teacher asked the housewife for her suggestions to remedy the health care system, she had none, and demanded to know what his opinion was.
When I finally left them, they seemed to be coming to some agreement over the evils of insurance companies.
Two retired gentlemen sat against a rail and took everything in. Both said they were against government involvement in healthcare. One of them cited the British system allegedly killing patients on purpose who are elderly and may need extended care by keeping them in ambulances for more than four hours so they don’t have to treated. (I checked this one out on the Web and found stories of problems with ambulances getting to a scene, but nothing about a government conspiracy to kill people).
The other gentlemen said his wife would be dead under the government’s proposals. He didn’t elaborate.
One suggested the biggest help would be tort reform to help drive down costs. He also suggested the government take the money it plans to spend on the program and instead give it to the uninsured to purchase insurance on the open market.
In this current atmosphere of hostility and mutual distrust, the people being left out are the ones who want to learn more. One woman was on the phone talking about how she was coming to the meeting to learn something about this debate. After the announcement was made that everyone was not getting in until later, she was seen walking back to her car.
If a healthcare reform package fails this time, the conservative wing will beat its chest proudly and say they “won,” but the losers will be the 47 million Americans still without insurance (among them some in my own family) and the millions of others who go underinsured and are going bankrupt because of it (also in my family).
Is that something to be proud of?
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Show me in the Constitution where it says government “should” provide health care. It’s not there. Government’s job, as I understand it, and what it does best, is govern. It was never designed to care for the physical needs of its people.
SAM RESPONDS:
I could turn that on its head and ask you to point out where the Constitution says government can’t provide basic social services, if the people’s elected representatives decide to do so. This is a policy argument, not a Constitutional one. That’s why elections matter. Different parties, different philosophies, different approaches.
MARK’S RESPONSE:
The beauty of the Constitution is that it was created to govern the nation, but remains flexible enough to address issues the founding fathers could not have foreseen more than 200 years ago. Individual and collective health is an issue for the government. Both the CDC and FDA exist for the protection and welfare of all Americans. Why do we do less to ensure the health of every American?
GARY GETS THE FINAL WORD:
Here’s another problem with your line of thinking. The framers of this legislation have a section in their bills that require everyone to carry health insurance. Where in the Constitution does the government have the right to tell me I have to purchase something like that? If I don’t want to have insurance that is my right.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with the need for health care reform. It is a complete mess. But is the only solution we can find for any problem facing us these days the creation of a new government program? To my knowledge government hasn’t done that good of a job with its responsibilities the last few of decades. Our deficit is staggering. Medicare is a mess. Social Security is a mess. Our infrastructure is crumbling.
We want these people running health care, too?
Government via the Congress of the United States establishes TARP. Then members of Congress who put this thing together begin complaining that there are no rules in the damned thing to make the banks do with the money what Congress intended it to do. What! Didn’t someone think of that when they were putting it together? It’s $700 billion. Shouldn’t more thought than what was done over a few days be put into something that expensive?
But we the people give government the check book to bail out irresponsible banks and an irresponsible insurance company. We are told that when the stock is sold back, we’ll make a profit. Yep. Let’s do it, say the people. Our reward? Our government sells back the stock we purchased from these banks for a whopping 66 cents on the dollar. While not all of the stock has been repurchased, we the people, again, are losing our shirts because of government.
And who benefits?
This is “change we can believe in?”
Our representatives in this representative form of government that you say has the right to do this has put together a more than 1,000 page document to reform health care that they haven’t read. The Democrats are out pushing for its approval because their party says that’s what they should do. Republicans are out opposing it because that’s what their party tells them to do.
How is this “reform” such a good thing? The people passing it rely on others to tell them what it says.
Passing something this critical with such awful discussion and in such a big hurry is as big a mistake as it was rushing the TARP plan through and the Obama stimulus package through. If government is the solution to this problem and if, as you say, the U.S. Constitution says government has the right to do this, then government ought to for once put on a real thinking cap and take its time.
And again, Sam and Mark, is a government program really the solution? Is government always the solution? Isn’t there a lot of danger to all of us when the people only look to government for solutions and forget that they can actually solve their own problems and that they are actually responsible for their own lives?
That’s what the framers of the U.S. Constitution had in mind when the crafted the document over 200 years ago. They saw a people taking care of themselves and being independent from a tyrannical government that taxed and taxed and taxed them for programs that didn’t work and that weren’t beneficial to them or to the people.
Yes, health care reform is beneficial to the people. But having government run the program isn’t likely to be the solution we all seek. Do you look at what is happening cost-wise in France, and in Britain, and our neighbor Canada? They have huge health care program deficits. They are nothing compared to the deficits we face if this thing isn’t done correctly.
We are moving toward a more socialized system of medical care. Some want it to be completely socialized–a single-payer system. How good is that? When was the last time you saw an innovative medical procedure or a new drug invented by one of these single-payer systems? That only happens in a free market system.
In your mind the Constitution gives our government the right to do this. I disagree. In mine, the document does not give our government that right. Whether we come together on that point or not isn’t really the issue, is it? The issue is whether government running all of our health care and dictating how it will be done is the best idea.
And it isn’t.
I’m glad these forums exist as a release valve for this country. If we didn’t have blogs, where anyone could post long, rambling, going-nowhere walls of text rants, there would surely be an epidemic of people runing crazy through the malls with assualt rifles slung over their camo jackets and McCain-Palin ‘08 T-shirts.
The idea that one could learn something at one of these healthcare town halls is ludicrous. I mean, come on.
I have no sympathy for the person on the phone that you wrote about. What cave did she come out of? What did she think she would learn from a town hall that would not have been available to her in the media? Goodness, all she would have had to do is read the Newark Star Ledger (both the news and the op-ed page) and she would have been able to learn a lot about what has been proposed and the pros and cons associated with it.
This process has been a joke from the beginning. You have an administration with a Congress with a substantial majority trying to ram something through with virtually no debate. If it was not for the initial outcry from the first town hall meetings the Democrats would have pushed this through at the beginning of August.
Liberals like yourself, Mark, have been blasting the government for Iraq, Katrina, the budget deficit for the past eight years and now we want these incompetent people to control our lives in such a personal way?
Gary already hit on these points, so I will not belabor them.
Sure, complain about people who are anti-government and lament in a rhetorical fashion about whether we should be proud of what is happening. But where is the lament about the way that this has gone down from the beginning? Are you “proud” of the way that it has been handled by the Obama Adminstration and the Congress? I’m not.
Let’s talk about the often-quoted but never proved “47 million uninsured.” Who are these people? You say that some of them are members of your family. What are their circumstances? How might we be able to take care of them without remaking the whole kit and caboodle?
I am grateful to the “conservatives” who have helped to slow down this process and I hope that they kill it and I will be proud of them.
Responding to James, who said: “Liberals like yourself, Mark, have been blasting the government for Iraq, Katrina, the budget deficit for the past eight years and now we want these incompetent people to control our lives in such a personal way?”
It boggles the mind that conservatives have the ability to point out at length the inadequacies of the government THEY voted into power for the last 30 years, and take this as proof whywe need to be against the current government they voted AGAINST.
Hopefully we get universal care and the psychiatric drugs these folks need will finally be made available to them.
Trust the government? Not only no, but hell no! Trust is earned, not given and the government has proven it can’t be trusted. Look at the cadre of tax dodgers and liars we have in Washington at this very minute and somehow we should rally around and believe them? Trust them with our health care, no less?
On the subject of people dying in ambulances, we have that here now. Hospital ERs so crowded that the paramedics can’t get the patients into the ER for treatment because the rooms and the hallways are filled. The paramedics got them there in time but that didn’t help. And Obamacare won’t help that one bit; it will likely make it worse with fewer physicians and more people crowding facilities!
Are people angry at the town hall meetings? Sure! They’re tired of being conned and lied to. The government admits they really don’t have a plan in place, but then want the peoples’ blessings on it. Come to the people for their input, but they don’t want to hear what we have to say anyway, unless it’s to praise their so-far lack of consideration for the taxpayers on this mess.
They have their narrow mind made up to pass some sort of “universal” bill no matter how not universal it really is, no matter how many people actually fall through the cracks in the bill, no matter how costly, as long as it becomes a legacy bill for Obama and a memorial for Kennedy.
Hell, they don’t even know how many uninsured people there are that would be covered, how many won’t be insured, and how many won’t take coverage regardless.
Finally, when you have to have the White House Council of Economic Advisers spend millions developing information and reporting to the President that small employers pay more per employee for health care than large employers, you can see the trouble we’re in. It took all that manpower and money to develop information that any small business person could have told them for years. Simple economics..but what would the government know about that when they’re spending YOUR money!
God Help the USA!
SAM RESPONDS:
BJ, I share your frustration, but I am always put off when people speak about our govenment as if it’s some foreign invader or occupying force. I heard the same nonsense after the Oklahoma City bombing–as if the government is our enemy, somehow.
This is OUR government, folks, and if there incompetence or corruption, it’s because We The People let our elected representatives get away with it. Too many Americans are more concerned about who wins some wacky, gross and dehumanizing reality TV show than they are about who their elected officials are.
If people are so fed up with government, why aren’t more members of Congress voted out? It’s because far too many people don’t even know who their local representatives are, let alone anything about the issues they are debating–issues affecting our future. I cannot a remember a time when the majority of people in this country were so ill-informed, despite the pervasive media we have today in the form of the Web.
Everyone seems to be plugged into their I-pods or texting away giddily on their cellphones, but no one is actually learning or communicating anything worthwhile. We have more information at our disposal than at any time in history, yet are more uninformed than ever. Shame on us!
Also, BJ, if you are waiting for politicians to be pure and selfless, you are doomed to be disappointed. Plato’s utopian Republic will never come to pass, and we will never be ruled by Philosopher Kings!
However, I believe the majority of our elected leaders want to do good by their constituents. We should hold their feet to the fire to make sure they do.
To James:
Thanks for your comments. You have underscored my point that this is not a debate about healthcare reform. But to answer a few of your points:
• Blasting the government for its failures “and wanting these incompetent people to control our lives in such a personal way?”
If the private insurance industry provided universal coverage at affordable rates based on the ability to pay without regard to pre-existing conditions and imposing deductibles meant to bankrupt a family, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we? As far as incompetence, we need to look no further than the sub-prime mess by the financial sector to raise the issue over whether the private sector can be counted on to make a compelling case for competency.
• Taking pride over the way this issue has been handled?
We should all be proud that people are taking such interest in this issue. The sad thing is that many citizens are misinformed about the subject. Healthcare reform has been on the table since Harry Truman. Richard Nixon may have come the closest to getting it done. This is the only industrialized nation in the world that has not found an answer to providing basic, affordable healthcare to all its citizens.
• Who are those who do not have healthcare and proving 47 million Americans don’t have it?
You can take some satisfaction in knowing that according to the U.S. Census Bureau that 47 million figure is off (though I’ve heard some estimates going as high 49 million). The Bureau put the figure at 45.7 million in 2007, the latest figure, a drop from 47 million in 2006. The reason this number dropped, the Census Bureau said, is because 3 million more Americans, a total of 83 million, were covered by government health insurance. Medicaid coverage also increased. Can’t wait to see what 2008 holds.
• Your question: You say that some of them (without insurance) are members of your family. What are their circumstances? How might we be able to take care of them without remaking the whole kit and caboodle?
I have a sister whose husband worked for a small company that never offered insurance. She drives a school bus and they offered her insurance she could not afford. Her husband got severely sick, disabled, and they’ve been saddled with enormous medical debt.
She recently got coverage through the state, and in her 40s got her first full physical since she was a child. She needs to find a cardiologist, but has been unsuccessful so far because she can’t find someone to take her insurance.
One of my sister-in-laws was told she needed an operation six years ago and just at that moment lost her job with health benefits. She just found another job with benefits, but is reluctant to leave a job she just started to get the operation. My brother, her husband, has worked in construction and depended on her for coverage. They live in Florida and he has not been able to find a job going on two years, not from lack of trying.
When my father died over 20 years ago, he left my mother with a mound of medical bills that took her years to pay off. Now she’s ill, on Social Security, and finds it hard to meet the deductibles as they mount with each trip to the hospital and doctor.
A new emergency room operation opened up recently at Staten Island University Hospital in New York, advertising over 50 rooms for patients. I had the unfortunate experience of having to take a loved one there. Despite all the new space, she laid on a gurney in the hallway from 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon until 6:30 the following morning before being admitted to the hospital. We were not alone in that situation. It was obvious to me that many people were utilizing the facility for care that could have been administered by a primary doctor.
I myself cannot name the number of doctors I have had to change in the past 15 years because they wouldn’t take my health insurance at the time.
Unless you experience the failures of the current system first hand, you can not understand its failings. The need for healthcare reform is played out everyday in the lives of the desperate, unfortunate, sick and neglected.
We need more physicians and nurses. You understand the toll the job takes on them when a mentally deranged patient begins to scream and hit caregivers as they try to do their job. They are overworked and understaffed.
It is vitally important that the system be reformed. The private sector is failing to address the gaps and they are growing. What we ultimately need is a public-private partnership aimed at providing universal coverage. And I will take pride in seeing that come to fruition, and watching the lies and fear-mongering die.
I disagree that our elected representatives want to do good. From what I see, Sam, they generally want to assure their personal future and wealth, and could care less other than to pander to those groups that will gain their re-election.
You know they don’t want any part of the proposed healthcare system for themselves. Why should they, when they have a life-long system that covers them and their families at a guaranteed pittance?
Arlen Specter said he would have the same “choices” as anyone else, but he sure hedged when asked if he would accept the government healthcare ordinary citizens had available if the healthcare bill passed. Sidestepped all the way for sure.
The current administration is in place due to a popularity contest, not because they have anyone’s best interets at heart.
And, yes, I don’t trust the government. As a Vietnam veteran, an investigator and having been behind the scenes all too often, I know how the government lies to cover everyone’s butt, and will create lies and scenarios that would make even corporate America’s con jobs seem lame.
The system needs to be reformed, but the private sector should be forced into doing it and the government keep their fingers out of the pie. Whenever you see a government partnership, you know what happens…there is no real partnership, you have government running the operation and spending the money, then telling you how successful it is no matter how much it costs and how dismal it actually it turns out.
Then if it really goes bad, the government steps aside and blames it on the private sector of the partnership. Happens that way all the time and I see no reason that it won’t continue.
John:
Thanks for the personal attack and the implication that I have a mental illness. It is this condescending attitude that people like you (i.e. the Democrats) that is helping you to lose this debate.
Mark:
Thank you for your comments. I agree that the system needs to be reformed, but what is being proposed is not reform. It is a remaking of the system to be something that has already been shown to not work.
I can sympathize with your healthcare struggles, but the stories from Canada and the U.K. are much worse. Question–why does the U.S. lead the world in developing new medical techniques and drugs? Why isn’t Canada and the U.K. leading the world in these areas?
Finally, the 47 (or 45) million number is a rhetorical tactic which lumps together all people who do not have insurance. Many people are uninsured by choice, by lifestyle and other reasons for which they should be responsible and not me. Yes, let’s take care of the hard cases and with issues of portability, but do not change the whole system for a relatively small percentage of the population.
SAM RESPONDS:
James, you state that Canada and the U.K. are “worse.” On what basis? That “fact” is repeated so often, many are taking for granted that it’s true. If it is true, as I wondered in an earlier blog this month, why haven’t those vibrant democracies (higher voter turnouts than the apathetic and politically disengaged U.S.) voted in parties that will go back to a privately-led healthcare system?
Also, while there is no call for insults or questions about your mental abilities, James, it sounds to me as if the conservatives (literally, those who wish to conserve the status quo, however inadequate) are overwhelmingly the vicious ones in the debate, with their bullying, intimidating tactics at town hall meetings, and their posters showing Obama with a Hitler mustache. And with the outright lies of people like Sarah Palin and Glen Beck in reference to “Death Panels” that any rational observer would see is hooey.
Sam, you wrote a thoughtful blog post a few days ago regarding one potential option to cover the uninsured without resorting to a “public” option–assigned risk pools. I wish that constructive alternatives to a public option like these were what conservatives were spending their time talking about. While I may agree with their opposition to a larger role for the government, too many are making the rest of us look foolish.
There was a recent article in the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care) that covers private market reforms that can be made. I wish, wish, wish that this was the Republican line and the basis of conservative talking points. Unfortunately we are being represented by the Palin/Limbaugh wing of the party, to our own detriment.
While I oppose what Congressional Democrats are doing in terms of the solution they offer, I sympathize with the need to do something, and frankly, am embarrassed to call myself a conservative because it paints me with the same brush as the “death panel” chorus.
I enjoy reading your blog- keep up the good work.
Enough of the name calling. What do we accomplish other than to avoid the real questions? The left is wrong. The right is wrong. The press is so compliant that we can’t believe anything they tell us. So how do we find out? Use the scientific method and examine the bill ourselves.
I have read the first 500 pages. Let me start with the positive, there are NO death panels. What the bill suggests (not requires) is that everyone have a living will and a health care proxy so that as such time as end of life issues arise, the patient will have been the one to have made the decisions–not a group of people who have no idea what he would have wanted.
It further suggests that one have a discussion about these documents with one’s health care provider to assess what measures one would be comfortable with in the event one becomes so ill that he can no longer express his decisions. Preparing for death may be morose, but the fact is if more people did so families would suffer less and the dying would have more dignity.
I like the way this part of the bill is written. It is the only place in the first 500 pages that one does not need a Harvard lawyer to help you interpret what is being said.
The funniest part of the bill is the section on “plain language.” I laughed so hard at reading this that I could have awoken the dead. The bill demands that all QHBP’s have plain and concise language so that anyone reading will be able to understand. The language in the bill is so incomprehnsible that the bill actually has to define what they mean by plain language! It’s hilarious actually.
The sad parts of the first 500 pages are the parts that expose the lies that our political leaders (both parties) have refused to address.
There are, for instance, at least 5 references to new taxes that currently do not exist–a tax on the individual for not having a “qualifed plan”; a similar tax on an employer; an excise tax on an employer above the tax for not having the coverage; a tax on the plans themselves. So the idea that this bill would require no new taxes is a lie based on what it says in black and white in HR 3200.
The assertion that your insurance would be portable is also false. According to the bill, if you leave a job your insurance is only portable if it is a QHBP as defined by the new commissioner of health care. If it is not a QBHP as defined by the commissioner then you must buy a QBHP through the Insurance Exchange created by the commissioner.
The choice is clear–it isn’t your choice any more, but it is clear. So the choice you have is get the coverage the government dictates or get the coverage you want and pay a tax for doing so.
I am making a chart of the pages, sections of the bill, and what it says that I will send to Sam in a few days. Hopefully, he will have his researchers fact check me and then reproduce my chart so that people can actually look at the bill and stop the name calling.
Come on people, we are ALL Americans and ALL want the best. We are at our best when we look at an issue, use American ingenuity to find the best way to work through the issue, and then implement solutions. We are at our worst when all we do is moan and complain about who is right or wrong.
As an active participant, researcher and salesman in health care, I find Mark’s orginal article somewhat biased in only pointing out the conservative side of “disinformation.”
Anyone who has followed the ongoing discussions/lectures on health (sick) care reform knows that positions change quite rapidly from the President, to the some Senate members and certainly in the House chamber. The media, source for most people’s information, has produced a lot in sound-bites and misinformation.
The comments above are all about what the media have been saying and primarily deal with personalities rather than health care reform–perhaps proving Mark Ruquet’s position.
I certainly expected more from insurance agents than the same stuff coming out of the media and politicians. At a minimum look at the information provided by the 5 national agent organizations around the time of the fly-in to washington D.C. on July 15th.
There are some meaningful reforms that can be done right now. For example, let’s quit talking about 47 million uninsured. As Pres. Obama changed at his Sept. 9 talk to Congress, he is now talking about 30 million, having eliminated all non-U.S. citizens, both legal and illegal.
The remaining 30 million are divided into at least 4 distinct groups, which we as agents can do a lot to resolve.
After 26 years of selling all kinds of insurance, including group and individual health insurance, I slowly but surely have come to the realization that our country’s health care/insurance system cannot be saved.
I have seen my small-business clients reduce coverage, drop coverage entirely or begin to require increasing contributions from employees, some of whom must then drop their coverage anyway.
I have watched as individual insurance purchasers have opted for deductibles they have no way of paying just to have catastrophic coverage.
And during all this I have attended seminars, read books, examined surveys and tried to reach some sort of rational conclusion about the situation.
After looking at everything that has been tried in other countries, plus our own country’s experience with a single payer system (Medicare) and socialized medicine (Veterans Administration), I have come to a singular conclusion.
If — and I repeat “IF” — our goals are to 1) provide coverage for all our citizens AND 2) control costs, only a single payer system will accomplish that.
Sadly, no so-called “public option” or “exchange” or “co-op”–all of which have been proposed–will accomplish much. In fact, such band-aids, if applied while at the same time continuing to support the current private health insurance system, will actually add to the total cost of health care.
This will give those who oppose any form of reform the ammunition they need to say, “There, see, it didn’t work.”
On the other hand, a single payer system has already been studied by the Budget Office in years past and they determined that the saving in adminstrative costs would actually pay for the coverage for the millions of uninsured citizens.
In fact, the CBO said the total expenditures for health care would be the same IF NOT LESS than current expenditures.
Would health insurance companies and employees suddenly disappear? Of course not.
First of all, many of the employees no longer needed at the health insurance companies WOULD be needed by the government to process claims. And health insurance companies, while no longer able to sell comprehensive health policies, would be busy cranking out supplemental policies to augment the national system just as they do in other countries.
If, for instance, the national plan provides for a semi-private hospital room, there would certainly be a supplement available so that those who can afford it can assure themselves of a private room.
Mr Ruquet is absolutely correct that the hysteria and screaming is, for the most part, not about health care.
Once you truly examine our system and honestly explore the solutions that are available, then the result is not screaming and ridiculous signs, but the realization that we have a lot of hard work ahead of us.
I was very disappointed with Mr. Ruquet’s opinion piece. He obviously is a Liberal Democrat as his whole article basically trashed the Conservatives and pointed out how the OVERWHELMING number of folks that showed up to the town halls are against reform. He speaks of how they were nasty, disrespectful, etc.
I disagree with him completely as I have seen the opposite from Conservatives. It is laughable that he acts as if those that are for the government reforms have something to be angry/upset about.
Most that are in favor of the reform are not attending, as they have heard enough and agree with it. If a person agrees with it they wouldn’t be expected to be angry/upset or very emotional at all.
If he has ever been to a sports event and witnessed a referee make a bad call, the folks that the call went for don’t say much and aren’t upset, yet those that know/think the call was wrong are ALL pretty much upset/arguing and exhibiting emotions.
This column by Mr. Ruquet does nothing to advance the debate and bring us closer to a reasonable/acceptable solution, but rather is advancing what he speaks of in the piece (PARTISAN POLITICS!).
Next time I would suggest we have somone print a refuting article to these one-sided diatribes if NU wants to be fair.
I look for information from NU and this article did nothing to help anyone understand the debate or information on HC, but sure helps identify just how accurate Mr. Ruquet is that so many are making partisan debates rather than informed debates.
I was going to cancel my subscirption, as I found the column in the newsmagazine wildly partisan and nothing more than continuing the disagreement on reform, but then I recalled something….
How nasty/vocal/disrespectful/angry were so many Liberal Democrats on issues that they wanted to be heard on when George W. Bush was President? How many cancelled their subscriptions or gave up?
I recall the angry/nasty/vocal left mobs on many issues that were
so important to them and I respect their right to debate, but I certainly think that thier opinions are more a part of the solution by providing their debate no matter how emotional it may be as this is how we are “pushed” to understand which issues are of the most important to either side.
I can’t remember the last time I saw someone that passionate about a referee not making a call against their team!
When Social Security was originally created, it had strictly designed benefits. For those who reached retirement age, they would be guaranteed an income.
What people don’t realize is that FDR knew the mortality of the average American fell far below the retirement age, so that the government calculated that they wouldn’t have to pay out all of the benefits for each American.
As American’s life span increased, there was no adjustment or calculation to pay for these retirees who made it past the finish line. In addition, Social Security benefits were expanded without a commensurate thought as to how to pay for these benefits.
The result has been the largest legal Ponzi scheme that exists today.
Now we come to universal health insurance. In Massachusetts, we have had a form of it for a few years. The executive at Harvard/Pilgrim Health Ins. Co. has discovered that many people who have signed up for the coverage, have quickly ditched the coverage after their illness or medical need had been met.
This has skewed the projected premiums so that those that continue in the program now have to pay considerably more to keep this program going. Even with that, there is a growing deficit.
I also have family who are having trouble with health insurance. There is no easy answer. Someone is going to have to assist them. My family will intervene to help.
In all of the aritcles I have read on this subject, the current administration has admitted that they will have to resort to some sort of rationing in order to make their program work.
My 30-plus years in the insurance business has shown me that clients want the best coverage at the lowest price. In health insurance, Americans want cutting edge research and development with affordable pricing.
In order to have an honest discussion on this subject, those who want universal health insurance will need to tell Americans that this research and development piece will no longer be available.
As bad as it is for those without health insurance, they can still receive treatment in an emergency room.
I don’t believe many Americans will stand for some bureaucrat from the government rationing coverage to them on a whim.
It might make a difference in the discussion if our governmental leaders would announce that they would sacrifice their platinum health plan and sign up for the current plans offered to ordinary citizens.
Now that would be real leadership for a change.
Any decision that is made will leave someone with less than they had before. The question is do I trust the government to be the catalyst for this change. My answer is no.
SAM RESPONDS:
Sir, first of all, I do not recall this administration saying that care is going to be rationed.
In any case, we have rationing now–those with insurance get better care, particularly on preventative care–than those without coverage.
I don’t quite understand the problem in Massachusetts–isn’t there a mandate to buy coverage? To work, a mandate is required–just like Social Security and Medicare are mandatory programs.
And speaking of Social Security–there have been many boosts in the amount of salary paid over the years, so it’s not like there have not been adjustments to revenue.
Social Security has enough money to pay benefits for decades. The problem is the government spent the surplus and left beneficiaries with IOUs in the form of Treasury bills, but in theory, that should not be a problem. After all, T-bills is how we finance our deficit.
Somehow, I don’t think the American people would be any happier than the Chinese to hear that Uncle Sam will not make good on his T-bills. The consequences of default would be catastrophic to our economy and society, and I don’t believe either party would let that happen.
As for government bureaucrats making decisions, why do you feel any more secure with an insurance company person making the decision–particularly if by denying claims, the company makes more profit, and the individual making the denial might be up for a raise or bonus? That is the question Americans need to ask.