Talking Healthcare Again

These posts continue to try and inform the healthcare debate, substituting facts for the emotion and wishful thinking of the left. Here is another quick "cheat sheet" on some of the most contentious issues in the healthcare debate and the facts that address them:

• Voters in November made the point they want healthcare reform. Voters in November voted for change and against Republicans who had started governing like--well, like Democrats. Healthcare is part of that change. But there's a big leap between wanting to reform what we have and ending up with what Pres. Obama proposes. In fact the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows the country is pretty much deadlocked on whether it supports the President's plan. Sure, when asked if they favor having government pay for healthcare the answer is yes. Why not? If you ask anyone if they'd rather have someone else pay their bill--whether that means picking up a tab for dinner, buying them a new car, or paying their healthcare premium--of course the answer would be yes. But polls consistently show that most Americans like the quality of the healthcare they currently receive. The consummate Chicago pol, Barack Obama, reads those polls. That's why he's promising to let consumers keep the care they already have. So while most people agree for the need for reform, few people believe in the radical change that the President proposes.
• Healthcare had gotten too expensive. No doubt. What hasn't? In 1977 I paid $5600 for a slick, tricked out car--my first one that hadn't been someone else's first car. The equivalent car today would cost nearly $40,000. But it would come with a power train, safety features and conveniences undreamed of 32 years ago. So it is with healthcare. It costs more and keeps costing more, but we get so much more--new diagnostic treatments, new drugs, and new technologies that save lives, improve the quality of life, and prolong life.
• 46 million Americans are uninsured. OK, we've beaten this to death, but here it is again. When you back out 1) workers who are transitionally uninsured--that is, they were between jobs and without insurance when the survey was taken; 2) the people who are already eligible for a government insurance program like Medicaid, Medicare or SCHIP but choose not to enroll for whatever reason; 3) the number of illegal aliens who aren't entitled to care anyway; and 4) the millions of "invincibles"--largely young males under the age of 34 who think they'll live forever and choose to spend their money on other things--the actual number of uninsureds is closer to 8 million. A much more manageable problem that hardly calls for the radical changes the President proposes. But OK, let's play the leftist numbers game. Let's say 45 million people are uninsured. That means 260,000,000 are not uninsured. The point holds. Are you really going to turn the system on its head for a problem that affects less than 15% of the population?
  
• American business could be much more competitive if it could shift the cost of employee healthcare to government. You hear this frequently from corporate whiners. They say that they're disadvantaged because European and Asian countries in effect subsidize their global competitors through nationalized healthcare. This is the same corporate foresight brought you Enron, Worldcom and the Fannie Mae economic meltdown. The truth is that the cost of health care in these other countries is just shifted from premiums to taxes. And so what those companies don't pay to insurers they pay to their governments. At least right now U.S. business has some control over how their money is spent on healthcare. When Uncle takes over they'll still be paying for healthcare, only this time it will be through the IRS and they won't have a clue or a say in how the money is spent.
• Nationalized healthcare will simplify healthcare and reduce its cost. Does the IRS simplify paying your taxes? Does the EPA, with its thousands of pages of environmental regulations,  simplify conservation? If government makes healthcare so simple, why do many doctors refuse to take Medicare assignments? If Medicaid is so cost-effective why are up to 40% of its expenditures in some states fraudulent? This one is so stupid as to not require a response.
• A "government option" plan will provide competition for the private insurers. There are 1500 healthcare plans of various stripes out there. If that's not competition, I don't know what is. The issue isn't that there is no competition in our current system. The issue is that the cost allocation mechanisms are all wrong. The true cost of Medicare and Medicaid treatment is partially allocated to those of us with private insurance. The cost of jackpot justice lawsuits are allocated in the form of higher malpractice premiums to providers with no history of litigation . The true cost of employee health insurance is allocated mostly to the employer's customers as healthcare costs are passed on to you and me in the form of higher prices for everything. These misallocations of cost skew the system and negate the consumer advantage of having 1500 companies competing for your business. The one thing we don't need is a government which can't deliver the mail on time, can't educate our children properly, can't secure our borders, and can't balance its own budget putting itself in charge of your health. 

Bottom line, when the President says that he's going to "reform" health care by providing a "public option" and by ensuring that his new system will lower healthcare costs, improve care and still allow you to keep your own insurance, reach for your wallet and hold on tightly. As my mother would say, if it seems too good to be true, it is.

Just thought you might like to know.

Obama's "Public Option"

The healthcare reform debate is heating up and we’re going to start hearing a lot about how we lag behind other countries in the access quality and cost of our healthcare. One country that is pointed out to us from time to time as a shining example is Canada. Maybe it’s because it’s closer to us than France, the U.K. or Germany. But the America-is-always-wrong crowd likes to point to Canadian healthcare as one model we should imitate. 

As I write this an outbound call center recording is laying down a message on my voice mail telling me that my Republican congressman is in the tank for the big drug companies and is trying to water down Pres. Obama’s plan for “public option” healthcare. You’ll be hearing a lot about “public option” healthcare in the next few weeks. “Public option” is a phrase conjured up by the slickie boys in the White House that the tested well with focus groups.  It sounds more benign than its real name: socialized medicine. 

Well, Canada’s had the “public option” for many years. So before we rush to judgment on healthcare reform, let’s take a look at how that “public option” is working out with our northern neighbors: 

1. According to a 2008 study in Lancet Oncology  five-year cancer survival rates are actually higher in the U.S. than in Canada. An American man has a 20% better chance of surviving cancer than his counterpart in Europe, for example. And if you’re a 50-year old man diagnosed with prostate cancer in the U.K., it’s a death sentence.
   
2. A joint American-Canadian study shows that Americans have greater access to preventive screening tests and have higher treatment rates for chronic illnesses than Canadians.
   
3. This “embrace” of government-run health care is motivated in part by a perception that poorer people in the U.S. are denied access to quality care. But today 14 million Americans already have access to quality care through Medicaid, Medicare, and the S-CHIP programs. In fact, a 2007 article in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy concluded that the healthcare gap between rich and poor is greater in countries like Canada that practice socialized medicine than in the U.S.

 These are facts that the President's Beltway brownshirts don't want you to know, but which even governments who run healthcare are starting to realize. In 2005 Canada’s Supreme Court invalidated the public healthcare monopoly in the Province of Quebec. Between 2006 and 2008 the Province of Ontario outsourced 160 emergency neurosurgeries, according to Dr. David Gratzer of the Manhattan Institute.  Where did the Ontario Health System send these patients for treatment? To The United States of America.

 In addition, to exporting patients, the Canadian system exports doctors to the U.S. My own mother received excellent care in her later years from a Canadian émigré doctor who became fed up with the problems with Canadian socialized medicine. But if you’re Canadian this means fewer doctors. And fewer doctors mean longer waits for treatment and bureaucratic rationing of healthcare.

 Healthcare reform will be the most contentious issue we face over the next year. If you are a Democrat enacting Pres. Obama’s healthcare proposal will be the Holy Grail—the final step in the creation of an American Social Democracy on the order of France or Germany. If you are a Republican it will be the most expensive entitlement in the history of the country—and the one that everyone admits will never be undone.

  

So let’s make this an informed debate. Whether you're liberal or conservative, this is too important an issue to be decided by focus groups, lobbyists or slick Beltway consultants. If we’re going to play follow the leader and mimic the failing healthcare systems of other countries all Americans should be aware of the consequences. Know the facts before you line up behind a “public option” that isn’t an option at all.

 Just thought you might like to know.