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.

46,000,000

With the debate over economic stimulus behind us, the next frontier in remaking America into a European-type socialist society will be healthcare. And more than anything else, a number you'll be hearing a lot about is 46, 000,000. As in "Forty-six million Americans lack health care." Or, "Forty-six million Americans can't afford healthcare." And, "Our healthcare system is in crisis when 46 million Americans can't afford health insurance." Don't believe it.



Now, I'm the first to admit that our system of healthcare is in need of radical surgery. And I think this nation needs a good, healthy debate on the best way to cure this patient. But the best way isn't by pointing to a statistic that's more fact than fiction. The best way to fix the problem is not to accept as Gospel truth an outright distortion. So here's the real scoop:

• The 46 million number was supposedly generated from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, which tracks demographic information on healthcare. In its annual report, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States the Bureau claims that health insurance converage is likely to be underreported in the U.S. So the government agency that initiated the statistic that has become a rallying cry for Euro health care believes that the number of uninsured is smaller than what it reported.


• Second, most people assume that that 46 million is made of up Americans who are chronically uninsured. The fact is that like all surveys the CPS was a snapshot frozen in time. Many of those counted in the 46 million number were transitionally uninsured. For example, they may have just lost a job, graduated from school without having found work yet, or were between policies. So the chronic problem--the number of people uninsured over a long period of time--is probably a lot smaller.


• Third, even if you accept the 46 million number, you owe it to yourself to examine it closely. If you do, you'll find that 18 million of the 46 million make more than $50,000 per year! 40% of the uninsured earn more than the median income in the United States. So far from the picture of Dust Bowl Okies painted by Euro health proponents, 40% of the uninsured are uninsured by choice. Maybe they'd rather spend their money on lux car leases rather than premiums. Maybe a kick-ass sound system is more important to them than annual checkups. I don't know, and I don't care. Not my problem. My problem is being forced to pay for their healthcare while I drive cars that are 11 and 12 years old. Statistically, twenty-somethings make up the fastest growing segment of this population. Insurers call them the "invincibles" because they think they'll live forever (C'mon, didn't you think that when you were 25?) Oh, and by the way--more than half of that 18 million uninsured-by-choice population makes more than $75,00o per year.


• Fourth, of that 46 million uninsureds, about 10 million are non-citizens. In all probability they wouldn't be covered by Euro health anyway.


• Fifth, about 14 million of the 46 million are already eligible for government-sponsored healthcare, like Medicaid, Medicare or SCHIP (the federally funded, state-run insurance plan for working class kids). For whatever reason, they've chosen not to enroll in these healthcare programs. Yet we're being told that we need to adopt Euro health to reach people who for whatever reason have chosen not to take advantage of current government insurance programs.

So who's left? If you do the math, we're left with about four to eight million chronically uninsured people. These are largely the working and underemployed poor. And we have a moral obligation to them as Americans to fix the problem. That's where our responsibility starts and ends. But four million doesn't sound as catastrophic as 46 million, so the administration and the leftist-controlled Congress will chant the mantra of 46 million until they achieve their goal of Euro health. And if it works as well as Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP those eight million people will continue to fall through the government's insurance cracks. We'll have radicalized this country without having any effect on the problem. Don't fall for it.


Just thought you might like to know.