Several months ago, completely by chance, I found myself seated on a plane ride from Washington, DC to Atlanta directly next to a very staunch conservative Congressman from Georgia. We had a fascinating conversation. Though I have strong left-leaning opinions, I decided mainly to ask him questions and to listen to his ideas and solutions.
He explained that his two greatest concerns as a Congressman have always been tax reform and health care reform. Health care resonates deep within his core due to the fact that he is also a physician. I asked him what he views as the fundamental problem facing the nation's health care system and what his solutions were.
The previous day, President Obama had given a speech outlining his key imperatives for health care reform. As I listened to this Congressman, his ideas rang very familiar to me. They sounded exactly like the key points President Obama had outlined: reducing health care costs for families and small businesses; insuring as close to 100% of Americans as possible, particularly all children; creating more opportunity for choice; investing in prevention.
I mentioned to the Congressman that his ideas sounded very similar to what I had heard from President Obama so I couldn't figure out why Republicans were so opposed to the bills being floated in the House and Senate. His response was merely that President Obama was lying and that the President wanted government to control the lives of Americans. The Congressman then proceeded to rant about how expensive the bill was and about how much money it would cost future generations.
Last week I was thrilled to witness health care reform become a reality. It amuses me that we continue to hear the same exact talking points from Republican after Republican: the cost of this bill will be trillions of dollars; our kids and grandkids will pay for it, etc., etc., etc.
First of all, the cost of the wars we were duped into post-9/11 have and will continue to cost trillions of dollars and our kids and grandkids will certainly pay for those costs for decades to come. The Republican response I often hear is "Well, that's different, that protects our country."
The reason we fear a terrorist threat or war is that people die from these acts. And because it leads to death, there is a willingness on the part of Republicans to spend oodles of money on defense.
Our health care system in its current state has led to countless deaths that could have been saved and that should have been avoided. I suspect that every American knows of at least one person who has died sooner than they should have as a result of inadequate health care coverage leading to a lack of quality preventative care.
So how do we measure the cost of health care reform? The cost of health care reform cannot be measured solely based on absolute monetary cost. Opportunity cost must be factored into the equation. The opportunity cost of remaining with the status quo and avoiding health care reform involved significant costs both in terms of monetary value as well as emotional costs that tear at the human psyche and that ultimately affect macroeconomic factors such as overall work output and productivity.
For instance, if someone's mother dies at 55 years old because she lacks adequate health care and, therefore, has not received simple, preventative care that would have caught cancer early enough for her to have survived, there are substantial costs involved. First of all, there is the emotional burden cast upon that woman's entire family who has to deal with the loss of a loved one. Let's assume this woman could have lived to 85 years old had her cancer been detected early, that would be 30 more years (or at least a solid portion of that time) when she would be contributing tax dollars to the government. And, of course, that would be 30 more years that her family could spend with her, which is positive on many levels (unless her family can't stand her. . . then the status quo probably works in their favor!).
From my perspective, Republicans in the House and Senate are holding so fast to ideology that they fail to offer any solid solutions. The opportunity cost of sitting on their hands and not pushing forth a change to the broken health care system was massive and they should've understood that. Republican ideology has morphed into fictional mythology, and I believe it will cost them dearly this November.
My grandfather once said "If you can pay with money, you're doing well in life." What he meant was don't ever pay with your body or with your soul. When analyzing and measuring the true cost of health care reform, we must take into account the opportunity cost on bodies and souls as well as the monetary cost incurred by both action and non-action.
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I actually don't think the bill went far enough in terms of a strong public option but I think Obama was smart to get what he could now and set a foundation that will hopefully be built on over time.
A lot of the problems in the medical field today were caused by the introduction of the government. By preventing sales across state lines, for example, resulted in near monopolies inside each state. This reduced the necessary competition that would lower costs.
The answer is reform that lowers cost by reducing the footprint of regulation, or nationalization by the very people that created most of the problems in the first place.
http://www.healthandsharing.com/21/articledet...
• Lastly, there are not 47 million Americans who can’t afford insurance-there are 47 million people in the US without insurance, a number which includes illegal immigrants. You are also confusing the phrase without with can't afford. studies have shown that many young people intentionally go without coverage thinking they are young and healthy and don’t want to spend the extra money even though they can afford it. The 47 million also includes people who are between jobs or recently employed but not within the coverage window as well as several million who actually do qualify for like Medicare and Medicaid. The true number of people who can’t afford it is about 12-15 million. Data available on Kaiser Permanente website
• Medicare denies a higher percentage of claims than those evil private insurance companies. From the American Medical Associations (AMA)2008 Health Insurer Report Card:
Payer - % claims denied
Aetna - 6.80%
Anthem - 4.62%
CIGNA - 3.44%
Coventry - 2.88%
Health Net - 3.88%
Humana - 2.90%
Medicare - 6.85%
UHC - 2.68%
Overall, the average combined claim denial rate of the private insurance companies was 4.05%. Medicare is at 6.85%. Full report here: www.ama-assn.org...
• Lack of insurance does not cause bankruptcy-too much debt and too little income causes bankruptcy and the study you refer to is highly misleading and biased. The people who did the study are outspoken proponents of single payer and their definition of a medical condition stretches boundaries. Addiction was included as a medical condition so that if you lost your job due to drug or alcohol abuse or gambled away your savings, your bankruptcy would be due to a medical condition.
• The United States counts all births as live if they show any sign of life, regardless of prematurity or size. This includes what many other countries report as stillbirths. In Belgium and France, births at less than 26 weeks of pregnancy are registered as lifeless. And some countries don't reliably register babies who die within the first 24 hours of birth. Thus, the United States is sure to report higher infant mortality rates. For this very reason, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which collects the European numbers, warns of head-to-head comparisons by country.
• The CBO stated the potential cost savingsfrom tort reforms would save the government-- we the taxpayers--$54 billion over 10 years. CBO also concluded, that these reforms would generate improved access to health care as well.
A survey by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 93 percent of physicians practice defensive medicine: that is, ordering tests, procedures, and referrals that are not medically necessary for the sole purpose of protecting the doctor or the hospital against medical malpractice claims. These higher costs are passed on in the form of higher health care insurance premiums, and that in turn squeezes an estimated 3.4 million people out of the ability to purchase health insurance. Another study by PricewaterhouseCoopers put the annual cost of defensive medicine at $230 billion a year.
Do political parties have souls? They certainly can't can't claim to be angels in this debate by any stretch of the imagination. Both major parties accepted millions of dollars in "campaign contributions" from the insurance industry, from big pharma, from the for profit hospitals, etc. Those contributors got the bill they paid for.
The hue and cry is about how much this bill will cost, yet no one is willing to acknowledge that based on an 80% payout ratio, the insurance companies gross profit will be more than double what the entire HCR bill costs. The devil is in the details, and this process is in it's infancy. By the time the "details" have all surfaced, the devil will have his due.
We had, and still have, the "best form of government money can buy". The only problem is, the American people have been outbid.
• The CBO estimates are not completely independent- they can ONLY use the parameters given by congress. Of course it is deficit neutral since the data assumes 10 years of taxes but only 7 years of costs. READ THE FINE PRINT
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• Obama says the public option is about creating competition but a single payer plan has NO competition- will be about as efficient as the post office. Funny how he is against vouchers and charter schools, which would increase competition with public schools and force greater accountability and expectations of the teachers unions
NOBODY IN THIS COUNTRY IS DENIED ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE.
• What exactly in the current proposals will REDUCE costs. Everyone has insurance but that does not mean that rates won't keep rising double digits because it reflects the cost of healthcare, not the cost of coverage. Simply paying the docs and hospitals less just means that the insurance companies will need to charge everyone else NOT on the public plan even higher rates to cover the shortfall. WANT PROOF? Just look at the fiasco in Massachusetts, which has a mandatory coverage plan and is way over budget, still does not cover 100% of the citizens, and MA residents not on the plan paying the HIGHEST PREMIUMS in the country.
• Guaranteed acceptance does not mean guaranteed coverage for any and all treatments. Many of you seem to believe that simply having coverage means you can’t be denied treatment that is deemed experimental, high risk and low probability or simply not logical (a pacemaker for a 90 year old Alzheimer patient).
However, while our government provides all of us with HC, we should also shoulder part of the burden of responsibility. For this to happen, we will have to foster a behavior of eating healthier foods along with exercise and home cooking. Preservatives used in fast foods have not been looked at in much detail as it relates to overall health or carcinogenic content.
Dom Helder Camara