The HealthScare Debate

Does anybody like their health insurer? Why all this misplaced outrage about the threat of taking away corporate obstacles to our health care? The strategy of the opponents to health care reform is to co-opt the almost universal anger people feel at their health insurers (if they have one at all) and direct it at those who would fix it: right emotion, wrong target. Health insurance makes us angry all right, with its denials of coverage for pre-existing conditions, restrictions on the doctors we can see, huge premiums larded with insurance company profits and executive salaries. If you dislike bureaucracy, then you should really hate the byzantine one imposed upon us now by health insurance companies.

The device being employed is one paranoid people use: projection. You see your own flaws in others, not yourself: the pot calling the kettle black. Who is interfering with the doctor-patient relationship? Not Medicare. Not the proposed new government health insurance plan. No, it is the insurers who have 'panels' of preferred 'providers.' If your doctor isn't on the list, you can't see him or her without paying out of pocket. Out of pocket - out of luck. Who is depriving sick people of health care, the so-called 'death panels?' Government bureaucrats? No, the government is helping to provide care for anyone over the age of 65 - Medicare. It is private insurers who won't enroll people with or cover those with pre-existing conditions, who deny approval for life-saving procedures, and who make it difficult to get medications. They are the ones who tell you that you don't deserve to live.

The big bad joke is that the private health insurers force us to stagger into seniority, and then let the government take over paying for health care if we are lucky enough to make it to age 65. Government has more incentive to give good health care, because the Medicare system takes over at 65, and has to pay for health care from that point on. In fact, we spend half of our health care dollars in the last year of life. All the private insurers have to do is get you through adulthood providing the minimal amount of care while getting fat on premiums you pay throughout your working life. Then, having extracted 27% of premiums on their overhead, executive salaries, and profit, they turn you over to the despised government plan that works fine with one-tenth the overhead, 2.7%. That would be Medicare.

Health care costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Such bankruptcies simply do not occur in Europe, with universal government-financed health care. Wouldn't you rather have a bureaucracy that actually has an incentive to maintain your well being? Good outcomes save Medicare money. The private insurers do not care about your health, just their profits. They simply want to invest your money while they have it (premiums) and you don't (benefits). The longer they delay and deny, the more money they make. We need Medicare for all.

So the health scare mongers accuse the government of what the private insurers are now doing. The anti-change 'protesters' are angry and they're not gonna take it any more. The only problem is that the private insurers have already taken it, and the anti-reformers are angry at the wrong people. Their strategy is the ancient one of scapegoating - mobilize all that real anger and point it at an innocent target. Who is rationing health care? The private insurers are - right now. That's a scary thought.

Comments

[seawolf77]

Exactly. I see one or 2 commercials on pro health care. Even less when it was Hillary. Saw all kinds from the other side. This is such a slam dunk. Remember in "As Good as it Gets" when everyone clapped when Helen Hunt said "HMO bastards" and everyine was surprised. Why? 20 years ago it sucked. It still sucks and is getting worse. Yet everyday I see all these Americans fighting passionately for a sinkhole that is bleeding the them dry. Some times I think this is John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Mike Tyson and Robin Givens.

[Kari Henley - Huffpost Blogger]

Great article!
I don't know why this converstation is not brought to everyone's attention again and again- because clearly the public is not understanding this issue of health insurance comanies being the ones to battle here, not the government.

While gov't hashes out their plan, an innovative new comany, called PriceDoc allows potential patients to search for any medical service they require in their area, and see a full isting of qualified providers, who list their lowest price for cash payments. Some allow a "make an offer" negotiation. It is growing like wildfire in Seattle, and will be available nationally in Nov. Check it out and love to have you blogging over there too!
Kari Henley

[dancinggrandma]

This is an excellent article! I'm a therapist with over 30 years in the field and what he's saying
about "projection" is exactly the dynamic at play throughout this struggle: everything the fright-wing
is spewing about the dangers of health care reform is that which is ALREADY occurring through
our for-profit, private health system. How so many people don't see this is pathetic & baffling!
I'm most of all incredulous that so many elderly oppose the public option while denying that they
are ALREADY the beneficiaries of government health care! This reeks of entitlement.

[PlaceboStudman]

Dr Spiegel,

you list your qualifications as a psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor. If that is truly the case, then surely you understand what is going on here. People are not mad that they are paying too much for their insurance. They are mad that they are paying so much for their insurance, compared to what they get in terms of actual medicine and technology.

ti is my theory, and has been my theory for a long time, that people would not be as upset as they are if they placed their blame on the people who are really responsible for this health *CARE* crisis, and that is the pharmaceutical industry. People are to the point where they are convinced they are powerless over the big bad BigPharma and the FDA, so they go over the easy targets of insurance.

They are, in essence blaming VISA when their CD arrives at home defective. Would YOU ask VISA to lower its interest rate when Amazon continued to send you faulty CDs or would you confront Amazon, or UPS, or the CD production company?

I know who I'd confront, and it isn't VISA