What to Ask at a Town Hall on Health Care

Like you, I am concerned that the health care reform proposed will not fix health care. I tried to attend our local town hall meeting on health care but could not get in. I had prepared some questions in advance that I believe speak for all of us (or at least most). I offer them below for you to consider asking at your town hall meeting and in letters or emails to our Representatives.

More (!) Bureaucracy?
The Healthcare Reform Bill will create three new governmental Agencies: The Health Benefits Advisory Committee, The Health Choices Administration, and the National Health Care Workforce Commission. The single largest cost item in all of health care -- expending more money than what is paid to all the providers put together -- is what someone called the "waste of the middle." Won't adding three additional bureaucracies just add even more useless cost to system already over-burdened with administration?

Not fixing "the system"
The President has repeatedly said that the health care system is broken and needs reform. Yet the Reform Bill addresses one part of one aspect of the financing of health care and not the shortages, the errors, the inappropriate profit-taking, and not even one of the eight value-less root causes of skyrocketing costs. How can you say the system is broken and then not fix it -- the system? (Oh, sorry, please do not say that we need to one thing at a time or fix healthcare step by step. The greatest truth that systems thinking has shown is that in the modern world, it is impossible to fix only one part of a system: you have to fix the whole thing.)

Raising (!!) Costs?
President Obama started this health care discussion by saying that the costs of health care will pull us down as a nation. Now we see a Reform Bill that will add over $1 trillion to the deficit. We need to reduce costs as a nation, and the Bill will dramatically increase our costs. What am I missing?

Believing Government Estimates
At its most optimistic, the Reform Bill is projected to be revenue neutral. (I do not understand this as the President said our most critical need was to reduce healthcare costs.) In 1964, the Medicare Bill was crafted to include careful cost projections. In 1990, GAO reported in that MediCare cost over 800% more than the original estimate and now reports that MediCare will go broke by 2016. Why should we believe any rosy Government cost projection when history shows they are always wrong and we end up paying?

Management Malpractice
If a doctor recommends treating the symptoms but not the cause of my illness and if there is no evidence that her suggested therapy will work, is this not medical malpractice? Applying the same logic to the Reform Bill, why isn't Congress guilty of management malpractice?

Does health care come with any personal responsibilities?
Canada and Great Britain - both touted as universal health care systems that we should adopt -- have come to realize that they cannot deliver on-demand care as an unlimited entitlement. Both are trying to inject some personal responsibility into their systems in order to create feedback...and failing. How does the Healthcare Reform Bill avoid that same pitfall: implying it can deliver unlimited care without bankrupting the nation?

Is there a quick fix?
The President raised the continuous crisis of health care to national prominence. Great! Why should anyone believe that a quick fix is possible for a problem that has been growing for more than fifty years?

Follow Deane Waldman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/systemmd

Comments

[patrickmcdougal]

Doctors screamed that When Blue Cross was created it would be socialization and the end of doctors, instead it made the millionaires.
These people are medical professionals there is a reason they hire accountants. They are Medical Proffesionals not Legislative Experts. .

[Beck rocks]

So is "making them millionaires" a good or a bad thing? The left never understands economics. Anything which gets in the way of consumers being directly responsible for their own healthcare purchases and costs is going to drive up the price.

[AntonioSosa]

What we should ask is why not just buy one-way tickets to Cuba or North Korea for all those who want socialized medicine and a socialist/communist country? They can take their comrades Obama and Pelosi with them. They have no right to transform the U.S. into another failed socialist country like Cuba just because they are dumbed down, as per Pravda: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-american_capitalism-0

[northstar11]

what do you call the 200 billion in subsidies bush gave to the agribusiness guys just before his second election?

[ComeOnAmerica]

Antonio...­you used the term 'dumbed down' before I could use it about YOU and your ignorant, nonsensical types. Reich wingers like you, and the "news" outlets from which you get your talking points, are so out of touch with reality that it'd be funny if it weren't so sad.

Here's a novel idea for you: DO A LITTLE RESEARCH ON YOUR OWN! It'll take less then 10 minutes, I promise. Google things like our country's rankings in the world regarding life expectancy, infant moratlity, cost per person, etc. (Hint: If the rankings were like the national hockey league, where almost every team makes the playoffs, we would actually MISS the playoffs because of the rankings).

Also look at neutral sites like politifact.com. For that matter look at the site that would be soooo p*ssed about the President's phantom death panels, (AARP), and see how and why they SUPPORT reform.

If you want some help, I'm sure many of us would be glad to help.

[tompoe]

So, how many individuals will sit on the Health Benefits Advisory Committee? What number of employees will the National Healthcare Workforce Commission have? Have you been told how many will work in the Health Choices Administration? Just how desperate are you to keep the present 1300 insurance companies with their many layers of bureaucracy in place to make sure your income is maximized at the expense of health care for Americans who just want their right to health care available to them?

[BarryS]

nonsense. People who get heavily subsidized insurance now under the current system are always making excuses why the rest of us shouldn't get any coverage. Let them give up their gold-plated policies and buy the individual policies with the 5X surcharge for prexisting conditions for 15-20 thousand per person per year, and then lets talk.
Any politician who participates in getting thes policies is essentially getting a bribe and should be prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned.

Best congress money can buy.

[pontesisto]

If you would like to help pressure Congress to pass single payer health care in a democratic and constructive way please join our voting bloc at:
http://www.votingbloc.org/Health_Bloc.php