Nonsense on Health Care from The Wall Street Journal

I'm not sure what debate the editors of The Wall Street Journal were watching last night, but it sure wasn't the one I viewed. There is something out of whack when they write this morning that "Barack Obama showed again in last night's debate that he sure is comfortable with the status quo on health care."

That's absurd, as any fair-minded viewer would attest. Senator Obama spoke passionately about the need to change our health care system. He clearly summarized the plans he has set out to provide access to health care for all Americans. He effortlessly explained the choices he would give to the American people. He made a strong case that we need affordable, quality health care for all. At the same time, he rightly pointed out the flaws in John McCain's misguided health care proposal, citing McCain's plan to tax employer-sponsored health care benefits and leave individuals to the tender mercies of the insurance industry.

How could anyone suggest that Senator Obama was supporting the status quo? Perhaps the writer of today's editorial was away from the television when Senator Obama said health care "should be a right for every American." That's not the status quo. Perhaps they missed him commenting: "In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills -- for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay for her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that."

That's not the only thing The Journal gets wrong. They label as "a wild distortion" the assertion that John McCain would tax employer-sponsored health benefits. Nonsense. A tax on benefits is in his plan, and he said so last night. Back in the spring when he first introduced his plan, even McCain's staff admitted that the proposal was "radical." Perhaps that's why relatively conservative organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Business are raising alarm bells about the McCain plan. Just yesterday, The New York Times reported that officials of those business groups predicted that the McCain plan "would accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance and do little to reduce the number of uninsured from 45 million."

At a time when Americans are worried about their jobs, mortgages, energy costs and retirement security, the last thing they need to be doing is fending for themselves in an unregulated health care marketplace. Yet, that is what the McCain health care plan would force Americans to do. In the current issue of a magazine published by the American Academy of Actuaries, McCain explains that we need to remove restrictions and regulations in the health insurance industry. He believes in the magic of the marketplace. He writes: "Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

That's not the kind of change Americans need in health care. We don't need to tax employees for their employer-sponsored insurance. We don't need to force individuals to go out and bargain individually with the insurance companies. We don't need a health care plan that could eliminate current coverage for employees and make things even worse.

The Wall Street Journal's editors have their ideological blinders on. They believe in the unfettered free market and in the elimination of regulations on the insurance industry. John McCain agrees with them. That kind of ideological purity, the kind that doesn't bother with the facts, is exactly what led to the collapse of the economy that we're currently struggling to fix. It's also led to a health care system that is fundamentally broken. Unfortunately, The Journal and John McCain want the same kind of unregulated, free-market solution for health care that they promoted for banking. Their programs would be a disaster for working families and only make our health care crisis even worse.

Comments

[odyssey58]

The private sector is incapable of fixing the problem. That's why we are having this discussion. Congress will have to get involved in order to fix.
To all of you who are in the "government can't do anything right" camp, who would rather have making health care decisions- a fairly paid gov't employee who has no financial stake in the health care he approves or denies, OR an overpaid private insurance employee who is paid a bonus based on how much care he denies? For me it's a no-brainer.

[LouisvilleLiberal]

Personally, I think arguing about rights vs responsibilities is a distraction from the real issue.

This is the United States of America, the most modern country on the planet. The idea that we as a society would put basic healthcare out of the reach of an every increasing portion of our population is rediculous. Only the richest people in our society who can pay cash for healthcare would be so selfish as to think otherwise.

Middle class people who have insurance will be shocked - as I have been - if they actually need to use the insurance they pay dearly for to fight a serious illness. They will find themselves fighting to get their covered expenses paid and they will find themselves buried so deeply in debt that financial recovery is impossible when it's over.

The fact that the number one reason middle class people go bankrupt is medical bills tells us something. I suspect most of these people had insurance because the truly poor can't scrape up the money for legal fees and have no assets to protect.

[proreality]

The WSJ has always been a "conservative" paper, but it was a least able to be trusted. At minimum, no matter if you agreed with all of the positions or not, it could be trusted, not anymore. Murdoch has turned it into a right wing rag. It is a shame! Newscorp is nothing more than a propaganda machine, what a disgrace!

[blooddoc]

I would advise Obama to qualify his remarks, to wit: "Access to affordable healthcare is a right." Otherwise, his premise about what healthcare should be is right on. People should not be subject to financial ruin because of a serious illness. People should not be refused healthcare because of ability to pay. Everyone should have access to the same level of quality healthcare; if you want amenities - a fancy private hospital room with Quaker furniture and a plasma screen - then you can pay extra. If you disagree with these basic premises, then I would submit that you are, at heart, a Republican.

[SailFree]

Rights are basically intrinsic, items which others may not take away. Logically, health care cannot be a RIGHT. Clearly, if government can designate it as a right, government CAN take it away!

Rights are intangible items such as the famous "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness," etc. Owning property is another.

No one should murder you.
No one should imprison you (without due process).
No one should prevent your pusuing happniess unless your pursuit infringes upon another's life, liberty, property, etc.
No one should forcibly and involuntarily take your property.

Defining health care as a RIGHT, however, leads unavoidably to taking someone else's property, goods, services, or money in order to provide what has been defined as a RIGHT.

This, in logical effect, creates a state of involuntary servitude or SLAVERY in those people forced to provide your health care.

And if something is defined as a RIGHT, the demand will skyrocket, the costs will skyrocket, and the results will be disastrous for actual HEALTH. Health, by the way, depends much more on your own choices re lifestyle than it does upon forcing someone else to provide it.

How else can it logically be?

[BBackSoon]

Dr. SailFree, I saw from your bio you listed you’re a doctor and that you have made some 800 comments since Sept 08. I find your logic confusing. I do not understand why if something is a right it will become more expensive and that demand will skyrocket? If we have affordable health care for people that currently go to the emergency room for every ailment would it not be actually cheaper to give them access to preventive or timely health care?

The people I would like to see cut down to size is the Insurance companies, Commercial Dr’s Offices and any other entity of the health care system that is trying to make a profit. Why should a Hospital have to make a profit? Why should insurance companies have the final say in the type of treatment you yourself can prescribe to a patient?

I also question the idea of servitude of health care workers. I personally don’t think the average Doctor or nurse makes nearly enough money for the job they do. And if we took the profit out of the system perhaps the people could make a living wage.

Our current health care system is expensive, complicated and heartless. My family insurance premiums have gone up about 300% in the past 2 years and the coverage has gone down while the co-pays go up. The system is broken, what do you suggest we do to fix it?

[RepugsOut08]

Michael Moore explained it best. Everyone expects the government to provide police protection, and fire protection. It would be ludacris to ask people to bargain for personal protection from robberies, murderers and such.
Someone's breaking into your house? Tell them to hold off while we check to se if your policy covers a robbery. Your house is on fire? Your plan only covers certain types of fires. Please go back into your burning house, and see if you can determine if the fire was started by A,B orC. Your daughter was raped? You failed to fill out form 26b, and pay an extra hundred a month for that coverage. Sorry. You've been shot? Sorry, a person was shot in your area last year, so we decided to terminate police coverage in your district.
Those scenarios may sound ridiculous, but they're no more ridiculous than the scenarios faced by people dealing with health insurance companies every day. And if you don't have health insurance, better be prepared to file bankruptcy.
Obama was correct. Healthcare should be a right, just like any other community shared protection service.

[ChicagoMolly]

In fact, originally there were no tax-supported fire departments, whose job was to protect all the people and property in a city. The original fire brigades were maintained by the private insurance companies to protect the property of their own clients, to keep their claims expenses down. If the Benign Insurance Co. covered your building they would send their firefighters out to save your house, but if the blaze spread to the houses next door, and they weren't covered by Benign, well, that was somebody else's problem. This clearly led to even bigger problems. The solution wasn't to "provide access to affordable coverage" -- it was to guarantee protection from fires for everyone through a municipal fire department funded by the citizens through our taxes.

[SailFree]

The major problem is that defining health care as a RIGHT leads to disaster.

[RepugsOut08]

No, leaving 40 million people uninsured, and strangling businesses and employees with ever increasing healthcare expenses is leading to disaster.
Don't you know of ANYONE who's been screwed by the current healthcare system? If you don't, you are in the very small minority, but it's coming to an emergency room near you.
If you don't feel I have the right to healthcare, then I don't feel you have the right to police protection. You don't have the right to be protected from foreign armies. Buy your own damn army if you're afraid of terrorists, and quit making me pay tax dollars to defend you.
See how it works?

[Manx]

On a related subject, The Wall St. Journal reported on Oct. 6th., that McCain's top economic adviser, Douglas Holz-Eakin, said that McCain would cut $ 1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid. Many doctors are now turning away patients because Medicare payments are too low. If McCain made more drastic cuts, it would mean the end of Medicare as we know it. This might be of interest to retirees in Florida and the rest of the country.

[SailFree]

You have inadvertently hit a vein of truth. If the government payout NOW is too low to make providing the services financially rewarding, what do you think will happen if government took over the responsibility of ALL health care? Hmmmmm....­.

You will find lower-skilled physicians. The best and brightest will go elsewhere or into other fields, for example. We could always use more lawyers, couldn't we?

What would lawyers think about Medicare if they had to content with LegalCare? Limits on lawyers' fees? Can you imagine the protests?

How about we limit hairdresser fees? Why should I, partially bald, have to pay as much as somebody with a full head of hair?

Get serious.

[proreality]

You have showed your stupidity and the stupidity of those who believe your lies. The cost to the government is dictated by the cost of over all health care and as health care costs have become inflated it has overburdened the governments costs.

The US spends more per capita on health care than any other nation in the world while failing to provide any health care for 20% of citizens and inadequate health care for another 20%

The United States DOES NOT have the best health care system in the world, it ranks 30th. It only has the most expensive.

While every-other industrialized nation in the world has in some form a nationalized healthcare system that keeps operating costs at below 3%(3 cents of every dollar going for administrative and non care related overhead) The United States health care system spends almost 20% on those. 20 cents on every dollar for non care related fee's, i.e. the CEO of a major HMO being paid over a billion dollars.

It is idiots like you that have kept the US health care system relegated to the status of a third world country. People like you are a foul and poisonous element in our society, why don't you learn something? Why not let every citizen have health care and if you want to "opt out" in order to spend money paying a greed mongers exorbitant salary we will allow that, rather than the other way around.

[RepugsOut08]

France has the number one healthcare system in the world. You don't get to be number one by having "lower-skilled physicians­." Your arguments are not supported in any way by the reality of our broken healthcare system as compared to the superior healthcare systems in other industrialized nations. You don't need to get serious, you need to get educated on this subject.

[schatsie]

Last stat i saw, group health insurance premiums include 12% in administrative costs.
that also indicated that administrative costs for individual health insurance include 29% for administra­tion... So that means individuals are paying premiums that are 17% higher than groups...

Imagine that, of course that would mean that the Insurance CEOs are DROOLING OVER THIS proposal..­..IMAGINE being able to pass on a 17% increase in premiums..­.

This shows how horrible the current system really is - and - that McCain's plan just will not work (unless you are the CEO who is now throwing more money to the Republican­s..) and those CEOs get fabulous pensions and their outrageous Country Club fees are also paid by you and me....

[JamesInDenver]

With McCain's Plan:

1. Many employers will stop providing group health insurance, because the premiums they pay will no longer be tax deductible. Over time, the number of employers providing coverage will dramatically decline. (The plan actually taxes insurance premiums.)

2.a) Employees who loose employer coverage, will have to buy insurance on their own at much higher rates. Without group coverage, they lack the bargaining power to command lower premiums.

2.b) Older employees (and those with preexisting conditions) who loose employer coverage, will be placed in high-risk pools. If they can find insurance at all, it will be at dramatically higher rates.

2.c) Taxes will increase for employees who continue to receive employer health coverage, because the premiums they pay into their employer's plan, will no longer be tax deductible.

3. Taxpayers without employer coverage will receive a tax credit, but it will be too small to cover private insurance costs. Consequently, many will go uninsured. (The credit is $2,500 for singles, and $5,000 for couples. The average cost of family coverage is $12,500.)

4. Lower income families with taxes less than $5,000 (ie. those with taxable income less than $38,550) will be out of luck. Your total tax-credits cannot exceed your total taxes.

5. Public hospitals will continue to be overburdened by uninsured patients, and families will continue to go broke.

6. (Who wins?) When premiums go up, insurance companies make bigger profits.

McCain's plan also reduces Medicare and Medicaid.

[LeftRight]

"4. Lower income families with taxes less than $5,000 (ie. those with taxable income less than $38,550) will be out of luck. Your total tax-credits cannot exceed your total taxes."

I'm not 100% sure, but I thought that his plan would include something like the EITC, where you can get back more than you pay in, PROVIDED that you have a family, AND $5,000 OR MORE of premiums. That, of course, does NOT count the OTHER costs associated with health care, such as copays, deductibles, etc...

[LouisvilleLiberal]

The term "credit" as it relates to federal taxes implies a dollar for dollar refund - even to those who owe no income taxes. This would be similar to the Child Care Tax Credit.

A tax "deduction" would simply lower your taxable income and wouldn't even begin to pay for Health Insurance, so I have to believe that McCain is talking about an actual credit.

However, $5,000 for a FAMILY is rediculously low. A young, single person in excellent health would have premiums of about $5,000 plus co-pays, plus deductibles.

McCain's not going to win the election and if he did, the Democratic Congress wouldn't pass such a ridiculous bill anyway....­.so it's not a worry to me.