Whining Americans Choose Caviar Health Care

Al Hubbard, architect of the Bush-cum-McCain health plan, compares Americans' use of the health care system to shoppers who indiscriminately buy caviar while someone else foots the bill, just as Senator Phil Gramm exits as co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign after calling America a "nation of whiners" in a "mental recession."

Hubbard, former assistant to the president for economic policy, spoke at a Thursday event at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. He blamed patients for driving up health care costs because insurance insulated them from the real costs of treatment.

He suggested that American consumers would run similarly amok in a world where employers provided "food insurance" instead of health insurance. "Pretty soon you would start buying caviar, the most expensive steak, and you would start buying more than you needed," he said.

Hubbard crafted the health care plan unsuccessfully promoted by President Bush and subsequently embraced by GOP presumptive nominee Senator John McCain. It would eliminate incentives for employers to offer insurance, shifting the burden of health care costs onto individuals, who would be granted a tax break to buy insurance. Critics say the tax credits would be at an amount far below what would be required to purchase health insurance.

About eighty percent of health care costs are incurred by the sickest twenty percent of Americans, those whose doctors order expensive treatments for difficult diseases such as cancer. Hubbard is suggesting that Americans going through serious health challenges should be shoppers first and patients second.

This remarks comes at a poor time for Senator McCain, who was forced to jettison co-chairman Phil Gramm because his remarks made the GOP presumptive nominee seem insensitive to the Americans' economic difficulties. Do Hubbard's comments mean McCain is hoping to lower health care costs by forcing Americans to treat health care as a luxury as precious as caviar?

Comments

[rpmcestmoi]

McCain-Bush-Gramm make me think (a new concept for America...feel free to use it without royalty payment) of George the father who had never seen a super market checkout scanner and did not have the foggiest as to the price of milk.

[MissingAmerica]

It would appear , based on the caviar theory, that one big difference is that we're buying the caviar for the Congressmen. What's more, we're working and unable to afford caviar because of this, while Congress just does nothing but take the caviar for granted. I never thought I would live to see the day that the greatest amount of anti-American sentiment would come from the Republican party.

[JKoos]

Only in the US does Socialized medicine look like Medicare. Anything goes and no cost considerations are untenable for Socialized medicine anywhere. Once we go the full socialized medicine route it will look just like Canada if we are lucky- probably worse. The only question is will we allow competitive free market, non subsidized medicine to survive with it.

[helenwiells]

Note to Mr. Hubbard:
Mr. Hubbard, you bleeping bleeper. You and your army of campassionate conservatives continue to blame the victim instead of putting the blame where it really belongs - with the insurance companies and drug manufacturers. These mega-industries answer to their stockholders at the expense of the ordinary man, woman and child in this country. You and the Republican Party still consider healthcare a privilege rather than a basic need. Would a society decide who could call on the fire department depending on their ability to pay? There is a fire burning...but it is in the hearts of a new kind of voter...one who is determined to see basic health care provided for all members of this crumbling society we have always been so proud of. The time is now for you and your unfeeling, well-fed buddies to pack up and head out of D.C. Good-bye and farewell.

[elbzee]

Ever hear that Ben Franklin started the first fire department? If you bought his insurance, he'd have them put your fire out. But if you didn't, too bad. Damn, I hate both insurance & pharm companies. They hold life and death for people. Human beings. What a sick system!

[FirstShirt]

if you really want to see a one term president have him suggest tax rates like socialist europe. This country has the best medical care system in the world for a reason. Don't believe it? Talk to someone who has experienced british socialized medicine.

[lisakaz2]

Best? Last poll had the US ranked 37th? Who's PR are you buying?

[Sparky123]

We all have to die sometime...doctors or not.

[musselmanm]

I have heard that there are countries in the world that just tax their citizens, pay the money to the healthcare industry and provide medical care for their citizens. Is this a lie?
Or is the care provided less than good? Haven't you heard all of the complaints from the citizens of these countries about their healthcare?
Is the life expectancy in these countries substantialy shorter than the lives of Americans?
Are these points often dominating the front page of our newspapers and other media?
Are insurance companies making profits on the backs of Americans?
Do you trust what our government and insurance companies tell us about the dire results of adopting a national heal care plan?
me neither!

[elbzee]

Recently, after a study in the capital district of NY, many of our hospitals were consolodated. In Schenectady, the remaining hospital actually announced on the news that if you really have an emergency, you should find a clinic, cuz the emergency room can't handle the volume and the waits are rediculous. So, to save money, our hospital is now incapable of delivering emergency services. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Great move.

Perhaps we, as a nation, must insist our "elected representatives" experience the same fun. We need to disontinue the free ride they get. Let em get down here with us!

[elbzee]

Anybody else notice the use of the word, "prescriber" in drug ads lately? Apparently, we don't have doctors anymore. We have PRESCRIBERS now. Indicative of a decline in the medical profession I'd say.

[starboymikey]

Unfortunately, "shopping for health care" is the new model being pushed by corporations that still supply health insurance. You're stuck with a huge deductible, like 5 thousand per family or even per person, and then a sizable co-pay after that.

When my company changed to a so-called "consumer driven" plan last year, we were given a series of "education meetings" telling us how to be "smart health care consumers" and shop for the best prices for say, herat surgery at differnt hospitals in different towns. "It's no different from buying a new car" we were told. "You can even bargain for better rates. Just tell hospital B in Albuquerque will do my open heart surgery for $6,000 less. If you can match that price I'll have it done here."

How many peeople requiring life-saving heart surgery are going to want to do that?

How about you, Senator McCain, who, along with the rest of your Senate colleagues have supplied yourself with a lifetime of the best healthcare available in the world, regardless of cost, on someone else's dime? Namely *our* dime?

Yup, Phill Gramm was right, I guess we are a nation of whiners. The ony quesiton I'd ask is "define we"

[chagedorn]

Health insurance is NOT healthcare. Insurance is basically a protection racket, with minimum services provided for maximum payment being the goal. With 47 million Americans uninsured and 25 million Americans under-insured (and rising) we need to realize that the insurance companies are merely middlemen standing between citizens and healthcare. I also wonder when we are going to hear that our insurance companies (who are also making quite healthy profits, thank you very much, in the middle of an economic downturn) have made some bad investments in bundled mortgages and that the American public now must bail them out or lose what little guarantee of healthcare those who do have insurance have left.

[CaptainFrogbert]

Also remember that America does not have a healthcare system: It has a disease maintenance system. Since we pay almost nothing to prevent disease, and the real profit lies not in curing disease, but in keeping the patient on any number of medications for YEARS if not their entire life, the primary focus of American health "care" is in keeping a patient just sick enough for as long as possible. And then once the patient runs out of money, the goal is to kill them as quickly as possible. Yes that is an actual (if unspoken) goal: witness the "care" received by indigent patients as compared to that of other countries. America has one healthcare policy and one only, suck them dry and leave them for dead.

[1stThron]

Both political parties are clueless because neither focuses on the quality of patient outcomes. Republicans focus of patients being more responsible in purschasing health care and the Democrats focus on how to cut what providers are paid.

In 1964, the Democrat legislature was to initiate legislation that focused on efficient Medicare spending and quality patient outcomes. For four decades federal government efficient spending was focused on underpaying providers and using the savings to reward preventable medical errors and operational inefficiencies. In 1983, government inplemented price controls to inspire providers to become efficient, but more ineffciencies and an explosion in preventable medical errors resulted. On October 1, 2008 Medicare will stop rewarding select preventable medical errors but will not invest some of the savings into preventing these errors. The nation can expect another explosion in preventable medical errors as providers suffer from less revenue. To put Medicare policies into perspective, a patient has a 2-4 times more chance of dying in a hospital zone from a preventable error than a U.S soldier has of dying in the Iraq/Afghanistan war zone. We have a health care crisis because the federal government is committed to rewarding failure and underpaying excellence and a nation gets what it rewards!

[lysistrata]

Such remarks tell us a lot about the kind of people Republicans are. Gram and Hubbard are not the only once. They tell us profit is all that counts and they have nothing but contempt for people not as wealthy as they are.

Why would anyone other than millionaires vote for a Republican, any Republican? The once that do deserve the contempt and more.

[FirstShirt]

And where do you intend to get your medical doctors, Walmart? Do you honestly think all the physicians will rush to your perfect consumer world for a dole from their socialist masters?

[lisakaz2]

And you're delusional if you think this country is #1 just 'cause you think it's patriotic to say so. Having suffered with a problem no one could diagnose, let alone treat, for about 4 yrs, I can tell you chapter and verse. Even now, conventional medicine won't do spit for me.

[ContraEgoiste]

Why you little irrelevant dirty serfs how dare you!!
How dare you expect the same care that we, your superior wealthy rulers get!!
How dare you even seek care for ailments or that of your little grubs!!
Stop your whinning and get back to work you insignificant miserable peons!!
We need those funds to bail out Fredie Mac, and Fanny Mae, and Bear&Sterns and war and . . . .

[Shaddup]

First of all if these "rocket scientists" in the GOP did a little research they'd find that most of our modern health care costs are caused by shuffling numerous copies of numerous papers back and forth ten times over for numerous health care companies. Not a problem with single payer. Second, when people know what they are covered for rather than thinking they're covered and then finding out they can't afford to pay--because the insurance co. decided they weren't covered--then the hospital loses more money to unpaid bills. And lastly it's because these free market GOP dweebs have been cutting cost so much that nobody can afford to get taken care of until they have to go to the emergency room--then the first two scenarios apply and costs runs rampant. God forbid republicans should ever have to care about their fellow man--unless there's a cost/benefit analysis first. This is the reason medicare's been going down the tubes with bush.