A Second City Warning to Obama
For all those Obama-ites confident that they won't make the same mistakes pushing health care reform that the Clinton administration did, might I suggest a trip back home?
Just a few minutes into the Second City comedy troupe's latest show, America: All Better!, the usual japes about the Jesus-like hopes projected onto our 44th president gave way to a quick bit about health care reform. A doctor was telling a woman that her diagnosis gave her only three months to live. When she pleaded for help, he told her that the good news was that Obama's health reform plan meant she was scheduled for her next visit just six months from now.
Bad news for Obama -- the audience laughed.
Conventional wisdom says that the shopworn distortions and deceptions that killed health care reform in the past have lost their sting due to combination of middle-class economic worries and soothing on-message reassurances. Perhaps. But comedy works only when it connects with real anxieties. The fact that Second City comics in the heart of Chicago are successfully playing to GOP-fueled fears of rationing should raise a bright red warning flag at the White House.
Here's another warning sign: I was talking with a liberal physician friend who's spent his career serving people in the kinds of Chicago neighborhoods where Obama worked as a community organizer. But my friend's instant reaction to my optimism about reform was concern: "I hope Obama doesn't just open up the government's checkbook." This from a primary care physician whose patients are overwhelming poorly insured or have no insurance at all! But he's also a middle-class guy with taxes to pay and kids to put through college.
A similar warning sign flashed on the recent ABC News special featuring questions for the president. Pastor David Hattenfield of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Cumberland, Maryland rose to address President Obama . He did not ask about the 46 million without health insurance or the estimated 20,000 men and women who die every year -- roughly 55 people every single day -- as a result. Instead, he was concerned about government "taking over" health care and his taxes going up.
In answering the good pastor, Obama, no doubt on autopilot, provided fiscal reassurance, citing his plan to cap itemized deductions for those making over $250,000 a year. Conspicuous by its absence was any reference to morality, Christian principles or the common good.
Yes, I know the administration is constantly rolling out stories featuring average Americans hurting because of inadequate health care. But are the 85 percent of Americans with health insurance listening? There is nothing Republican opponents would like better than for the debate over health care to devolve into a discussion about taxes.
Finally, there is the balancing act of when to roll out specifics. At some point, supporters of reform like myself need specific legislative language we can use to debunk the overarching sense of danger and dread opponents are seeking to instill. Yes, specifics are supposedly on their way, and yes, the upcoming full-court press by the administration to sell reform to Congress and the public may indeed culminate in America, All Better!
But right now, that's going to take one heck of a second act.
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I’ve had this same sense when I’ve spoken to friends outside the beltway. And from middle-of-the-road Democrats no less. One friend said, “I’m terrified of this socialized, European-style medicine…You won’t be able to pick your own doctor.” Never mind that many “socialized” systems aren’t really socialized, that some models actually give you free choice of insurer and doctor while most Americans have no choice of insurer and restricted choice of providers. Never mind that our own private system is already heavily government run. It has no basis in reality but Americans believe they have the best health care in the world. They know absolutely nothing about other systems other than a few horror stories that get bandied about in the press.
You forgot to mention the other gaffe at the ABC town hall show: When asked if he would keep his kids in the government healthcare he's promoting even if one of his daughters needed care beyond what it would be able to do he admitted he'd use his WEALTH to get the best care possible for his kids. Something I'm sure most of us here can't do if it's OUR kids.
Why was that a gaffe? Are you for everyone to have exactly the same conditions (such as housing) throughout their life independent of wealth? However, if Obuma (sic) is saying single-payer will not provide the same level of medical opportunity to rich and poor, then yes, something is wrong.
A google search generates only adjectives regarding a US single-payer system versus our present system. Nor is it any easier to see a comparison of US costs versus other nations.
There are many reasons why analyses of historical medical costs and projections of medical costs under different insurance regimes provide little actual information: our system contains disincentives to cost savings.
so would just one liberal democrat or progressive tell me how much money should be spent for each person.....how much for a heart attack...how much for ms...over a lifetime of 80 years how much should an american be worth in terms of healthcare...when you have a number let me know where you are going to get the money from.....
Where does the money come from to pay for all the people who go to the emergency room and don't pay? I'd like just one conservative to tell me that. When you have the number let me know where that money comes from.
$400 per visit comes from gasp! taxes...
Make 4 or 5 trips a week, thats $300,000 a year...
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07122009/news/regionalnews/hosp_itality_abue_178789.htm?page=0
The thing is if unviersal healthcare will save us money, why do we need to tax people extra for their employer sponsored healthcare plan? This is on the table it it bothers me.
From where do we get it now? Private insurance for anyone over the age of 40 or for women of childbearing years is about 20% of your median income thus totally unaffordable if you privately pay. How much better would it be if your premium is tied to your income such as with Medicare? Private insurance limits are usually $1 million or less over a lifetime - would that not be the same for any governmnet-paid-for plan? Most of us, thank God, will never use that much, but others might. With private or government-paid plans, the calculations are the same. That does not change. If you pay "taxes" for a single-payer plan such as Medicare, you do NOT also pay premiums. Nicest thing - you can pick your own doc, and you cannot be thrown out, cut back, denied coverage. We HAVE rationing now, but how much wiser to have rational standards for everyone? New knees at 95 when you also have other serious problems is just stupid. Making sure everyone has coverage for what they really need is a human responsibility we have to one another. Let's work to stop the scare stories and get on with it.
Actually, the stats on waiting time for many treatments and medication is true.
All indication is that it will have to be rationed, and worse of all, by the Govt. appointed agents and agencies.
Canada's death rate is much higher in most catagories of major health issues.
And that is the truth.
Fear. Works every time, right?
Pul-lease!
Tell that to the millions of Canadians LAUGHING at us right now -- it's crazy that this is even being debated!
That is NOT the truth. Canada's and all other nations with single payer health coverage is vastly better than that of the US. We pay the most and have the worst ourcomes among industrialized nations. Before you wade into this, ask Canadians please? I've never met anyone there who was unhappy with their health coverage. Health care is already rationed - we have a weekly column in our newspaper where case after case of insurance company denials is listed. Being barred from coverage, recission, and denial of coverage are all rationing. Calling an expensive but standard type of care "experimental" is a form of rationing. Making deductibles so high and out of pocket outrageous is rationing. Raising ER rates on the uninsured four times higher than billed to insurance companies - rationing. You worry about waiting times? Try scheduling "elective surgery" in a major city. Two months is not unknown. Six months for hip replacement is routine - all of this IN the United States. So why do you accept rationing from private corporations making a profit off you but wring your hands over the mythical rationing from something like Medicare? You're less likely to be denied care under the latter since treatment is left to your doctor, not some bean counter. Get past the fear and to the moral common good of decent systems that leave medicine to the medical professionals and payment to a disinterested party that covers every one equally. Single payer - it's the only way
From a letter to The Washington Post, 7/3/09: George F. Will attributed America's high health-care costs to the demand for expensive technologies and new treatments. But that theory doesn't hold up when we look at how other countries deliver health care.
......
According to the "Frontline" report, Japan boasts "the best health statistics in the world. The Japanese go to the doctor three times as often as Americans, have more than twice as many MRI scans, use more drugs, and spend more days in the hospital. Yet Japan spends about half as much on health care per capita as the United States." The secret? In Japan, everyone must buy insurance, and insurers cannot turn away a patient for a preexisting illness; nor are insurers allowed to make a profit.
Here are the questions we should be asking: Why are we the only developed democracy in the world without universal health care? Why do we spend twice as much money on health care as other nations? And why do these other nations boast better health results? Mr. Will tried to answer only the second of these questions in his column, and he failed.
M— G—
Silver Spring
And here are the stats:
Total health expenditures per capita, 2003
United States $5711
Australia $2886
Austria $2958
Belgium $3044
Canada $2998
Denmark $2743
Finland $2104
France $3048
Germany $2983
Ireland $2466
Italy $2314
Japan $2249
Netherlands $2909
Norway $3769
Sweden $2745
United Kingdom $2317
No laughing matter!!!!
It is a laughing matter, those stats are from 2003 and the US IS MUCH WORSE OFF NOW...
More recent stats:
Total health expenditures per capita, 2006
United States $6,714
Australia $3,122
Austria $3,545
Belgium $3,183
Canada $3,672
Denmark $3,349
Finland $2,472
France $3,554
Germany $3,328
Ireland $3,082
Italy $2,623
Japan $2,514
Netherlands $3,383
Norway $4,521
Sweden $3,119
United Kingdom $2,784
http://www.who.int/whr/2006/annex/en/index.html
Tears of joy, tears of joy!
and with all that great health care they still commit suicide 30,000+ times a year...maybe they can't get in to see the shrink....
C'mon! 32,439 suicides in the US in 2004 - an additional 500,000 suicide attempts annually - can't even imagine what the stats are like now!
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-us-statistics-and-prevention/index.shtml
Japan's suicide rate is so much more complex than a matter of waiting in line for the shrink. There are many cultural factors (attitudes towards suicide, towards mental health, demographics, work culture) that make a direct comparison based solely on this one statistic untenable.
That is maybe the worst, most ill-reasoned conclusion I've seen this week.
Someone in Second City is displaying their lack of smarts. A lot of intelligent people are getting sick of listening to the whiners who are trumpeting their complaints of how Obama "hasn't done anything."
I will repeat what I said on another post: If you have the money, the land, and the blueprints for a new house, does it go up in three days? Of course not. The man has been President for a measly SIX MONTHS! It has taken nearly THIRTY YEARS to have the country deteriorate into the quagmire it is in now. It is NOT going to be fixed in six months, we'll be lucky if it's anywhere near 50% of the way back to its feet in six YEARS. An analogy: This country seems to feel it is entitled to a personal car for everyone old enough for a driver's license. Take a ride through any suburban area and you will see 2, 3, or 4 cars in any given driveway and they all belong to that family! Six decades ago, there was ONE car in the driveway and the family took the bus or the train! We LEARNED to expect all those vehicles for our personal convenience, and learned behavior CAN be changed! UN-learned, if you will.
Give President Obama the time and support he needs. Do not fall for the republican lies.
you have never seen a habitat house go up have you.....
we have 2 milion shovel ready jobs.....whats that i hear...crickets....
This is how we go out as a country: too stupid and uneducated to rise above the corporate scaremongering, advocates too witless to pushback with a Rogues Gallery of Reps and their Payoffs, stumbling into another final giveaway transfer of trilions into corporate pirate coffers. Meanwhile we no longer are compettive with all of the modern nations which provide health care for their citizens as a basic right, having to price $2500+ into a car for worker health care. So we go out of business.
yep...
Its that simple, gee we really are stupid and uneducated...
Kind of like spending $2 for every $1 you bring in, our government is doing that you know, too... Im all for healthcare reform, but if its not done right, we are a lot more stupid than you make it out
At this point I have to conclude that the people in power who allowed Obama to be elected did so simply to quell the growing unrest in the populous. Effectively he is just window dressing incapable of solving any of the real problems of our corrupt government. Democracy is only an illusion in this point in our history. I do not think that even Thomas Jefferson could design a government free of special interest looters in the present state of a world full of complex economic trickery capable of evolving much more quickly than any democratic legislation.
It used to be that the fire department was either the arm of an insurance agency protecting its clients so they wouldn't have to pay for lost property or just a for profit company that haggled with you over the value of your home/business before putting out the fire.
Police work used to be in the hands of a country's army. Now financed by the municipalities in which they operate (FBI etc notwithstanding).
Where's the Republican, libertarian calls to "de-regulate" those social services? Wouldn't free market capitalism provide better action and cost efficiency? I'm like most other people in the fear of a non-profit motivated government owned healthcare industry, but not being tried before is no reason to not give it a shot now. I live in a fairly recently de-regulated electrical market, overall Kw/H cost didn't drop, because now the companies have an added, consumer passed cost in the form of marketing and advertising.
It has been tried before, just not here.
Every industrialized western nation has Universal Health Care, it works well for them. Despite the American propaganda that a for profit industry, will put your quality of care above their profit margin!
Your right... the government does not waste money or act on greed. They are not corrupt and they have our best interests at heart.
Trust the government, they will take care of you.
Obama should have reached out to Ralph Nader and for help with health care reform rather than kowtowing to the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies. Instead he has allowed any chance of a progressive reform on the health care industry to be marginalized and eviscerated by Clinton style "concensus" processes that are going to be more costly than the existing framework for healthcare.
The Democrats should have been front and center giving examples of the way health care is managed in this country and pointing out that there already exists a paradigm where bureaucrats are between the insured and their doctors. Anyone out there who has ever been rejected for getting approval an MRI, CAT scan, any type of lab work or any procedure knows that the insurance industry has inserted itselfe between the patient and doctor in an effort to ensure that their profits are maximized and their losses minimixed.
I support not only single payor but socialized medicine. But I also am opposed to the government just "opening the checkbook", as they did with the financial sector. None of the payout went to benefit anyone outside big finance.
The same can happen with "health care reform". It currently looks like it will be a huge windfall for insurance companies, some benefit to providers, and a huge loss to consumers. Those who were previously uninsured will likely find health care access even more limited and affordability completely gone.
The MSM print/TV entertainment media fails to cover any of the truly disastrous facts about the current health care scam. Not surprising really.
But what about current private insurance rationing of care, when they either deny coverage or tell a medical professional what they can or can not do. That's right, a non-medical professional tells a medical professional what they should do based on looking at a piece of paper and overriding the doctor's judgment while the doctor is looking at the patient. Does this make sense to anyone?
How about the practice of recession, when the standard operating procedure is to dump you if you or your family members have serious medical problem. It's perfectly legal, and they do it all the time.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-rescind17-2009jun17,0,3508020,full.story
So you pay your premiums on time for years and years, but when you get sick, they WILL dump you so they don't have to pay. And it's perfectly legal.
The FBI, Justice Dept., & politicians all love to talk about how, by being tough on crime, the American public have been made safe. Safe from the Mafia & protection, extortion, drugs, & the numbers rackets they once ran. That those enterprises are gone.
Wrong. The Mafia became quasi legal entities Health care (protection rackets, we won't make you sick as long as you pay, but we're not responsible for your health by other means)
extortion (pay your loans early at usury rates, or we ruin you and take everything you own) Drugs, (street drugs are too messy, hard to import, cyclic, and easy to cut) became BIG Pharma, legalized drugs advertised for non existent disease. Numbers, states now has lotteries, Indian Casinos are usually partnerships with Vegas/Atlantic City interests.
Now instead of paying "bribes" these hybrid corrupt but legal entities "lobby" give relatives board room jobs, campaign contributions are made, wives get consulting jobs, and once the elected official is ousted, is hired on as a lobbyist themselves.
There has ceased to be any public in the "public service" aspect of elected office. There is servicing however. Whor@s service their clients all the time. Don't we all feel "serviced" by those who deny the majority what they want, like TARP pay caps & no bonuses, credit card interest caps, a public options and tell a town hall meeting, that if we want the same health care a senator has, we should go to work for the federal government?
The biggest concern is the lack of health care reform. I belive most Americans know that current system is broken. I bet Second City would have received far greater laughter if they added a line about how the private insurance company would have just denied the claim from the beginning without any wait.
Or found a way to cancel her insurance.
at least second city is brave enough to exercise their 1st amendment rights....
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