Why are we beating around the bush? Yes, there are a lot of good benefits in the health care law that would be lost if it were repealed. But there's also a basic truth: health insurance saves lives. A study by doctors from the Harvard Medical School calculated that about 1,000 people will die for every one million people who are uninsured. Since the health care law is expected to cover 32 million currently uninsured people, a vote for repealing reform is a vote to kill 32,000 people a year.
Who are these people? They are people like Tifanny Owens, the Seattle mother of the 11-year-old boy who stood next to President Obama when he signed the health care law. Tifanny died after she lost her job and her health insurance because her illness was making it hard for her to get to work. Without health insurance, she couldn't get the treatments she needed to stay alive.
They are people like Billy Koehler, the Pittsburgh man who died when he couldn't afford to replace his pacemaker because he lost his health coverage when he was laid off from his job.
While Tifanny and Billy are dramatic examples, most others are everyday tragedies. Many of the uninsured people who die early die because they don't get early diagnoses and treatments for chronic diseases like high blood pressure, asthma and diabetes. Instead, they end up being given expensive emergency treatment when their medical condition is advanced, too often leading to early death.
The 32,000 deaths don't include all the "insured" people who die because they have lousy insurance. Like Melanie Shouse of Missouri, who didn't get the treatment that she needed for breast cancer because her insurance had a very high deductible and didn't cover much of her care. And then there are people who are maimed because they are uninsured, like Marcus Grimes of Virginia, who lost his eyesight when he couldn't afford eye-saving surgery because his job didn't include health coverage.
Somehow, it's not politically acceptable to talk about the truth -- repeal will kill and maim tens of thousands of people. When Florida Rep. Alan Grayson said that the Republican health care plan was for people to "die quickly," he was roundly attacked by Republicans and the right-wing media. Why did the right go after Grayson so hard? Because they realize that a real debate about how opposing health reform means sentencing working families to death would cut through all their horse manure about a "government takeover" of health care. Unfortunately, most Democrats were cowed by the vitriol of the Republicans' personal attack on Grayson -- just what the right hoped would happen. Instead, Democrats should have defended him and amplified his truth-telling.
Dr. King said, "Of all the forms of injustice, inequality in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." The key word here is "inequality." We spend twice as much per person on health care as any other developed country, while those nations provide good coverage to everyone with almost no out-of-pocket cost. We have the most unequal health system in the world, and it kills tens of thousands of people every year -- that's the shocking and inhumane part.
So as the Republicans rant about repealing reform to stop a government takeover, Democrats should do more than just remind people that repeal will take away real benefits, let the insurance industry off the hook, and increase the deficit while cutting a decade off the solvency of the Medicare trust fund. Democrats should make it crystal clear that repeal will end "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for 32,000 Americans a year.
Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.
http://www.therepealpledge.com/
And most of the people who oppose health care reform do so from the envious position of never having lost anyone they loved to the disgraceful sysytem which has been in place for far too long.
Yet as they stand around and fight to deprive others of life, I wonder what they think they look like.
Want to see the future under "Obamacare"? Just take a look at what has happened with the cost of college tuition. Same concept, same result.
Healthcare is in dire need of repair. But, the law that was passed is not a solution; It is an even greater problem.
So many headlines say the healthcare bill will cost so much, or save so much... and take so many jobs, or create so many jobs... I would really like less generalities and more specifics.
Please tell me one specific provision of the healthcare bill that you think is terrible. Just one.
And how do they stack up to maternal mortality rates in countries where abortion is illegal?
Or are pregnant women not people in your books?
To get the number of lives saved or lost by Roe V Wade, even if we count, as you clearly do, a handful of cells as a person, you'd have to take the number of pregnant women who died in the years before Roe V Wade, subtract the numbers that die now, then add the number of abortions.
Is that what you did?
I thought not.
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We seem to miss the point made above by Dr Gawande. The public option or single payer is not the silver bullet. But right has distorted this debate to the point that the party of "personal responsibility" defends individuals who aren't being so with their own healthcare. As long as EMTALA (the law that requires ERs to render and stabilize all patients, regardless of their ability to pay) medical costs will continue to go up to cover these uninsured patients. The phrase I heard from every con was "I shouldn't have to pay for someone else's medical care".This displays a stunning ignorance about how our HCS works or for that fact how insurance works. If you have fire insurance, your premiums go to pay for someone else's house to be repaired in the event of fire. The problem with private health insurance is that everyone eventually gets sick, not everyone's house burns to the ground
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande#ixzz1AC2sGbSp
The currently uninsured and the sick see it as their hope. But there are a lot of healthy people who don't want to look ahead and pay for something they don't think they'll need anytime soon.
Anne C
NY Health Insurer
I take issue with that statement. Insurance never saved anyone, a person providing treatment or care did.
Health insurance for profit is the biggest scam in America. Those that like it the most, pay for it, and are lucky enough not to need to use it.
Name one other business where the happiest customers are the ones that never use the product.
This bill was a failure across the board.
Another victory for dividing and conquering the enemy, and as has been the case for 30 years, the enemy is the People. And the People join in once they get theirs.
Obama's reform increased the profits of the predatory fat cats, and only covered part of those not covered. The system remains the worst in the industrial world.
This study also points out that people with government insurance (medicare etc) are more likely to die than those who have no insurance at all.