Settling myths of insurance coverage
September 1, 2009 by Opinions · 2 Comments
Column by Justin Lamb
Increasing access to health care in this country would seem like a pretty noble goal, but one look at the cable news networks would lead you to believe otherwise. The health care reform debate has devolved into an utter circus. While there will always be disagreements over how to tackle the big issues facing our country, any civil discussion of these differences has been drowned out by a small number of raucous individuals.Why is it that an issue as important and as wide-spanning as health care can’t be discussed without blatant lies and ad-hominum attacks? Let me take a moment to set the record straight.
First, President Barack Obama’s health care reforms will not result in the creation of “death panels†that determine who lives and who dies. The question of “death panels†arises from a program in a current House iteration of the bill that will allow senior citizens to have access to consultations regarding a living will. Let us first remember that the government has been recommending that all Americans have a living will for decades, through both Democratic and Republican control of the branches of government. That’s it, living wills. It’s difficult to follow the logic from living wills to death panels, but it’s also difficult to call that logic.
Next is the notion that health care reform will result in a government takeover of the health care industry in America. It has become a pretty common talking point among those opposed to health care reform to compare these reforms to the health care systems of Great Britain or Canada.
However, even a cursory review of the proposals on the table will show that there is no provision for government run health care. Instead, health care reform would result in a “public option†to obtain health insurance. This is not a measure to kill the health insurance industry, but rather increase choice and competition in the marketplace. At the moment, the largest health insurance company in Kentucky accounts for 51 percent of the market, while the top two together account for 61 percent. A public option for health care will result in a greater number of insured Americans, as well as lower health insurance costs for everyone over the long term.
Finally, I want to address the myth that the health care system in America is not broken and therefore does not require reform. Many opponents of health care reform like to tout how the American health care system is “the greatest in the world.†Well, according to the World Health Organization the United States’ health care system is ranked as 37th in the world, putting the U.S. between Costa Rica and Slovenia. You have to wonder then, where do health reform opponents get the gall to say that nothing should be done?
Surely they haven’t seen that family premiums in Kentucky have risen by 61 percent since 2000 and 24 percent of Kentuckians spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care costs. In Kentucky, 10 percent of people have diabetes, 30 percent have high blood pressure, 27 percent of seniors don’t receive a flu vaccine and 21 percent of children in Kentucky are obese. If these numbers represent the greatest health care system in the world, then perhaps we should just stop trying. It would be a sad state of affairs if this was the best America could do, but you and I know differently.
The United States has nearly all of the means and resources to create a health care system that is first in the world and that covers all Americans. The only resource we’re lacking is the political will. If you would like to join in the fight to ensure that the American health care system is the best in the world, I encourage you to come to a College Democrats meeting. We meet each Monday (Labor day excluded) in room 211 of the Student Center.
Justin Lamb is a political science junior. E-mail opinions@kykernel.com.
Theme : 6 Main Lies Have Nothing To Do With This Promising Reform / Without reform, Medicare system doomed.
If the findings of CBO over inaction had been released earlier, Ted Kennedy could’ve seen his lifetime wish come true.
Inaction cost, $9trillion over the next decade, can not be compared to the balance between estimate and outcome in a worst case of scenario, and this balance could be adjusted each year. ((Some of CBO analysis : While the costs of the financial bailouts and economic stimulus bills are staggering, they are only a fraction of the coming costs from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that each year Medicaid will expand by 7 percent, Medicare by 6 percent, and Social Security by 5 percent. These programs face a 75-year shortfall of $43 trillion–60 times greater than the gross cost of the $700 billion TARP financial bailout)). Time does not fix endless greed and energy depletion.
When the public health is also one of commodity like a house, we come to a tragic and unthinkable conclusion : As to for-profit business, the more and longer ills patients get, the more profits they make, and it will debilitate the overall economy involving education for the future, not to mention continued bankruptcy of middle class.
Of young adults ages 19 to 29, 13.2 million, or 29 percent, lacked coverage in 2007, and that implies the total of this promising reform will be cheaper than expected, I guess.
In case of an unexpected injury or ill, they might give up their learning or aspiration, in this regard, this reform means liberty, job opportunity, competitiveness for them and future.
1. The contents of savings (below) in this reform ‘have nothing to do with’ limit to medical access, rationing, tax raise, and deficit etc.
Rather, without wiping out these wastes and roots of bankruptcy for middle class, all fronts are sure to face larger financial ruin than this recession, which leads to more limit to medical access, more rationing, more tax raise, and more deficit etc than today.
$1.042trillion (cost of reform) + $245bn (cost to reflect annual pay raise of docs) = $1.287bn (actual cost of reform).
$583bn (the revenue package) + $80bn (so-called doughnut hole) + $155bn (savings from hospitals) + $167bn (ending the unnecessary subsidies for insurers) + 129bn(mandate-related fine based on shared responsibility) + $277bn (ending medical fraud, a minimum of 3% , the combined Medicare and Medicaid cost of $923.5bn per year, as of July,) = $1.391trillion + the reduced cost of ER visits (Medicare covers some 40% of the total) + the tax code on the wealthiest more reduced than originally proposed = why not ? (except for a magic pill, an outcome-based payment reform & IT effects and so forth).
As lawmakers debate how to pay for an overhaul of the nation’s health care system, a new report from The Commonwealth Fund claims that including both private and public insurance choices in a new insurance exchange would save the United States as much as $265 billion in administrative costs from 2010 to 2020.
“Health reform can help pay for itself, but both private and public insurance choices are critically important,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis, who coauthored the new report. “A public insurance plan can help drive new efficiencies in the system that will produce large cost reductions. Without a public plan, much of those potential savings will be lost.”
Unlike high fuel price and mortgage rate in recent years as the roots of great recession and bankruptcy of middle class, the severity in the high cost of health premiums has come to light lately. Similarly, in an attempt to hide these deficit-driven corruptions and wastes, the greed allies struggle to turn the savings via removing these wastes into limit to medical access, rationing, tax raise, and deficit etc.
In contrast, not to mention a wide range of consumer protection, options across state lines, this promising reform takes initiatives in more primary care docs and improved long-term care. And the bill expands coverage for mental health services, and defines what will be covered. It also prohibits co-payment charges for wellness and preventive medical care. There is no mention of rationing. The use of this term is, again, a gratuitous distraction aimed at feeding fear
2. Greedy insurers with no competitors by consolidation have nothing to do with the law of price, demand & supply.
Under the free market theory and the premise that the public health is also one of commodity like a house, if the demand decreases on a large scale, accordingly the price tends to reflect it, as in the case of house price, and it never happens for the price to spiral up. One step forward, in case the price is spiraling up, to be sure, the remaining clients should withdraw the contract or choose the other options. In practice, runaway premiums with no competitors by consolidation drive the enrollees out, and 4C + 2R (canceling, capping, cherry-picking, cash for special lobby, rationing, rapid premium hike) guarantee multiple times as much profit. Sadly, no way-out other than the prohibitive ER is allowed in America. Therefore, the victims today and tomorrow deserve long overdue protection from non-profit Government.
3. The plans to stem inflation in the House have nothing to do with crowd-out.
With the heartbreaking tears in mind (In no other industrialized country do 20,000 people die each year because they can’t afford to see doctor. Nearly 11 Million Cancer Patients Without Health Insurance), private market also needs changes and should join together to complete this reform , as promised, otherwise, the runaway premium only has itself to blame while new firms are filling the void with competitive deals.
And It can be said that fair competition starts with a fair, sustainable market value.
However, the plan in the House is designed to keep people in an employer-based health insurance system, and the public option would be offered to those for whom employer-provided insurance is not available. And job-based coverage (indirect payment), some mandate code, ample capital, the reduced exorbitant ER costs, IT base to streamline the administrative processes and trim the costs might be favorable to the private market. Over time, supposedly, the public plan will concentrate more on basic, primary cares, and the private insurers will provide their clients with differentiated services. And focus should be on the uninsured, the underinsured.
– Except For The Underinsured, The Uninsured Alone Outnumber The Entire Population In Canada –
In an attempt to avert innovation, moderation, and social responsibility, accusing essential affordability, citing take-over, will be a dirty play.
4. Profit-driven markets have nothing to do with affordable, sustainable public health.
When the public health is also one of commodity like a house, we come to a tragic and unthinkable conclusion : As to for-profit business, the more and longer ill patients get, the more profits they make, and it will debilitate the overall economy involving education for the future (Of young adults ages 19 to 29, 13.2 million, or 29 percent, lacked coverage in 2007).
Under the most wasteful structure on the planet like no coordinated preventive care program waiting until people get ill, about 50% of idle world’s best practices, a pay for each and every service reimbursement and frequent readmissions, no e-medical record and deaths, crushing litigations and the more profits via the unnecessary, risk-carrying procedures, and the most inefficient paper billing systems imaginable, overpriced pharmaceuticals, bloated insurance companies, incredible medial fraud, exorbitant costs by the tragic ER visits etc, it might be no wonder with the comprehensive, systematic reform in the pipeline, just one attitude of patient-oriented value in 10 regions has attained 16% of savings in Medicare while their quality scores are well above average.
Aside from the already allocated $583 billion and the savings of this reform package, 16% of $923.5bn (the combined Medicare and Medicaid cost per year, as of July) is around $147.76bn per year and 1.4776trillion over the next decade, and this patient-oriented value alone could be enough to meet the goal.
Please be ’sure’ to visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13gawande.html?hp for credible evidences !
Today, another innovative, fundamental change in payment system, or patient’s outcome based payment reform that is able to turn the profit-oriented malpractices and volume into the patient-oriented value and quality is waiting for a final decision.
Now that Minnesota spends “20 percent” less per patient than the national average and 31 percent less than in the highest cost state, under a pay for patient’s outcome pack, this promising reform could be successful along the way, I believe.
Aside from the already allocated $583 billion and the savings of this reform package, “20%” of $923.5bn (the combined Medicare and Medicaid cost per year, as of July) is around $184.7bn per year and 1.847trillion over the next decade, and this patient-oriented value alone could be sufficient to meet the goal.
5. Inflation-driven greedy allies backed by the insurers have nothing to do with deficit-neutral.
When some part of our body is ailing seriously, we are going to lose competitiveness, equally, when some part of a nation is ailing servery, it is going to loose competitiveness, too. In case somebody in the house gets ill, health will be put over house, in practice.
6. The analyses of CBO have nothing to do with common sense and practice.
Costs of Preventable Chronic Disease account for around 75% of the nation’s $2.4 trillion medical care costs. U.S. health care spending is also expected to double in the next 10 years. and they are largely preventable — 80 percent of the risk factors are behavior-related.
Unlike the analyses of CBO, world-wide outstanding public programs put heavier emphasis on preventive program equally, and preventable swine flu pandemic is expected to cost about $2trillion dollars world-wide for the lack of prepared vaccines. (Genes included in the new swine flu have been circulating undetected in pigs for at least a decade, according to a team led by Rebecca Garten of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who have sequenced the genomes of more than 50 samples of the virus).
If CBO asks the profit-driven interests about why they have hindered the budget request for preventive program in Medicare and Medicaid, they will say, ” just look at the health Katrina special lobbying has made, the more and longer ills, the more profits, we are professional, and we are obstructing this reform right now, too ” .
7. Conclusion : The public health is a fundamental human right.
As I said above, patient-oriented value alone could be enough to meet the goal, and another innovative, fundamental change in payment system, or patient’s outcome based payment reform that is able to turn the profit-oriented malpractices and volume into the patient-oriented value and quality is waiting for a final decision.
If At least, some media pay attention to this flower of reform, people will feel empty as the past and current discussion has been time-consuming for sure.
Thank You !
Health care is a right not a commodity. Anyone who contracts an “unprofitable” disease is branded as having a “pre-existing condition” and inhumanely dropped by the greedy, for-profit health insurance companies. How is it that the richest nation in the world cannot – will not – provide adequate health care for all it’s citizens? Even the communist nation of Cuba can do that! 61% of all bankruptcies in the US are due to a health care crisis. Is this to be the legacy of America? “United we stand, divided we fall” is Kentucky’s motto and should be the rallying cry of all citizens for real and substantial health care reform. Support the public option and the hope of honest competition and cost containment in health care insurance.