Health-care misinformation: Big numbers

By all means Bruce...tell us what the swamp didn't want to print so you could direct attention elsewhere.

Here's some info people can use to beat back some of the most absurd healthcare claims that are coming out of the mouths of the Big Health Insurance Lobby and their foaming at the mouth puppets in the Republican party.

1) The government -- i.e., not private enterprise -- wants to kill Granny. Let us get this straight. The government wants to kill Granny and, by implied contrast, private enterprise, that we all learned in Economics 101 exist for the sole purpose of caring for each and every citizen, will look out for Granny's well-being.

* Is this the same private enterprise that sells death (cigarettes), needing to addict 15,000 new children per month just to maintain revenues? Or, is it the same private enterprise that resisted selling safe cars? Or, perhaps it is the same private enterprise that would never pollute our air or water, or, if they did, rush to clean it up before they hurt anyone? Or, maybe they mean the private enterprise that imported toxic toys for children? Or, the private enterprise that so generously donates candy and soda pop machines to public schools?
We actually do know the private enterprise they mean -- it is the private insurers who try not to insure people who are or may get sick, try to drop them from their rolls when they do, and deny every claim they can when they cannot drop you from their policies. That's the private enterprise that has been caring for you for years.
And what about the government? Perhaps the evil government they refer to is the one that determined cigarette smoking caused lung cancer in the first place; or the one that established pollution controls and standards for clean air and clean water; or, perhaps it is the evil government, out to kill Granny, that administers Medicare with less than a 5 percent administrative cost compared to 25-30 percent for private enterprise; or, the evil people at the Food and Drug Administration that ensure the integrity of the food supply and the safety (and potency) of drugs people take to combat illness?
Let us concede, however, that the government does deliberately kill people. It is called the death penalty. And, although the goal is not to have our own people killed, war usually does a pretty good job of ensuring people die. So, if Granny refrains from committing a capital offense, and does not -- like the Limbaughs and O'Reillys and Bushes and Cheneys and Kristols and Lowrys and Buchanans and Chamblisses who love war so long as they do not get called to fight it -- volunteer for the armed forces, it is not the government she needs to fear for her life.

2) We cannot afford it.

* Here's a shocker--we are affording it today, paying for it now. Hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical companies are not giving away treatment and medicine for free. They are not printing their own money (although the word "scrip" is indeed in prescription). They are getting paid.
Now, how can that be? Well, if you are among the 260 million Americans who have health insurance, you are already paying for the 47 million who do not. Health care providers overcharge you assuming a predictable percentage of bills will go uncollected. You see, along with your insurance exec's Gulfstream, you pay for the uninsured with your premiums for those higher charges.
But, you don't mind, do you? Because they never called it a "tax."
If we get universal coverage, there will be no unpaid charges. Charges per item or service could come down and, therefore, insurance premiums could come down -- unless of course the insurance execs wants a company yacht along with the Gulfstream, or just to report higher profits, then they won't. Wonder what a competing public option would do? Hmmm....
And, by the way, there are huge savings to be had just from improved efficiencies of a system in which total costs count more than the cost of one procedure or drug or intervention.
The secret reason they never called part of your premiums a "tax" is that if we ever got health care reform, and premiums declined, or at least did not increase more rapidly than other parts of the economy, then we might have called it a "tax cut." And one of the "Old Rules" is the only the right wing gets to say the word, "tax cut."
But, they are correct that health care costs are spinning out of control and that one of the purposes of reforming the system is to reduce those costs. One of the best ways of reducing costs is improving outcomes.

3) Let private competition solve everything: Imagining a world without Medicare

* Ok, to test that hypothesis, let us examine what our world would be like without Medicare. One possibility would be that the elderly would be insured privately and randomly in the same plans as the rest of us. Care to guess how high your premiums would be if your plan carried those higher risk seniors?
Or, suppose no insurance company really wanted to insure the elderly and they were without insurance. Then Granny gets sick. Who pays? Do you let Granny go untreated? Does Granny "allow" you go bankrupt, and deprive your kids, her grandchildren(!), of their college funds, to pay for her care?
Or, suppose there are insurance companies only covering the elderly? Their insurance premiums would be ... oh, doesn't seem to work does it? Very few would be covered since it would be unaffordable, so we are back to no coverage.
How about this? Your children can be covered to the age of 18 under your policy. What about your parents getting covered under your policy once they hit 65? Think we are back to sky-high premiums with that one.
I know, I know, I know (says Newtie), let's give each Medicare recipient a lump sum, and let them go out and buy private insurance with it. For starters, about 20-30 percent of that is no longer going into actual care, but into "administrative" costs, so their coverage would decline.. Then again, if a person is ill, the insurer may not wish to cover him; if there were a law against such discrimination, we are back to both skyhigh premiums few could afford and the contribution coming from Medicare being insufficient.
Now, for the most likely scenario without Medicare. Granny is covered, premiums are higher but not outrageously. Why? Because when Granny does get ill, the insurance companies will deny coverage, or drop her. So, you can have the wonderful experience of paying higher premiums and then going bankrupt a bit sooner, all while Granny is wondering how she could allow herself to do this to you, and her grandchildren. Now that would really kill her.

4) The free market can solve everything, and at lower cost.

* No, it cannot. First, and most convincingly, it has not. Since most systems tend toward equilibrium, it might have been surmised that, after all these years, everything would have already been solved. The purists would say that there are government programs around (like Medicare) that have distorted the system so that free markets cannot reach an equilibrium solution. But, that is nonsense. See # 3 above.
Secondly, though, free markets are genetically incapable of providing high-quality, low-cost, health care for all. Why? Because most people incur most of their health care costs when they are old. By the time they are old, health care prices have risen (even if at a normal rate), whereas their incomes were earned way-back-when wages and salaries were not nearly as high. Hence, even if they had saved prudently for the inevitable rainy day, it is unlikely most people would have enough saved from wages during their youth and middle age to cover the costs that they are now charged in their old age.
In addition, the costs of an illness can be, and often are, catastrophic to individuals, and only the very wealthy would have the money to pay for the total costs of care.
Ok, the free-market-solve-everything crowd would say, they would all purchase insurance. But, that is today's system, not everyone purchases it, not everyone can afford it, and private markets in search of profits do what would be expected: they weed out those most likely to add costs.

5) Your health care will be rationed.

* Don't know how to break this to you, except to say it in a whisper -- your health care is rationed today. Insurance companies do not cover everything, and, when they do, it is often just up to a point. Medicare likewise has certain rules about the level of nursing care required to qualify for reimbursement.
For example, we now know that highly intensive, properly guided physical therapy can restore motor function in people after strokes. A different part of the brain is trained to take over motor control. Here is a real-life case: A professor had a stroke. He is otherwise young and vigorous, formerly a champion-level athlete. But, his insurance will not cover the costs of 12-16 weeks of the highly intensive physical rehabilitation required to recover motor function. He gets just 3 weeks, only one hour on alternate days, but not even at the facility closest to his home, he has to go to one the insurance company approved.
One of the benefits of a comprehensive system is that treating this man for 12-16 weeks so that he can recover his motor function is not only better for the patient but, in the long run, is also much less expensive than forcing him, because of lack of coverage, to remain partially paralyzed. For any given insurance company, however, it is not less expensive, because he is likely to get passed into a different company. Thus, outcomes are worse and costs are higher.

6) Medicare is bankrupt ... or will be in 2042.

* I'll buy the first foaming at the mouth Wingnut that came name one private insurance company who is funded for all the healthcare expenses it will have to pay for the next 33 years, a meal of freedom fries, deep-fried in beef fat with all they can drink Mountain Dew.

These answers are a result of three factors: (1) Inability of Obama and Congress to articulate details of a very complex set of health care bills; (2) Calling it "health care" at first and then switching to "health insurance"; and (3) A basic distrust by many Americans (shown by polls) in Congress and Obama.

The GOP is performing orchestrated outrage for their Big Health Insurance overlords. There's a script for this stuff that was written before these events even happened, written instructions showing GOPer minions how to shut down efforts at civic discourse at healthcare townhalls. The web site Think Progress obtained a leaked memo from a group that calls itself Right Principles. The three page memo details how these right-wing nutbag protesters should behave at town hall events.
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http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-gop-thugishness-town-halls-called
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The misinformation is coming from the wealthy Big Insurance Co's and Right-Wing Lobbyist groups who are getting the dumber than a bag of rocks toothless rednecks who make up the GOPer base to go out to healthcare townhalls all over America and protest against their own well being.
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http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/when-liberals-protest-its-facism-when-c

"All of this is refuted by fact-checking of the plans emerging from Congress so far, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee has cited the chapter and verse that dispells...."

Barney Frank? You want us to trust Barney Frank? Didn't he just say yesterday that we shouldn't trust our government?

Maybe we should trust those phoney liberal "doctors" that keep showing up at these townhalls too?

> 44,230 more people are losing health coverage each week.

> 191,670 more people are losing health coverage each month.

> 2.3 million more people are losing health coverage each year

Republicans know that a successful health care reform that achieves universal coverage will bury them electorally for a generation. Health Insurers and their Lobbyists and Big Pharma know that a powerful public option and a Medicare bargaining for prices will kick them off the gravy train permanently. Republicans and Big Insurance Company propagandists know their scare tactics aren't nearly as scary as reality for the large majority of Americans.

Faux News: Fairly Unbalanced

Self-proclaimed "great Americans" lie to Americans. Self-proclaimed "country first" in the pockets of big money.

A basic distrust by many Americans (shown by polls) in Congress and Obama.

Posted by: Erica | August 19, 2009 4:14 PM

Yes...lies about the bill play no part. Amazing how Obama kicks McCain/Palins butt...but it's a basic mistrust. What garbage. Your grasp of reality eludes you.

Americans Can't Trust Republicans With Medicare

You want a simple message to counter dishonest Republican fear mongering on healthcare? How's this, Republicans want to do away with Medicare. They've always wanted to take it away, and if they get half a chance in the future they'll get rid of it then. It's not hard to find examples of them saying so in their own words since Medicare started.

Saint Ronny Raygun in the 60s: "if you don’t [stop Medicare] ... you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free."

Republican Bob Dole openly bragged in 1996 that he was one of 12 House members who voted against creating Medicare. "I was there, fighting the fight, voting against Medicare ..."
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http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/07/29/medicare-44/

GOPer nutjob/ "guru" Newt Gingrich said of Medicare, "We don't get rid of it in round one because we don't think that's politically smart, we don't think that's the right way to go through a transition, but we believe it's going to wither on the vine." He then went on to propose cutting Medicare by 14% and forcing millions of senior citizens to seek out private HMOs or go without, all to help make sure Medicare would 'wither on the vine.' And it continues right into present day.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/16/us/gop-s-plan-to-cut-medicare-faces-a-veto-clinton-promises.html?sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all

Roy Blunt: "You could certainly argue that government should have never have gotten in the health care business, and that might have been the best argument of all, to figure out how people could have had more access to a competitive marketplace."
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http://www.firedupmissouri.com/content/radical-roy-blunt-it-would-have-been-best-if-medicare-and-medicaid-never-existed

Former Republican House Majority Leader the Dick Armey reaffirmed this week on MtP that he thinks Medicare is "tryanny" and if that's not worrisome enough, he wants to "phase out" social security too.

Republicans want to do away with Medicare because they're against government healthcare, always have been, always will be. That's a core plank in GOP ideology, they hold it as dear and precious as some holy theology. Just yesterday, when asked about government healthcare, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said the "government is a predator, not a competitor" and went on to note he wouldn't vote for any healthcare reform bill as a matter of conservative principle, even if it has everything he wants in it. So when a Republican talks about "reform," says we must "get the government out of healthcare," pitches convoluted tax schemes and private accounts for the affluent, or spits out terms like "socialized medicine," like a dog whistle they all mean the same thing: getting rid of Medicare.
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/2009/08/sen-grassley-on-health-care-the-government-is-a-predator.php?ref=fpblg

Forget about grandma being unplugged, grandma won't be able to afford being seen, much less be able to pay for hospital admission. Grandma is on her own. All so that conservative zillionaires and their Republican congressional lackeys can save an extra 0.0145 of their gross, bloated paycheck, the same flat rate we all invest to keep millions of senior citizens alive and healthy today.

Dishonesty has been the tool of the special interests against Americans. Time to fight back against these crooks and take back healthcare reform.

Number 1 source of "health care" misinformation: the Obama White House.

Be very afraid that the insurance company big wigs will not be able to pad their off shore profit accounts with their enormous bonuses if the single payer goes through. Why do Republicans think that these Ins co. CEOs deserve this money...is it the same as the AIG goofs and the rest of Wall Street CEOs? They all drove their companies into the ground.

If illegals won't be covered does that mean when they wheel some gang banger in after being shot up in a drive by does he go to the end of the line for treatment? I didn't think so.

Paul A,

Nice cut and paste job from "Cup of Joe Powell". Here's JOe's qualifications - according to Joe - Language, Politics, Humor, Philosophy, MoviesMoviesMOVIES!!, Everything I Don't Know

The last part is very telling.

1) The same free enterprise that sells cigs? Would Medicare be part of teh same gov't that allows the legal sales of cigs and makes more per pack than the cig companies do?

2) We can not afford it. That is a true statement. Just like any business, the paying customers pay for those that do not pay - be in it th electric company, the local department store, etc... It's part of the cost of business - unfortunately. Private health insurance also subisdizes the short-changing of doctors and hospitals by Medicare and Medicaid also.

3) Imagine a world w/o medicare. I can only dream if I would have been allowed to save 2.9% of my slary until I was 62 , invest that money and take the proceeds and purchase helath insurance. I, and most others would make out like bandits.

4) Name a gov't program that has come in at estimated cost and with customer satisfaction. Medicare? NO. Social Security? Not even close.

5) Health care will either be rationed or taxes will be increased. It's either or. I guess Cup of JOe was sleeping during that class of Econ 101.

6)I buy you two of those delicious lunches when the gov't uses the same accountingstandards that the insurance companies have to.

BTW - First GrannQuack and now you, Paul A - are any of you libs able to think for yourself?

Paul A,Nice cut and paste job from "Cup of Joe Powell". Here's JOe's qualifications - according to Joe - Language, Politics, Humor, Philosophy, MoviesMoviesMOVIES!!, Everything I Don't Know
Posted by: Terry | August 19, 2009 8:20 PM
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It sucks when your own (GOP) tactics are used against you, doesn't it TrickleDown Terri?

You're the nutbag that's been on here for the last two years shilling for Repug tax cuts for the rich, big oil and big corporations and cheerleading for taxpayers to keep feeding billions of their hard earned dollars to the Miliary Industrial Complex.

You're a sociopath Terri, and you have no credibility on here, none, zip, nada.

Here's our health insurance horror story

My wife and I are in our 60’s
We are self employed
My wife has a pacemaker
I am in good health
We have Blue Shield
The most affordable policy we could find at our age was their PPO 4000/8000 plan
Our monthly premiums are $915 per month..
Our deductible is $4000 per year per person.
So basically we are “self insured” since we pay at least $15,000 per person per year for insurance premiums and health care before we can get a dime of help from Blue Shield.
I’ve tried everything I can think of to get our premiums down. Even looked into a small group plan.

It’s gotten to the point that we’ve started going abroad for medical care
For the past 4 years we’ve been saving up all our medical and dental problems and making a 3 week visit to a Thai hospital where the care is excellent and the cost…just a fraction of what I would have to pay out of pocket in the US. For example, last November I had an Endoscopic balloon dilation for a condition known as dysphagia. The specialist in the US said the operation would cost me $2500 if I paid cash.
I decided to wait until I got to Thailand and had it done in at Chulalonkorn public hospital…cost $100 including biopsy, (all I needed for ID was my US passport. No questions asked!!)

It’s sad that we have to go overseas for affordable health care while other people get affordable health care here at home just because they work for someone else.

That "welfare" type system...that rewards people who work for companys's who pay generous benefits...and punishes people who work for themselves or for companies that provide no health care...is why I think the US health care system is a failed system

Trickled-On Anti John E,

Tax cuts for job producers produce a growing economy for everyone. As far as big oil - I guess you didn't hear the BO is backing Off-Shore drilling? He is backing this off-shore drilling with US Taxpayer dollars. The catch? It's off the Brazilian coast. NO American jobs, but it will still "hurt" the environment, won't it?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166.html

back to mom and dad's basement with you.

Tax cuts for job producers produce a growing economy for everyone
Posted by: Terry | August 19, 2009 9:55 PM
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TrickleDown Terri,

You mean those tax cuts for the rich "job producers" who destroyed our economy the last eight years after they took all of their "profits" and put them in off shore accounts?

Sorry clown, no copy and paste article from the Murdoch Street Journal is going to fool anyone. Repugs govern for the rich, period, end of story.

Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, Terri.

Terri,
You know what I like about you? I could yank your chain on here for three straight days and you're such a typical self righteous blowhard dittohead that you would continue on with it because in the hardcore Wingnut mind, winning an argument means shouting the loudest and having the last word.

You and Johnny W Libertariangoofball are my favorite Wingnuts, because you're so "confident" in your opinion.....that you HAVE to have the last word.

Are you smart enough to see the irony here?

Trickled-On Anti John E,

The tax cuts that produced the 73 months of economic growth and low unemployment. Please show me a credible article that blames the recession on 2003 tax cuts. If the tax cuts were bad for the economy, then why didn't we have the recession in 2004 or 2005?

Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life. However, it does beat your alternative of just plain stupid.

AT,
I think Terry is talking about those wizards of Wall St. that shorted every bodies stock portfolios into the basement.

Silva, we've got something you and the partisan "factcheckers" in St. Petersburg don't have, actual evidence of government-run healthcare in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6ojBgTyA7I&feature=player_embedded

You can say "death panels" won't exist, but we know that they already do and will under this plan. You can say it won't cover illegals, but ignore the information in the House bill that keeps practitioners from checking IDs. You can lie, lie, lie all you want and call yourself a "factchecker," but it won't make you any less of a liar.

Lenin,

The wizards of wall street can't short your portfolio w/o your permission.

Keep stuffing your matress w/ your $8/hr earnings

Big Pharma, the Insurance companies and other swiftboaters are on the rampage against letting Americans have affordable healthcare.

Don't be a sap and believe any of the Viagra ads that are buying opinions to say we don't need healthcare reform.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DBOmuY2c6Q