You've got to wonder who's calling the shots on the New York Times editorial board when you read crap like this.
Why is the New York Times intent on deflecting the attention of its readers to the real criminals responsible for the collapse of the healthcare system?
This particular editorial reads like it was written by the executive committee of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).
The gist is that the American people and our doctors are responsible for skyrocketing costs. You and I are responsible for the American healthcare catastrophe.
Why are they writing stuff like this? If it's a harbinger of things to come, then perhaps we should write off the New York Times for even a smidgen of fair and accurate reporting about healthcare during the 2008 election.
Let's take a look at a few nuggets from this gem gift to AHIP. The paper of record, weighed in this morning with some seriously deranged thinking in a mammoth lead editorial on healthcare
As you know, healthcare is the most urgent domestic issue going into the 2008 election. It is at the top of every public opinion poll. Stakeholders have huge vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Going forward, don't be surprised if we'll need forklifts to dismantle piece-by- piece junk reporting and junk opinion.
Here we go. Get out the forklift as we burrow deep in this dungheap.
The High Cost of Health Care
The relentless, decades-long rise in the cost of health care has left many Americans struggling to pay their medical bills. Workers complain that they cannot afford high premiums for health insurance. Patients forgo recommended care rather than pay the out-of-pocket costs. Employers are cutting back or eliminating health benefits, forcing millions more people into the ranks of the uninsured. And state and federal governments strain to meet the expanding costs of public programs like Medicaid and Medicare.
There's a big problem with their analysis. The Times seems unwilling to place the blame for the health care catastrophe squarely where it belongs--our system of for-profit insurance and for-profit healthcare.
Before we go any further with the Times, here's the truth from Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP).
The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 47 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.
This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.
http://www.pnhp.org/
According to the New York Times, these are some of the reasons that the richest country on the planet spends more money on healthcare than any other nation, yet finds itself with 47 million uninisured, and the rest of us dangerously underinsured.
Americans are rich, we are huge healthcare consumers. Blame us. Blame our doctors.
Almost all economists would agree that the main driver of high medical spending here is our wealth.
. . .This is mostly because we pay hospitals and doctors more than most other countries do. We rely more on costly specialists, who overuse advanced technologies, like CT scans and M.R.I. machines, and who resort to costly surgical or medical procedures a lot more than doctors in other countries do.
The New York Times wants its readers to know that we could cut costs, if our doctors only practiced tried and true medicine. This is known as evidence-based medicine. Dear Kossacks, this could have been lifted in it's entirety from AHIP talking points. Yet it has morphed onto the editorial page of the New York Times.
Stick to What Works. The sad truth is that less than half of all medical care in the United States is supported by good evidence that it works, according to estimates cited by the Congressional Budget Office.
Karen Ignagni, the CEO of AHIP has been writing and talking about evidence-based medicine for years. Buzz words like "efficiency" and "accountability" are used by lobbyists like Ms. Ignagni in an effort to demonize doctors and blame the American people for skyrocketing costs. We Americans demand that our doctors over-treat us. Were it so. Most Americans can barely afford the deductibles and co-pays and think long and hard before even going to a doctor. This kind of bullshit comes straight from AHIP.
As you know, but what the New York Times fails to mention, is that in the United States healthcare is about funneling money to Wall Street. Every dollar that is spent on your healthcare goes against the bottom line. In fact, contrary to what the New York Times describes, Americans are far from profligate healthcare consumers, how could we be? The insurance industry employees armies of highly trained bean counters whose sole function is to put up roadblocks and deny care.
Prescription drugs.
Everyone but the Times is well aware that the confusion, corruption and chaos which surrounds Medicare D has brought misery to tens of millions, while injecting countless billions into the already swollen coffers of the pharmaceutical industry. Everyone but the New York Times knows that Medicare D brought promises and grief but not authentic prescription drug coverage to the nation's elderly.
The editorial board of the New York Times might take a look at esteemed journal like The New England Journal of Medicine for the truth.
Most Americans agree that affordable drug coverage under Medicare has been needed for some time. But instead of a solution to a growing problem, Congress gave the country a prescription-drug plan that achieves few of its original goals. The current problems with Medicare Part D are largely the direct result of the undemocratic way in which the plan was authored and passed. The final legislation, heavily influenced by drug-company and health insurance lobbyists, focused mainly on the needs of those industries instead of those of the seniors it should serve.
The political process used to pass Part D was the worst abuse of the legislative process I have seen during my 20 years in Congress. In the months before its passage, a few powerful Republican leaders worked to undermine conscientious reform proposals.
http://content.nejm.org/...
Could those huge advertising dollars have anything to do with what the Times editorial has to say on the subject of prescription drugs?
Drug Prices. Compared with the residents of other countries, Americans pay much more for brand-name prescription drugs, less for generic and over-the-counter drugs, and roughly the same prices for biologics. This page believes it would be beneficial to allow Medicare to negotiate with manufacturers for lower prescription drug prices and to allow cheaper drugs to be imported from abroad. The prospect for big savings is dubious. [Huh? This is from me.]
So how do we cuts costs? And who's to blame? Well, again the New York Times lays the responsibility directly on us and our doctors.
We pay doctors too much in the United States. Dare we "cut their compensation to levels paid in other countries?"
If we trained more primary care doctors, there would be fewer over-paid specialists pumping us to demand costly heart bypass procedures, lung transplants and assorted painful procedures (which we all secretly desire). And by the way, the New York Times, conveniently forgets to remind its readers, that most for-profit insurers routinely deny, or (their newest trick), authorize then refuse to pay for expensive medical procedures.
Pay Providers Less. With doctors dreadfully unhappy under the heavy hand of insurers, it would seem shortsighted to make them even unhappier by cutting their compensation to levels paid in other countries. But many experts believe it should be possible to tap into the vast flow of money sluicing through hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities to find savings.
Emphasize Primary Care. In a health system as uncoordinated as ours, many experts believe we could get better health results, possibly for less cost, if we changed reimbursement formulas and medical education programs to reward and produce more primary care doctors and fewer specialists inclined to proliferate high-cost services. It would be a long-term project.
I wish the editorial board would spend a few minutes reading what passes for news. If they did, they might mention that profit is what drives all healthcare in the United States.
From a July article in the New York Times about Humana profits.
Humana Earnings Soared in Quarter
LOUISVILLE, Ky., July 30 (AP) — The health insurer Humana Inc. reported Monday that its second-quarter profit more than doubled from a year ago on the strength of improved cost controls and sharply higher income from its government business.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
And this from the Washington Post.
UnitedHealth Profit Rises 38 Percent
MINNEAPOLIS -- UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation's second-largest health insurer, said Thursday its third-quarter earnings rose almost 38 percent on growth across its businesses.
The Minnetonka, Minn.-based company said it earned $1.1 billion, or 79 cents per share, on revenue of $18 billion for the three months ended Sept. 30. During the same period last year, UnitedHealth earned $800 million, or 61 cents per share, on sales of $11.6 billion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
But let's not get into that pesky little problem of profits.
Healthcare reform won't be easy. Incoming artillery will come from everywhere including places like the New York Times, which we might have thought would be an ally. But if we are close to critical mass, it means that the forces which plan on derailing us yet again, will find themselves this election cycle facing the full fury of the American people. And as more people come to recognize the failings of the health care system, the momentum for reform will intensify and hopefully become unstoppable.