Over the last few months, we've been treated to a continuous barrage of alleged Democrats pushing various versions of "public option" - a private/public optional hybrid that preserves the role of private insurers and doesn't threaten their hegemony too much. In order to achieve that, it must not be too attractive to anybody.
Part of the big lie that has been spun to make American legislators be able to plead plausible denial if they vote for it in its current form is the myth of cost sharing affordability. However, this lie is one of the most dangerous, because the very real lack of affordability kills a lot of people. I am going to attempt to document some of the ways in which it isn't true in this diary.
For an American family to purchase a health plan of single payer quality would cost on the order of $35,000-50,000 a year with our current burdens to support. That care is basically free in Canada.
Also, under the House proposal, people could get insurance through the exchange if they paid their entire premiums — a cost that would be prohibitive for many workers.
From: For Many Workers, Insurance Choices May be Limited
By Mary Agnes Carey and Julie Appleby
Kaiser Health News
July 15, 2009
Health Care Costs have been going up SO much faster than incomes that health care cost sharing is crowding out all other spending and this trend is heading the US towards disaster. Its essential to the health of the greater US economy NOT JUST TO SLOW THE RATE OF INCREASE, as Obama "hopes" to do, but to reverse it.
The cost of not reversing it is a disaster in which most Americans are literally impoverished, picked off, alone, one by one, alone against a system that often seems designed to punish, humiliate, and marginalize them by design.
Manning WG et al. 1987. "Health insurance and the demand for medical care:
Evidence from a randomized experiment." American Economic Review, 77(3):251-277.
People do reduce their use of health services when user fees increase —
but the poor, often the ones who need medical care most — are
the hardest hit. In the Rand experiment, low-income users cut their
likelihood of medical use from 82.8 per cent when they didn’t have to
pay, to 61.7 per cent when user charges were highest.
Talk is cheap but money talks. The test of the public option will be in the obscure details of how much "cost sharing" they MANDATE. So far, I think they have been lying quite a bit. People who make four times the poverty line are still poor. VERY FEW CAN OF ANY OF US AFFORD TO PAY FOR HEALTH CARE WITHOUT RADICAL CHANGES.
Those who parrot the affordability fabrication are betraying the American people.
How bad is the situation? Very bad. One doesn't have to search long to find a huge amount of evidence that even the Massachusetts-like premiums that are going to be charged for public option are unsustainable for most Americans of average means- that is to say, Americans of modest means. (The tiny number of ULTRA-rich skew the statistics to make Americans seem richer on paper than they really are)
Conversely, the healthcare offered globally by single payer plans like Canada, is of consistently high quality. Indeed, I have read that for a small American family to purchase such a plan, with national choice of physicians, (Canadians can see any doctor in the country) it would cost on the order of $3-5,000 a month, depending on their location.
The Democrats are covering up these ugly realities with their spin.
Its getting worse, rapidly. Even those who have high-quality healthcare plans often find that their doctors are willing to approve less and less, because of the declining "standard of care" constantly pushed lower and lower by profit-oriented payors.
Contrasting that with Canada, is a study in differences. In Canada, the non-profit approach means doctors can focus on patient care.
This makes all the difference.
Please look at some of these references, before you make the mistake of thinking that cost-sharing (fees, premiums, co-pays, uncovered costs, and deductibes) are a good idea. If we must continue carrying the private plans on our backs, wit their shrill demands, so bet it, but make that process transparent and free to the end users and pay for it out of taxes, even though it could be several times as expensive as single payer. But don't sacreifice affordability and quality on the sacrificial altar of free market orthodoxy. Public option is an expensive trap we can't afford, compared to the time-proven single payer healthcare which would be affordable for all. American families can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on another pre-crippled healthcare plan that only pays 70% of the huge expenses of medical care. We can't afford public option's lack of cost control. Its bad medicine.
Thank you.
- Myth: User fees would stop waste and ensure better use of the healthcare system From Canada's CHRSF - a government agency! "Research has shown time after time that user fees inevitably create advantages for the rich and healthy while making matters worse for the sick and poor." Indeed!
- Trends in Underinsurance and the Affordability of Employer Coverage, 2004–2007 (Must read for those who think even a new "public option™ brand insurance will be "affordable" for the sick who make 400% FPL.`)
- U.S. Ranks Last Among Other Industrialized Nations on Preventable Deaths 101,000 Fewer Americans Would Die Annually If the U.S. Improved Its Preventable Death Rate to that of the Three Top Performing Nations
- Single payer vs. "public option" compared
- The Obama Administration's Options for Health Care Cost Control: Hope Versus Reality (Shows how little Obama's promised savings under public option will probably be, Statements that PO "will" also save a lot of money without SP's reduction in billing infrastructure- are transparent attempts to associate public option with the known quantity, single payer-which does save a lot of money The closest models to 'public option' usually lose money, They know this, so perhaps the lies are in preparation for a quite possible failure of PO and then, a post-failure disinfo campaign against the obvious next approach, single payer.)
- What is a "Risk Pool"? (Public option is very similar to the state high risk insurance programs of last resort. Description by the National Association of State Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans (NASCHIP) Read this, especially the part about how and why high risk pools lose money.)
- Learn more about single payer health care for all
- Myths about Canada's healthcare system debunked
- Tommy Douglas ("The Greatest Canadian")
- U.S. healthcare industry's lies about Canada and U.S. healthcare industry's lies about Canada pt. II
- The Health of Nations (Ezra Klein)
- Sick Around The World (PBS Frontline)
- Foreign free riders and the high price of US medicines (Shows how incredibly little US drug companies spend on basic research and how much cheaper drug prices are in single payer nations, which increasingly host more drug research as well. Drug sales remain highly profitable in single payer nations though, just not as predatorily priced as here. Apparently, elements of US govt. are participating in big-pharma disinfo campaign.)
- The 0.6 Percent Bogeyman Medical Malpractice Payments Fall to All-Time Low as Health Care Costs Continue to Rise (Many iatrogenic injuries are very serious)
- Medicaid Estate Recovery