I grew up during the heyday of the Saturday morning cartoon. Week after week, I’d watch the adventures of characters such as Scooby Do, Spider-Man and Jonny Quest, all rendered with colors that were only slightly less vivid than those of whatever breakfast cereal I was consuming.
But not even the countless hours of animated antics I watched before the Senate approved its much diluted health-care reform bill could have prepared me for the cartoonish battles that preceded the historic vote. I watched in disbelief as leaders of the majority political party behaved like recent graduates of the Neville Chamberlain School for Negotiation.
Joe Lieberman, looking more like Droopy Dawg than Droopy Dawg ever did, kept moving the goalposts as to what compromises were required in order to secure his vote. Somehow, he reversed himself again to announce that he’d vote for the bill.
Meanwhile the Republican lawmakers as petty and grasping as any villain thwarted by the Scooby gang, delayed and diluted any proposals for reform. Except in this case, the ad guys largely succeeded in their evil scheme. They’d have gotten away with more, too, if it wasn’t for those pesky bloggers at Street Prophets and Daily Kos.
Now I’d like to debunk some of the myths I’ve heard during the debate.
Death panels. Something that exists only in the fevered imagination of right-wingers whose tinfoil hats have fallen off. The legislation in question actually reimburses physicians for time they may spend discussing end-of-life issues with patients.
Universal health care means rationed services. I hate to break it to folks, but health care already is rationed according to income and location. A hospital in East Armpit, Idaho is far less likely to have top-flight talent and equipment. When I was hospitalized with a case of gangrene back in ‘06, the doctor who did the surgery said I’d likely die unless I was transferred from the sixth-largest city in the state to the largest.
Cutting out waste and fraud means that people will lose services. People who make this argument don’t understand how much waste there truly is. If you had a chronic skin irritation, your tendency would be to treat the affected area, then save any unused ointment for use on future problems. Here at the home, the solution is to dispose of a half-full tube and replace it with an unopened tube when a future outbreak manifests itself.
Of course, it goes without saying that the ointment delivered by the facility’s pharmaceutical supplier is half the strength and twice the price of an over-the-counter product available at the nearest drugstore.
Prevention of disease doesn’t save money. I am convinced that for all those people who aren’t hypochondriacs with OCD, it does.
The nursing home where I reside could save a lot of money on insulin if residents were provided with meals that helped control diabetes. Instead, we dine on food rich in starches and sugars.
Not too long ago, a stuffed baked potato was presented as a dinnertime entrée. To this, a resident could add tater tots as a starch and corn as a vegetable. Pile on a sweet dessert and you’ve got all the ingredients for an amputation in the not too distant future.
A diet with an assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables would cost more than the starch-laden meals offered here, but residents would require less insulin. Decent food costs less than insulin, but Medicare won’t pay for that.
Given this facility’s unceasing efforts to cut costs, I am dreading the inevitable “Soylent Green” moment.
Another money-wasting tactic is in the realm of admissions. Some facilities schedule transfers after midnight, in order to bill another day’s stay to the patient’s account. The facility receiving the patient also gets to bill the patient’s account a second time for the same day.
The first facility then has an opportunity to fill (and bill) a bed during regular working hours.
Universal health care will cause long lines. Unless you’ve got concierge medical service, you’ve probably spent time in the reception area of a general practitioner or specialist who has booked several patients at the same time in order to maximize profits. This is why these reception areas are known colloquially as waiting rooms; not “we’ll heal you while you sit there reading six-month-old magazines” rooms.
Universal health care restricts freedoms. Really? Good health is a prerequisite for availing oneself of some of our most cherished rights. What good is the right to pursue happiness if someone is too ill to make the pursuit? The rights to bear arms or to peaceably assemble can also be infringed by poor health.
So now we’re left with questions that need to be resolved. Can the house version of health-care reforms be resurrected? Can Democrats outfox their naysaying GOP colleagues? Will the final battleground be the judicial system?
Stay tooned.