These memes drive me nuts. The idea that taking 100 years to do health care reform is too fast is sheer idiocy. Where did this straw man argument originate?
Did it start with fear? Fear that health care reform will mean we get less of the pie or less control than we currently don't have now. Do opponents fan the flames of fear with confusion and raise the spectre of runaway costs?
Here we are nearly 100 years since Teddy Roosevelt's defeat and we're still tinkering with the idea of health care reform.
...and the criticism is that
We're going too fast?
PBS has a 100+ year time line that shows how the AMA, other physicians, economic depression, Republicans, Libertarians, war, political gamesmanship, political compromise, medical innovation, and the temporary success of "new" insurance products are the excuses for why The United States hasn't enacted a responsible health care policy accessible to all their citizens.
Before 1920, helping people get well had never before been so lucrative. Selling medical cures was a lot easier with improved medical know how and mass communication that brought it all together. Is it any wonder that those who profit from health care are dead set against reducing their revenues, even if it kills us? Once we look at health care reform through corporate health care and bought and paid for Congressional eyes, I "see" why our opposition thinks we are going "too fast". Any progress at all would be "going too fast" for corporate health care.
No, the "too fast" argument is an excuse based upon fear. The facts show that 100 years is not too fast. 100 years shows the opposition will create a new road block for health care reform with every suggestion that goes toward rectifying the core issues of accessibility, inclusiveness and cost control.
The best antidote for fear is investigation. Just like we show our children there is no monster hiding under their bed or might explain that safety belts might be uncomfortable but they are important to use for our safety; we have to go through our health care reform fears, one by one.
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The reform bill is too confusing?
Actually it's organizations like AARP that are confusing. They have a web site in full support of health care reform. They have a myth busting page. Then when President Obama says AARP is with him, AARP issues a "not so fast statement"? Do they even know what's on their web site?
The poll results can be confusing if you don't know how to read them. 79% want a Public Option which is better named the American Option (see pg 7). Survey USA has a total of 77% showing a public option is Extremely Important or Quite Important. CNN shows that 55% of us favor a Public Option (number 40). Kaiser Family Foundation still shows 59% support a public option (page 6). It's all in how the questions are phrased. The CBS polls showed a majority to be for the PO before they rephrased their poll and we became confused and unsure. NBC reproduced the same result simply by rephrasing to scarier language. Go here for an explanation for poll result differences. The Huffington Post has this excellent post that exposed conflicts of interest of pollsters.
As you might suspect, the confusion is artificial. It is a construct of the media trying to find a relevant story to fill their 24/7 news cycle. Yes, the arguments over health care reform are confusing, but it's because opponents of health care reform want to create confusion and the media encourages the confusion. The number of people worried about their current and future access to health care are real. The reality is that most people do want reform with a Public Option and more, but media personalities won't promote these polls without an obligatory caveat to keep the drama going. The issue is that most people are worried that Congress isn't going to effectively reel in the greed based U.S. health care system.
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Then there's the argument over the costs
The current cost estimate of $900 billion to 1 Trillion dollars over 10 years comes down to $90-100 billion per year or roughly 12%-13% of what we spend on Medicare and Medicaid. That's less than what we spend on war. That's a little less than 10% of what we spend on the DoD ($7.4 billion plus bridge appropriations of $90 billion each here and there). Will reform reduce or increase costs?
Certainly, if we don't remove the incentives for over utilization we won't save any money. Just compare Tenet's financial statement and gross profit of 39.7% with a page 16 from the public, non-profit Memorial Hospital Systems of South Florida. (You'll need to take the link, because the screen shot was too blurry to use here.)
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Tenet has a gross revenue of about $9 billion per year and 55 hospitals. Hollywood Memorial has 4 hospitals that generate about $1.2 billion per year. Tenet doesn't always make a profit every quarter, but compare the loss quarters of $15-$30 million with the $100-$178 million profitable quarters. Non-profit hospitals can over utilize medical services just as readily as Tenet and they do (the difference being the non-profit hospital reinvests their surpluses into expanding services). We will not save any money until we find a way to remove the perverse incentive that fee for service reimbursement schedules do to encourage medical waste and abuse. Most health care wonks hang over utilization on the defensive medicine meme, but really, most unnecessary medical tests and procedures are done for the profit motive and the "frivolous law suit argument" makes for a great excuse.
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If we don't force insurance companies to have far greater medical benefit ratios than the 43.5% Assurant posted for the 2nd quarter of 2009, we won't save any money.
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If we don't start meaningful negotiations with pharma, they will continue to show 84% gross profit ratios (69% if R&D costs are included in costs of revenue) like Pfizer did for the 2nd quarter of 2009, we won't save any money.
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The media? The media is more focused on the drama and in their revenues than the facts. Spin is profitable. Obama was mostly accurate in his speech last Wednesday according to several fact checkers, but that isn't the story the media ran with. They are only interested in viewership and readership. That requires controversy, rancor and rhetoric to keep people tuned into the distractions. If you listen to Chuck Todd, it's apparent he doesn't think his viewership is intelligent enough to understand a concept that contains more than three facts and Mr. Todd is typical of the media mind set. The MSM makes decisions based on the lowest common denominator and they miss the mark, which means they focus solely upon people with third grade intellects (and can't play 6 Degress of Kevin Bacon).
Explaining how health care reform is taking over a hundred years, dispelling (rather than encouraging) the confusion and taking the time to show the profit ratios is boring and worse, it takes too much effort to make these concepts simple to understand. It's far more interesting to the reader and viewer to see to political opponents do verbal sword play over something like the banal rudeness of Joe Wilson's out burst during President Obama's address. The inconsequential wins out over the substantive every time in the news business.
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We're being played.