Getting Beyond Hysteria to True Health Care Reform

Too many words. People are complaining that the proposed health care reform bill is a couple of thousand pages. Why can’t it be simpler? That is to say, why can’t the most ambitious social reform since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal be more succinct?

It’s so much easier to use inflammatory slogans: Socialist! Hitler!

Then they complain there is not enough information. 1,000 pages and people are complaining the bill does not say enough.

There are legitimate questions to be raised: how will access to care be expanded? Will care be rationed? how will it be paid for? Will the deficit explode? Will families and businesses be mandated to purchase health insurance?

But Rightwingers are using the Health Care reform initiative in the same shrill way they are questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s Presidency: they see this as a political war and health care reform as Obama’s Waterloo.

So instead of raising issues and dare I say offering solutions (that go beyond taking away the ability of a person who has been crippled or killed by medical practice to seek damages, though tort reform should certainly be part of the discussion; and go beyond suggesting that Health Savings Accounts, where you actually need to have so much extra money floating around, you can stash it away for the medical emergency that will likely bankrupt you), they are screaming out fearsome slogans.

Euthanasia. Death Panels. Socialized medicine. Bankrupting Medicare.

And then there is the real bogeyman in the room: “Government Funded Abortions.”

All of these are intended to push that particular button that makes people crazy – bringing a gun to a town hall meeting, having a woman hysterically proclaim: “They are destroying my country. I want my country back.”

(Funny how familiar that sounds when Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, torture, Guantanamo, firing of U.S. Attorneys for political purpose incensed the Liberal/Progressives during eight years of the Bush Administration, and the shift of wealth had people wondering when there would be another revolution. Even the questioning of the legitimacy of the man occupying the Oval Office has a familiar ring – only the hand-recount of the Florida ballots proved that we were right: Bush did not win his office, he was appointed by the Supreme Court.)

I respect legitimate discourse. But what’s out there, though, are lies intended to fear-monger.

I saw it myself in Florida, the epicenter for Medicare recipients. A TV commercial from one of these right-wing groups aimed at older people was saying that Obama’s Health Care Reform would be paid for from $500 billion from Medicare.

That, of course, gets old people riled up. “Hands off my Medicare,” they say. They don’t want single-payer – that is, they don’t want single-payer for others (their children, grandchildren) because that’s what Medicare is, a government-run, single-payer system.

And Medicare delivers health care at only 3 cents out of a dollar spent, compared to 30 cents for every dollar paid to private insurers – including millions in salaries for CEOs, profits for shareholders, and advertising and marketing campaigns.

In fact, seniors love their Medicare.

Interesting conundrum.

Obama was so anxious to bring a new, conciliatory tone to Washington after 14 years of “last-man standing” partisanship (I blame the Republicans, beginning with Newt Gingrich and honed to a tortuous art by Karl Rove), he kept single-payer out of the discussion.

He felt that the “public option” would be a reasonable option, and has repeatedly promised that “if you like your health insurance, you don’t have to change.” (Funny how Rightwingers like competition when it comes to public education, but not health care.)

That has opened up the legitimate concern that the health care reform proposed will be too costly – because the only way to really control costs is through a single-payer system, like Medicare.

But that isn’t the argument being used against the public option. They say that making it possible for people who can’t get or can’t afford private health insurance to buy into the same system that Congress has, will somehow destroy America’s health care system altogether. They call the “public option” a “slippery slope” to (you guessed it): single-payer.

They don’t seem to care that their children are being bankrupted by runaway costs because of the lack of competition, and the essential fact of a capitalism system, that it is designed to maximize profit for the owners/shareholders. That means providing less health services because every dollar spent is less profit to keep.

“Government-run health care? That’s like putting the [dreaded] DMV in charge!” (Actually, I find the DMV run very efficiency). Clearly these people would rather have Halliburton run their health services. Or even better, Blackwater.

Everyone has stories to share.

A parent discovers that her college-age child is not covered for a physical exam, which disclosed high blood pressure. They simply don’t cover “preventive care.” And yet, you would think there is a social – let alone personal – benefit to finding out early, before there is some sort of heart attack, about a blood pressure problem that can be controlled with diet and exercise, rather than expensive medications.

[On this note, kudos to New York State for passing new health legislation so that young adults, 19 to 29, can continue under a parent’s group health insurance policy; it also extends a COBRA-like benefit to this young adult population.]

This young adult needed an operation. But you don’t actually know what the operation will cost, and what will be covered, and what the family will have to pony up, until after receiving the bill.

That is hardly “free enterprise”. Because health care is not a commodity. How do you put a price on life or death or suffering?

Half of all bankruptcies are triggered by a medical issue. Think about that.

And think about all the families who see their dream of owning a house fade, their children’s college fund, their retirement savings depleted. The fact is, there are no controls over health care services, and no real competition, either. You simply can’t shop around, and you can’t even find out in advance what a procedure will cost.

I have been getting emails from right-wing groups organizing protests at the town-meetings to discuss health care.

Each and every one shouts out what they are against – government-funded abortions, health care for illegal aliens, and of course Sarah Palin’s assertion that her son, Trig, born with Down-Syndrome, would have been euthanized.

It is amazing to me how none of them discuss the 20,000 people a year who die because they do not have access to health care; or the cost to all of us because of people who use the Emergency Room like their personal doctor (this was Bush’s rationale for why health care reform was unnecessary – everyone has access to Emergency Room, he said).

And what about people stuck in jobs and marriages they can’t tolerate, except they are afraid they will lose their health insurance, and perhaps would not be eligible because of a “pre-existing condition” to get insurance on their own, at a price they can afford? (this would get little sympathy from Rightwingers, who would see people stuck this way as an instrument of Family Values, preserving Marriage, and I am sure they like the idea of people unable to change jobs – did you hear that productivity has hit the highest level in ages?)

They don’t seem to be concerned about people who have been paying premiums, all of a sudden told they have been dropped when they get sick.

But I don’t understand how you can be proud of spending more per person than any other country in the world, yet rank 37th on the list of industrialized nations for outcomes. This country is pathetically, shamefully low on the list for infant mortality (hear that, Right-to-Lifers), putting us on par with countries we would consider Third World.

In fact, as Paul Krugman of the New York Times, pointed out, the only reason the United States has such longevity at all is because people over 65 have access to Medicare – that is government-sponsored universal health care.

Euthanasia?

I actually overheard a woman in the Great Neck Post office tell a man “Obama wants to kill old people and children.”

In point of fact, the Right-to-Lifers who got an orgasmic thrill when Bush scurried back from Crawford and Congress intervened to keep a brain-dead woman alive against her husband’s wishes, did nothing as a Texas hospital pulled the plug on a two-year old whose parents could not afford the cost of continued care.

Somehow it doesn’t compute that insuring that health care is available to 20 to 65 year olds might also have something to do with affirming life.

And where is “quality of life” in the discussion?

One of the many lies that is circulating about health care reform is that it will bankrupt America.

The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy. Health care costs have been rising at two and three times the Cost of Living – far outpacing income growth.

Americans spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care. The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses. Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama's reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit. That is because it is paid for out of money that is simply wasted and not helping every person have access to health care. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office projects that health care reform will reduce the National debt by $100 billion.

You can even get it straight from the source: The White House has launched an online resource — WhiteHouse.gov/RealityCheck — to help separate fact from fiction and share the truth about health insurance reform.

I was very proud of Reach Out America, our grassroots advocacy group in Great Neck, for joining the rally in Washington on behalf of health care reform. We need more of grassroots, less Astroturf.

Karen Rubin, Long Island Populist Examiner