Robert Reich lays it out:
[Big pharmaceutical and insurance companies] don’t want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, “unfair” is anything that undermines their profits.
So they’re pulling out all the stops — pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called “moderate” Republicans who say they’re in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they’ve been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.
Your understanding and participation in this battle really does matter. Do not assume that your representatives and senators are going to do the right thing as the result of a party label. The influence of Big Pharma and insurance companies is far greater than party affiliation. These folks need to know that citizen influence can occasionally be greater than either. Make sure they hear from you. Regularly.
Vivian J. Paige
I’d say it’s safe to assume that they will NOT do the right thing.
Vermelia
How is government run care working in Canada? How do you explain why my aunt had to wait 8 months for one freaking exam, and eventually had to come here for it?
Sorry, but as the son of a doctor in private practice who has worked his butt off to get to where he is today, yes I say hell no to a public plan option. It’s the DUMBEST idea that’s ever been proposed in this country. If there’s any justice, the liberals that loves this system will have to wait 1 year before getting access to a hospital for an exam.
My dad came here with nothing in his wallet and worked his way up. I know liberals hate doctors who make money but given how many lives my father’s saved over the years (he’s too modest to talk about it, but I will), I don’t apologize one damn bit for the money our family has made.
And my sister, who’s a Wharton grad, used to work for a pharmaceutical company. She also doesn’t apologize one bit for the money she’s made. It’s about time that liberals stop hating on the rich and realize that you don’t create wealth by penalizing success.
By the time you all are through with your shitty ideas, this country will be the Socialist States of America and everyone will be moving to Europe.
So let me get this straight. You want the government to back off when it comes to interrogating terrorists and collecting evidence on terror suspects overseas? Yet, you have no problem having government get in the business of picking winners and losers in the health care debate?
How has government done running social security, medicare, medicaid, the Post Office, our education system, and the post Iraq war occupation? Yet, after 30 years of incompetence, liberals want MORE government?
Get me to Europe ASAP.
Plin
Everyone I know in this country who is violently opposed to public health care has never actually experienced it for themselves. They always trot out some second- or third-hand example of terrible experiences in Canada or the UK, as though the exact same issues of wait lists and barriers to treatment didn’t also exist in the US system. Oh, wait: those mostly only affect poor people. Not hardworking Americans, nossirree!
Give me a break. Public health care isn’t about trying to keep doctors from earning a living–or, yes, even becoming quite wealthy. And there’s no reason pharmaceutical companies shouldn’t make healthy profits as well. (Yes, that was deliberate.) But there’s a difference between earning a reasonable profit and gouging the public, and there are huge systemic costs that are borne even by those hardworking Americans who never have to wait for treatment, and who are never denied a test or medication because it’s not covered by their crappy, employer-chosen insurance plan.
Giving up access to public health care was the single hardest part of my decision to move back to the US, and the only part of my old life that I still miss. (Well, and the day trips to Venice, but I digress.) The system here is even more appalling than I realized, and at least as rife with inefficiencies as any public system I’m familiar with. The only people who are benefiting from the status quo are the pharma and insurance companies–who could still run a perfectly profitable business under a public health system. But why settle for “perfectly profitable” when you have a captive public who has no choice but to pay outrageous overages just to get basic care.
Talk about toxic assets.
James Young
You’re probably right, Plin: “Everyone … who is violently opposed to public health care has never actually experienced it for themselves.” So? Most of the people I know who are violently opposed to any war have never experienced for themselves. Most of the people I know who are violently opposed to Marxism have never experienced it themselves. Most of the people I know who are violently opposed to Naziism have never experienced it for themselves. We can play this game all day long, but the fact is that socialized medicine fails everywhere it is tried. The notion that is should be tried here is based on the same fallacies as every other socialist experiment anywhere, to say nothing of the fact that it is — on a Federal level — unconstitutional. There is no “right” to health care.
I’ll keep my guns, my SUV, my religion, my cigars, and yes, my private health insurance. You keep THE CHANGE!
MB
Oh, lord. This is so patently ridiculous I’ll get around to it on Monday.
Vermelia
Plin, I respectfully disagree. I don’t think public health care works. Admittedly, it’s hard for me to be objective on this issue. But in my opinion, government run healthcare doesn’t work.
Vermelia
Thank you James Young! Finally, someone who gets it. Thanks James for calling a spade a spade.
MB
On the chance that there is any sincere interest in fixing health care in this country, I’m going to ask Vermilia and James what they propose as fixes, before I respond further.
James Young
What do I propose to “fix[] health care in this country”? Well, you really won’t like my solutions, since we disagree with what is wrong with health care in this country. It’s certainly not the uninsured: many, if not most, by choice. The problem is high costs, government interference, and government mandates.
The root problem is that we socialized half the system in the ’60s. Drop Medicare; drop Medicaid; given veterans the option of federally-funded health insurance to meet our obligations to them; drop requirements that hospitals treat the indigent with my health-care dollars; and promote free-market solutions with full deductibility of costs for employers who provide health insurance. The only thing government should be doing for health care is programs to prevent epidemics.
I would expect medical costs to drop by at least 20% within a week after Medicare is gotten rid of. Another problem that getting government out of the health-care business would solve is the lifestyle police: government has no business telling people how to live if it’s not subsidizing their health care.
tx2vadem
James, what is your reasoning behind the expectation of a 20% price drop if we got rid of Medicare? Medicare is currently servicing the highest cost users of health care service. If they were dropped overnight, I don’t think any insurers would pick them up. I would expect many have some condition by virtue of their age that they are taking treatment for. Much like homeowner insurance, you cannot apply and receive coverage if your house is on fire (aka pre-existing condition).
I would expect without Medicare prices would rise substantially. You would increase the ranks of uninsured (and not the young who essentially use little to no health care service). This group would still require care, but they would now have less means to pay for it. That would I think mean two things: higher bankruptcies and higher costs pushed by health care providers as they recoup the cost of uncollectible receivables from paying customers. Or if providers don’t serve those without coverage, then you have higher mortality rates. And I would expect that consumer spending would be drastically altered as relatives spend more of their disposable income on supporting their elderly family members.
I would restate the problem to be: we pay the highest per capita cost for health care, but we do not have the best health outcomes across all or the majority of measures. I think you can have a system that combines the benefits of private enterprise with the benefits of government coordination (like Germany for example) that would solve the problem. It need not be a single payer system like Canada or a true socialized system like the UK. But key, I think, to reducing cost is ensuring universal coverage. If everyone is a part of the risk pool and paying into the pool, then it reduces the costs for everyone as the risk is distributed. Equally, healthcare providers are then always paid for their service so they do not need to recoup uncollectible receivables from paying customers.
MB
A genuine thanks for that, James. I don’t really have a whole lot to say in response other than to say that if you express opinions on health care in the US in the future, you should link to that as background. I think it’s very . . . illustrative.