Got Health Care?

I found the opinion below posted on the Internet, on a music related forum no less. It is one of the most cogent discussions of the health care issues facing our country that I have seen. It's simple and direct, and speaks to folks in a way that does not use fear, nor drowns us in policy wonk speak. It's the discussion we should be having in this country.  Unfortunately we aren't.....

For tens of millions of Americans, one illness, and one denial of coverage equals economic disaster. And guess what? For every one of those disasters the entire economy suffers. A house goes into foreclosure, bringing every house on that street down in value. High ticket items like cars, appliances, computers, aren’t even a consideration for these families, which means less of those items are sold, which equates into job losses for the companies that produce such things. And that medical care required to deal with that catastrophic illness? That goes unpaid due to a bankruptcy, which means you and I pay for it anyway in underlying costs. It's why a Tylenol costs $50 at the hospital.

For any American that finds the idea of a public option for health care to be distasteful, consider this: You already pay for every person who is currently not insured (1 in every 6) or is under-insured (an indeterminate number). You already pay for every person who is bankrupted by health system as it exists now. You already pay for every person (and that includes illegal aliens) that can’t pay their health care bill.

Without the public option, health care reform amounts to a huge bonanza of new customers for the current crop of for-profit insurers. Notice the “for-profit” part of that sentence. It is in the interest of your health insurer to prevent you from getting the health care you need because that's how they profit over and above the actuary tables that were once the basic premise of insurance. Why would we want to reward the companies that have bankrupted so many Americans by denying them the health care they paid for?

The arguments against a public option are without merit. Show me one good argument that has been presented against the public option. Death panels? A total lie. Why make something up out of whole cloth if you have a good argument?

How about abortion coverage? A lie. Everyone knows that a bill covering abortion wouldn't pass, so it's not going to be in there. Besides isn’t that a women's health issue? Shouldn’t that be between the doctor and the woman? I mean how can it be argued, on the one hand, that a public option will interfere with the relationship between a patient and a doctor, while on the other hand it's argued that the government should disallow payment on a procedure recommended by a woman’s doctor? If you want NO interference between that doctor/patient relationship, then technically there should be NO exclusions other than purely elective surgery. But remember, not all abortions are elective, and we shouldn't allow any insurance company, private or otherwise, to determine whether a particular abortion is elective thank you very much.

Paying for illegal aliens? We already pay for them!

Government takeover of your health? No. Even a single payer option, which is what medicare is, doesn’t take over a patient’s health. At most a public option offers a government run health INSURANCE program. In other words, it’s just another option.

But then the naysayers argue that the public option will put the private insurers out of business, because somehow everyone will want to jump ship from their insurance company to enter into the public option.

Why would people want to do that? I mean, if the insurance you have is so great, then why on earth would you want to jump into a government run insurance program which is supposed to be so bad for you/us? This defies logic. Is the argument against a public option because it’s bad? Or is it because it will be better than what we currently have and thus destroy our already existing quasi-capitalistic health care system? Please pick one.

It’s too expensive? Too expensive for whom? I don’t know about you, but I pay $14,500 a year in insurance premiums, and two years ago I was denied coverage on a "pre-existing" condition--a condition that cost me $15,000 for a one hour procedure, despite religiously paying my premiums. In this particular case, I was able to deal with the unexpected cost. But what if it cost me $150,000 or more? At some point, a denial breaks me. And I currently PAY a substantial monthly amount for insurance! What exactly am I being insured against?

Too expensive for America? We can’t possibly sustain our current system, so we’re going to just tweak it, leaving our premiums in the hands of companies who’s only interest is their own profits? How much are our premiums going to go up when the government tells insurance companies that they can no longer exclude preexisting conditions? You don’t think your premiums are going to increase substantially absent any real independent not-for-profit competition? Come on.

Breaking the state restrictions currently on health insurers, and allowing them to supply coverage on a national scale? Personally, I don’t think this is such a horrible thing, so long as there is a public option too. Otherwise we risk crushing competition even more by creating large monopolies that will do everything to prop up just enough competition to prevent antitrust lawsuits. Give us a public option, and allow the private insurers to operate nationally. That would make an even playing field, right? Let’s see who wins.

Health care companies like big pharma and insurance companies give large amounts of money to Senators in small states (both Republican and Democratic). Do you know why they do that? Because a Senator in a small state wields just as much voting power as one from a large one. Because these Senators are in less populous states, raising campaign money is far more difficult for them than say a Senator in New York or California. This means the “Blue Dog” Democrats who operate in small rural states are bought and paid for, and that’s why it's difficult for the Dems to come up with 60 votes. Not because it’s good for you, me, and your neighbor as Americans. But because it keeps those Senators in office.

These insurance and pharma companies also give large sums of money to Senators in charge of certain committees, like the Senate Finance Committee for instance (where the current Senate version of the health care bill sits). That's because committees are where potential bills go to die, and paying off Committee chairs only helps the cause. The term “blood money” comes to mind here, and I mean that literally and on a grand scale.

So please stop believing the lies and the false arguments. Start thinking beyond the rhetoric, and understand that a government run health insurance option has already been popular for decades now. It's called Medicare. Understand that there are many examples of systems that work far better than ours and which involve government. Nothing being proposed is new or untested elsewhere in the industrialized and capitalistic world.

The only way to push health insurers into competing is by providing some actual competition. And the only way to do that is to have a public option. If a public option turns into a single payer government run health insurance system ten to twenty years from now, then clearly, the public option proved to be the better one, and we can all continue to strive for the American Dream, whatever that is.

Tell me, why would anyone be afraid of that?