10.16.09
Lies They Told Me About Healthcare
Okay, just needed to get this off my chest. I can’t stand the idiocy on all sides of the healthcare debate. Here are a small portion of the lies I have recently read about healthcare, with my refutations. I don’t link all the facts I’ve seen to refute these lies; look them up yourself.
1. The current bill will be revenue neutral. No it won’t. The assumptions in the bill are absurd. It will increase the deficit significantly.
2. Government death panels will ration care under proposed health bills. Under the bills most likely to pass, this is not the case. The death panels will be outsourced to the private insurers, who already have death panels. Sorry, but resources are not infinite. People will always die under every health system because their treatment is not cost effective. Someone will always make that decision.
3. Preventative care saves money. No, it usually doesn’t. Consider high blood pressure. Giving blood pressure medications to everyone who has high blood pressure reduces the number of heart attacks, but because the medications are given to many people who would never have had a heart attack, money is not saved. Preventative care is still usually cost effective, though, and that is what matters, saving life-years at as small a cost as possible.
4. We need single-payer healthcare (ie, government-funded care like Canada has). No we don’t. There are many different systems used in OECD countries, and plans (such as that of Switzerland) that do not have single-payer at all but require private health insurance have similar costs and outcomes to single-payer plans. Furthermore, there are many different hybrid systems, such as in France.
5. Surveys show people in America/England/Canada like their healthcare. This is irrelevant. 90% of people are fairly healthy; for them they will likely be satisfied anywhere. I for one have had the opportunity to see radiologists in both France and the United States. In both cases the diagnosis was quick and cheap. I paid maybe $300 out of pocket for multiple wrist x-rays and a consultation with a hand surgeon in the USA (and this is with a high-deductible health plan), and I was seen three days after calling for an appointment. In France I was seen in about the same time and paid maybe 40 Euros out of pocket for a consultation with a radiologist and a back x-ray.
6. A single-payer system will keep costs down. No, not really. Single payer or hybrid systems in England and France are having cost troubles just like here. The cost problems in the American system will not be cured by single-payer. See this great article in the New Yorker.
7. It is only because of greedy profiteering companies that our healthcare costs are so high. Actually, there are a decent number of health insurance companies and hospitals that are non-profits. Look at car insurance for a comparison: a non-profit mutual insurance company like Amica competes well with for-profit companies like Geico and Allstate, but the for-profit companies are on par in cost and service with the non-profits. With hospitals, for-profit hospitals often provide more charity care than non-profit hospitals.
8. The problems with our system can be fixed by reducing government interference and regulation. I am as much of a free-market ideologue as anyone (in fact, I consider myself to be an anarcho-capitalist rather than a libertarian, and I am definitely not a conservative), but there are problems with health insurance that are structural. The main problem is that many diseases are chronic, but health insurance is renewed annually. This is the pre-existing condition problem. One legitimate way around this problem is to force everyone to hold insurance. A free-market way around this problem would be for insurance companies to offer pre-existing condition insurance, separate from health insurance, such that if a person acquired a chronic disease during a 30-year term the insurance would pay for all future costs of the disease. This is a very risky kind of insurance to offer, though, and is unlikely to come into existence on its own. What is certain is that the present system of forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, but only under certain conditions, is quite flawed.
9. Low American life expectancy (relative to other OECD countries) is proof that our health care system is flawed. I have blogged about this before. Life expectancy is driven by all sorts of things, and the US has higher violent death rates and accidental death rates than other countries. Furthermore, the quickest way to reduce life expectancy at birth is to have plenty of babies die. The US has more pre-term babies and babies to teen mothers than other OECD countries. Despite heroic neonatal ICU expenditures, many of those babies die. Rather than look at life expectancy, it makes more sense to compare disease rates and cure rates of diseases.
10. We should keep our current system of employer-provided health insurance. Even Obama tells people that the health care bills won’t take away their insurance. No matter what system you believe in, it makes no sense to tie health insurance to employment. This makes the labor force less mobile and reduces entrepreneurship.
11. Everybody has a right to good healthcare. Nobody should die because they can’t afford healthcare. These statements sound noble but when you apply them to other situations you will realize that they are absurd outside of a socialist utopia. People die every day in Detroit and Gary and Cleveland because they cannot afford to live in the suburbs and thus avoid crime. Tens of thousands of poor people die every year because they acquire disease from a poor diet or lead poisoning from living in a poorly kept-up building. Or they die of heat stroke because they cannot afford air conditioning or they die of diabetes or a heart attack because they do not have time to exercise due to working multiple jobs. The one thing that people consider most important is their health. As long as we are not living in a socialist utopia the rich will live longer and healthier lives because they can spend money on healthcare, personal care, safety, and quality food.
12. Single-payer healthcare will at least ensure access to decent basic care for the poor. Here in Michigan we have single-payer education: almost every school district receives the same amount of money from the state per capita. The poor students still get far worse education than the rich students, and for many school districts the education is truly horrendous.
13. Obamacare will be socialized medicine. Yes, it will be slightly more socialized than our current system, but Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and the VA already spend a large chunk of our health dollars. In other words, our health are system is already quite socialized.
Yngvai said,
October 17, 2009 at 12:13 am
A nice unbiased viewpoint.
I would disagree with #3, but only to a point. It depends on how preventive care is defined. Putting people on high blood pressure medications certainly would be expensive and not cost saving. But there are forms of preventive care that can be cost saving. For example, there is evidence that obesity treatment can help employers save on health-care costs, which is why some employers like Microsoft will cover weight management programs. Such programs can also reduce absenteeism and presenteeism, which also are cost-saving for the employer.
Tastylunch said,
October 21, 2009 at 7:58 am
I think we have a solution here.
Give people with terminal illnesses insurance but force them to live in inner city Detroit. It will prop up housing prices there and serve as a death panel instead of having the gov’t or private insurance do it!
I kid I kid.
Something does have to be done though, what I don’t claim to know.
my health insurance has gone up 17% per annum since I started and I’ve had no claims. That is clearly not sustainable.
Joe Shareholder said,
October 24, 2009 at 1:18 pm
The debacle will be forcing people to pay for health insurance that don’t need it………until they do. For example, healthy young people will most likely opt out of the program and pay (because there will be no pre-existing limitations), and they opt out of the program the very next year. Any idea who will pay for this surgery? That’s right, others on the plan. Anyway, these kinds of issues will increase everyone else’s premiums. It will be much more expensive as you pointed out in bullet number one.
Joe Shareholder said,
October 24, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Whoa, half my comment above was erased somehow. My point was healthy people will pay the fee and opt out of the program until something major happens. Since pre-existing conditions will no longer prevent coverage, they’ll simply sign up when they need health insurance. This will increase the premiums everybody else pays since they’ll likely opt out again the very next year. The benefit for them will be a major surgery for a small price, and the cost will be passed on to others still in the program.
Mark said,
November 12, 2009 at 5:19 am
“Single-payer healthcare will at least ensure access to decent basic care for the poor. Here in Michigan we have single-payer education: almost every school district receives the same amount of money from the state per capita. The poor students still get far worse education than the rich students, and for many school districts the education is truly horrendous.”
-but they atleast get access to education which is more than you can say to the millions of Americans who cannot afford/get healthcare access.
I don’t get the insurance example comparing it to other types of insurance. I missed the point in that part. But I think comparing health insurance to any other insurance doesn’t make sense bc they do entirely different things. Car insurance or home insurance work fine but they only pay our for big catastrophes and one time things. Where healthcare is an ongoing yearly thing for many people especially women. It requires many payments frequently. Thus private healthcare is flawed just from that aspect.
Mark said,
November 12, 2009 at 5:26 am
I agree tying it to employment is stupid.
Yeah, the cost may end up being the killer of single payer it especially with the medicare payments we have due as baby boomers are approaching retirement. hehe I guess it would just be another ponzie scheme along with social security at this point. Going to be hard to payoff all this national debt and keep things going at the rate they print money.
Michael Goode said,
November 12, 2009 at 8:20 am
Mark — Actually, there are very few people who don’t get access to healthcare. Keep in mind that we have Medicaid for the poor and Medicare for the old. Also, one of the problems with health insurance is that it is not treated like insurance. Health insurance covers all sorts of standard things it shouldn’t cover, so of course premiums are high! What is wrong with people paying for basic care out of pocket? People do that for their cars and that works fine. They also do that for housing and for food. By having insurers pay for everything there is an extra layer of bureaucracy and cost. If healthcare is so basic as to necessitate that the government provide it to everyone, why is the same not true of food and housing?
Mark said,
November 13, 2009 at 12:04 am
housing, food and cars are affordable. I don’t know if you know how much a hospital bill for one day is? If you get an illness that requires recurring treatment that cost is extremely high relative to food and housing. It’s not just poor people that can’t afford health costs. From my understanding it disrupts the middle class just as much as the poor.
This is pretty much the story around the country.
At least 62 percent of all U.S. family bankruptcies result from medical expenses, reports a study released yesterday in The American Journal of Medicine
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=are-medical-costs-the-leading-cause-2009-06-05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9447-2005Feb8.html
Nobody’s safe. That’s the warning from the first large-scale study of medical bankruptcy.
Health insurance? That didn’t protect 1 million Americans who were financially ruined by illness or medical bills last year.
A comfortable middle-class lifestyle? Good education? Decent job? No safeguards there. Most of the medically bankrupt were middle-class homeowners who had been to college and had responsible jobs — until illness struck.
As part of a research study at Harvard University, our researchers interviewed 1,771 Americans in bankruptcy courts across the country. To our surprise, half said that illness or medical bills drove them to bankruptcy. So each year, 2 million Americans — those who file and their dependents — face the double disaster of illness and bankruptcy.
But the bigger surprise was that three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance.
Michael Goode said,
November 13, 2009 at 6:35 am
Mark — that is why I differentiate between health care and health insurance. I have had catastrophic-only health insurance for a few years. And I have had no problem paying for x-rays, doctor visits, and medications. For hospital stays and other expensive things it is quite necessary to have insurance to cover it.
Everything you state ignores my point: people’s focus on having health ‘insurance’ cover everything makes no sense! If anything, the focus on having it cover everything draws attention away from how well it insures against catastrophic risk. Do you know how much your insurance plan will cover in a year or in a lifetime? I do ($5 million, with my out of pocket limit at $10,000). Most people don’t. I can assure you that 99% of those bankrupted by medical bills either had no insurance or their insurance had a very low coverage limit. Yet I am sure that they know what their copay is for a routine doctors visit.
So I am not arguing that our current system works. I am arguing that if we fix some of the problems in the healthcare insurance market it could work quite well.
European01 said,
December 10, 2009 at 8:46 pm
11. Everybody has a right to good healthcare. Nobody should die because they can’t afford healthcare. These statements sound noble but when you apply them to other situations you will realize that they are absurd outside of a socialist utopia. People die every day in Detroit and Gary and Cleveland because they cannot afford to live in the suburbs and thus avoid crime….
That reasoning sorry but ridiciculous and to be fair this kind of reasoning that makes me proud of been european…So because people go to live in high crime areas they die,true, and that does put any problem to u?…so also police for the people who can afford it? Hahahaha seriously it is funny how people can disagree to things such as Human Rights, but i guess half of the thing UN say will sound to you as this socialist utopia, in which millions of people we are living happyly in Europe for over a hundred years, we maybe in crisis now, as they have been before, but for us there is not discussion about such fundamental issues… I understand the logic of ur reasoning, economically its right, sure it is, but u fall in so many mistakes of the functionalism…because u lack to understand that behin those economic decissions, there must to be a moral guidance, and objective to achieve. I undertand that u american have choose those values and moral, and as far u agree on them good for u guys,ill be happy in my side of the atlatic u in urs, it jsut that seriously that point of ur reasoning is VERY weak and quite unrealistic to consider utopia a system that is been working for so many decades, of course there are budget issues, as well they are in any other model and other aspects of the economy.
Today a little happier about be living in utopia.(even if in here we have serious problems, but the objective is try to fix them, but u know for as people dieng of cold, warm or curable deseases…yes is kind of a basic, even if then we have less iPhones per person, I guess everyone choose its values, and then come the economic decisison to support them)
Henry Massingale said,
February 26, 2010 at 1:47 pm
A single Payer, will this is not what I and my friends are building, It is called a United Health Care, with all kinds of very good people who feel that it is our right to build it within our Government, and placing the task against Government Officials to build Laws to protect it. And at the same time it forces Government Officials to work in behalf of the People…
2/26/2010
Wow, It was stated that Health care is not a moral issue,hmmmm
Please allow me to share a little story with you. As I watched my mom die from cancer, and Health care Insurance Companies dumped on her as if she was no more than a dog dieing on the side of the road, i dropped from and out of this system for over 30 years, and now because of system failure, the IT, has come into my life. As I watch Government Officials fight over this Health care Dollar, it reminds me of a bright sunny day in Tennessee while on a friends farm and a little bug flew in to the ground, and the chickens went plum off, boy oh boy the scawking and the feathers went shy high, so I reached down and I took this scared little Health Care Bug from Government Officials, and I have it safely in my hands. As I searched for a way to help, I asked God to help me build a Reform that is of a moral building block for the better good of man kind and to rebuild the National Security of the United states Of America. And you would never guess what God has allowed me to see. This little blog statement you will find true,
first;
I wish to give a great big thank you to all my new friends on the Internet for posting FASC Concepts in and for Pay It Forward.
This building block for a honest Health Care Reform has been a great experience and for any one who did not take part, you have truly missed out on what makes Americans Great. This diversity created by Government Officials has failed and now the eyes of 173 million American People watch as now, for the first time Government Officials sit down together as it should be. The out come is yet to be seen. But they know that a anomaly has been created and it is because of the restructuring of The Constitution, The Bill Of Rights, and The Declaration Of Independence, “has been used in it original created forum” as a factor of a peoples right to undo the amendments of Laws that protected Health Care Companies against the People, over a dollar.
And I wish to say i write what is needed in order that some how I can undo all the wrong I have done in hopes that the slate will be wiped clean….
Just because our children do not understand I wish to share this again,
“For days I worked the word diversity in my mind and it came to me that because of this it is not Americas weakness it is our greatest strength. And this is how I will show you.
Constitution-
Bill Of Rights -
The Declaration of Independence-
United under one forum, builds what is called the Trinity of the Protection Of Laws. This is because these Laws were built by people of faith who gave thanks to God for this wisdom. One would have to see and admire the simplicity of the three as one and at the same time they maintain their independence.”
On page 100 at our site is the early stages of what is called A Prime Directive for Health Care, so please drop on by and see 173 million peoples views in and for Health Care. And it should be known that this information on page 100 is true and documented in Law and History.
Henry Massingale
FASC Concepts in and for Pay It Forward
http://www.fascmovement.mysite.com on google look for page 1 American dream official site.