I admit that I am not a fan of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the hypocrisy and mendacity of her USA Today column about health care reform (co-authored with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer) is beyond her usual low standards. Time to parse. From their column:
Americans have been waiting for nearly a century for quality, affordable health care.Health coverage for all was on the national agenda as early as 1912, thanks toTeddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose presidential run. Months after World War II came to an end in 1945, President Harry Truman called on Congress to guarantee all Americans the “right to adequate medical care and protection from the economic fears of sickness.” From President Lyndon Johnson…there hasn’t been a more debated domestic issue than the promise of affordable health care for all.
The concept may have been debated, sometimes rejected, sometimes supported. But this plan hasn’t been. Its details and implications are what is roiling the water.
The failure of past attempts is a reminder that health insurance reform is a defining moment in our nation’s history — it is well worth the time it takes to get it right.
But time to get it right is precisely what President Obama and Pelosi have tried hubristically to deny the American people–along with time to learn what the plan would do, time to debate its wisdom, time enough for representatives to even read the 1000+-page bill!
They recound a few examples of rude behavior in public meetings and name calling (boo, hoo–tell it to George Bush) stating:
Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.
Hmm, it was supporters of the bill who put an opponent in the hospital, but that aside, rudeness is never appropriate. But reflect for a moment why some people are so angry: Precisely because Polosi and Company tried to ram this down our throats without the chance for meaningful debate and because many representatives have been profoundly unresponsive to legitimate concerns of their constituents. If anything is “un American,” that is.
Then comes the mendacity:
The first fact is that health insurance reform will mean more patient choice. It will allow every American who likes his or her current plan to keep it. And it will free doctors and patients to make the health decisions that make the most sense, not the most profits for insurance companies.
It will not mean more choice, but less. Note the use of the word “current” plan. This is an example of what I call lying by omission. Under the House bill, if you change policies, the choices available will be limited to ones approved by the government. That will stifle insurance companies from innovating and competing. And treatment decisions won’t be between a patient and her doctor, but will also include a utilitarian bioethics rationing board.
I could keep on, but the post would be longer than her column: She demonizes insurance companies, always easy targets, but forgets to mention what it is like to pursue appeals within federal programs. She promises affordable care for all, but forgets to mention it will bust the US Treasury, will come at the cost of substantial cuts to Medicare, will likely lead to rationing and waits for treatment, and is likely to run out of financial control like Hawaii’s universal child coverage did–requiring its revocation–and Massachusetts’s universal plan, which is on the verge of collapse.
We can achieve reform without passing this takeover-of-the-health care system-by-the-federal-government turkey. Indeed, to borrow from Pelosi’s conclusion: we must.
August 10th, 2009 | 11:42 am
It will allow every American who likes his or her current plan to keep it.
This is a terribly disingenuous claim. While the plan allows for existing policies to be grandfathered in – so that people who currently have individual health insurance policies will not lose coverage – only a small number of existing plans would be grandfathered in, and health insurance companies cannot enroll new people into these existing plans. All new private health insurance will have to be bought through an exchange, where the government, through an unelected health choices commissioner, will set premiums, dictate benefits, determine deductibles and establish coverage. Exchange participants will be required to insure anyone who asks to be covered and to accept all renewals.
The eventual, and quite inevitable, result of such a system will be a gradual disappearance of private insurance companies: Since the premiums for these new plans will be federally set, how will these companies absorb the cost of restricted premiums for higher risk policies? They must either a) steadily raise the premiums on the grandfathered-in plans, which will gradually force the extinction of these plans, b) reduce their approval and paying of benefits (making them less competitive and less likely to survive), or c) go out of business.
So, yes, you can keep your plan, provided that it is one of the plans the government allows to be grandfathered-in. That is, you’ll be allowed to keep it until the proposed public plan and government exchange force that plan (and/or the entire company) out of business, which, sooner or later, it will most certainly do.
August 10th, 2009 | 1:38 pm
Either that, or the government will co-opt the “private” companies and continue to call them “private.” There’s no end to the ways this bill can abuse the healthcare system.
August 10th, 2009 | 2:54 pm
It would be WONDERFUL if private insurance companies all went out of business. Then costs would plummet and care could be care again and doctors could be doctors again. Well, as close as this bunch ever could get to that, but in a few generations sanity might start to return. But they won’t go out of business this way; they still will be at the trough; otherwise Obama never would have gotten to the White House and the current malarkey wouldn’t be being floated. It’s insurance that started this whole mess in the first place, and people were sheep enough with that to be sheep enough so that we’ve got Pelosi, Barack, et al. now.
August 10th, 2009 | 10:21 pm
“Reflect for a moment why some people are so angry: Precisely because Polosi and Company tried to ram this down our throats without the chance for meaningful debate and because many representatives have been profoundly unresponsive to legitimate concerns of their constituents.”
Well it’s the Democrats who are again, and in response to many of their constituents, trying to fix the current system, which is getting worse and by some measurements is already much worse than that of other leading industrialized nations. And meaningful debate is not what we get when people shout down their elected representatives in forums designed for dialogue. Meaningful debate is also pretty near impossible when leading figures on the Right distort actual plans and decades old academic papers and throw out scare words lie “death panels.”
Obama tried to ram a bill through quickly precisely because he could anticipate that latter tactic.
August 11th, 2009 | 9:37 am
[NOTE: I DON"T ALLOW NAME CALLING ON THIS SITE, SO I EDITED YOUR COMMENT ACCORDINGLY.]Sadly, as the scripts are handed out to the [OPPONENTS] to scream out at the Town Hall meetings, no one is taking the time to think about those ACTUAL facts about our society and the lack of affordable healthcare. Why is the cost of Healthcare escalating at such an enormous rate? Because of the “un-insured and under-insured that we pay for with each and every day that the working American is alive. We pay $50 for an aspirin because the “poor” are guaranteed medical attention but DO NOT pay a dime, should this continue? People, like myself, refuse to go back for much needed Chemotherapy or Radiation because, even with BlueShield/Blue Cross at $769.00 a month, my deductible is $3,000 a year and my provider is only covered at 50%—–YOU DO THE MATH! After my husband lost his job due to GREED by a Republican SMALL BUSINESS OWNER who could afford a $2 Million dollar CABIN but didn’t want to continue to pay my husband, both of us, with pre-existing conditions, can’t go to the doctor. Are we the “SCABS” of society that ignorant people are yelling about in Town Hall meetings??? They don’t know us, our situation, our lives that will soon diminish because we are paying the price of BIG BUSINESS HEALTHCARE who pay Republicans BIG $$$’s to continue to rob Americans like us.
August 11th, 2009 | 3:43 pm
It’s a free market, Bonnie. Find another employer who will treat you right. There’s no economic or even moral or ethical principle that the employer must provide insurance designed to your specifications.
August 20th, 2009 | 12:56 am
Ken: If you have spent any time at all perusing the archives, you’ll see it’s a realistic fear. Compare the opposite scare tactic some are using, that I could discover tomorrow that I have cancer (23 y.o. in excellent health! Not impossible but ridiculously improbable!).
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