Being without health insurance is no big deal. Just ask President Bush. “I mean, people have access to health care in America,” he said last week. “After all, you can just go to an emergency room.”
The above is the lead paragraph of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s op-ed which was reprinted in The Virginian Pilot. The article seems right on point with much of what has been discussed in this thread. Krugman points out many of the fallacies in the arguments against some form of universal health care:
- From Business Week: “… American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems.”
- The Commonwealth Fund survey says the US ranks “near the bottom … in terms of how hard it is to get medical attention on short notice…”
- Delays in Canada and Britain are caused by doctors, while insurance companies are the culprit in the US. Reference Mark Kleiman here.
- Americans get faster hip replacements because the majority of them are performed by Medicare, which is essentially a universal health care program.
With so many Americans uninsured, we are beyond the time for serious conversation on some form of universal coverage.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Vivian, thanks for pointing all this out. Krugman is one of my favorite economists and columnists. And I can personally attest that in Northern Virginia, with excellent health coverage, it is still almost impossible to get seen by a doctor quickly.
It takes six months to get an appointment for a mamogram. To get in to see my general practitioner is nearly impossible. One year, I couldn’t get an appointment until after my flu symptoms were almost gone. And I have Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is a decent company.
Friends of mine in HMOs have to get approval from a primary care physician before they can see a specialist. And usually, the primary care physician has to at least attempt to treat the problem first, which takes about a month, before he or she can refer the patient on to the specialist. This wastes valuable time and can cause medical complications, sometimes serious ones.
The truth is we already have rationed care and long waits and insurance companies are making large profits on it. HMOs can’t be sued so there is little accountability for them or incentive to improve.
We have a great healthcare system, but the healthcare delivery system is broken.
I think we can do much better than this!
Well, one bright spot (nevermind that it casts a rather cynical shadow) is that US business is waking up to the fact that it’s competing with businesses that don’t bear these costs. That means that they’ve got a substantial interest in bringing their lobbying talents to bear on the task of shedding these costs. While some small businesses might have been able to get away with just not offering health care benefits, that’s not going to happen at GM, AT&T, or Exxon. So the conversation’s coming. It’s up to us to make sure that the questions are fairly framed.
Universal Health Care will not be free, BM. Where is the money going to come from? Taxes. So, if from corporate taxes, the companies are back in the same boat they are in now. If from personal taxes, then the corporations might as well cut out the middle-man and reduce salaries to pay for the health insurance.
Either way, the money comes out of GDP, which is mostly produced by the corporations.
I’ve spent many an hour sitting in the emergency room with my mother, my son, or just by myself. My mother was having a heart attack, which manifested itself by nausea and vomiting. They brought her a little plastic basin to puke into during her six hour wait to be seen. How kind. My son had a subarachnoid hematoma – we didn’t know that at the time – but the boy was complaining that on a scale of 10 his head pain was a 10 – and he had to wait two hours, until he was crying with pain and vomiting into the waiting area trashcan before they got the idea that something was wrong. My daughter went out with a young man she thought she knew, who slipped something – maybe LSD – into a cookie he offered her. She had a very bad reaction and talked him into taking her to the hospital in her car. She called me up in the middle of the night crying and saying everything looked very strange. I made the 10 minute drive in 6 minutes, but by the time I arrived I discovered that they had discharged my daughter, assuming she was some sort of drama queen, and let her drive home. She didn’t have insurance at the time and they wanted her out of there. They asked her if she’d taken anything. She said no, and that was good enough for them. Didn’t even occur to them to find out whether someone had given her something. We’re all very fortunate that she didn’t kill anyone on her way home, a ride which she described as being akin to navigating a constantly shifting, morphing, flexible landscape.
So I keep wondering what the advantage is to our current system. I waited for years before I had a policy adequate to take out a parotid tumor which had been growing next to my left ear for over twenty years. When you don’t have insurance, or you have pre-existing conditions subject to exclusion that’s what you do. You wait and hope for the best.
Bush is a rich boy who’s never had a financial worry in the world. He’s never had to worry about whether he can afford health care. He bankrupted his own company but he got bailed out by his father. And he has the nerve to suggest that the way to solve the problem is give people tax deductions. What a moron! As if the vast majority of lower income people even have taxable income high enough to make a difference for them.
Time for universal health care.
AIAW, MB, Carla –
Based on past experience, we’re going to need to divvie up our time defending against Mouse’s filibuster, in which she and Tom claim repeatedly that THERE IS NO PROBLEM. I suggest rotating two hour shifts each over the next five days. Better yet, ignore her.
The question this post neglects to ask is does everyone have a right to health care. If yes, then why and how much health care.
If people weren’t willing to pay through the nose to get this stuff, then the system would correct itself. Socialization is not the solution – free market is.
MH, do you think there’s a free market at work in health care?
This is breathtakingly clueless. People don’t have a *choice*.
And VAB, while Mouse is easily handled (it’s so cute when she jumps up and down when she’s cheerleading for Tom), you’re right, it’s probably best to ignore her. Don’t Feed The Trolls is my general rule, which I should do a better job of sticking to, I think.
I have never said there isn’t a problem, only that a federal UHC solution is both a bad idea and unconstituional.
Mad Hatter, there is NOT a free-market system. Those of us with employer-sponsored health insurance generally get two choices: take it or leave it. (And you cannot leave it unless you can prove you have other insurance.)
Some companies will give HMO or PPO options, but that is not a free market, either. Rates are negotiated by the insurance companies. There are specified “in-plan” facilities, and going outside the plan is always more expensive.
When you have an emergency, do you call around for the lowest price and the shortest wait before you go? In many places, there is only one hospital anyway.
In all, I think California may be on the right track. Require that everyone buy insurance, subsidize the poor to buy it, and require that the companies issue the insurance. They will lose some money on the old and sick, but they will make it up on the young and healthy that would not normally buy insurance.
BTW, I cannot recall when I have ever been “cheerleading for Tom.” In fact, I do not recall ever mentioning him before now. Could you please refresh my memory?
Excellent diary! And meanwhile the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are making record unconscienable profits.
Remember, Medicare’s administrative costs are nil compared to private providers’ admin costs!!!
Actually, Merck’s net income went down 4% from 2005 to 2006.
Phizer’s profits peaked in 2004.
Anyway, if it were not for the incentive of these “record unconsionable profits,” where would we get our new medicines?
As for Medicare’s admin costs, there are those who disagree with your assertion.
One major respect in which we do not have a free market system is that there is not an effective, consistent, objective mechanism to require health insurance carriers to live up to the promises for which they receive premiums. If any other business violated the terms of their contracts as consistently and as shamelessly as health insurers do, they would wind up in court and the behavior would be corrected fairly quickly. The trade-off in regulation is not enough to take care of this problem by itself. And no, I’m not saying that the answer is more lawsuits; just that a basic component of contractual enforcement is missing, which unfortunately encourages this behavior.
And Mad Hatter, in Hampton Roads, we have one company that owns most of the hospitals, many of the doctors’ practices in almost all areas of medicine, many testing facilities, and some nursing and assisted living facilities. It even has its own insurance company (health, of course). That’s not a free market by anyone’s definition.
People pay what they have to, if they have the money, because they have no choice. If they don’t have the money, they don’t get the insurance or the care they need. Or, they get the care they need, and wind up losing everything in the process.
Go over to the Social Security Administration or to bankruptcy court and talk to any of the people waiting there. You will hear many stories.
Anon, According to their website, the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI) is a research and advocacy association of insurance carriers active in the individual, small group, HSA and senior markets.
So, citing a biased healthcare lobbyist is a bit suspect!
And for the profits, Rep. Henry Waxman’s Report to the Committee on Government Reform, September 2006, stated that Pharmaceutical Industry Profits Increase by Over $8 Billion After Medicare Drug Plan goes into effect.
The Report’s Conclusion
Pharmaceutical industry profits have increased substantially since the new Medicare drug program went into effect in January 2006, increasing by over $8 billion in the first six months of the year. Three factors account for the Medicare drug program’s impact on profits: increased demand for popular drugs; the inability of the drug plans to obtain discounts from drug manufacturers; and the ability of the drug manufacturers to increase prices significantly for drugs
used by over six million dual-eligible beneficiaries.
Anon,
MB and the rest clearly don’t understand economics, they just think the government can and should provide us with everything. No Problem just tax the rich and evil corporations, blah, blah, blah! They cry all the time about extreme profits and as you clearly pointed out, who is going to provide new medicines and tech for future causes. Same with the oil companies!
God forbid, rlewis, that you lose your job and your health insurance and your wife/husband and children have to forego seeing the doctor when they have a “sniffle” or maybe something more serious. Or your Mom, Dad, Sister, Brother, who can’t afford health insurance, need “care”. Are you gonna pay for it for them? Or do you want to just send them to the emergency room like Carla described above.
Can you possibly understand that your fellow human beings, whom you share this earth with, deserve a healthy life too whether they can afford it or not. Forget it, you probably don’t believe they do deserve it…..