Apparently lots of people are as gullible as Charlie Brown. How many of you remember the New York Times‘ poll last month?
The exact question was, “Would you favor or oppose the government’s offering everyone a government-administered health-insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans?” Seventy-two percent favored such a plan. Twenty percent were ignorant enough to oppose it. Do any of the “Public Option” plans look like Medicare? Don’t bet your bottom or your dollar. They sell you Medicare but deliver the worst of the private plans. Yesterday, with great fanfare, Senator Kennedy’s health committee announced an affordable reform plan that included a public option. Really? No. There were precious few details but what was available certainly gave no cause for celebration. Add in what proponents of a public option have heretofore described and you will need to start looking for where you stored away your sack cloth and ashes. A significant amount of the potential savings with a single-payer system are realized by physicians and hospitals no longer needing to carry such a heavy administrative burden. They will no longer need large staffs devoted to dealing with the paperwork of those of the hundreds of health insurance companies and thousands of plans they accept. Keeping the private plans means keeping the paperwork. It means keeping the costs. Another misconception the proponents encourage is that you will have an option. The New York Times‘ question was about an option available to everyone. The proposed public options fail to meet that standard. If you already have insurance through your employer, you likely will not be eligible for the “public option.” Various others are likewise barred from participating. Instead of providing accessible, affordable healthcare, our leaders see their prime directive as being to insure the profits of the corporations they work for. The public option is said to be competitive with the private plans. With a single-payer system having such dramatic financial advantages over the private plans, the question should be how the private plans could possibly be competitive with any government plan. Never fear. The public option will be the dumping ground for those that would not be profitable for the private corporations. Is it beginning to make sense now? Since the public option is being required to be self-sustaining, that means those eligible for the public plan will pay far higher premiums than otherwise to subsidize those who cannot afford the costs. The moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth you hear coming from the healthcare insurance corporations is just for show. They will be skimming the cream while the public plan sucks on the dregs. Some analyses show them as potentially enjoying healthy increases in their profits. Every option up for discussion has been tried. Single-payer works. TennCare, Tennessee’s version of Medicaid worked for one year, until the costs caught up with it. Whether the Massachusetts plan or any of the the others, they have all failed. The choice is not hard if based on cost, viability, service provision or any other rational measure. The difficulty is only in the politicians sacrificing the bribes that are not available from a single-payer system. It is not a case of a public option = good and single-payer = better. It is a question of an affordable, accessible, viable system or something as bad as or worse than what we have. If there is anyone who thinks the present system is acceptable, ask yourself why we are having this national debate. Why is this topic at the top of the national agenda? Why is no other country having a debate about changing to a system such as ours? A single-payer system is feared by some as meaning the end of the private insurance corporations. So what? They are the ones who created this mess. As in Britain, there will always be some people who think they are special and deserve special care. The market is relatively small but does exist. The fact is that, although the patients feel more special, there is no significant improvement in health outcomes for those in the private system. Although much smaller, some of the private companies will survive. But what about all of those people who work for the insurance companies? First, I consider life and health to trump a job that contributes to a lower health standard for the country. Second, every study I have seen projects an increase in jobs from a single-payer system. After all, we will be providing health care to nearly 50 million uninsured and more preventive and early care to those with inadequate insurance or those who presently can’t afford the co-pays and deductibles. Unless something unexpected and major blows up, the outcome of healthcare reform will determine President Obama’s place in history. This is an issue of critical importance. Every Democratic president since FDR has failed to pull it off. If he loses, he will be forever tagged as a failure. If he wins, it will turn on what he won. Giving us a single-payer system will place him among the great ones. Signing a reform that fails to improve the nation’s health and healthcare system will be seen as the loss of an opportunity that comes less frequently than once in a generation. He will be seen as squandering a golden opportunity. He will be seen as a major failure.
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