Take Two Aspirin

The President has a headache. His healthcare reform is in trouble. He can’t even get a bipartisan agreement that Dr. Seuss ate green eggs and ham.

Two noted health reporters, the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic, this week had major articles marking the difficulties the President’s reform was running into in Congress. While Speaker Pelosi continues to insist that the House will produce some vague public option that is to Obama’s liking, the Senate is still taking their marching orders from the healthcare industry.

It seems that the President is refusing to take medical advice. David Scheiner, MD was for 22 years his primary care physician, until he moved into the White House. Dr. Scheiner is a strong advocate for a single-payer system. Mr. Obama would be well-advised to listen to this man. He recently stated, “It’s nonsense that the private insurance companies need to be protected. Why? Because they’ve done such a good job?”

Let me answer the good doctor’s question. Let me do it emphatically. The only valid reason for not supporting a singe-payer system is that it does not generate bribes.

Reid Cherlin, the President’s assistant press secretary for health issues, wrote in an e-mail, “The President has been clear that while a single-payer system may work in some countries, it makes the most sense for us to build on what works in the system we have and to fix what’s broken.” What about the present system is worth saving? To quote Obama’s own physician, “Because they’ve done such a good job?”

I would suggest that the entire system is broken. If you have a complete junker of a car, a Yugo, if you will, that would cost more to repair than buying a brand new Lexus, what is your choice? This question presupposes that comfortable, economic, reliable transportation is your primary consideration. Your answer may be different if you have some strange Yugo fetish.

You may demur. You may say that there are things about our system that are worth saving. You would be missing the point.

The question is not how good the latest MRI machine is. The question is what should replace the present insurance morass. The question is how to structure a system we can afford. The question is how to incentivise preventive healthcare. The question is why do we need to waste nearly $750 billion each and every year on paperwork and on profits for people who don’t heal anyone; for people who ration what we can get; for people who stand between us and our physician?

The denizens of the Congress work for us (supposedly) yet enjoy a far superior healthcare plan than most of the people they work for. Let’s put it this way. Either we should be able to get what they have, or they should get what we have. If they produce a “reform” plan that is not as good as theirs, we need to force them to participate in whatever plan they devise for us or we need to rid ourselves of these parasites.

Tagged as: congress, david scheiner, doctor, obama, pelosi, public option, reform, senate, single payer