Now that health care reform has passed, a new poll suggests that disaffection with the legislation doesn't approach the levels the GOP keeps referring to. 49% of Americans support the plan, while only 40% oppose it. I'm guessing the other 11% doesn't care one way or the other.
Between the people that approve of the legislation and those who don't care one way or the other, it's 60% to 40%.
Those numbers in no way reflect the numbers the GOP keeps citing. The majority either supports it or doesn't care by 20 points. Who, exactly, is upset other than them? And how much longer do they think misinformation and scare tactics will work?
While 13 state AG's are filing lawsuits that question the constitutionality of the bill, I'm not sure they will be successful. Their argument is that the government cannot force any one to purchase a product the person doesn't want to pay for.
However, mandatory car insurance has been largely the law of the land for years. Car insurance is mandatory because it mandates financial responsibility and serves a greater public good than allowing people to drive without it.
Mandatory health insurance falls in the same category. Mandating it serves a large enough public purpose to make doing so constitutionally justifiable. That is the basis of the laws that require liability insurance for vehicle owners.
My prediction: the GOP will continue to foam at the mouth, mislead and just outright lie. Their lawsuits will be dismissed and probably not be heard by the Supremes. Their tactics will become increasingly questionable.
Just about any healthcare bill that passes is almost 100 years overdue. Teddy Roosevelt first proposed it, and his cousin, Theodore, pursued it. As did Truman and even Nixon. Nixon thought it was good idea. And I never thought I'd agree with him about anything.
We spend more and have poorer outcomes than any country in the industrialized world. Mostly because we treat too many people in emergency rooms who would have been better served by a GP long before they end up in an ER with acute and critical problems.
I've spent more times in emergency rooms that I want to think about. And I've also seen more people using them as a primary care facility than makes sense.
Getting those people out of the ER would probably save enough to keep many hospitals from contemplating bankruptcy. It would certainly improve their balance sheets. Treating someone in an emergency costs significantly more than the cost of preventative and diagnostic care from a GP.
Our current healthcare system reminds me of a Churchill quote about Russia: "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma". Our health care system is arbitrary and confusing in much the same way. People who need it can't get it, and people that have it pay too much for it. They subsidize all those emergency room visits that could be better-addressed by a GP and lead to better patient outcomes than those emergency room visits provide for less money.
I'm also reminded of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" where some animals are more equal than others.
The healthcare debate (if you can call what happens in the legislature debate instead of endless sound bites) boils down to two issues: social justice and fiscal responsibility.
Allowing the cost of health care to continue to spiral out of control is not fiscally responsible. It is negligent on every front. While the cost of health care accounts for 1/6th of our economy today, doing nothing will send that out-of-scale ratio even higher. All that, while, as a country, we have almost the least accessible health care in the industrialized world.
Over and above this floats social justice. Although that isn't a concept that most (if not all) of the GOP understands. What it means is that, if you are sick, you should be able to see a doctor and be treated, regardless of your income. It means that you shouldn't have to wait until you're dying of cancer to get a diagnosis or treatment until things have progressed so far that you only have weeks to live.
That is not hypothetical situation. I lived through it. I lost someone very dear to me who didn't have insurance. When he finally got a job with insurance benefits, he was immediately diagnosed with cancer and only lived another 8 weeks or so. It was too far gone. Had he been diagnosed earlier, treatment would have had a good chance of success.
In all the hoo-hah and posturing surrounding the debate, we lost sight of the fundamental fact central to the whole mess: those without insurance delay treatment until they end up in an emergency room or just die, and those with insurance end up paying for it. The cost of treating uninsured patients that gets passed on to the insured amounts to an indirect tax on health care. People say they don't want to pay for other people's health care, but they already are.
A reasonable health plan for me costs a little over $600 a month. I pay 25% of that. To insure a dependent, my cost would go to $900 or so a month. To insure a family, 60% of my pay would go to health insurance.
And I consider myself lucky to have the coverage that I have. But I thank the Lord that I do not have to provide it for anyone else. I couldn't afford it.
Those facts cannot be denied.
And one, in good conscience, cannot deem people without coverage as "irresponsible". They're generally just poor, making minimum wage or a little more, if that. If they even have a job.
If they're lucky enough to have a job, it probably doesn't come with insurance, and if it does, it's too expensive.
I went without health insurance for over a decade. When I had to see a doctor, it cost at least $150-250 between fees and prescriptions. Sometimes, I just didn't go to the doctor at all and hoped things got better. I didn't have the money.
When one has to choose between a doctor and rent, the doctor usually loses, because at least you're left with a place to be miserable in if you pay the rent.
While the need for universal health coverage should be obvious to anyone who looks at the situation from an objective view, providing it is mired in partisan rhetoric that embraces the word "socialism" too freely. Universal health care is not socialism: it's humanitarianism.
Treating people like humans.
Throughout the healthcare reform fracas, I've been stunned by one thing: the federal government already runs one of the most efficient health care systems in the world. And no one has noticed.
The VA system was once a mine field of paperwork and inefficiency, but it has transformed itself into a system that provides some of the best care money can buy. It's easily as good as what costs $600 a month to cover me. It's an efficient system that concentrates on treating patients.
It requires them to have a physical every six months. The VA realized that getting a patient in the last few months of cancer would be much more expensive to treat and likely have a worse outcome than diagnosing earlier. Finding the problem earlier would not only save them money, but would lead to a higher quality of life for the patient. One that means being above ground, and not 6 feet under.
The VA has rationed care, to be certain. But so has my private health insurance company. I’m waiting for an appointment with a specialist because I can’t hear with my left ear. A simple ear infection turned into something else, but I have to wait for over 2 weeks to see one a specialist about it.
Some people seem to think that "social justice" equals "socialism" when nothing could be farther from the truth.
With all the hoo-hah, amidst lies, disinformation and scare tactics, things have moved beyond the ridiculous into the scary. Legislators and their families are being threatened with physical harm and/or death. The opposition tactics have moved from merely the uncivil well into the unacceptable.
My hope is that the rabble-rousers will be their own undoing. The more the GOP and the Tea Party movement come to resemble the Nazi Party, the more damage they will do to themselves. I pray that they self-destruct.
The cracks are already starting to appear. The American Enterprise Institute (a conservative think tank) fired David Frum for an opinion piece he did that criticized the GOP and Tea Partiers for the way they handled the health care debate. Even his credentials as a former Bush speechwriter didn’t save him.
The party of “NO!” is becoming the party of “no dissent”, one that has no room for criticism or self-reflection. Such a rigid stance alienates moderates, whom we all know determine most elections. They don’t like rigid, extreme stances from either side of the aisle. That’s why we call them “moderates”.
Radical opponents of health care reform are on the wrong side of opinion, ethics, morality and history. They may scream loud, but the rhetoric amounts to the “tinkling cymbal” that 1 Corinthians speaks of: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
They are sounding brass that amounts to a tinkling cymbal.
My hope and prayer is that they tinkle on themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment