<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Friday, March 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

More fuel for health care reform fire

By John Laird
Published: March 21, 2010, 12:00am

Notes, quotes and anecdotes about health care reform while wondering how Californians feel about Anthem Blue Cross boosting their health insurance rates by up to 39 percent:

One of the most objective online sources of information about health care reform is the Kaiser Family Foundation: http://www.kff.org/. (It is not associated with Kaiser Permanente.) Enough with the objectivity. Now, on with the opinions:

If it’s wrong for the government to use your tax dollars against your will to pay for abortions, why is it OK for the government to use my tax dollars against my will to pay for unnecessary wars?

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently focused on three popular complaints about health care reform. First, that it’s a new government takeover. Krugman writes that such a “takeover happened long ago. Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs already pay for almost half of American health care, while private insurance pays for barely more than a third (the rest is mostly out-of-pocket expenses).”

Second, many critics point to a Medicare actuary’s report that total national health spending in 2019 would be slightly higher with reform than without reform. Krugman argues this “points to a pretty good bargain … the Senate bill … would raise total health care spending by less than 1 percent while extending coverage to 34 millions Americans who would otherwise be uninsured … a large expansion in coverage at an essentially trivial cost.”

Third, to those who complain that health care reform is fiscally irresponsible, Krugman asks: “How can people say this given Congressional Budget Office predictions … that reform would actually reduce the deficit?” Yeah, maybe so, critics counter, but by how much? Oh, only “by $138 billion in its first decade … $1.2 trillion in its second decade,” Krugman wrote in a second column.

You say you don’t want to pay for health care for illegal immigrants? Pay attention. You already do — in the emergency room, the most expensive doctor’s office there is. Don’t you want your money spent more wisely?

If the guy sitting in the airplane or bus seat next to you wants to pay the same rate as everyone else for a public health plan that would help him avoid contracting a communicable disease, what possible difference could it make if he’s an illegal immigrant?

Another myth-buster is Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post. One misconception he shoots down is that the public is undecided on health care reform: “Divided? Yes. Undecided? No. Poll after poll show that people, by and large, have made up their minds about where they come down on this bill. Opposition runs in the upper 40s (percentages), support in the low to mid-40s and undecided respondents in the low single digits. Those numbers haven’t moved much since August 2009, when the raucous receptions that members of Congress received at town hall meetings across the country signaled growing leeriness toward the legislation.”

Another myth Cillizza addressed is that health care reform will be the No. 1 issue in the fall elections. Yes, it will be crucial, “but it will be secondary to Americans’ concerns about jobs and the economy. In a Gallup poll conducted this month, 31 percent of people identified unemployment as the most pressing issue facing the country, while 24 percent named the ‘economy in general.’ Twenty percent chose health care.”

The current employment-based health insurance system does not pass what I call The Martian Test. Imagine some interloping visitor from another planet trying to describe this in his dispatch back home: “You won’t believe this, but many Earth bosses are paying more than half of their workers’ health insurance, for reasons none of the Earthlings can explain.”

What we can explain, though, is that the absurdity of this system is leading to its unraveling. Krugman reports that “less than half of workers at small businesses were covered last year, down from 58 percent a decade ago.”

Look at it this way: Is your life insurance or car insurance any of your boss’s business? Then why are the two of you teaming up on your health insurance?

John Laird is The Columbian’s editorial page editor. His column of personal opinion appears each Sunday. Reach him at john.laird@columbian.com.

Loading...