Thursday, June 25, 2009

Obamacare: Fine for Thee but not for Me

President Obama's infomercial brought up few surprises last night, but Teh One struggled to explain whi it's ok that he'll always get better health care than you.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care..."

Another neurologist, Dr. John Corboy of the University of Colorado Health Science Center, asked the president, "What can you do to convince the American public that there actually are limits to what we can pay for with our American health care system and if there are going to be limits, who's going to design the system and who's going to enforce the rules for a system like that?"

Obama, however, didn't directly answer the question.


Well, we all want the "very best care" for our loved ones, but we accept the health care that we ourselves manage to cobble together for them. Some argue that the "public option" doesn't mean you can't have private insurance (which is true in the abstract, but not the reality). Karl at Patterico's Pontifications does an excellent job noting the dangers the "public option" poses.
Pres. Obama has now publicly admitted that “there is a legitimate concern if the public plan was eating off the taxpayer trough, it would be hard for private insurers to compete.” The public will quickly come to realize that unfair competition is the entire point of a public plan.

All anyone need do to demonstrate the point is to ask what would happen if the public plan ran into financial trouble. Does anyone seriously think that after bailing out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and GM (soon to be owned by the very UAW whose legacy healthcare costs made GM’s business unprofitable), the feds would fail to shovel money into a public plan far beyond the $10 billion in seed money Sen Chuck Schumer is already trying to lift from the taxpayers’ wallets?

Moreover, Independents and Republicans can be moved by arguing that if the federal government requires all employers to provide health insurance for their employees or pay to support a public plan, employers will likely drop their coverage and shift their employees into a public plan. The Lewin Group has estimated that about 119 million people would shift from their current coverage to the public plan, which is a two-thirds reduction in the number of people with private coverage.


The argument that government involvement will equal competition is a sham. There's competition now with private health care, in that you can shop around for different plans. Moreover, most states have some sort of high risk health insurance pool for those considered uninsurable by private insurers. As I pointed out here, the actual number of people who can't get health insurance (as opposed to those who choose not to) is relatively tiny. On top of this, there's catastrophic health insurance for those who only want it to pay for emergencies (and, really, this is what we should all be using as opposed to going to the doctor for every cough and sniffle).

My guess is that those who don't get insurance through their employer (a) don't want to shell out the money and (b) don't know about the public options already in place. The government could be helpful if they did a better job of informing the public about the high risk pools, and also with a certain amount of regulation of the insurance industry. Is there any reason you can get inexpensive and mandatory car insurance but health insurance companies can deny you any insurance whatsoever? I'd like to see regulation that forced insurance companies to offer a cafeteria of coverage ranging from emergency care to "everything" coverage. And companies would have to cover pre-existing conditions, albeit with a premium for those considered "at risk." Sure, the cost might cause some people to opt out of that coverage, but there's at least a choice then. When even Pho admits the public option is lousy, then you know it's not something Americans want. Well, unless you want more of this.
President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

How much you wanna bet that if it's Michelle faced with surgery or the pain killer that Barack will opt for the surgery? It's only the rest of us that are costing too much for health care. That's a nice thing to think about as the Baby Boomers get to retirement age.

And then there's the fact that most people are happy with their insurance coverage. Unless you use a poll stacked with Obama supporters.