I must admit I don’t get all the excitement surrounding the supposed “overhaul” of the US health care system. Other alternative titles for this post were Much Ado About Nothing and Barack’s Big Adventure.
The following excerpts are taken from an article posted on physorg.com and apparently originally written by www.HealthyMagination.com . My points and questions will be written in italics following each excerpt.
-The United States is the only major industrialized nation which does not offer some form of universal health care. The government does provide coverage to the elderly and disabled under Medicare, some of the very poor under Medicaid, government workers and military veterans.
Even after the passage of this controversial bill, the US will remain the only industrialized nation without some form of universal health care.
President Barack Obama’s health care bill, which passed Sunday in the House of Representatives, aims to bring the United States closer to universal coverage than ever before.
Listen to the carefully crafted wording. The bill aims to bring the US closer to universal coverage. This is essentially a non binding promise to one day have a humane health care system.
-Some 15.4 percent of the US population – or 46.3 million people – did not have health insurance in 2008, according to the Census Bureau. Since about 10 million of those are not US citizens, the most commonly cited number is 36 million people.
The plan is intended to usher in the most sweeping overhaul of its kind in four decades and extend coverage to some 32 million Americans out of the 36 million who lack it now, according to the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Again the plan is intended to extend coverage, but appears to contain many corporate friendly loopholes to avoid any financial hardship for the health care industry. These non statements are a defense attorneys dream, and allow the health care providers and insurance companies to avoid responsibility while increasing the responsibility of people using their services.
The United States drastically outspends other countries on health care, yet has worse overall outcomes and leaves millions at risk of losing their homes or even lives for lack of insurance.
-Per capita spending in the United States also ranks far ahead of other industrialized nations at 7,290 dollars in 2007. That’s more than 2,500 dollars more per person than Norway, which ranks second, and about 2.5 times the OECD average of 2,984 dollars per person.
-Total health care spending accounted for 2.2 trillion dollars in 2007, or 16.2 percent of US GDP. That’s five percentage points more than second-ranking France and nearly twice the proportion spent by the United Kingdom and Japan.
Pay more get less. Nothing in this bill seems to force this condition to change.
-Nearly 45,000 people die every year in the United States because they don’t have health insurance, a recent study by Harvard University researchers found.
-Premiums for health insurance provided by employers have doubled since 2000 and most workers are spending more out of pocket even as the services covered shrink.
-Medical bills contribute to more than half of personal bankruptcies and homes lost to foreclosure.
The problem obviously is that health insurance is too expensive for many people, So the solution should be to cut down insurance costs so that more people can afford insurance. Yet, there is much in this bill which implies that costs will come down for insurers and health care providers, but actually go up for those needing health care services and insurance.
For the first time in US history, most Americans would be required to buy insurance or face fines, and larger firms could face penalties for not offering coverage.
Care to read that a few times. Not only are we not going to provide health care for all citizens, but were going to penalize them for not having enough money to afford insurance.
This is kind of like credit card companies raising interest rates for those incapable of paying off their debt.
-Until now, insurance companies have been able to deny or even revoke coverage for pre-existing conditions like heart disease, cancer or – in nine states – injuries sustained from domestic violence.
The bill would ban insurance company practices like denying coverage for preexisting illnesses, dropping people from coverage when they get sick, or capping lifetime coverage, and restrict new plans’ use of annual limits.
Sounds good at first, but it doesn’t say anything about capping the amount of money an insurer could charge you for their policy. Hence, instead of dropping your coverage for preexisting conditions or sickness they can just raise their rates beyond your capacity to pay, and then you get slapped with additional fines by the government for not having health insurance.
- No “public option”
After a year-long fight, Obama’s Democratic allies opted not to include a government-backed program to compete with private insurers, which supporters and many analysts described as the best way to rein in costs.
Plainly stated there will be no national health care product which could have been used to keep the profit based companies from gouging the public.
The legislation carries an initial 10-year price tag of 940 billion dollars, but would reduce the ballooning US deficit by 138 billion dollars through 2019 and 1.2 trillion over the following decade, the CBO said.
Democrats have highlighted the independent Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that the bill would cost 940 billion dollars over the next 10 years, while cutting 143 billion dollars from the bloated US deficit through 2019 and 1.2 trillion over the following decade.
-Health care spending is expected to eat up 25 percent of the US economy by 2025, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Any doubt that this long term cost savings estimate will be revised down between now and then, and replaced with more ballooning deficits.
The plan creates new state-based marketplaces called exchanges where Americans without employer-provided coverage could buy insurance.
But the bill would also offer subsidies to help individuals who earn too much to get coverage under an expansion of the government’s Medicaid program but under 400 percent of the US federal poverty level, which in 2009 stood at earnings of 22,000 dollars per year for a family of four.
Some nice double talk and a few crumbs for the poor before they get those nasty penalties and fines for being poor.
-While the United States excels in areas such as cancer care, it lags behind other industrialized nations in avoidable hospital admissions for treatable conditions like asthma and diabetes, the OECD found. Disparities also lead to high infant mortality rates and a shortened life expectancy.
Not much in this bill which offers a promise of better health care, but rather lower costs and higher profits for health care related industries.
Republicans also vowed to keep up the fight in the Senate — the next battleground — and repeal the broadly unpopular bill if they win back majorities in November.
There you go, now comes the real reason for the health care bill passage. Obama put his political future on the line by promising a new health care system, and Republican’s now can spin the hell out of this non-issue to win back the House and Senate. Obama can say he lived up to his word and complain bitterly when his bill is compromised or revoked by the House and Senate, and the Republican’s are able to politically exploit a bill which will not improve US health care.
After a year of often bitter debate, Obama cleared the way to his victory with an 11th-hour deal to sign an executive order reaffirming a longstanding US ban on government funding for abortions, winning support for the bill from a group of conservative Democratic holdouts.
It just gets better and better doesn’t it.
Just a final note on the who truly benefits by the passage of this bill you only have to look at the stock market. Since the passage of the bill stock’s related to the health care industries have done well, with many skyrocketing.
The financial press attributes this to the fact that “uncertainty” has been removed from the market. If they certainly were going to lose money, I doubt the stocks would have exploded upward.
Jim Guido