Re: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 - The USCHO debates
I always enjoy MinnFan's posts because they really bring home how simple the average conservative thinks.
This "doctor"'s rant is pretty amusing. Lets take it one by one:
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Mr. President,
You justify a hasty and massive healthcare "reform" to save money, by spending an additional trillion dollars. You would fix a "broken" and broke Medicare system by adding another 47 million beneficiaries to government programs while arguing this will reduce overall costs.
Ummm...two different goals here. Insuring more people and helping to pay for it by cutting costs/inefficiencies. So...doc, we shouldn't try to insure the 47M???
I've itemized your inaccurate claims, with my comments in italics.
You assert that your healthcare reform will:
· Force insurance companies to insure pre-existing conditions. That's like allowing bettors to wait till after the race has been run, to place their bets. That won't cut costs.
Somebody explain the betting analogy, because I don't get it. Why would a doctor care if insurance companies have to cover pre-existing conditions? If you lose your insurance, and have a pre-existing condition, you're just supposed to live your life without insurance???
· Eliminate lifetime limits on coverage. Unlimited lifetime coverages must increase premiums to pay for them and will raise total costs.
So be it. Some things are going to cost more, some things less (drug co's and hospitals accepting 250B less in payments for example). Again, what's the alternative - people driven into bankrupcy for long term ailments???
· Require insurance companies to pay for routine examinations, preventive care, and screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies. Once again, how can you be insured against a sure thing? The only way my company can pay for a colonoscopy is to add enough onto the premium to pay for it, plus their overhead.
So we shouldn't get people screened ahead of time, and wait for a condition to develop that needs more aggressive (and expense treatment)? This would save money in the long term???
· Make Medicare more efficient, so tax dollars won't enrich insurance companies. Insurance companies do not derive income from Medicare, because it is a federal program. Incidentally, its costs per patient have increased much faster than private insurance.
Hence the effort to squeeze savings out of Medicare.
· Cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid. These programs have been in effect over 40 years -- and I've seen the waste and inefficiency for most of that interval. Did you just find out about the waste and inefficiency now, and why hasn't something already been done about it?
How is this Obama's problem? He took office in January. We shouldn't do anything about waste because nobody's done anything for the last 40 years? Great logic there. Hope I never run into this guy in the ER.
You claim that:
· "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." But didn't you just imply this week that Medicare Advantage subsidizes insurance companies and should be eliminated to save money?
He's not talking aobut Medicare. He's talking about private insurance. Where did this guy go to school? The "Papa Doc" Duvalier school of Medicine in Haiti?
· "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." But large numbers of doctors have indicated that they will quit or retire if this plan is enacted
Proof please. Where's the evidence of this claim? People are going to retire instead of continuing to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in a lucrative profession just to protest govt policy? Okayyyyy
· "You will not be waiting in any lines." Maybe you won't but we will. Your plan will add up to 47 million new insureds, with no increase in the supply of primary care physicians that are already in short supply.
More demand leads to more supply.
We physicians live with our healthcare system, all day and every day. We care about being able to heal. We hate disputing with insurance companies, and especially with government bureaucrats. Certainly changes in insurance practices are needed, and would have occurred long ago, absent a government record of 60 years of meddling with the market.
People dropped for pre-existing conditions, cheaper drug alternatives kept off the market, 9 million different forms to fill out, no electronic billing, - the govt caused this???
As you say, "...let's disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations" such as those in your op-ed, "that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed."
And I agree, this is about America's future: whether Americans will remain free, or be ruled by an increasingly intrusive and authoritarian statist government.
Is this a medical opinion?
G. Wesley Clark, MD
