Whenever I've discussed health care reform here, there are a number of commenters (both on the blog and via email) who assert as god-given truths the right-wing party line opposing a national single payer option. I have three big problems with the typical comment:
- Much of the time the naysayers rely on anecdote and refuse to acknowledge what valid statistical studies show. They heard about a woman in Canada who had a hard time getting the surgery she thought she needed, so she came to the U.S. or they've read newspaper stories about waiting time to get in to see a doctor in rural Canada. They don't seem to understand that anecdotal evidence can be collected for almost any point of view--no human system is perfect, and every institution will fail sometimes, somewhere.
- Much of the time the naysayers just seem completely uninterested in learning where the truth really lies. They often repeat (ad nauseum) the slogans that are being wafted around the right-wing TV and radio circuits--that national single-payer health is rampant socialism, that it will lead to government-mandated euthanasia and government-selected doctors and government-enforced rationing, that Big INsurers and Big Pharm are just like any other business, making a living through entrepreneurialism, and that we shouldn't condemn them for how they do it and we certainly shouldn't use government power to create a more level playing field. Well, from my perspective, that's all bunk. Take the euthanasia claim. It's apparently derived (I have to say apparently--it is really a scare-the-old-folks fiction invented to try to prevent real reform in the form of a public option) from the House bill provision for permitting medicare to cover the costs of a once-every-five-years consultation between a patient and the patient's chosen doctor about what kind of end-of-life wishes the patient has, and from the fact that Rahm Emanuel's brother Ezekial Emanuel is a bioethics expert who has written about end-of-life issues. The House bill provision doesn't have anything, not anything, to do with euthanasia. A doctor who is on record as opposing making even physician-assisted suicide legal is not a doctor who is in favor of euthanasia. A doctor who writes about bioethics in the end-of-life area that most doctors must deal with as a significant part of their practice is a doctor who is interested in thinking about how medical doctors can best serve us when we are dying. It is, in other words, about serving patients by making it possible for them to make the decisions they want to make, that right now they have to pay for out of their own pockets, which may be quite empty, so they may not now be able to enjoy these kinds of services that the rich take for granted day in and day out.
- Most of the time, if the naysayers do quote anybody who has done a study on the issue, it will be something produced by a right-wing think tank to be used in the anti-reform propaganda campaign. One of those is an analysis by Robert Book of Heritage Foundation, which purports to prove that government run health care is bad because it will inevitably be more costly than private health care, through a purported analysis of Medicare administrative costs. Luckily, Angry Bear Tom Bozzo has done an analysis of this study that shows, not surprisingly, that it is simply wrong and that Medicare's administrative costs are, in fact, much lower than private insurance. Please read his post: Are Medicare Administrative Costs High?, Angry Bear, August 6, 2009, in which he carefully shows how these right-wing think tanks distort information in their "broadside[s] against government run health care." One teaser question--how much of the federal government's budget for "administration of justice" would you think should reasonably be added to the listed Medicare administration costs? Needless to say, Book allocates a whopping proportion. Angry Bear has the real facts.
Recent Comments