Hoyer/Pelosi ‘Un-American’ op-ed shows Democrats in denial over voters rejection of Obamacare
The recent USA Today op-ed by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer was a stunning mis-characterization of those opposed to Obamacare as being either ignorant about or deliberately misrepresenting the “facts” of the Democrats radical health care scheme:
Health care is complex. It touches every American life. It drives our economy. People must be allowed to learn the facts.
The first fact is that health insurance reform will mean more patient choice. It will allow every American who likes his or her current plan to keep it. And it will free doctors and patients to make the health decisions that make the most sense, not the most profits for insurance companies.
via Column: ‘Un-American’ attacks can’t derail health care debate – Opinion – USATODAY.com.
According to the op-ed, unruly Americans have been behaving badly at recent Town Hall meetings because they don’t know the facts or don’t want the facts to come to light. On this score, Hoyer, Pelosi and their fellow Democrats have it exactly backwards: the Town Hall protests have been highly charged precisely because voters are fully cognizant of the facts about Obamacare.
Americans appreciate the fact that President Obama as well as many liberals in Congress support a singly payer health care scheme. Most Americans are savvy enough to penetrate the fog and obfuscation of the Democratic talking point that a public option will somehow keep private insurers honest by offering competition.
As most Americans realize, the playing field would never be truly “competitive” because, the federal government doesn’t have to play by the same rules as private corporations constrained by the free market. Any enterprise run by the federal government (e.g.,Amtrak; Postal Service) enjoys a unique advantage in that it can operate at a loss indefinitely, and simply print money or levy taxes to fund its continued operations. No private company can compete against an institution that is free to operate under these parameters.
Once private insurers get out of the business, Americans will no longer have the freedom to choose among various health care delivery options. It is this ineluctable “fact” that is prompting such vehement opposition to Obamacare.
Lastly, the assertion by Hoyer and Pelosi that Americans strongly favor health insurance reform, in light of the fact that support for their plan is dropping like a stone, is indicative of a political party that is utterly obliviousness about the nature and extent of the opposition to their health care reform initiative.
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I’m not really sure about your utilization of the Postal Service as evidence that government programs inevitably monopolize the industries they’re in. After all, USPS competes regularly with Fed Ex and UPS, among many others. In fact, it’s worth thinking of the mail industry as a model for what the health industry could become, provided there’s a public option: because of USPS, everyone can send mail. For those who want services above and beyond the norm, however, your best bet is purchasing something pricier from a private firm. Likewise, with a public option, everyone would have access to health care, and those who wanted more than standard care could buy it from a private firm.
What am I missing?
I cited the Post Office not for the monopolization thesis, but for the fact that it keeps losing money. Does it not give you any pause to turn over the administration of our health care system to the same entity that runs the Post Office so inefficiently or that has insured that Amtrak has not turned a profit in 40 years? As such, I am somewhat mystified as to why you want to hold out the United States Postal Service as a model for what health care could be…
Once the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health care (public option) private companies eventually will no longer be able to compete. The government will offer premiums to employers 30-40% cheaper than their current private plans (because the premiums will be funded by taxpayers).
The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, “fizzle out altogether.”
Americans are fully cognizant of where a public option will lead, hence the dwindling support for Obama’s health care plan. But a more fundamental question that advocates still haven’t answered is how will you pay for all this? The CBO has shattered the cost-savings myth of Obama’s proposals, so how are you going to fund universal health care? Please don’t say that you’re going to pay for it all by only taxing “The Rich.”
In response to another comment. See in context »First of all, private health insurance companies do not add economic value. There is no particular reason to keep them around.
Second, the real reason private health insurance companies can’t compete with a public plan is that they have to provide profits to investors, billions of dollars in executive compensation and billions in salaries and office space for all of the people in charge of denying people reimbursement. That’s a lot of money and I see no reason why 30 cents of every health care dollar should be taken out of patient care and put into those things.
Then there is recission, which affects one half of one percent of policyholders but close to 50% of policyholders who actually get sick, since no insurance company is cancelling the 7,000 dollar a year policies of healthy people. As Taunter Media points out:
“It should be fairly clear that the people who do not file insurance claims do not face rescission. The insurance companies will happily deposit their checks. Indeed, even for someone in the 95th percentile, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for the insurance company to take the nuclear option of blowing up the policy. $11,487 in claims is less than two years’ premium; less than one if the individual has family coverage in the $12,000 price range. But that top one percent, the folks responsible for more than $35,000 of costs – sometimes far, far more – well there, ladies and gentlemen, is where the money comes in.
“If the top 5% is the absolute largest population for whom rescission would make sense, the probability of having your policy cancelled given that you have filed a claim is fully 10% (0.5% rescission/5.0% of the population). If you take the LA Times estimate that $300mm was saved by abrogating 20,000 policies in California ($15,000/policy), you are somewhere in the 15% zone, depending on the convexity of the top section of population. If, as I suspect, rescission is targeted toward the truly bankrupting cases – the top 1%, the folks with over $35,000 of annual claims who could never be profitable for the carrier – then the probability of having your policy torn up given a massively expensive condition is pushing 50%. One in two. You have three times better odds playing Russian Roulette.”
Did I say insurance companies add no economic value? Let me rephrase that. They are parasites and extortionists.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’d just like to point out that John has no talking point for this. I’ll take that to mean I’ve won this debate.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Kinsellagh,
1) I would point out that the millions of Americans who have too little or no health insurance cannot benefit from the competition between health insurance providers.
2) The US government already insures the health of millions of Americans through a single payer plan, first the members of congress (of both parties), certain executive branch offices, the entire united states armed forces, and of course medicare and medical. It is just a matter of extending those same benefits to all Americans.
3) The simple fact is that Amtrak supplies services that the private sector cannot. Amtrak was only created after the private sector abandoned passenger rail service. Notably Amtrak is actually run by private companies under contract with the US Government.
4) Similarly, the US Postal Service provides services that UPS and FEDEX cannot and will not. No private company is going to be able to make a profit delivering individual letters door to door.
Government provides services that the private sector does not or cannot provide. The private sector cannot insure all American profitably.
Mark-
I will begin by saying that I did not particularly like the Pelosi-Hoyer op-ed. There is nothing un-American about protesting, even if the shouters are louder than I would like. Yes, I think it obscures the real debate but they have every right to do so if that is how they want to go.
However, while your main point meets the talking points for the anti-public option point of view, the simplistic approach belies the true facts.
While the private insurance companies, understandably, would prefer not to loose market share to a public option, even they have worked the numbers and realize they have already succeeded in the health care debate. Yes, they are making some real and useful concessions. By agreeing to take all who would like insurance (no more denials due to pre-existing conditions) and doing so on a community rated basis, they have certainly put something into the pot. But – they have well calculated that the increase in business that is coming as a result of the larger number of insureds that we will see on the other side of a reform package, will more than compensate for whatever market share they might lose to a public option – particularly if that public option is obligated, by law, to operate on a more level playing field.
Nobody, at this point, believes that a public option, free of the competitive conditions you describe in your piece, will survive the Senate Finance Committee. At the very best, we might see a public option required to compete on a fairly even footing with the privates and I think it better than even odds that we won’t even see that. What we will most likely see are insurance co-operatives that will be of little value when it comes to their ability to compete with the privates.
Throwing in the whole “we all know that Obama and many liberal members of congress favor a single-payer health scheme” is where you take what could be a rational argument and make it foolish.
You are absolutely right. Obama and many liberal members of Congress would favor such a system, if there was a chance in Hell that the American people would accept one. Do you think it was an accident that Obama set these feelings aside and went for a public option in its place? Do you really believe that the government of a country which remains firmly center-right is going to somehow buy into a single-payer system just because a public option is put in place? If this is true, it sure as hell should have happened already. I mean, we’ve had a fairly popular socialized medicine for our senior population since 1964 and we still are nowhere near, as a nation, accepting a single-payer system in America.
There are many good arguments to be made against various elements contained in the various reform bills under discussion. When you go to these simplistic, paranoid places, it does not illuminate the debate, it harms it.
If, as you say, most Americans are savvy enough to “penetrate the fog and obfuscation of the Democrats”, don’t you think they are savvy enough to avoid a socialized medicine system which is, somehow, slipped in the back door through the trojan horse of a public insurance option? You kind of can’t have it both ways, can you?
To add to Ethan’s point, I really can’t remember the last time I used the US Post Office. It’s either emails, faxes, Fed Ex or UPS. So how much did the post office benefit from government ownership. And, in case you haven’t noticed, they keep raising their prices so they aren’t just letting the business run at a loss because they can.
I think you’re a pretty smart guy, John. I know you can do better to make your points than relying on an over-simplified argument that may convince some because it is easy, but not because you are giving them real and useful information. The people out there prepared to be swayed by bumper sticker one-liners such as what you present are already sold one way or another. The fight is going to be over those who remain on the fence. To win them, you have to better than this.
John – I called you “Mark” in my comment. Apologies for that!
No problem Rick. I’ve been called much worse things than “Mark” before…
In response to another comment. See in context »“I’ve been called much worse things than “Mark” before…”
Me too!
In response to another comment. See in context »Nonpartisan? The Lewin Group? You’ve got to be kidding!
“Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest insurers.
More specifically, the Lewin Group is part of Ingenix, a UnitedHealth subsidiary that was accused by the New York attorney general and the American Medical Association of helping insurers shift medical expenses to consumers by distributing skewed data. Ingenix supplied UnitedHealth and other insurers with data that allegedly understated the “reasonable and customary” doctor fees that insurers use to determine how much they will reimburse consumers for out-of-network care.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/22/AR2009072203696.html
There was a time, decades ago, when American conservatives were genuinely in favor of smaller government and opposed to monopolies. As I recall, Teddy Roosevelt built his career on this concept. Today “conservatism” is sadly personified in this excremental piece of writing: there’s a conspiracy afoot, secret plans to socialize the insurance system, everyone should be scared, lashing out randomly is “democratic,” etc. Pathetic. The illegal monopoly currently running American insurance (into the ground) needs more defenders? Don’t they already have enough on their payrolls? Shouldn’t a “conservative” be more concerned with saving this corrupt industry from itself than with villifying a mild attempt to reign in this self-made disaster? Again: pathetic.
I could easily take exception with any number of things in the boilerplate partisan post. Since when has USPS or Amtrak ran any private firm out of business? So will a public option be so great it’ll bankrupt Cigna and Blue Cross (because of non-profit status or subsidies) or will the public option be a drain on the gov’t like Amtrak or USPS (because of non-profit status or subsidies). Pick one…
But the bottom line is that the opposition have failed to prove that this wonderful “freedom of choice” they currently have is all that wonderful. We rank like mid 30s against other nations in health care, dude. How can you argue that what we have will be destroyed if what we have is lousy. 50 million uninsured or underinsured and those who have insurance pay through the nose (30-50% more than other countries something like that).
That’s the real problem. The premise of your argument is false. What we currenly have stinks by almost every measure. So when you start off by defending it you yourself are guilty of obfuscation. Even those with great care don’t even realize how expensive it is… and they are paying for uninsured people anyway.
As far as the intelligence of the “vocal” opposition, it seems to me that the loudest of these people don’t even know the difference between communism, fascism and socialism. They also think this is a constitutional issue (haven’t sorted that out yet). Yeah, man, they’re brilliant.
The premise of your comment is false: you state that, “What we currenly have stinks by almost every measure.” Really? Is that why approximately 75% of Americans with private health insurance are satisfied with their plans? Is the promised Nirvana of a Canadian style single payer system is meeting with such opposition?
What is the factual basis for your assertion that, We rank like mid 30s against other nations in health care, dude?
In response to another comment. See in context »Nice try, John. But whether 75% are satisfied with their plans is meaningless, even if true.
Most people, of course, don’t get sick. Of those, most people don’t become seriously ill. Of course THEY are satisfied. The insurance companies haven’t given them any reason not to be because they haven’t tried to make any claims.
Why don’t you try polling the sickest one percent, the people with more than 35,000 dollars a year in costs, who account for 22% of health care spending? I doubt very much that you’ll find anything like 75% satisfaction with their insurance companies.
In response to another comment. See in context »I will keep pounding this drum in the vain hope that someone will actually look at the Canadian system in a thoughtful, non-partisan way. As Alison Kilkenny notes in her recent post, voters simply can’t rely on lazy and uninformed journalists to actually — say — report firsthand what life is like for Canadian doctors, patients, nurses and hospital administrators. I have seen nowhere, in any major media outlet, one thoughtful report on the day to day experience of a single-payer government-finance health system in Canada, only in France and England, nations with very different cultures and histories.
Only in the U.S. does the word “government-run” seem to evoke such utter hysteria.
Yet government spends billions to run the military and people seem delighted to finance it, maybe because it will never ever touch them personally.
The reason so many morons are shrieking at town halls is that some are fed up with the many lies and distortions by private interests determined to maintain enormous profits as their lack of understanding, or opposition to, Obama’s ideas.
Caitlin, here’s an informative thoughtful report on the Canadian heath care system:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111721651&ps=cprs
In response to another comment. See in context »I’m not convinced that the Canadian system is the health care system to beat all. Most European countries have pretty good results, too.
In response to another comment. See in context »Duh, which is what you alluded to. Sorry about the irrelevant comment. I missed a sentence on my first read-through.
In response to another comment. See in context »It’s 73% in Canada and the UK and 56% in the U.S. according to Gallup. So since > 70% is indicative of success…
It’s in the last sentence of Peter Singer’s essay a few weeks back in the NYT Sunday magazine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=5
Things are easy when you make them up as you go.
Maybe you should scream “TYRANNY!”. That seems to be the popular thing…
[...] I can’t help but snicker at how during the W administration it was an act of innocent free speech for all kinds of Americans to call W a Nazi or Hitler. Yet when Obama rolls out a series of policies that are historically in line with those of the National Socialist Party – you know, what the Nazi Party started out as – and historically knowledgeable citizens call him and his minions on it, these people are somehow un-American. [...]
Mr. Kinsellagh;
I have posted a few comments to Mr. Dupray on T/S in hopes that he would offer up some sort of solution in lieu of whines to our healthcare problem in this country, to no avail, even to one which Rick Ungar urged him to look at. So let me begin with this: You state that “Once private insurers get out of the business, Americans will no longer have the freedom to choose among various health care delivery options” as if this is some sort of fact, while arguing that Americans at town hall meetings are aware of them (facts). So, when are the private insurers leaving the business and why? Seems kind of stupid to leave such a lucrative business until after it’s failed, don’t you think? As well, I have traveled the nation’s highways very extensively over the past fifteen years, and I can assure you, those ranting at town hall meetings have very little knowledge of the facts, primarily because their main source of information in this country, the so-called forth estate, is giving them none. Those that have done their own excavations of the little bit of real reporting on the issue have quite another view. That view is one of solid support for this reform, as much as it leaves a bad taste in their mouths, do, in part, yet again, to a frankly shitty news front that deals in bullshit more than hard fact about just what we’re going to get. Forth-estate? D-.
You also bring up the USPS as one of the things no one can compete against, while neglecting to mention that it is one of the few agencies specifically authorized by the US Constitution, and having a civilian workforce second only to Walmart, and not really using tax dollars since the eighties. How well do you think the USPS is doing against email? How about Fedex, UPS, and others? You might want to look at an op-ed piece from WaPo about a week ago that kind of paints a picture that doesn’t match your oblivious perception on that one. Amtrac? Who the hell knows, we never really get any good reporting on that one anymore because it really doesn’t put asses in the seat at Glenn Beck tapings. That is an aside, but it is important in understanding why yet again, a voice from the right screams out, offering nothing but complaint, backed by nothing more than a loose connection with those of us out here on the ground that live the life you seemingly know so little about.
So, let’s get down to brass tacks: Healthcare is now a LARGE national problem, not just for the many that don’t have it and can’t get it, but for those that have no need for it yet. In the healthcare world – insurance / care itself, there exists today a general rule of thumb regarding the financial paradigm; it’s basically the 80/20 rule, and it applies in many areas of business, but in healthcare it deserves a long look. Twenty percent of the people getting care will incur eighty percent of the cost. I have many friends that work in healthcare from insurance to medical care, from my years of working in it in the early nineties. It’s been a fairly usable rule. One thing you may not know, as well relates to simple hospital billing, prior to the early nineties there was no universal billing code manual for hospitals to bill from, making hospital to hospital cost analysis a crap shoot at best. That one got help in the nineties, now all we need is a shitload of technology to make it work more efficiently – there a times in our history when the only way to get that to happen was to take it on a the federal government level. Now is one of those times, especially considering the fact that our capital building machine has been usurped, robbed, and turned into a money press for those that have no need to build things in a market economy. Kind of leaves the rest of wondering how Wall Street is going to fix healthcare – CDS swaps on the terminally ill? Then you have guys like Richard L. Scott that literally turned medical care into a for profit business; you should look into that guy if you really want to know how to argue conservative health care philosophy.
Complaining about an op-ed that complains about what-ever it complains about, is fruitless, because personally I don’t give a shit about that right now; I’m concerned that a business round table led by big pharma and health insurers has managed to consistently take the public option out of the reform, which, from just about all angles, Americans do support. So, Mr. Kinsellagh, you friend, are guilty of exactly the same bullshit we’re getting from the Hill; the reason people aren’t liking what they’re seeing is because some rotten bastards in the background keep yanking the one thing that many of them(us) feel will make it worthwhile even after passing the though the colon of the big white elephant in the room – the burn machine of Republican rhetoric, blue dog democrats, and the few that abide by profound principals or stands ala Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul. I mention these two men because, love them or hate them, they generally stand precisely behind what they say they’re going to do and why.
I submit that the oblivious person in the equation is the one that continues to pass on the misinformation as if it is new, profound, or useful. Yours is none of these things, and me and my conservative friends think guys like you need to spend a little more time out here on the ground, hopefully waiting in an urgent care clinic for two hours, hoping you have enough cash left in your checking account to cover whatever might have just gone wrong. Mr. Dupray didn’t bother to respond, hopefully you will, because my conservative buddies need someone bright enough to defend the conservative angle right now; they have discovered how badly they have been lied to, whom did the lying, and wondering why they continue to listen to someone that has never had a job, makes more money than their entire family tree, and offers up no solutions to the problem. We’ve been listening to the whining for a long time, we need answers, so you had better get cracking.