*a quote from one of the Repugnant plans: "In solving our health care crisis, Americans already know that government will not work…Patients should be able to choose from a variety of private insurance plans. The Federal government would run a health care system — or a public plan option — with the compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the post office, and the incompetence of Katrina."
Friday, May 22, 2009
Warning: Spin Doctors at Work
Update: A new poll released by The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation studying health care issues, found that senior citizens served by Medicare are more satisfied with their health insurance than those patients served by employer provided plans. Only 8% rated their health insurance as poor compared to 18% who rated their employer plans the same. Medicare patients also reported better access to physicians and fewer instances of not receiving needed treatments. Republicans are resorting, as usual, to mendacity to obstruct the passage of much need health care reform including a government provided plan to level the health insurance playing field. Their proposals are basically warmed over ideas for tax credits and "health savings accounts" that do nothing to control the escalating costs of the current patchwork of employer and private insurance. They tout the "freedom of choice" of private insurance and exploit sterotypical notions of government inefficiency*. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that the government systems for civil service employees and the elderly are more efficient at controlling costs without sacrificing a person's health care options.
{5/18/09}Former Governor of Kansas Kathleen Sebelius is now Secretary of Health and Human Services. She was also the former insurance commissioner of the state, and saw rationing of health care services by private insurance companies first hand. While testifying at her confirmation hearing she said: "I frankly, as insurance commissioner where I served for eight years saw it on a regular basis by private insurers, who often made decisions overruling suggestions that doctors would make for their patients that they weren’t going to be covered. And a lot of what we did in the office of the Kansas Insurance Department was to go to bat for those patients to make sure that the benefits they had actually paid for were ones that were delivered." Another reason for making sure there is at least a government insurance policy option in the reform package, if single payer makes too much sense for American plutocrats. The fact is that all of the arguments being used by Repugnants to block reform are simply propaganda.