By Sen. Jim DeMint
(Republican, U.S. Senate - South Carolina)
It is now clear that Congress and the president’s top priority for 2009 is health care reform. Since the collapse of Hillary-Care in 1994, Democrats have been working to re-plan and re-package a government takeover of your health insurance.
This year, they’re hoping to get their chance. Last month, Senator Ted Kennedy offered a glimpse of what they have in mind when called for the creation an optional, “public health insurance plan, where coverage is provided in the public interest.”
That may sound nice, but in one sentence, it describes everything that is wrong with a government take-over of American health care.
Health care, by definition, can’t be provided in the public interest because no doctor has ever seen “the public.” Doctors see patients: one at a time, providing personal care in the patient’s interest only.
Now, if you listen to the ongoing debate about health care reform, you hear a common theme, especially from those who favor a government take-over.
They talk a lot more about costs than they do about care. Only here’s the thing: the government is the reason that costs are spiraling out of control now. Government now covers 100 million Americans, and costs are exploding. Under the proposed takeover, 130 million more will be added to government health programs. How can they expect to get costs under control by doubling the government’s role in health care?
The answer is by rationing care. If government wants to cover 230 million Americans and bring down costs, the only way it can possibly do it is denying care to people whose health care is deemed – you guessed it – not in the public interest.
Under similar schemes in Canada and Great Britain, people wait weeks to see their doctors, months to see specialists, and years to get routine procedures and treatments. High-tech tests and breakthrough medicines are off-limits because the government decides – in the public interest – that they are too expensive.
When the late actress Natasha Richardson suffered her skiing accident in Canada this spring, the hospital didn’t have an MRI machine. The doctors never knew her injuries were life-threatening… until it was too late.
That’s how a government take-over of your health care will try to get costs under control: cheap, outdated treatments, long waiting lists, and low-tech hospitals. It won’t take long before families realize the true costs of such a plan aren’t counted in dollars and sense.
Instead of the government-controlled “public option,” we should move toward a “personal option,” where we help individuals and families buy and own their own health insurance plan that no government can ever take-over or take away.
Health care is personal and private. It should be administered by doctors and nurses in their patient’s interest, not the interests of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington.
Because never forget: any law that empowers government to provide health care in the public interest implicitly empowers government to deny it for the same reason.
I plan to play a big part in the health care debate this summer, and my website will be a clearinghouse for information about the issue as it develops. Feel free to check in often, as new content will be added every week. And to help you stay informed, I’ll be in touch frequently as the health care and other debates move forward.
Thanks very much, and God bless.
8 comments:
This is the insurance industry line through and through. The health care system doesn't work in the patient's interest now, except insofar as the patient's interest and the interest of profitability converge. And unfortunately, that often fails to be the case.
The stakes could not be greater for the health insurance industry. On the one hand, they could gain hundreds of billions of dollars if all Americans are required to have coverage, and lower income families receive subsidies to help them afford it.
On the other hand, a public plan with lower administrative costs and no profit motive would have premiums they would be unable to compete with, driving most of the private insurers out of the market.
But while the insurance industry would suffer from a public plan, the rest of us would benefit. The cost of having employees in this country would go down, and access to health care would go up.
Make no mistake about it. Jim DeMint represents the health insurance lobby on this issue - not the rights of patients. Insurance companies have long been more likely to refuse a treatment type due to its cost than has Medicare, and that's the most valid comparison in this situation.
mason,
i get what you're saying and i do agree with you that we can't allow the insurance companies to exert undue influence on policy out of concern for their own bottom line.
however,
i'm not quite sure how you get from there to a point where you'd blindly support sweeping nationalization of the health care system.
statements like this:
"On the other hand, a public plan with lower administrative costs and no profit motive would have premiums they would be unable to compete with, driving most of the private insurers out of the market."
just don't sit well with me. i would be amazed if the federal government could operate a health insurance system with lower overhead than the private sector and i think you're correct that they would certainly be much less concerned about how much money they'd be losing.
i'm inclined to wait until the current administration has forged a leaner, more efficient american auto industry that makes products that are so affordable and reliable that they drive most private manufacturer's out of the market before i wholeheartedly support them monkeying with our health care.
(read that as, i expect either a healthier dose of skepticism at the front end, or a willingness to acknowledge how badly they've screwed up after the fact (and you're own complicity) (if that is indeed the scenario that comes to pass) from anyone who believes that our healthcare system will be better once the government 'fixes' it).
We spend too much on health care without getting the sort of outcomes we would expect for that investment. I say let the government run it, not because everything the government touches succeeds, but because health care is not fundamentally a service that the free market has proven itself capable of delivering effectively and cheaply.
The usual argument in favor of privatization - that competition leads to improved quality and lower price - simply doesn't seem to apply in this case. Money is made not when sick people get the care they need to recover, but when they remain sick and continue to require expensive treatment. (And even a public health insurance plan does nothing to solve this - it's just better than throwing more money at the current insurance industry)
Shopping around for better treatment or lower price is difficult, because almost nobody outside the medical profession really understands the benefit of any given treatment in order to make the best decision in the interest of their own health. And those in the medical profession have to consider their own bottom line whenever they give advice.
the usps is not fundamentally a service that our federal government has proven itself capable of delivering effectively and cheaply (i wouldn't be shocked to see us witha privatized postal syten in the next 10-15 years).
point there being that just because the free market hasn't yet been able to adjust in an unprecedented time of medical progress and expectation to offer better health care options, there's nothing to support the notion that the federal government would do any better (except for hope (and there are ample examples which indicate that they won't) (of course i don't support the governement takeover of our auto industry either, so we may have to agree to disagree on this sort of thing (which again, i'm happy to do, allowing that when it comes time to be retrospective, we can have an honest conversation about what happened and how we got where we are).
in just the last two years, the private insurance companies have begun to offer different options. the one that immediately jumps to mind is the high deductible health plan. you pay peanuts for full coverage after the payment of your $2000 deductible. it's a great option for younger folks because it keeps you from getting dogged on your premium but ensures that you won't go into extraordinary debt in the event of a medical emergency. I like this kind of thing because it recognizes that we all have different needs and will utilize health care accordingly. my concern with a federal system is that it will not recognize this diversity of need, but rather will seek to establish a 'base level' of care. we don't need the government to tell us what kind of health care we need. we need the government to enable us to proactively research options (which i agree must be more affordable) and make an intelligent decision about what our specific needs are.
in terms of your categorization of when insurance companies make money, i think you're mistaken. when people remain sick and require expensive treatment, it's the insurance companies paying, no? they make money when you pay your premiums and don't file claims (like all insurance operations, if i'm not mistaken).
as to your last statement, i'm not willing to allow the government to make decisions on my healthcare, just because they are difficult decisions. it's the same as it ever was. those of us who are capable of figuring things out and taking care of ourselves should be allowed to do so. those who can't should be at the mercy of our government.
(that being said, they need to do something to make health care more affordable. i fail to see how government administration of health care will do that).
Seth, happy to leave it at 'agree to disagree', but I need to clarify my position. I don't think the insurance companies make more money when people continue to get expensive treatment - the health care industry does. Unfortunately, Congress isn't talking about reforming health care delivery, but just how we purchase insurance.
Insurance companies and providers are two different, yet connected, industries to my way of thinking. I don't really have a major beef with the health insurance industry, but the profit made at the expense of the sick is why insurance companies have traditionally excluded coverage of pre-existing conditions.
you make an excellent point. our entire system is broken.
we could ask congress to do something to put the brakes on expensive advances in medical care but i think we'd agree that no politician in their right mind would ever come out and say that we need to be spending less to research aids/cancer drugs, groundbreaking procedures (like pulling kidneys out of vaginas), and increasingly anthropomorphically convincing prosthetics because it's really driving the cost of our health care through the roof.
the acknowledgement that this issue is much larger than just the insurance side of things makes me even more suspect of what would convince someone that our government (!!OUR GOVERNMENT!!) can move us in the right direction just by mandating an insurance overhaul.
You assume the government will break everything it involves itself with. I think government could potentially do a good job, but I'll concede that we've killed off a number of industries in the past through well-intentioned reforms that drove up the cost of doing business.
I assume that free markets are only best when competition can drive improvements in efficiency and quality. We both agree that the current system of health care is unsustainable, and we both agree that the currently-debated plan isn't likely to fix that.
There's common ground between us, clearly.
What plan would you support?
I'm going to move my blog this weekend from pr.hbblogs.com to practicalrealist.com. I'll probably be mentioning this topic from time to time, and I hope you'll be a regular in the comments.
Thank you SWACgirl, for indulging this side conversation in your own comments section.
Mason, you are very welcome. I enjoyed reading the two sides of the conversation and thank you both for sharing your thoughts in this forum about the subject of health care in America.
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