Sound of Silence: Something Really Worth Forwarding

Dear Friend,

This is probably one of the longest emails I’ve ever sent, but it could be the most important.

Across the country, we are seeing vigorous debate about health insurance reform. Unfortunately, some of the old tactics we know so well are back — even the viral emails that fly unchecked and under the radar, spreading all sorts of lies and distortions.

As President Obama said at the town hall in New Hampshire, “where we do disagree, let's disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that's actually been proposed.”

So let’s start a chain email of our own. At the end of my email, you’ll find a lot of information about health insurance reform.

Right now, someone you know probably has a question about reform that could be answered by what’s below. So what are you waiting for? Forward this email.

Thanks,
David

David Axelrod
Senior Adviser to the President

PS. The following is a response to the email sent out by David Axelrod. The information below is in no way associated with the White House or any members of the Obama Administration (unfortunately). The following information is taken from the website of Physicians for a National Health Program. More online resources are located at the very end of the email. Please ask your Congressperson to support HR 676 and the Kucinich Amendment to HR 3200 and ask your Senators to co-sponsor S.703.

6 ways the public option provides security and stability only to those currently with coverage

A public option will not increase choice for patients: A public plan option will not increase choice of caregivers and choice in location of care. Patients will still have a limited choice of provider restricted by networks and will pay more to see providers outside of their network. Patients will still have to seek authorization for treatment.

A public option does not guarantee patients can keep their own doctor, regardless of changes in employment or health: A public plan option leaves the employer based system of health care provision intact. If an employer chooses to change to a new plan, patients may have to change their doctor or pay higher fees to stay with their doctor. Insurers have strong financial incentives to enroll the healthy while avoiding the sick patients; thus if a patient becomes ill, they still risk losing their employer based insurance.

A public option will not force private health insurers to compete on a level-playing field, especially in limited markets: The Medicare HMO experience shows private plans undermine fair competition despite regulations. The current Medicare experience combined with experience in many different states that have tried this type of reform shows that public plans are left with the sickest patients and fail due to rising costs while the private insurers continue to collect premiums from the healthiest patients and maintain their high profits.

A public option is unsustainable: Health care reform that includes a public plan option will add tens of billions of additional dollars annually on top of $2.5 trillion, (twice what any nation spends per person). Absent effective cost control, any increase in coverage or benefits will quickly be erased by rising costs of insuring the sickest patients, whom private insurers refuse to insure. Vast domestic and international experience with public option schemes show that in no case have they resulted in universal coverage.

A public option would not improve overall quality: (1) it would leave in place the deficiencies that have resulted in very high costs with the poorest health care value of all nations, (2) it would keep intact for-profit, investor-owned hospitals, HMOs and nursing homes that have higher costs and score lower on most measures of quality than their non-profit counterparts, and (3) it would add yet another payer to our fragmented system perpetuating challenges to coordinated care, for example, there will still be a need to collect premiums, track enrollment, disenrollment, etc, and hospital/NH payment will still require the an enormous billing apparatus.

A public option will not reduce health care costs: Adding a public option to the array of private insurance companies in existence will only exacerbate the waste and inefficiency inherent in a patchwork system of health care finance. In their drive to fight claims, issue denials and screen out the sick, insurance companies generate more than $350 billion in administrative paperwork waste. The proposed insurance industry regulator entity will only add another layer of needless bureaucracy to this already bloat-heavy system. Maintaining this system means that no effective cost control is possible and the system will rapidly deteriorate as costs increase.

6 common myths about single-payer:

Won’t this result in rationing like in Canada? The U.S. already rations care. Rationing in U.S. health care is based on income: if you can afford care, you get it; if you can’t, you don’t. A recent study by the prestigious Institute of Medicine found that 18,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have health insurance. Many more skip treatments that their insurance company refuses to cover. That’s rationing. A number of studies (notably a General Accounting Office report in 1991 and a Congressional Budget Office report in 1993) show that there is more than enough money in our health care system to serve everyone if it were spent wisely. A single-payer system will save enough on administration to assure access to care for all Americans, without rationing.

Won’t this cost me more money? Almost all Americans spend more than 3% of their annual income on co-pays, deductibles, and premiums while most businesses currently paying for private health insurance spend about 9% annually. A single-payer system would decrease costs to both employees and employers. It will eliminate bankruptcies due to medical bills and possibly stop the outflow of companies from the United States to Canada.

What will happen to all of the people who work for insurance companies? The new system will still need some people to administer claims. Administration will shrink, however, eliminating the need for many insurance workers, as well as administrative staff in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. More health care providers, especially in the fields of long-term care, home health care, and public health, will be needed, and many insurance clerks can be retrained to enter these fields. Many people now working in the insurance industry are, in fact, already health professionals (e.g. nurses) who will be able to find work in the health care field again.

Won’t competition be impeded by a single-payer system? Past competitive activities in health care under a free market system have resulted in major expenditures on overtreatment, advertising, and marketing. These expenditures have been wasteful and expensive, and are the major cause of rising costs. Unlike the current system, which locks patients in to doctors in the network, a single-payer system promotes competition by allowing patients to choose whichever doctor they prefer without major administrative expenses currently expended on advertising and marketing.

What about incremental reform of the health system? Many well-meaning supporters often push these bills as “feasible steps” to move us towards single-payer, but the history of these kinds of health reform efforts shows that despite their claims of pragmatism, incremental reforms have consistently failed for more than three decades. Incremental reforms cannot garner administrative savings and redirect them to care. Hence, they always founder on the shoals of cost. In addition, these reforms distract attention from the economically realistic, if politically challenging, option of single-payer reform.

What about the claim that a patient in Canada would have died of a brain tumor if he hadn’t come to the U.S. for an MRI? The claim that he would have died had he waited the four months for an MRI scan is an outrageous lie. A C-T scan was done immediately. The tumor was identified, and it was of a nature that did not require emergency management. An emergency MRI would have been done if it were indicated, but it wasn’t. This is an article on low-grade astrocytoma, confirming that this was not an emergency.

Please ask your Congressperson to support HR 676 and the Kucinich Amendment to HR 3200 and ask your Senators to co-sponsor S.703.

Educate yourself and others with the following resources: