…In response to the previous email, I just sent my Congressman the following email. It built on the research I’ve conducted so far (and required a couple hours’ additional reading) but I’m relatively proud of it.

Congressman Carter,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply to my email, in which I expressed my support for health-care reform proposals currently being discussed. I hope you don’t mind if I offer a point-by-point response.
Continue reading Health care: My response to Carter’s response →

As I mentioned in my very first health-care-related blog post, my Congressman—John Carter—sent an email poll asking what his constituents thought of Congress’s health-care proposals. Rather than clicking a button, I sent a quick response indicating my general (and uninformed) support for Democratic proposals.

Congressman Carter, or one of his employees, responded not long after with a lengthy and impressively thorough description of exactly why he thought the Dem plans were a bad idea. I’m reprinting his letter here, then I’ll post what I just sent him.

From: Congressman John Carter
Subject: Responding to your message
Date: July 31, 2009 4:38:49 PM CDT
To: house@happywaffle.com
Dear Kevin:

Thank you for contacting me to express your support for President Obama’s health care plan. Access to quality health care is a critical issue facing our country, and I appreciate your input.

America has the highest quality health care in the world. A recent medical study on cancer survivability rates showed that Americans are in a lot better shape than Great Britain, Norway, and the European Union nations, all of which have government run health care. For example, the survival rate for those diagnosed with prostate cancer in European Union countries is only 77%; it is 99% in the U.S. Additionally, all female cases of cancer have a survivability rate of 62.9% in the United States, but only 52.7% in England.
Continue reading Health care: Carter’s response to my response →

Let me lead off the discussion of Her Majesty’s National Health Service with an interesting op-ed by Mr. Stephen Glover:

I deeply resent the Americans sneering at our health service – but perhaps that’s because the truth hurts

In it, Glover does an appreciable job knocking down some of the sillier rumors about health care in the UK whilst (whilst!) affirming that it’s not all lollipops and zero-quid bills on the other side of the pond. (Captain Obvious alert: dentistry is a particular problem.) Continue reading Health care pt. 5: ye olde NHS →

I commented earlier about how tort reform for doctors seems like a good idea. This NYT editorial is informative on the topic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/opinion/17wed2.html

With regards to overall health-care spending, it looks like frivolous lawsuits (obnoxious as they are) don’t contribute much to the big problem we’re facing. “[The CBO] estimates that caps on damages would ultimately reduce malpractice premiums for medical providers but would have a ‘relatively small’ impact on total health spending, reducing it by less than half a percent.” So, Republicans who gripe about frivolous lawsuits with regards to the big honkin’ health-care money problem aren’t really swinging at the right piñata.

But there IS a piñata worth swinging at here. Continue reading Health care: A bit about malpractice reform →

I wasn’t going to post about it, since the info is readily available elsewhere, but I might as well link to what factcheck.org says about Obama’s speech…

http://factcheck.org/2009/09/obamas-health-care-speech/

— Joe Wilson’s wrong and Obama’s right about whether the bill covers illegal immigrants. It doesn’t. But it’s not quite as simple as that; the GOP argues that the bill lacks a proper enforcement mechanism to make sure people taking advantage of the public option are US citizens, or even legal immigrants. Good point, except any illegal immigrant who applies for a public insurance plan is committing insurance fraud and taking on a rather huge risk of being caught. Would some still do it? Sure, there’s always weasels. But certainly not enough to constitute a significant drain on public resources. Seriously, I think Republicans have a secret crush on illegal immigrants or something.
Continue reading Health care: fact-checking Obama’s speech →

I liked Obama’s speech last night for a couple of reasons:

— He specifically named the lies being told about health-care reform, and called out the public officials who were spreading them. (Five points off for not naming names, though…)

— He correctly pointed out just how much common ground there is with regards to health-care reform. The public option is one controversial piece among a whole lot of not-so-controversial improvements to our system; I noticed how many times the Republicans stood to clap, and rightfully so.

I also liked his talk of tort reform for medical malpractice lawsuits, which seems as much of a no-brainer as any other piece, though apparently it’s a Republican cause célèbre. I sat on a jury in a medmal lawsuit a few years back; because a doctor made one screwup while in a stressful situation, we awarded $3 million to the plaintiffs. And felt dirty while doing it. Even simple caps on awards would be a win, in my book. (But I haven’t really looked into it.)

How bout that Republican jackass, eh? Not only yelling out “You lie!” in the middle of his speech, but yelling out “You lie!” regarding something about which Obama was very clearly not lying. We may have all witnessed the swinging of the pendulum; that seemed to be the exact moment where the jackassery of the truthiness-loving teabaggers was laid bare. One of the two people involved looked like a petulant child at that moment, and it wasn’t the president.

The whole thing made me more hopeful that some good reform will actually come out of this whole mess, public option or not.