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.
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…
— 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→
Shortly after last night’s speech, I received the following amusingly over-the-top text from an unknown number.
Whoa, nelly. Turns out it was from a former coworker… I have no idea how he had my number in the first place, but he apparently thought strongly enough that Obama was the anti-Christ to share it with his entire address book.
(Whichever phones allow you to text everyone in your address book simultaneously should be burned in a fiery pit. Just saying.)
Admittedly, though, that was the one part of Obama’s speech last night where I could see pitchforks being raised and torches being lit in some quarters – “Hell, no, the guv’mint ain’t gonna require me to be insured!”
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.
I’ve occupied my time between blog posts reading, watching, and listening to some of the literally dozens of links I’ve collected since I decided to have my little health-care day.
One is Al Franken giving a stellar political performance as he explains the health-care proposals to a skeptical group, including many of the proposed improvements on which we all should certainly agree:
I’ll be the first to admit that both Bill and Al wear their liberalness on their sleeves, but I think both videos are reasonable, adult discussions. IF you have an hour to watch them both, that is.
Let’s talk about that money thing. Money can be tricky. Everybody went justifiably nuts when the Treasury department suddenly decided to lend $700 billion to banks that had more or less dug their own hole. Now it’s a year later, and lo and behold, we’re actually turning a profit on the whole endeavor. Nutty.
Health care is much more confusing. When we talk about its spiraling costs, we’re usually talking all sorts of transactions: patient out-of-pocket costs, government spending, costs for medicine, doctor salaries and insurance, etc. etc. Plus, some “expenses” are actually “missed revenue” (like the tax subsidies the government provides to cover private insurance). Confoosing.
5. Universal health care ultimately would transform legislators into quasi health care practitioners.
Chuck’s point here is brief enough to quote entirely:
With government-sanctioned universal health care, legislators would become quasi medical practitioners because they would lead and guide the government-controlled medical boards, personnel and policies that would oversee the program. That would include abortive and end-of-life counsel and services. Federal politicians would rely upon relatively few chief physicians (appointed mostly by them), who in turn would oversee and implement the medical policies and procedures that they felt were best for the country.
One of the oddest leads I got when asking for health-care data from people was via my high-school buddy (and staunch conservative) Christie, who pointed me to a series of articles by none other than Mr. Chuck Norris. Chuck, if you didn’t know, is something of a political celebrity in right-wing circles. In between punching bad guys, he pitches for presidential candidates:
Not long ago, my Congressman emailed out a poll wherein he asked his constituents what they thought of the Democratic health-care plan. Annoyed that my Congressperson was reducing my thoughts on such a complex topic to a “yes” or “no” radio button, I instead wrote him back, saying in brief that I felt our health-care system desperately needed SOME kind of reform.
A week later I got a thorough response from Congressman Carter (or his form-letter-writing staffer, either way) thanking me for my contribution and outlining why he was against “Obamacare.” He led off with a striking couple of sentences:
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.
Bam! My notions that health care is automatically and entirely better in the rest of the industrialized world came crashing down. Those are some powerful statistics there; has the eeeeevil US health-care system really got cancer whipped like that? Continue reading Health care pt. 1: Cancer survival rates→
All this health-care talk is giving me a headache. A big one. Intelligent people whose opinions I respect are contradicting each other, sometimes angrily, over the ups and downs of reforming the health-care system (or not reforming it). And that’s not to mention the screaming and screeching going on at health-care town halls. I have a deep and justified fear that insane rumors and irrational emotion are creating the direction for actual legislation affecting 300 million people.
I feel the need for some health-care clipart.
To make things worse, my whole life I’ve been a hopeless moderate, and a very poor debater. I’m often stopped in my tracks when someone makes what appears to be a good point, only to come up with a great counterexample days later. It’s annoying. Thus, my ability to contribute meaningfully to the whole discussion is kinda rusty.
Well, I’m not the most politically active person in the world, but I’m taking a stand here. I’ve been collecting a LOT of articles from various points of view. I’ve literally requested a day off work for this. I’m going to learn everything I possibly can about the health-care debate in the attempt to form a proper opinion.
Currently, I’m in favor of universal health care in a general sense. But I’m ready and willing to change my mind and be convinced otherwise.
Here’s my rules while researching:
— I’m not liberal or conservative; I’m factual. If something isn’t backed up by sound facts, it’s of very limited use to me.
— The plural of “anecdote” is not “data.” Just because your family member was saved by universal health care, or your friend flew from Canada to the States for treatment, doesn’t mean that’s true for everyone.
— I will be active in seeking out opinions that go against mine. I’ve already visited that wingnut Sean Hannity’s website to see what he thinks about improving our health-care system. I’ll be visiting again.
— And I will check and double-check EVERYTHING.
If nobody reads this, that’s fine – until a few minutes ago I planned on this being a personal, private project. But if anyone has points of view to contribute, that’s excellent. Especially those who disagree with me. I wanna hear the most lucid, intelligent arguments I possibly can, and then find out if they’re right.
Health-care day is this coming Wednesday, September 9th. I look forward to learning a lot. I’ll document as much as I can in this space.
Sorry, I should add a joke here to improve readability. How do you keep an Aggie in suspense?
