Family Security Matters » Publications » Excusive: Why ObamaCare Will Cost American Lives

Family Security Matters » Publications » Excusive: Why ObamaCare Will Cost American Lives

It is amazing. The administration piles lie on top of lie when trying to sell to Americans a nationalized, single payer health care program, and no one in our political establishment challenges them. Where are our spokesmen? At the very least, our opposition political “leaders” should be saying the following.



The Obama administration claims that the health care plan they will propose is not a single payer plan because Americans will not have to give up their existing insurance plans
if they are happy with them. The truth, however, is that Obama and most of the advocates are on the record saying a plan like theirs is the first step toward creating a single payer system. In fact, if a single payer system gets adopted by this Congress, Americans will not be able keep their current insurance plans – or any other private plan - because most, if not all, private insurers will be bankrupt. The government insurance "option," which the advocates argue will "create competition," will undoubtedly do the reverse: put the current 13,000 health insurance companies out of business. And who needs to “create competition” in the health care industry? With that many companies already competing in the marketplace, we certainly don't need the government to intervene.

The Obama administration and other single-payer-plan-socialists also say nationalized health care is necessary because of the "large population” of uninsured. This “large population” is a fiction I have unmasked in my research. The most commonly-used number of uninsured is 46 million. Ten million are illegal aliens (I for one would rather not insure them so as to weaken the magnet drawing them here illegally); an additional 10 million uninsured earn over $75,000 per year – they can afford it but choose not to buy it; and another 10 million already qualify for government-provided health care but are too dysfunctional simply to sign up for it. Consequently, a more realistic number of uninsured Americans is 16 million.

Whether at 16 or 46 million uninsured, the Left says skyrocketing costs make nationalized health care necessary. What that blanket statement misses, however, is that unlike electricity, where the product we get is the same every year, the health care product we get each year is different and better from the year before. Therefore, if there is any health care cost increase that is worth it to pay, it is that of improved medicine, treatment and technologies. Americans agree: in a recent poll reported in Health Affairs, fully eight in ten (82 percent) describe themselves as satisfied with the quality of the health care they receive. This is probably why – according to a March 2009 poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, National Public Radio, and Harvard University - the majority of Americans trust their doctors over government bureaucrats to dispense health care. That is, the medical community understands the health care business a whole lot better than bureaucrats. Further, Americans - if not this Administration – know that the best way to lower the cost of new technologies is to let them compete in the marketplace where other contenders eventually bring the costs down as a natural outcome of market forces.

But still, Americans are not pleased with health care costs, and this problem needs honest investigation, not political grandstanding. Perhaps the most significant reason for rapidly increasing health care costs is government involvement through Medicare and Medicaid. Included in your health care bill is a non-itemized cost of about 20 percent which you pay to make up for the shortage in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to doctors and hospitals. These programs pay about 80 percent of what it costs the provider to deliver the services. You are picking up the other 20 percent in your insurance premium. If the "government insurance option" passes, they will shift more and more costs onto the private insurers until the necessary premium increases will make them noncompetitive. Their businesses would be forced (as they are to a lesser degree now) to pay for their "competition's" expenses (the government's), and they will go out of business. As always, the government is the problem, not the solution.

Another reason for runaway cost increases is the Democrats’/socialists’ support of trial lawyers. The Left is now claiming (they are probably correct) that one third of all medical tests and studies conducted are unnecessary. Of course this is almost entirely because trial lawyers have parasitically and relentlessly attacked doctors and hospitals, oftentimes without merit. Consequently, doctors and hospitals take many tests they know are unnecessary simply to inoculate themselves against lawsuits. But the Democrats point to the waste without noting this reason, and thus falsely claim that bureaucratic inefficiency is the reason.

Their next phony claim is that they can eliminate it. It can be eliminated, but the Democrats cannot be counted on to do so. There is an unholy Troika of Democrats; the press, which is perfectly happy to support the Democrats’ lies; and those stalwarts of American values, the trial lawyers who are savaging hospitals and doctors without regard to anything but the money they will earn. They will continue to lie and dissemble in support of one another's criminal malfeasance to achieve a political and personal monetary triumph…certainly not to improve health care in our country.

Sen. Chris "friend of Angelo" Dodd (D-CT) recently appeared on Fox and regurgitated these lies, but he took it a step further and said we could save 30 percent of health care costs by correcting the waste in testing. But tests and studies are only a small percentage of overall costs. If the Democrats really did eliminate all the waste (which is nonsense on its face), they couldn't possibly save nearly a third of total costs. It would be closer to one or two percent.

If a fair evaluation of any government-run system were done, the Obama administration’s proposal would be a non-starter. Health care rationing is a part of every current government-run system. Don't get cancer in Canada, because none of the costly newly-developed drugs is available there (resulting in a significantly shorter life expectancy). And don't get old in Great Britain or you will be refused many services, including life-saving dialysis (over a certain age), or a second cataract procedure which is considered elective surgery, and a lot, lot more. For a young woman to get a birth control pill prescription in Canada she must wait about four months. And don't get sick in Canada in the month of December. The provinces always run out of money by the end of the year so, not surprisingly, that is when the doctors choose to vacation. If you need an MRI or a CT scan, in the US you can usually get one within 24 hours, and from a choice of facilities. In Canada, the same tests will cause you to wait three months or more while your cancer continues to grow, or your blood clot explodes, killing you. The U.S. has 10 times more major medical equipment per capita as Canada, and I'm sure every other government-run program. I could go on, but this idea is so idiotic, it stuns the imagination that it even is being considered.

Think of this. What does the government do better than the private sector? Is the post office more efficient than UPS or Federal Express? How about the government’s administration of welfare where the distribution of welfare money costs 3 dollars for every one dollar that gets to a recipient? Is there any private company that would exist with that kind of overhead? Throughout history everything every government in the world has done has cost vastly more than a similar job in the private sector. If nationalized health care gets passed by this Administration, health care will suffer the same fate. It will just be more painful because it deals with life (yours) and death (yours too).

Don't let the liberals point to the boils and warts in the system and then claim they can do better. Certainly our system can be improved, but it is still by far the best health care system in the world. If we want to improve it we might start by having the government pay its fair share. We might get rid of the trial lawyers and replace them with a workman's comp-like system. And we might stop states from mandating services which prevent the marketplace from designing policies that best serve the customer at the lowest price.