Yesterday evening, President Obama was faced with a daunting task.
To the chagrin of many Americans who tuned in for President Obama's remarks to Congress last night, the speech was long on rhetoric and purely partisan accusations and short on sound solutions for reform.
Beyond that, the president's speech was regrettably replete with contradictions that will only cause further confusion among the public.
There are certain parts of the President Obama's speech that deserve a response. Below are excerpts from his speech in bold with my responses.
President Obama: We are the only democracy -- the only advanced democracy on Earth -- the only wealthy nation -- that allows such hardship for millions of its people. There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage. In just a two-year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point. And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone.
A few points here.
First, notice how for the last few months this Administration has repeatedly used the “47 million” uninsured figure. That number suddenly disappeared in the president’s address last night. Surely with “14,000 Americans” losing their coverage every day, it’s a mathematical impossibility for 17 million Americans supposedly uninsured prior to the president’s remarks before Congress to now have insurance coverage.
Furthermore, if the president’s figure is correct regarding the number of Americans losing their coverage every day, would it not make more sense for his Administration and Congress to focus all their efforts primarily on getting the economy back on track so that Americans with health insurance through their employer don’t lose their jobs?
Secondly, for President Obama to claim that the United States is the only advanced nation in the world that allows “such hardship” for millions of Americans is simply stunning.
The majority Americans are satisfied with their current health coverage. We lead the world in cancer treatment and medical innovation. Any country can pass a law mandating “universal coverage.” While countries like Canada, Britain, and Japan have universal healthcare in theory, in practice it’s a different story.
President Obama made it sound as if the government mandating universal healthcare tomorrow would solve all our problems and impose no sacrifices on us. He did not once mention waiting lists, doctor shortages, or the cost to taxpayers. We need look no further than Massachusetts – the state with the most physicians in the country – for proof of what universal healthcare would look like on a national scale. Waiting times and costs alike have skyrocketed in Massachusetts since that state implemented its universal health program. What good is “universal coverage” for purposes of preventative care if said coverage means longer waiting lines to see a physician?
President Obama: But the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem for the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you'll lose your health insurance too. More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care. It happens every day.
The president’s criticisms of the system become more inconsistent with each passing day. He has repeatedly maintained that we spend far too much on healthcare in this country. But last night he complained about insurance companies not financing the “full cost of care.” He failed to expand on this point.
Many of us on the free-market side of this issue have long advocated for health insurance portability. This can be achieved in a number of ways. Sadly, the president did not mention anything last night about treating individuals and employers equally in terms of tax treatment and health insurance.
President Obama: One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it. Another woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne. By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer had more than doubled in size. That is heart-breaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated that way in the United States of America.
The president didn’t name names when he invoked these stories last night. But if true these stories are heartbreaking and these persons and their families would have legal recourse.
But it bears mentioning once more that most Americans are currently satisfied with their coverage. Is there room for improvement? Of course.
The government finances nearly 50% if health care expenditures in this country and the president believes more government is the solution? He cites these two stories with a nary a mention about the pitfalls of moving to a system with even greater government control of the health care sector.
President Obama may have missed the 2005 landmark Canadian Supreme Court ruling on government-run healthcare.
The Wall Street Journal reported at the time:
Call it the hip that changed health-care history. When George Zeliotis of Quebec was told in 1997 that he would have to wait a year for a replacement for his painful, arthritic hip, he did what every Canadian who's been put on a waiting list does: He got mad. He got even madder when he learned it was against the law to pay for a replacement privately. But instead of heading south to a hospital in Boston or Cleveland, as many Canadians already do, he teamed up to file a lawsuit with Jacques Chaoulli, a Montreal doctor. The duo lost in two provincial courts before their win last week.
The court's decision strikes down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance and is bound to upend similar laws in other provinces. Canada is the only nation other than Cuba and North Korea that bans private health insurance, according to Sally Pipes, head of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and author of a recent book on Canada's health-care system.
Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin went on to declare, “Access to a waiting list is not access to health care.”
Is Canada one of the advanced democracies to which President Obama was referring in his speech? Again – having to wait in pain for one year for a hip replacement is neither compassionate nor moral.
President Obama: Then there's the problem of rising cost. We spend one and a half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it. This is one of the reasons that insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages. It's why so many employers -- especially small businesses -- are forcing their employees to pay more for insurance, or are dropping their coverage entirely. It's why so many aspiring entrepreneurs cannot afford to open a business in the first place, and why American businesses that compete internationally -- like our automakers -- are at a huge disadvantage. And it's why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it -- about $1,000 per year that pays for somebody else's emergency room and charitable care.
How does the president arrive at the conclusion that we spend more than people in other countries “but we aren’t any healthier for it”? Could it be that this assertion is based on one statistic alone – life expectancy? Forget that we are a profoundly more diverse nation than most others and that life expectancy is determined by a whole host of factors.
The president misrepresents the burden imposed on our businesses by providing employees with health insurance. As Shikha Dalmia points out, “whatever else universal coverage might bring, there is no evidence that it will bring economic nirvana. If anything, contrary to what the president suggests, the correlation runs the other way for countries with universal coverage such as Canada, England, France, Germany, and Japan. On nearly every economic front, their performance has been worse than America's—even, surprisingly, in controlling health care costs.”
If the president and Congressional democrats were to have their way, the financial burden would shift from employers to taxpayers and the result would undoubtedly be lower quality medical treatment and more government control of health decisions.
President Obama claimed that we are all paying about a $1,000 per year for someone else’s emergency room care. Okay, but he did not explain how much we would be paying if his plans were to be enacted.
Does anybody honestly believe that a new public plan will not be heavily subsidized by taxpayers?
President Obama: Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined.
So the way to mitigate pressure on government health care spending is to create yet another government plan modeled after Medicare?
Is that right?
President Obama: Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan. First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.
Notwithstanding President Obama’s powers of clairvoyance, this claim is not exactly true.
President Obama: And that's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance -- just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise -- likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers. There will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still can't afford coverage, and 95 percent of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements. But we can't have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility to themselves or their employees.
Wait. Did the president not say that American businesses are at unfair advantage in terms of international competition because of health care costs? So his plan is to improve their advantage by imposing an even larger financial burden on them?
What am I missing here?
Jim Pinkerton sums up President Obama’s speech nicely writing, “And in the meantime, completely absent from the speech were the words ‘cure’ and ‘research.’ Obama mentioned medicine just twice, and in a routine fashion. Like the Clintons before him, Obama is more focused on the redistribution of health, not the creation of health.”
There are a number of other points President Obama made last night that warrant a response and I will address those points in the next few blogs.
