Health Care -- Political Orphan

Tomorrow President Obama begins his big push for some sort of universal health care. Already the pundits are talking 1993 when Bill Clinton lost his bid for health care reform. More people seem to be for it this time, but there’s less money than there was 16 years ago.
The bailouts have left us staggering under debt that no one can even calculate exactly. Trillions. And now Obama is asking for another trillion or so to reform the medical system and pick up the millions who are uninsured.
That has to give more than conservative Republicans pause. The uninsured don’t seem to represent any major voting block, so no one seems to feel threatened as to his re-election prospects no matter what happens to health reform.
That, alone, can drop momentum for a bill to near zero. Certainly nobody’s dropping big bucks in a lobbying campaign for universal health care. What bucks there are are coming from the private health insurers who are terrified of losing premiums under any new system.
That hurts, too. Congress loves to do well by voting for nice causes that have lots of lobbyists behind them. After all, SOMEBODY has to pay for the millions on millions it costs to buy TV ads in order to run a winning campaign. Most members spend their entire terms raising the cash to pay for the last election and to begin the next. Most of it comes from lobbyists.
This leaves Obama pretty much forced to try to get a health reform package through strictly on its merits. Unless someone physically bombs part of the United States or a threat level is so high it puts Congressmen at risk, few bills go through on mere merit!
I don’t envy Obama the job that faces him on health care. He’s going to take flak from the left, the right, the centre, the Republicans, the independents, the Democrats, the liberals, the conservatives—and !!! the American people, even those who are actively scared of losing their jobs and their present health insurance.
This astounds me. It was the scare tactic used in 1993; it’s already on the airwaves now—“Do you want Uncle Sam as your doctor?” “Choice will be dead.”
Millions of Americans immediately recoil in horror at the thought. It’s knee jerk. Uncle Sam is going to take away my doctor (whose name I may not recall, because I’ve only ever seen him for three minutes at a time) and make me go to a low-end, poverty clinic down in the ghetto!
That, more than anything else, will beat health care reform. The commercials that tout this horrific scenario are paid for by the health insurers that are upping your co-pays and your premiums every year. They’ll make money when you say, NO, to government involvement—and you’ll lose.
You’re buying a bill of goods that has neither value nor credibility. Government builds roads—and we drive them coast to coast at 70 and 80 miles an hour, feeling safe enough. Government builds air ports and bridges that some of us use almost daily. It’s government that hires the air traffic controllers who keep hundreds and thousands of aircraft from piling into one another.
Government does a lot of things very well. Take Social Security. I went down to see them right after I turned 65 and they carefully—and accurately, it turns out—explained my options. I chose the one that seemed best for me and, every third of the month for five years, my cheque has arrived at the bank. If there is a holiday, it comes early rather than late.
Medicare pays my medical bills without quibble. I’m fortunate enough to have a Medicare supplement (which people might well go on buying if there were a universal form of Medicare for all Americans) that pays a good bit of what Medicare doesn’t cover.
It seems to me that Medicare is by far the most efficient medical coverage I’ve ever had. I shudder to think of it being placed in the hands of a private insurer. I have to say that, in this case, efficiency lies with the government.
And I’ve yet to meet a physician, hospital or specialist who doesn’t take Medicare. The same would be true for any universal health insurance! Is your physician likely to limit his practice to uninsured illegal immigrants rather than accept you under a reformed medical system?
So how are you going to lose your doctor? Why won’t you have the specialist of your choice? Will he pack up and move to Africa where they can afford to pay a physician in an entire year what he could earn here in a month or less? I think he’ll still be around.
The insurance companies who sponsor those lurid ads on television about having Uncle Sam as your physician are, bluntly, lying in their teeth—and they know it.
But all of that won’t help President Obama after tomorrow. The debt won’t go away—it will be much cheaper to let the uninsured suffer. No one’s going to start dropping major lobbying dollars on behalf of the un-insured or the under-insured. No one will lose an election over what happens to medical reform.
And Americans will go on believing that all their doctors will pack up and leave the country if a universal health care package is ever passed.
It’s pish-tosh. But it’s likely to win the day. No one but the large insurance companies will be the better for it.