Republican Talking Points on Health Care

In my series of posts on this blog, I have dealt with the crucial need for reform of our health care system, and have decried the inexcusable outright lies and libels deployed against the reform attempts.

While Republicans, their allies, and cohorts have brought all their energy into the attempt to block all meaningful change, they have on occasion pretended that they do want reform, but an examination of their “positive” proposals shows them to be sham.

Thus Senator McCain in addressing his Town Hall Meetings always begins with an attack on the Public Option, which as most of us know is a government sponsored insurance plan, like so many other government insurance plans such as Medicare, which are run much more efficiently than private insurance plans, but which unlike Medicare, which is a single payer plan, would be but one among many plans, and would compete on an equal footing with private plans. But McCain does not discuss the merits or demerits of the public option, he hold forth with “the Public option is the “government option” using a sound in his voice clearly intended to make it sound sinister. That is not discussion – that is not debate – that is in keeping with the attack line of innuendo and distortion.

But then McCain goes on to talk about “his plan” and I think it is necessary to examine what it is that purports to be “his plan.”

He starts by having a large poster on an easel that supposedly summarizes it as follows:

1.) Focus on what we can afford-don’t burden the future. 2.) Insurance Reform to improve access. 3.) Reform Medical Malpractice 4.) Tax Reforms/incentives to purchase insurance ($5,000 advanced, refundable tax credit) 5.) Increase freedom and real competition to choose the best plan in any state. 6.) Risk pools for those with difficult conditions. 7.) Address long term cost reductions 8.) Incentives for Wellness and fitness.

1.) I have listened again and again to McCain perorations and I have never heard him set forth what he thinks we can afford. What McCain forgets to tell us is that the one thing we cannot afford is the status quo.

2.) Insurance Reform – Again it is hard to fathom what this means to McCain. He apparently does not want to force insurance companies to stop discriminating against those with pre-conditions, or against women, or to have lifetime limits, or to drop people when they are become sick. It is only clear what he does not want. What he is for is a mystery.

3.) Reform Medical Malpractice. This is the only area where he is clear but he does not want to focus on preventing malpractice, which is rife in our medical system. Nor does he want to set up procedures to more effectively weed out non-meritorious claims. What he wants is to put limits on how much injured people can recover so that only those who have large incomes could recover significant amounts. What he want is to limit recoveries to economic damages, i.e. if someone who earned millions was injured and could not work for a year they could recover millions, but someone who earned $30,000 a year could recover only $30,000. He would disallow all non-economic damages. Thus if medical malpractice caused an unemployed person to lose his eyesight, or lose a leg, or become paralyzed, they could recover zilch. That is what is meant by Medical mal-practice reform.

4.) As for incentives to purchase insurance it is hard to understand how this would cover the uninsured. It would give a $2,500 tax credit to every person in the US ($5,000 per family) toward buying health insurance. The rich, who don’t need it, would get it. The poor, and indeed the middle class who still could not afford insurance with the $2,500 subsidy toward a $5,000 or $6,000 premium would get nothing and would continue without insurance. How this would move toward universal coverage is hard it envision but it would be another windfall for those who don’t need it.

5.) Increase freedom and real competition to choose the best plan in any state.” What does that mean. Well during the campaign he expressed it this way: “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products, less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.” McCain would actually bring the banking debacle to our health insurance system. Instead of regulating them – he would free them from regulation. He would make a bad situation worse. Has he learned nothing at all? But there is a reason why insurance companies can’t operate across state lines and it is explained in a post found here. It prevents a race to the bottom. It does not create better choice.

6.) And how would he deal with people who are sick and who now can’t get or can’t afford insurance. He would create “Risk pools.” In other words take all the ones who need health care and put them all in the same insurance pool where the cost of their insurance, rather than being spread over a diverse risk population, would contain only those with existing health problems. Can anybody imagination what the cost of such insurance would be. Only the very wealthy could afford it. People like McCain. This is reform?

7.) Address long term cost reductions. How would he do that? He opposes all attempts to rationalize health care so that only effective treatment would be reimbursed.

8.) And finally incentives for Wellness and fitness. How would he do this? Again he opposes all attempts to get people to lead healthier lives, such as a tax on high calorie beverages, which would go along way to reduce obesity and improve health outcomes,

But there is no substance to anything on the positive side of McCain or the other naysayers. All they really have in their bag of tricks is “NO” and lies intended to sow fear.

 Why does the viciousness and deception never stop?