By Kelly Schleich
After reading the article "Health Care: my letter to a senator," I feel obligated to correct some of the fear-inducing misinformation propagated by the author. A closer look at her eight points reveals a lack of understanding of both the bill itself and the current health care crisis in America.
First, the bill does not give the government the power to force people to follow a certain diet or go to a certain doctor, and it certainly does not allow for anyone but the patient and their family to make decisions about end of life care. Doctors would be required to discuss issues such as living wills, power of attorney and DNR orders so that if a times comes when the patient is unable to speak for himself, his wishes will still be respected.
As for the second point concerning high projected costs and the number of willfully uninsured, a closer look at the facts is in order. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2005 the number of uninsured Americans was 46.6 million, 15.9 percent of the population. Even more troubling is that 8.3 million of those people were children. The Bureau concluded that the percentage of Americans without insurance rose because employer-sponsored coverage declined, not because those people decided that insurance was a luxury they could live without. The numbers have only grown since then as the economy has continued to decline. In the richest country in the world, it is inconceivable that these hard-working citizens and innocent children should be denied basic medical coverage that they both want and need.
The other uninsured mentioned in the article, illegal immigrants, are simply not included in the reforms and cannot take advantage of them. The Senate Finance Committee's plan says "no illegal immigrants will benefit from the health care tax credits," and the House's bill, H.R. 3200, even has a section entitled "NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS." There is the chance that a small number of people from outside the system could take advantage, but denying coverage to many in order to stop those few seems foolish.
The third point in the article echoes the irrational fears of the first. The government cannot tell a woman how many years she must wait between pregnancies. One of the basic tenets of healthcare is respecting the patient's right to autonomy and self-determination, and to act otherwise would be to violate the nurses' or physician's code of ethics. This bill would not be supported by such a large margin of healthcare professionals if it forced them to go against their ethical obligations. Additionally, in countries like Britain who already have socialized medicine, there is no precedence to suggest this would ever occur.
The author's fourth point is that, since she is pro-life, she does not want her tax dollars to support what she does not agree with, namely abortion. This sounds reasonable, until one considers that nearly everyone's taxes go to support something they do not agree with. For example, many Americans do not support the war in Iraq but continue to pay their taxes knowing that a large portion of their money funds programs that they believe are important such as public education and infrastructure improvements. Living in a multicultural society with a variety of viewpoints virtually guarantees that no one will agree one hundred percent with where their tax money goes and abortion is no different than any other issue in that sense.
In her fifth point, the author contradicts herself by saying that she believes in taxing the wealthy because they have more to give and then saying that taxing them would reduce job creation. Whether or not the wealthy are taxed, the President's Council of Economic Advisors reports that reform will help the economy by not only boosting worker productivity and lifting the burden of providing employee insurance off the shoulders of small companies, but creating jobs from the resulting savings.
The sixth point is equally misleading. States currently make a lot of healthcare decisions, with the result being incredible variations in coverage from one state to the next. The regulations vary so much that people cannot bring their health insurance with them when they move to a new state, and people in some states have much better health care than in other states. The inequality is astounding. Clearly the current "layer cake" structure doesn't taste as good as the author would like us to believe.
The seventh argument, along with making the least amount of sense out of the eight, is frankly insulting to all those working in medicine. Medicine is not trial and error when it comes to the treatment of patients, and while it may not be based on algebra it derives its treatments and protocols from the study of statistics. Studies show what treatments work on what diseases, in which doses and on which people. They help reveal why certain people get certain diseases and can help people avoid illnesses to which they are susceptible. It is true that in some situations doctors and nurses operate on intuition and are forced to make judgment calls, but the foundation of their practice is evidence-based empirical knowledge. So it makes sense to create formulas for payment based on what is known to be safe and effective, and to not pay for ineffective treatments.
As for the final point regarding the fear of a bumbling government destroying our current system with its ineptitude, one only needs to look at all the programs the government runs successfully. The postal system, the military, public education systems, Medicare, all are government-operated programs that, while not necessarily perfect, most would not like to see placed in the hands of the private market.
Information like that given in last weeks article, whether intentionally inaccurate or simply poorly informed, clouds the rational debate over healthcare reform. The gravity of the problem calls for careful research and thoughtful consideration, not snap judgments and the parroting of other's views. When the facts are clear, the nation can come to a consensus on an appropriate course of action.
