Health Insurance Does Not Equal Health Care!
The following message was sent to me by Dr. Lora Chamberlain, whom I met at a recent congressional district town hall meeting.
Let’s get smart about this Health Care bill at this late hour in this process. Can’t you tell that we are being divided and fired up to attack each other by all the talk show hosts, pundits, corporate leaders and politicians. This divide and conquer technique has always worked for them but has never worked for us! Can we all agree on that fact, at least? Great!
So we will have to come out, right now, with some kind of unified mantra about this bill, in the middle of all this chaos, that will help all of us, conservatives and liberals, get more out of this bill and will lessen the destructive aspects of this bill.
My suggestion for this unified mantra is No Individual Mandates!
First, can we agree that in a perfect World, Health Care would be a Human Right and Not a Privilege? Really, we all have that level of compassion in us don’t we? So if we were flush with money in this country, everyone could be cared for, correct? Great!
Second, can we agree that this Health Care bill does not perfectly reflect that ideal? Great! See how we are moving along with this endeavor.
Now, a little about me, I am a populist/ progressive/ single payerite/ health care advocate/ physician but I want everyone to know that some of the arguments on the right actually make sense to me. This Health Care Reform bill is scaring me too! I am a Family Physician and 100% concerned for patients and their families. I do not own any investments in any health care related industries at all and I presently only have catastrophic health insurance because I am not working!
Here is my #1 concern about these Health Care bills: The Individual Mandates!
Forcing people to buy Health Insurance is not going to drive prices down. It has failed miserably in Mass. causing premiums to rise 25% in the first 2 years after enactment of their mandated insurance program in 2006. This program has driven Mass. to the brink of economic ruin. Now the safety net hospitals in Mass. which are so important to so many patients have been drained of their funding. These were the hospitals and clinics that were actually providing real health care to the lower income citizens and now the poor are left with their insurance policies and much less actual health care. Go to www.pnhp.org and see for yourself if you do not believe me. Health Insurance does not equal Health Care! Can we agree on that too? Great!
Many on the conservative side are complaining that the health care bill allows the IRS to get in their faces demanding proof of their insurance policies and the large, costly Fed. bureacracy that will be created around enforcing this individual mandate–I agree with them. If we just drop the individual mandates from this bill and allow this insurance reform program to stand on it’s own, (if it is going to be affordable then let it be actually affordable), we could then see if competition comes back into the insurance market. We can monitor whether the prices are affordable by how many people voluntarily opt into buying the insurance. People want access to health care, if it is affordable, give all Americans at least that much credit.
The Public Option does not even start until 2013 in these bills. If enough people can actually afford good insurance we can always go back and reevaluate the rest of this bill. This can be viewed as a multi step reform package. If the insurance companies do not lower prices enough, improve benefits and become ethical in their business practices, then we will have the back up of the Public Option coming down the road. We can then expand the Public Option into a viable Single Payer system if the companies have failed completely. Many more Americans will be willing to come on board the Single Payer train at that time, having the benefit of 4 years of spotlight on this issue. I personally do not believe that the insurance companies will comply to all the regulations, I believe they will fight it, corporations never give up profits willingly. It always takes a crisis to cause real change in bureaucracies like insurance companies, but we can wait and see!
If we drop the individual mandates then we won’t run the risk of a Mega-Federal Big Brother enforcement agency, which never ends up good for the people of this country and we can keep this expansion of the IRS out of our life. Lord knows I hate the IRS and it’s despotic control too!
So can we all agree, at the very least, to demand the dropping of the Individual Mandates? Great! Now everyone is free to argue for everything else that they want in or out of this bill, but at least if we are all saying No Individual Mandates we might not end up with a bill that does more harm than good!
A Doctor’s first goal is always, “Do No Harm”. Please help me with this effort, to do no harm to America in this Health Care bill, No Individual Mandates!
Sincerely,
Dr. Lora Chamberlain,
Chicago
