It’s been over a year since the start of the healthcare debate, and for all the progress made there is little to yet show for it; however, President Obama released an outline for what he expects from a healthcare overhaul bill and while his direct intervention, however late, is welcome, it is not without problems. The two glaring omissions of this entire process, President Obama’s efforts included, are that this reform process is not healthcare reform, but rather insurance reform, and that there is sill no public option or extension of Medicare.
President Obama’s outlines for a bill include a requirement for all citizens to purchase insurance plans, or receive a penalty – this is, to bastardize a phrase, feeding the hand that bites you. One of the very reasons that the United States is in its current position of poor healthcare is the insurance companies that are more interested in profit than they are fulfilling the sole reason for their existence. Besides argument of reactive vs. preventative care, insurance companies have continued to raise the financial bar for individuals to simply be able to see a doctor, have a broken bone addressed, or even visit a hospital in an emergency. More importantly, in the event that an individual or family can afford to pay the absurd amounts demanded of them, their coverage is denied for a variety of obscure and self-serving reasons.
The entire process has focused almost solely on insurance, but from the substantially wrong perspective: to provide insurance for the whole country, not to remove or, at minimum, fix the insurance system itself. Rather than provide a Medicare-for-all package, public option, or the easy answer that would be socialized medicine, it has been deemed better to force some small, token amount of regulation on the insurance companies and require that their services be purchased. Quite honestly, rewarding such abhorrent behavior with millions of new, coerced customers is not the rebuke of business and ethics practices that the insurance industry deserves, but is instead a twisted validation.
There is surprising growth of Congressional support for the public option, when it has been thought dead for months, that could be accomplished during the process of reconciliation between the House and Senate bills. No matter that a public option, defined as the ability to purchase into a government-run healthcare plan, is not even close to socialized medicine does not seem to phase the screaming masses that can be found both inside and outside of the halls of Congress. One of the typical arguments is that while Americans may go to Canada or Mexico for medicine, the citizens of those countries come to America for surgical procedures, but, like most of these talking points, it is a false and invalid comparison: America has the best doctors not because of a better healthcare system or medical law, neither of which are true, but rather the simple truth that American doctors have substantially higher incomes and public visibility than any other nation in the world.
While a public option would not solve all the needs of true healthcare reform, where the system would be tightly regulated and converted into that of preventative medicine, it would be a substantial start. A public option, essentially no different than paid-for Medicare, would provide the competition to the insurance industry that is sorely needed in order to stop their disturbing behaviors and insane price hikes. Furthermore, the public option, if proven successful, could eventually be a gateway to a true nationalized healthcare system – one of the few talking points that the reform bill’s detractors have gotten correct.
If healthcare reform is to happen, it must happen now, in the immediate present – but healthcare reform without a public option, tighter industry regulation, or any substantial action against the predatory practices of those who latch on to the pockets of all Americans is not reform and should not, in any fashion, be passed into law. For Congress, and ultimately President Obama, to approve such toothless and ineffective legislation is nothing less than political theater that will inevitably produce results only worse than those that currently exist – especially if the process takes another six months under the guise of false bipartisanship, consideration of a public option, or various other carrots to the American people that are truly just billyclubs.
Real healthcare reform must be passed now, not later, in order for both the American people’s faith to be restored in the political process and their health retained before another medicine, procedure, or facet of care is denied to them under false pretenses.
From Kyle Brady…
Kyle can be found on his blog, via email, or on Twitter.
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