| Sen. Snowe, you recently took a walk in Bangor, and talked with some people about health care. First, a sincere thank you for making yourself available. It means a lot to us.
I found myself intrigued by the Bangor Daily News coverage of the event. Here is an excerpt of a conversation with Dr. Kathryn Bourgoin:
"The senator, as cool as anyone could be on a 90-degree day, agreed that Medicare has worked well for the nation's seniors. "But, I'm not as confident that government can run an entire system," Snowe said." - Snowe talks health care on Bangor walk; The Bangor Daily News, August 20, 2009, By Eric Russell.
Interesting perspective, to say the least, since you seem to have the utmost confidence that, with a little reform, the private sector can run an entire system just fine. How is that even possible? It defies all logic.
Please.... please... PLEASE, take off your ideological blinders that tell you the "free market" works best in any situation, and look at the evidence.
Medicare has a long, successful track record, as you have admitted, an overhead of 4%, and the person running it makes $150,000 a year.
The private sector insurance companies, on the other hand, have an average of 30% overhead, and an average CEO salary in excess of $10,000,0001. These companies preside over the most expensive system in the world, we pay 50% more for our health care than the next closest industrialized country, and we pay that premium for a quality of service that ranks 37th in the world, and dead last among the top 19 industrialized nations2.
Great Britain has government run health care, and spends just 6% of it's GDP on health care. The United States spends 17% of the GDP of the largest economy on the planet, yet the WHO ranks Great Britain's system 18th in the world compared to 37th for United States2.
Afraid of rationing? Try getting into an emergency room in any U.S. city, on any given evening. In his book, Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis - and the People Who Pay the Price, Jonathan Cohn tells the story of a 55 year old Boston woman with heart disease. One evening at 4:35pm, following her collapse and a 911 call, the responding ambulance was turned away, due to over-crowding, from the emergency room of the closest hospital [within 5 minutes] equipped to deal with her condition. She was re-routed to another nearby hospital whose trauma team did not have the means to perform the life saving procedure she required. By 7:03pm that evening, she had died.
Why the crowding, and hence the rationing? Because the under-insured and uninsured have no choice but to go to emergency rooms for any treatment they need. You see, to have a regular primary care physician and office visits, they pretty much insist on having insurance and/or immediate payment. While emergency rooms cannot, by law, refuse emergency treatment. So these people literally have to wait until a condition becomes an emergency!
Why is this true? Put simply, so H. Edward Hanway (Cigna) can retire with a $73 million golden parachute1, and Ronald Williams (Aetna) can make $18.6 million a year1. What do we get for paying this exorbitant compensation? They develop better and better ways to raise premiums, deny claims, exclude the sick from coverage, and purge customers who actually, you know, use the insurance to get health care (the audacity!). Also known as making a profit in a free market, but yeah, Senator, big government is the problem.
Senator, what exactly, considering the above, makes you so confident in the private insurers? Your reform? Your oft-touted SHOP Act doesn't even ban discriminatory practices such as pre-existing conditions. Fostering competition? Your bill fails there too, Senator, a co-op for shopping? No matter how many co-ops you form, there are still only 8 major players, and they don't need your co-op as badly as you need them... According the economics I studied, that still leaves them in the driver's seat on pricing.
What makes me so sure? Because some states, like Maine, already have consumer protection laws that these companies don't want to deal with... so they just don't offer insurance here. What's your plan on that?
Seriously, what is your plan? Since the Finance Committee is keeping the details of their plan under wraps (somewhat understandably, I admit) during negotiations, we really don't know anything but the broad strokes. According to the Washington Post, It will cover an estimated 94% of Americans -- eventually. Here's an interesting quote from article: "The Finance Committee coalition is seeking compromise on some of the most complex issues facing Congress [such as]... ...who and how many should be allowed to remain uninsured."
Yet, even as you sit your taxpayer sponsored; all visits, screenings, and procedures 100% covered; socialized health insured "persons" around your conference table deciding whom to exclude, Some of you people have the nerve, the unmitigated gall, to call the provisions of H.R. 3200, Sec. 1233 monstrous, evil, and/or dangerous? You have the temerity to lie about bureaucrats making life-critical decisions they have no business making? It's becoming very easy to see where you get your material.
Congress needs to come to grip a certain fact: Only a non-profit, low overhead organization is going to fix this. So, tell us Senator, what's wrong with Medicare for everyone again?
By the way, I have an idea. How about we leave members of congress, and all the congressional support staff serving congress as a whole, uninsured? The co-ops are your idea, how about you buy your insurance there?
1. Source: AFL-CIO, 2009 Executive Pay Watch
2. Source: World Health Organization, World Health Report
Note: fortunately, it's a well established fact that the terms "persons" and "asses" are interchangeable when discussing members of congress. |
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