Health Care: Two Quick Thoughts
Most of you already realize this, but the thought is worth repeating relentlessly: if you get your health care coverage through an employer you do not have health care insurance. You have an employee benefit. Insurance is something attaching to you wherever you are and for whomsoever you work. It is personal. If you lose your job and the health care coverage goes with it then you do not have insurance.
Conflating the two situations, insurance and employer provided benefit, is one of the greatest muddles in the current all too muddled discussion about health care.
The American system has two predominant ways to get health care coverage: government programs like Medicare which provides about 45% of all dollars spent on health care; and employer provided benefits, which provides a further 35%. Of these two only Medicare acts like insurance: the benefits relate to you regardless of your employment situation.
The other thought to carry with you as the debate rages is that Medicare, and other government provided health care such as the Veterans program, consistently receive higher customer satisfaction ratings than most, if not all [I haven’t come across any yet], of the privately provided care options. And the difference is significant.
The reason I mention these two quick thoughts is that I met my friend Joe today – I use him as my bellwether for right wing thinking – and he rolled out the standard Republican line of attack about how no one likes Medicare and about how most people have private insurance anyhow so why are we debating getting the government involved.
Lastly some of you may have seen this stupid editorial at Investors Business Daily. I am not the first to pick up on this – Paul Krugman mentioned it, as did Jay Bookman – but for those of you who want to see how absurd some of the opposition to health care reform has become here’s the key quote:
‰ÛÏPeople such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn‰Ûªt have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless,‰Û?
The editorial uses the UK health care system [a.k.a. The National Health Service] as representative of all the evils of a government provided program. And it settles on poor Stephen Hawking who suffers from a horrendously debilitating disease as an example of the kind of person who would not be cared for on the basis of their extreme condition. Hawking being the world’s foremost physicist of the past twenty years the Investors Business Daily wants to highlight the enormous waste of talent that this lack of care would represent.
Except of course that Hawking lives in the UK and gets his care through the National Health Service.
Oops.
I suppose it would be too much to ask that opponents of reform actually have a credible argument. You know, one not littered with falsehoods and scare tactics.
Sigh.
