Robert Reich, that little-bitty fella from the Clinton Administration, has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this morning entitled “Why We Need a Public Health-Care Plan“. Unfortunately, Reich doesn’t mention a single reason about why we need a public health-care plan – instead he rambles on about why we need to raise taxes so there can be a public health care plan. But, Reich is a big government guy what should we expect?
The biggest lie in his piece is this line;
Critics say the public option is really a Trojan horse for a government takeover of all of health insurance. But nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an option. No one has to choose it.
He’s right that no one has to choose the government plan for their family, but no one has a choice to opt out of paying for it, do they? Talk about a Trojan Horse. Obama has used the same line continuously. It’s like the folks who pay for social security benefits they’ll never receive. Just like social security, the health care plan will depend on financing from people who’ll never see a return on their money.
Another joke line from Reich;
The public plan would merely force profit-making private plans to take whatever steps were necessary to become more competitive. Once again, that’s a plus.
Yeah, government is great source of competition. Like the Post Office versus UPS and FedEx. When the Post Office loses money, they impose restrictions on UPS and FedEx so the government can be more competitive with the public sector. How does that benefit the consumer? It doesn’t, in fact it usually hurts the consumer.
As a practical matter, the choice people make between private plans and a public one is likely to function as a check on both. Such competition will encourage private plans to do better — offering more value at less cost. At the same time, it will encourage the public plan to be as flexible as possible.
Anyone who has ever been under military of veterans care can attest as to how “flexible” the government can be. Here’s an example of the efficiency of military health care. I had an appointment on the fifth floor of Walter Reed to get ready for surgery. A week later, I had another appointment on the sixth floor that they called a “pre-op” appointment. The second appointment was for the sole purpose of me taking my paper work from the fifth floor to the sixth floor in the age of computer networks. That’s efficiency, boy.
Here’s the part I don’t get – this administration tried to force veterans with service-connected disabilities to get health insurance to reimburse the government for their care. The President was adamant about it and said he needed the $540 billion that would generate, and that was just for the small portion of veterans that have service-connected disabilities. How in hell does he figure he can afford health care for the whole country?
“How in hell does he figure he can afford health care for the whole country”? Jonn, he doesn’t, he knows we can’t afford health care for the whole country, including the 10-12 million illegals he wants to cover. This is solely about the government taking over that part of the economy, just like they took over 2/3 of the auto industry, or the banking/investment/insurance industries. Once in place, priced at less than private health care, who thinks that business, and local and state governments, will continue to participate in private health care plans? By default, the government will own health care. Once they own it, they can start to really regulate it, like deciding who gets what treatment when, and where.
And when they regulate it, they get to say who gets to work where, and what’s available where and when.
For example, Clinton decided to “help” the VA become more efficient. He ordered that services be centralized based upon population density. Thus, here in Maine, we have one VA hospital for the entire state, while Boston has two VA hospitals. Because of the disparity in population (Maine’s population is about the size of Boston, while it’s area is the size of the rest of New England put together), Maine’s VA hospital had some of it’s services taken away and sent to Boston to be, well, more efficient.
Thus, anyone needing eye surgery, heart surgery, most orthopedic surgery, etc, has to go to Boston.
That’s a 3.5 hour drive from where I live. The VA runs a daily (weekday) shuttle from the VA hospital to Boston’s VA hospitals. It’s free, but you have to get to Togus to meet it. That’s about 45 minutes from where I live, but I can’t drive. So, I have to catch the DAV van at around 6:30 am, the day before, to get to Togus to catch the 7:00am shuttle to Boston. Otherwise, it’s about $26.00 in cab fare to meet it at one of it’s two en route stops.
After you get to the VA Boston hospital, you wait for everyone in your shuttle bus group to get done with their appointments. Sometimes that’s until 5PM. Then you all pile on and ride back to Togus, where you spend the night (if space is available), then wait around all the following day for the DAV shuttle van to take you home.
That’s 3 days spent for an eye appointment at the retinal clinic in Boston, which I have to endure because I detached both retinas. That’s also repeated for your pre-op visit and surgery, etc.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The medical treatment I have received has been first-class all the way. However, what should be a short appointment and day surgery is, each time, a 3-day transportation nightmare. It would be more cost-effective to allow patients to use local services and the VA pay for treatment, then what is currently being done.
Patients with serious surgical needs have no way for family to visit them absent large outlays of money and time.
These sorts of things will be awaiting a government-run system, and people had better be prepared for it. Hospitals will be told what services they can offer, and in what quantities. Procedures and staffs will be centralized based upon population density to become more “efficient” and those hospitals will turn into surgical factories, where people are treated on an assembly-line fashion, if they get treated at all.
I am greatful for the VA, for the great medical support I have gotten. However, for someone with a small child (and being a single parent) it means having to cancel and reschedule, or put off needed medical treatment because I couldn’t get a sitter for three days straight, or because the DAV and VA won’t allow my child to accompany me in their vehicles.
Ah well. The nightmare will be upon everyone soon enough. I would just admonish those who want a government healthcare plan to be very careful about what they wish for.
respects,