From a long-time reader at TPM:
Like everyone I have a sob-story to tell about health care. After telling it to countless liberals who oppose the Senate's health-care reform bill, I still haven't heard a good answer from them about why they can't support the Senate bill. They usually stop talking, or try to change the subject.
Maybe Raul Grijalva or Barney Frank or Anthony Weiner or Jerry Nadler have wrestled with this problem and I haven't seen it. Have you seen anything from them about this?
My story: My father is dying of Huntington's disease. Before he dies in 8 to 10 years, he will need anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and drugs that fight dementia and his tremors and convulsions. He'll need multiple brain scans and physical therapy sessions.
Current medical treatments can't save him, but they will give him a few more years before the slow death strips him of his memories, personality and control of his body.
There's a 50 percent chance the same slow motion death awaits me and each of my three siblings. If I ever lose my job I'll become uninsurable, permanently. My sister already lost her insurance.
That means whatever treatment is developed for Huntington's will be unavailable to us. There's simply no way we could afford it. Not only high tech gene therapies or other interventions, but the medications and treatments that exist now that would buy us enough time to see our kids' graduations or weddings, and would give them hope of not suffering their grandfather's fate.
There's a bill that would mean we'd never be rejected for health insurance or have it canceled. Health insurance that could ease our final years, or maybe even save us.
But liberals are refusing to support it....
Read the rest of the "Sob-Story" at the link.
I expect that few people wanted the public option more than I. My choice for a plan within the realm of possibility is a Medicare-for-all-who-want-it health care bill. Those who are happy with their present insurance may keep it. Whoever wants to join Medicare can pay and receive their health insurance through Medicare. It appears this is not to be.
However, the members of the House of Representatives can sign on to the quite-imperfect Senate bill, and thus provide better coverage for a great many people. If the Senate bill is the only way to improve health care coverage for a number of people with pre-existing conditions and those who may be uninsurable because of existing conditions, should they lose their current insurance policy, then I say, "Go for it". What comes to mind is, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
MD's plight illustrates how desperately we need decent health care. Marcy Wheeler makes a response that accepts MD"s story but views the analysis differently.
ReplyDeletePaul,
ReplyDelete1. I don't think MD meant that his list of people to be persuaded was exhaustive. OCICBW.
2. I'm not persuaded by Marcy's argument that we should do nothing now. It's possible that the bill will be fixed down the road. Of course, I realize that it may not. I'd take the chance.
3. Sure. Blame the Roman Catholic bishops. How does blaming them get us any farther down the road to health insurance for more people?
I don't think Marcy is naive enough to think blaming is going to solve anything. She does point out that what Grijalva and Nadler are fighting for would benefit MD's father and that they are not arbitrarily holding things up. Also that Stupak's attempt to make choice less accessible to women is a major sticking point in the bill's passage. From her perspective the bishops make a better target than the progressives because she feels the progressives are trying to make this a better bill for ordinary people and restricting abortion is not an equivalent issue for her (though it clearly is for some).
ReplyDeleteShe posits that in numbers of votes in the House we appear not to have enough to pass it without dealing with several issues and their respective factions, no single one.
You are probably right that MD was not intending to be exhaustive, and we both might be wrong on this.
Marcy also thinks that in order for it to pass it will have to change in one direction or another, so I don't think she is promoting doing nothing.
Marcy is a detail wonk of the highest order. What moved me to point to her article is the discussion of a number of specific issues and how that translates into medical care for real people. She is a cancer survivor herself so it is a visceral matter for her as for so many tens of thousands.
I think I know why progressives should be against this bill: because, essentially, it's got,along with the popular features, the worst ideas from everyone's plans. It's not consistently conservative, it's not consistently progressive, and it has an enormous stash of pork wrapped up in it to nudge the Democratic holdouts into line.
ReplyDeleteThe most important reform for health care would be unhook it from employment. This does not do it. The best way (in my view) would be something along the Canadian line, where the government guarantees a certain minimum level of medical care and access (so that, for instance, whoever needs expensive medicines can get them if they can't afford them on their own, and whoever needs lifesaving treatment will be able to get it), and any higher quality of treatment is up to the individual through insurance, etc.
What the current bills do, however, is simply force everyone to buy insurance from the insurance companies (in some plans,not all), force all business to be the middleman for their employees with the insurance companies, and force the insurance companies to take all comers without regard to actual assessment of risk. I think the result would be insurance companies offering only stripped down plans that would supply minimal coverage and run out as soon the patient actually needs it to kick in.
Paul, Marcy knows more of the details of the plan than I, surely. But, if I were a legislator, knowing only what I know as a humble citizen, I'd vote for the bill. Of course, a legislator should know more than I know. It's not a good bill, but if the worst parts of the bill are that bad, there will be pressure to fix the legislation.
ReplyDeleteKishnevi, I don't quarrel with anything that you say. You and Marcy may be right that passing no bill would be better than passing the Senate version.
From just my anecdotal experience from hearing others talk, the awful Medicare-Part D drug benefit is helping more people that I would have believed. I know that the drug companies are profiting from the bad bill, but from what I hear, a good many folks are satisfied with the results.
I'd prefer to see the House version passed, which won't happen, but I definitely want a bill passed. If the Senate bill is the best we can do under the pathetic, godawful circumstances, then that's what we need to pass. I keep hoping they will pull a rabbit out of some hat and make it better before it passes. And I want to keep fighting for better than that until everyone in this nation has decent healthcare and we're not going bankrupt to have it.
ReplyDeleteThe wars. The wars. If we'd pull out our troops out of the wars, perhaps we would not go bankrupt so quickly from the costs of health care.
ReplyDelete