Posted from Investors Business Daily
Reform: Millions of Americans finally got to hear the Democrats’ pitch on health care reform, made by their top salesman. But they heard nothing new — just a lot of discredited myths recycled as the truth.
For the record, we support improving our health care system. As is, it has too many rules, too much government spending and too few market forces to keep costs low and quality high.
We spend north of $2 trillion every year on health care — 17% of our GDP, the most of any wealthy nation. If that sounds like a lot, remember this: An estimated 47% of that already is spent by the government. And government’s share will grow even without “reform.”
Look closely at the plans so far to emerge from Congress. What the Democrats have proposed, in essence, is a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of our nation’s economy. When brought up in Congress, this idea has been rejected repeatedly. Yet, somehow, the idea never dies.
That’s why the president’s speech Wednesday night was a big disappointment.
Rather than a breakthrough that would remove government’s stranglehold on a once-healthy market and move us toward true reform, we heard a lot of old bromides and myths — things we just can’t let go uncorrected. Too much is at stake.
So following are 15 of the biggest misconceptions — and there are many more, we assure you — that we found in the speech:
• “The uninsured . . . live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare.”
Actually, of the 46 million people the census estimates don’t have insurance, some 20 million have incomes above average and could afford to buy it, according to a study by former Congressional Budget Office Director June O’Neill.
Of the remaining 26 million uninsured, an estimated 13.7 million are poor. They are eligible for Medicaid — the state health care programs for the poor. But many, too, are illegals — about 8 million.
Though they’re eligible, research from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association suggests as many as 14 million uninsured Americans qualify for public coverage, but don’t enroll. And as many as 6 million are enrolled, but don’t report it to the government, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis.
That leaves about 5 million people with no care.
By the way, according to the Census Bureau, America now has 37 million people in poverty. But Medicaid enrollment covers 55 million people — at a cost of $350 billion a year.
Based on this, no one should be without care. Which leads us to wonder: Is nationalizing our health care system really necessary to take care of people who already have care available to them?
• “Many other Americans . . . are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or expensive to cover.”
This statement betrays a profound ignorance of what insurance is. If you can buy insurance after you’ve gotten sick, it’s not really insurance, is it? And why have insurance at all? It’s an incentive to simply wait until you get sick, then make someone else pay for it.
To see how absurd this is, let’s take the same concept to auto insurance. Why not let people buy insurance after they get in an accident? One reason, of course, is it leads to fiscal and personal recklessness.
• “There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage . . . every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage.”
As noted above, the bulk of the 30-plus million uninsured actually can get coverage — and in many cases, qualify for existing government programs. But how about 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day? A little math shows this is just a scare statistic.
Multiply it out, and it comes to 5.1 million people losing coverage in a year. Sound scary? Consider that, according to the census, 46.3 million Americans don’t currently have insurance — 600,000 more than last year. That means that, along with 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day, another 12,400 Americans are signing up for it — even in the middle of a brutal recession.
Those who lose insurance do so usually because they’ve lost a job. Most are without insurance for a couple of months or so. The best way to boost the number of insured — and one that “costs” nothing — is to cut taxes, ease regulations and slash government spending. Those policies are all proven job creators.
• “We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren’t any healthier for it.”
This is a non sequitur. We spend one and a half times more per person, true. But because our health care here is better. That’s right — better. True, our life expectancy of 78.1 years — which is up sharply from just a decade ago — ranks us 30th in the world in longevity. But look a little closer at the data.
The U.S. homicide rate is two to three times higher than in other industrial nations. And we drive a lot more than others, so our auto fatality rate of 14.24 deaths per 100,000 people is higher than in Germany (6.19), France (7.4) or Canada (9.25). Add to this, we eat far more than other countries on average, contributing to higher levels of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
When all those factors are figured in, according to a recent study by Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa, Americans actually live longer than people in other countries — thanks mainly to our excellent health care.
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