The following is being submitted as a letter to the editor.
In the September 3rd edition of the Livingston County News, Congressman Chris Lee gave an extensive interview in which he claimed that his opposition to universal healthcare was based on "business experience." Rarely, however, have I seen a less practical and businesslike argument than the one Congressman Lee makes.
He says that "government isn't up to the task" of managing a health insurance plan, but he seems to forget that the government already manages half a dozen such plans: Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration hospitals, the Military Health System, SCHIP (which he should remember, since he voted in favor of it), and we must not forget the government-sponsored healthcare that he and all the other members of Congress get.
Indeed, Medicare is considered one of the most efficiently run healthcare systems in the world. Although the Congressman claims, according to the article, that "Private industry, with its drive to control costs and seek efficiencies, will always do a better job," what he doesn't mention is that they "control costs" is by denying all but the most basic healthcare needs even to the people who actually have insurance. And "efficient" is a word which anyone who's looked at the math would never use about health care in this country. Health insurance companies take 20 cents out of every dollar you pay them in profit, and another 30 cents for "overhead," the cost of the bureaucrats you fight with on the phone to get your medical bills paid. All that means that for every dollar you give to your insurance company, only half goes to actual medical treatment.
The government run Medicare system, on the other hand, takes three cents out of every dollar for overhead, and nothing at all for profit. Three percent of money "wasted" by government versus 50% by the insurance conglomerates. You don't need an MBA to know which is more efficient and the better deal. I'm willing to bet that any local businessman, offered the opportunity to cut healthcare costs for himself and his employees in half, would jump on it because that's just good sense.
Mr. Lee does get some things right: for instance, that the U.S. spends twice as much per capita as other countries spend on health care. And yet he completely ignores the big difference between how the US handles health insurance and the way other countries do. Canada has a public system which guarantees quality healthcare for all it's citizens, while not preventing anyone from having private insurance if they want it. In fact, the US is the only industrialized country that doesn't have universal healthcare--and we're also the only industrialized country where health insurance is so unaffordable, and insurance companies are allowed to treat their customers so badly: overcharging the healthy, rejecting the sick or injured, and dropping you from coverage the minute you start to actually need it. Even those who are happy with their insurance have to ask themselves, if I get sick, is my insurance company really going to pay up?
If Congressman Lee really thinks that government would botch a public health insurance option, here's my advice to him: don't use it. The proposed system is entirely volunteer, and no one who doesn't want to use it ever even needs to know it's there. Of course, Mr. Lee's stance is a bit odd considering that he himself has government funded healthcare as a member of Congress. If he's so confident that private companies can do better, why doesn't he reject his government coverage and buy privately?
Instead of addressing the real problems with the cost of healthcare, or the $4600 per person per year that's being skimmed off the top by the insurance industry, Mr. Lee is nibbling around the edges of the issue, like a man rearranging the living room furniture while the house is burning down. He'd rather talk about tort reform, which experts agree is less than 1% of the cost of healthcare, while giving a free pass to the big insurance conglomerates who broke the system in the first place. If this is Mr. Lee's business sense, no wonder he made his fortune from the sale of his father's company, International Motion Control, to the Chinese. |
