By Mano Singham
There is a Quinniapiac poll that shows that 69% want a public option.
A recent New York Times poll also finds that 72% favor "the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans." The poll also found that "most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector."
Meanwhile, as Bernie Horn points out, in another new poll "Eighty-three percent of Americans favor and only 14 percent oppose "creating a new public health insurance plan that anyone can purchase" according to EBRI, a conservative business research organization. This flatly contradicts conservatives' loudest attack against President Obama's plan to provide quality, affordable health care for all."
To combat the charge that this was a biased poll funded by single payer supporters, we should note the groups that fund the EBRI (Employee Benefit Research Institute): "EBRI's biggest donors include: AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, General Dynamics, General Mills, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Northrop Grumman, Schering-Plough, Schwab, T. Rowe Price, UBS Financial, and Wal-Mart. EBRI also receives large contributions from the insurance industry, including: Blue Cross Blue Shield, CIGNA, Hartford, Kaiser Permanente, Massachusetts Mutual, Metropolitan Life, Union Labor Life, and UnitedHealth. And who funded this particular EBRI poll? "AARP, American Express, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Buck Consultants, Chevron, Deere & Company, IBM, Mercer, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Principal Financial Group, Schering-Plough Corp., Shell Oil Company, The Commonwealth Fund, and Towers Perrin."
As an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed in 2003, the majority of Americans support a single-payer, government-sponsored health care system, even when they hear the right-wing's alarmist arguments. David Sirota highlighted some key findings of the poll:
- Question 48 in the poll shows that 79% of Americans say they support "providing health care coverage for all Americans, even if it means raising taxes" over "holding down taxes, even if it means some Americans do not have health care coverage."
- Question 49 shows 62% say they support a universal health care system "run by the government and financed by taxpayers" over the current system.
- Question 50 shows 57% say they would support this program even "if it limited your own choice of doctors" (which doesn't necessarily have to be a side-effect of a single-payer system).
- Similarly, question 51 shows 62% say they would support this program even "if it meant there were waiting lists for some non-emergency treatments" (again, not necessarily a side-effect).
So let's stop talking about "popular opposition" to government involvement in health care. The people who are opposed are the people in the current system who benefit from the sickness of others or have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that involves the government. What they are really scared of is that the public plan will be so popular that everyone will want to join in. Currently estimates of the people who will want to get in can get as high as 119 million, a number suggested by one of the health industry's main lackeys, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).
What the health industry wants is to get their hands on the 50 million or so who are currently uninsured as a new revenue stream. As Robert Parry points out:
The industry's hope is that the government will mandate that those Americans sign up for private insurance and offer subsidies for those who can't afford to pay the premiums.
Fifty million new customers and government largesse to help pay the bills would be a huge windfall for the insurance industry, which otherwise faces a decline in its market because Baby Boomers are reaching the age to qualify for Medicare and because rising unemployment is draining the pool of Americans who have insurance through their employers.
So watch for them to make noises about how they support everyone getting insurance, while at the same time fighting any attempt to change the way the current system works because it has proven so profitable for them.
Since they are aware that the public supports the public option, their strategy is likely to be to make the public option as unattractive as possible.
Losing Proposition
Insurance companies continue to exist by playing the odds, which is done by asking all the right questions when people sign up. If an insurance company fails to set up plans that make a profit then it will go bankrupt, there is no such thing as breaking even in that sort of business. Conversely, government run programs are all a guarenteed loss (of tax dollars), similar to gambling. It's either a huge debt will be run up via government healthcare with guarenteed gambling losses, or the standard of healthcare will significantly be decreased if they decide to ration healthcare to meet a budget, or most likely both. Either way, it should be more expensive to pay for healthcare via the government through taxes than it should be in paying the insurance company, depending on the policy that we've decided on and how healthy we all are. Actually, there are many obese and unhealthy people in this country, and I think they should pay more than the healthy and fit people like it's always been.
Profit in Healthcare
I don't agree. Insurance-run healthcare makes a profit above and beyond the costs of the medical services provided. A single-payer government run system, on the other hand, will make no such profit above these costs.
Consider the following:
Your local police and fire departments are now run by the government, paid for by your tax dollars. If these services were instead turned into private enterprises, they would be more expensive because the providers would have to make a profit—and charge the public accordingly.
Healthcare should be a not-for-profit enterprise, IMHO.
Healthcare Liability
The federal government already can't manage the budget it has, why should it be trusted to balance it's budget with this losing proposition? I like my current healthplan, it's worth every penny and I'm hoping that my insurance company makes a small profit off of it (I try not to pay for more than I'm betting I'll need). If my insurance company doesn't profit then that means I'm doing something that is injurious to myself. Conversely, if the federal healthcare doesn't make a profit then that means it's just making stupid bets, it's essentially wasting money with deficit spending. I'm afraid to see what the result will be, especially if I don't get to decide what service I'm willing to pay for or if the service ends up being subpar and I end up having to pay out of pocket (if that's even allowed under a federal healthcare plan).
Anyhow, look at the disaster that social security is (that system relies on a good economy and a booming population BTW, or else the retirement age needs to be raised or else there's more deficit spending), I can't bring myself to expect any better from something that is far more of a blatant liability than social "security" (haha) is.
Healthcare truth
I am not advocating the proposed Obama healthcare plan, and neither is Mano Singham. We do believe, however, that a single payer system is best—the French model, for instance—which is arguably the most cost effective and beneficial to patients in the world. I have lived in France and seen this system first hand, and it is remarkable.
Healthcare insurance companies are in the business of maximizing profits, not providing the best care for the public. They make their money by *denying care* to as many people as possible; the more claims they deny, the higher their profit becomes.
You said: "If the [potential] federal healthcare doesn't make a profit then that means it's just making stupid bets." This is not correct. As in the French healthcare system, money allocated from taxes pays only for the care of patients, fair payment to doctors, and efficient administrative costs. It is a non-profit system, whose goal is to provide the best possible healthcare, but not profit shareholders (for there are none).
Social Security is actually not a disaster but a solvent system; that is, it does not lose money in the strict sense, but pays for itself as it was meant to do. It is made to *appear* to lose money because of "creative" financial practices. Funds from Social Security taxes are unfortunately not kept separate and distinct from other funds. The government has borrowed and spent the accumulated surplus funds, called the Social Security Trust Fund, while counting the funds as revenue, not debt. In other words, Social Security funds are borrowed and manipulated for other purposes--invested in other programs--some of which lose money and cause the appearance of a Social Security deficit.
Bah!
You get what you pay for, that is how health insurance works. It's just like buying anything else from any other company. No gimmiks and especially no Czars need to be involved. People also don't have to have health insurance either, there shouldn't be any laws requiring it. If people go to the ER and they don't have health insurance then they are forced to pay out of pocket for it via a scheduled repayment contract with the hospital because it's their fault for not having the insurance.
Police and Fire
Are you saying that the public should also pay out-of-pocket for police and fire services?
Medicare today is a single payer healthcare system. Who is the Medicare Czar of whom you speak? Medicare is a simple system, with little or no red tape required on the part of the patient. Participants may even select their own doctors.
Yes, Actually
Fire insurance and crime insurance, absolutely. People should be able to gamble for what sort of service they think they'll need. I don't think my house is going to catch fire unless there's an arsinist, if I lived in the hilly areas with much more wind I might buy a finer fire insurance plan because the probability of my house catching fire goes up significantly more. As far as nature is concerned, we need controlled burns in the forests of our country, I'm willing to pay taxes on such a thing assuming that it's done properly to mitigate the risks of the gigantic fires that come every once in a while and wipe out thousands of acres of our national resources. As far as crime insurance goes, if you live in the ghetto and you'll have more crime, taxes don't necessarily prevent or mitigate that sort of thing anyhow. I think people need to own their own weapons and take the law into their own hands in order to protect themselves and their families when they live in the ghettos, instead of waiting for the cops to arrive conveiniently hours after the crime already went down. If you live in a rich neighborhood the cops are also worthless too, their main purpose it to give out traffic tickets and bust people for marijuana and parking tickets, again they're never around whenever a real crime takes place such as a burglary or when a car gets stolen, forget about it if a car or bike gets stolen even in a rich neighborhood they'll show up late, perhaps days late. I think that companies and banks need to purchase their own crime insurance too, good point.