Left In Lowell

Finally! Some Health Care Sense from the Senate

4 Responses to “Finally! Some Health Care Sense from the Senate”

1. John Maguire Says:
   July 28th, 2009 at 7:59 pm

   I comment here because Mr. Richard Howe suggested a conservative-libertarian ought to comment on these pages.

   This pdf is a diagram of the new nationalized health system that is coming. If someone has a better diagram, please post it. http://docs.house.gov/gopleader/House-Democrats-Health-Plan.pdf

   I am very worried about the current frantic rush to a “reform” that is so complicated it’s impossible to understand. What is the rush? Are the Democrats afraid we will see the details of the bill, and, seeing them, scream bloody murder?

   Here are two reasons why I am worried, from my recent personal knowledge.

   I have two relatives in Canada, both in their late 50s. Both have had serious health problems, and both are horrified that we are going in the Canadian direction. My sister Rachel, originally from Albany NY and now in Montreal, said to me about two weeks ago when I visited her, “You DON’T want to get sick here!” She had had thyroid surgery, and after some difficulty come through it okay. But she was very worried that if things went wrong, really first-class help would not be available in time and that she would lose her voice permanently. (She’s a lively and lovely talker: passionate: we all love to hear her talk. She feared she would end up a mute.)

   My son’s father-in-law, Henry Tidby of St. John, contracted an infection during a vacation trip to Mexico about two years ago. He came back, and things got worse and worse. After some number of months of treatment by his doctors and hospitals in St John, he had some weird kind of painful pimple in the middle of his chest, and he was not getting better. His doctors had some ideas about what might be wrong, but they didn’t really seem to know, and the treatments and drugs they came up with did not work. The infection and the pain got worse. Mr. Tidby is no hamburger flipper–he’s upper class, on the board of a private school, high level CPA, the whole thing. He has access to the best Canadian care–and it was not working. He was in so much pain for so long, he was starting to despair of ever getting better. Finally a friend of his said, “I’m on the board of the Lahey Clinic–just drive down there–they practice medicine at a different level down there–don’t wait, go.” So Mr. Tidby lay in severe pain in the back of his car while his wife drove seven or eight hours down to Burlington. He arrived on a Monday–they did lab tests and exploratory surgery on Tuesday–then went back in and did more surgery on Wednesday. The docs in two days had figured out exactly what was wrong: exactly the kind of strange bug he’d contracted, exactly how it had mutated, exactly where it had moved and lodged in his chest tissues, and exactly how to excise the infected tissues and what anti-biotics were needed. When I saw him in his hospital room on Thursday he was worn out, but there was a happy look in his eyes. He’d been saved. He was on the mend. He was going to be okay.

   “I didn’t think hospitals like this existed,” he said. “The lab results came back in almost instantly where back home you wait a week or two to get lab results. When I watched hospitals like this on TV in Canada, I thought they were fictional. I had no idea hospitals like Lahey really existed.”

   Mr. Henry Tidby had been trying to get used to an invalid’s life of pain when his friend said, “Go directly to Lahey–don’t delay any longer.” And now he’s well.

   It’s the free-market system that has given us hospitals like Lahey–that’s my assertion. All those doctors, surgeons and nurses are using their best brains to investigate and treat illness: there is no bureaucrat to say “Sorry, doc, that treatment has not been federally approved–so you can’t try it.” But soon there will be.

   After ten years or so under this level-everything-federal-system, Lahey’s and Mass General’s current brilliance will be diminished. After 20 years, today’s level of care will be only a memory. We Americans will be like Canada, imprisoned in run-of-the-mill care. But unlike today’s Canadians, future Americans will have no option of driving or flying some place for world-class care. If you are in Henry Tidby’s situation, your job will be to get used to your pain and being an invalid.

2. Lynne Says:
   July 28th, 2009 at 9:31 pm

   OMG you are kidding right? Really?

   First, also no one but me or other moderators will likely even see this comment. The date on this post is early July. So this is really kinda moot if you want to be commenting here. Also, we have plenty of libertarians, Republicans, and even some pretty far right conservatives posting here, so I don’t know what you mean by “Dick Howe told me to post here.”

   Second. The PDF you linked to is so totally crap. It’s Republican scare tactics. It doesn’t even make sense nor actually map to anything useful. Debunked.

   I lost health insurance FOR 6 YEARS under your favored market system. So sorry, ain’t gonna fly.

   The VA, Medicare, all very popular. Know why? They actually are pretty quality. Every measure, EVERY measure of our system is behind the rest of the first world that has single payer or some form thereof.

   I have tons of friends in Canada, and they love their system, wouldn’t trade it for ours for the world. For every scary anecdote you have I have ten more feel good stories. One of my friends had four kids and several major health problems in Canada. Not a problem. Another had an ectopic pregnancy. She paid NOTHING out of pocket.

   We have waiting periods and SERIOUS HMO-profit-driven denials in this country. Do you have any idea just the statistics on people who ARE insured and get denied essential surgeries and other treatments here???

   Anecdotes mean nothing. Facts do. You don’t seem to have too many.

3. John Maguire Says:
   July 29th, 2009 at 8:21 am

   Your have not answered the brunt of my argument–that the brilliance of our medical care is likely to diminish with government rule-enforcers in charge. You have given no counter argument.

   You could have argued, for instance, that VA hospitals are the source of many new treatments, or that Medicare supports cutting edge research in cancer.

   I would point out to anyone reading this that “losing health insurance” is not the tragedy, it’s losing your life or your health that matters. I have been without health insurance for years at a time; it was a conscious choice, and I take responsibility for it.

   I agree that the PDF doesn’t make much sense–but then, the “health care reform” bill doesn’t make sense, either.

   This reform bill is a major attack on liberty. It makes many things illegal that people currently do and want to do. Example: I already have lost the freedom in this state to buy the kind of insurance I want. I had a high-deductible policy, which cost me not too much. I wanted to be covered for catastrophes and to pay for lesser problems out of pocket. Now, with “reform” in Massachusetts, that’s more or less illegal. Massachusetts tells me that my policy is not “comprehensive enough.” The state wants me to buy a fancy policy, with bells and whistles I think are excessive, and they will fine me unless I do it. Who has decided on the kind of health insurance policy that’s right for me? Not me–them.

   “The VA, Medicare, all very popular. Know why? They actually are pretty quality. Every measure, EVERY measure of our system is behind the rest of the first world that has single payer or some form thereof.”

   “Pretty quality” is not the same “world-class” quality.

   You are definitely wrong when you say “by every measure” our system is behind. You don’t want to get cancer in a single-payer system. Cancer survival rates–actually a pretty important metric, wouldn’t you say?–are significantly higher here than in England and Canada. More people surive cancer here than in England or Canada. You know why? Single-payer health-care forces rationing by delay. You get cancer in England–you are waiting a good while for your treatment.

4. Mr. Lynne Says:
   July 29th, 2009 at 8:42 am

   First of all,… you can completely ignore that diagram. I’d hope people understand propaganda when they see it.

   Jonathan Cohn:

   If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The Republicans did the exact same thing in 1994, when President Bill Clinton unveiled his reform plan. That chart was, to be clear, relatively accurate. The Clinton plan really was very complicated. Just like the new plans moving through Congress.

   But these charts–and, more important, the Republicans who use them as propoganda–tend to ignore one inconvenient fact: American health care is already complex. Ridiculously complex. Thanks to decades of haphazard, disorganized growth, it’s evolved into a mind-numbing web of institutions, agencies, businesses, and individual actors.

   So just to make sure that fact isn’t lost, we’ve developed our own chart–a chart of American health care as it is today, in all of its convoluted glory. It appears below; click for a larger version.
   

   (hat tip Ezra)

   So to some issues point by point:
   “What is the rush?”
   Delay will have the tendency of killing any reform… good or bad. To the extent that any party thinks their reform is good, they’ll try to speed it up. This isn’t really a surprise, it’s right in the GOP strategy memo. Also note that the Senate is a much more efficient body at stopping things rather than passing them.

   “I have two relatives in Canada, both in their late 50s.” Ok, so here’s the deal. You can find ‘bad’ outcomes in any system. The only way to look at the overall effectiveness of the system is to look at it systemically, This means anecdotes are not very useful. Suffice to say there are others who are gratefull they were in Canada when they got sick.

   “She had had thyroid surgery, and after some difficulty come through it okay.”
   In most circles that counts as a ‘good’ outcome not a ‘bad’ outcome. Glad she’s doing well.

   “My son’s father-in-law…”
   See “I have two relatives…” above.

   ‘”The lab results came back in almost instantly where back home you wait a week or two to get lab results. When I watched hospitals like this on TV in Canada, I thought they were fictional. I had no idea hospitals like Lahey really existed.”‘
   This isn’t a function of insurance, but rather of delivery. The single payer proposal that the post is about doesn’t really address delivery. Of course you could say that making things cheaper will make delivery worse, and there is some logic to that, but you’d have to assume that what we pay now is already is ‘right’ to assume that costs can’t be cut.

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