GOP Response To Obama’s Speech: Reform Puts Bureaucrat Between You And Doctor
GOP Rep Charles Boustany of Louisiana, a cardiologist, will give the Republican response to Obama’s big health care speech tomorrow, GOP leader John Boehner’s office confirms to me.
In the speech, Boustany is likely to slam Dem health care reform for putting Washington bureaucrats between you and your doctor, Boehner’s office says.
Boehner’s office sent over a statement hailing the choice of Boustany. “He understands why a Washington bureaucrat — as Democrats have proposed — should never get between a doctor and his patient,” Boehner says in the statement, previewing what to expect from Boustany himself tomorrow.
The statement from Boehner’s office also says that the GOP leadership had tasked Boustany earlier this year to “reach out to Congressional Democrats to find a bipartisan approach to health care reform,” adding that Dems “refused to work with him.”
So after Obama’s big speech, a Republican doctor will come on the air and say that Dems refused to join Republicans in a bipartisan search for a health care solution — and warn that Obama’s reform plans will put bureaucrats between you and your doctor. Hey, that line has been working for reform opponents since the 1960s, so why shift gears now?
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Most people believe the insurance industry gets between us and our doctors now, so I don’t see that as a brilliant response. Hopefully, if that’s all they’ve got they’ll do nothing but continue to discredit themselves in the eyes of all but the far right.
hey lmsinca, lemme just take this moment to say we’re very glad to have you commenting here regularly and appreciate your contribs…
Ugh… I totally would have watched if it was Palin or Bachmann. Guess I need something else to watch at that time. Unless he speaks like Jindal, that may keep may tuned in.
Thanks
It’s an interesting blog to follow, lots of diverse comments and food for thought.
Where are all the Christian leaders in this debate. Why are they not raising their voices.
Shouldn’t those Bishops who openly state that they would refuse communion, to those who have sworn an oath to faithfully uphold and defend the constitution, if they do not violate that oath, when if comes to the subject of abortion, be also willing to speak out for health care, as a social justice issue.
By the way, the Catholic Church is also against the death penalty, but one never hears of any of their Bishops and Cardinals declaring that they will refuse communion, to any Presidential candidate, or US Senator, who supports the death penalty.
WWJD. What would Jesus Do?
I find it astonishing that the Christian leadership, that is so invested in the “Pro Birth” campaign, has been silent, for the most part, when it comes to actually providing health care for all, which would appear to be something that Jesus would insist must be provided, in order to be truly “Pro Life”, and not just “Pro Birth”.
I think we have our first post that really requires a deletion!
Good idea having a surgeon deliver the response – no one will listen to him anyway but his former profession does give hi some credibility. He likes to emphasize areas of agreement. Good feel for his opinions here:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/05/16/gop-pledges-to-work-with-obama-on-health-care-reform/
Good idea having a surgeon deliver the response – no one will listen to him anyway but his former profession does give hi some credibility.
It gives the semblance of credibility, but i doubt it really matters who would speak. It’s not going to be his words, it’ll be the party leadership. You pull out some no-name party member, have him give the speech they were already writing when Obama announced a joint address, and then say “Look, he has a M.D. so he must be right!”
Well, did anyone really expect the GOP to come up with new talking points? I don’t think they will work directly following Obama. I think the best thing Obama can do in his speech is say over and over that Medicare is government run and talk about how his plan closes the donut hole in Medicare. The GOP was at least smart to pick a speaker nobody has heard of.
At the very least knowing the GOOPer talking points, in his speech Obama can emphasize how much the insurance bureaucrats have inflicted themselves between us and our doctors. That would give people a better idea of what is going on. And would make the GOOPer talking points look kind of silly.
Forget about all the insurance company bureaucrats and brokers like my friend Steve between you and your doctor.
Forget receisions for pre-existing conditions.
Eric Kleefeld reports that Boustany is a Death Panel Supporter
Dr. Death delivering the GOP response – priceless
We’re voting I took a dump off the Island.
Obama wants to put a bureaucrat between you and your health insurance. The Republicans want to take away your health insurance:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/09/on_offense_2.php#more?ref=fpblg
“Government is, at best, no more highly regarded than the insurance industry……the Kaiser Family Foundation asked, “Which worries you more: that under a new health reform bill, government agencies would play too big a role in deciding what medical procedures people can or can’t get, [or] that currently, insurance companies play too big a role in deciding what medical procedures people can or can’t get?” By 48 to 38 percent, respondents said they were more worried about the prospective role of government…“A woman earlier asked who’s going to keep the health insurance companies honest. I’m concerned who’s going to keep the government honest.”
http://www.tnr.com/blog/william-galston/americans-still-dont-trust-government%E2%80%94-they-could-go-health-care-plan-modeled
@kathleen regarding Josh’s total misunderstanding: “The fact that you’re insured and aren’t directly feeling the cost of individual tests and procedures is [a] problem.”
There is almost universal agreement (right and left) that this statement is true. Josh really exhibits a very basic misunderstanding here.
Greg
Not sure what your policies are on posts that cross a line (or what lines there might be) but that post above from “I took a…” must come close to being a valid target.
Zipping out but wanted to note Vega’s 7:49 AM post…
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/
Obama needs to say exactly how this is NOT the case at all.
Kathleen Hussein:
The Republicans want to take away your health insurance
You should read this or this.
“Obama needs to say exactly how this is NOT the case at all.”
Which is how exactly?
I remember how little Jindal’s speech actually addressed the talking points that Obama used and how ineffective the language was (let alone the delivery). I expect it will be much of the same here. In other words, Obama will say over and over that the public option is an OPTION, say that if you like your plan you can keep it, say that the government plan would not put anyone between you and your doctor, etc, etc. Maybe we’ll get another great quote like lambasting “something called ‘volcano monitoring’” only to have a volcano erupt in the GOP VP nominee’s backyard.
Obama needs to say exactly how this is NOT the case at all.
No, that’s playing defense. He needs spell out simply and concisely how health reform HELPS you.
-Those already covered get to keep current plans and should expect premiums to come down eventually.
-Those not covered or dislike their insurance can shop through national exchange WITH A PUBLIC OPTION to find the plan that best suits them and their family
-Those unable to afford coverage will receive subsidies to help pay.
-Insurers may not rescind coverage/procedures for ANY reason.
Hammer those points over and over. The people that are scared about reform are not properly informed, ideologically opposed, or freaked out by Beck. You can assure the ill-informed. Everyone else is likely a lost cause and a waste of effort to carry them along.
Patches:
Those already covered get to keep current plans and should expect premiums to come down eventually.
Why? What part of the plan could possibly lead to lower insurance premiums?
Private Insurance puts Bureaucrats between patients and their Doctors all the time, and often will not even let patients get any treatment.
Nice to see that Republicans have finally decided to come out against anyone coming between patients and their doctors.
We now have the Republicans endorsing universal health care, with a single payer system, because that is the only way to get rid of all those Insurance bureaucrats, who are always preventing doctors and hospitals from treating sick people.
Liam at 1:47,
Private Insurance puts Bureaucrats between patients and their Doctors all the time, and often will not even let patients get any treatment
This claim is made frequently. Personally, I’ve never had it happen or even directly heard of it happening. Maybe I’m just lucky.
Keeping in mind that data is not the plural of anecdote, do you have data on the frequency of “not even let patients get any treatment”?
It would seem the optimum solution might depend quite a bit on whether this is a 1 in 10 insured person-year event, or 1 in 100,000 insured person-years.
Also, insurance is a legal contract. We have very well developed mechanisms for enforcing contracts and resolving contract disputes. And there seem to be an adequate number of lawyers. So I’d also appreciate it if you could point me to data on how the contract issues are resolved when insurance companies “will not even let patients get any treatment”.
Certainly the two are tied together, but I think Nate makes a good case for why his speech (which is a one off that doesn’t really have an equal in terms of rallying support) is best placed in the tail end of this battle. These bills were always going to be mired in Congress for a time, maybe it didn’t have to but all the way to September but I believe the WH has been mostly concerned about when to apply this final burst of pressure and turn it into a tipping point (instead of trying to roll the ball uphill all by himself like Clinton did).
This seems like about as good a point as you could ask for since the Finance Committee is wrapping things up and August was pretty much an entrenching in which the GOP won by a slim margin if at all and all that serves to do is make people impatient for SOME sort of action. I just don’t know if it would have speed the process up or made the bill stronger for the President to come out early and demand something from Congress. Bullying and demonising plays into the oppositions hands, nor is it Obama’s style to be the out and out partisan.
Why? What part of the plan could possibly lead to lower insurance premiums?
The part that would have the public option setting the baseline for what basic quality insurance should cost. Everyone else needs to compete at that level or lose business. That means offering better coverage or the same coverage at a comparable price. Either way, demand for their crappy product goes down, which means they’ll have to lower prices or boost service quality. But since insurers really offer no service other than to be middle men for the exchange of money between patient and doctor, they’d likely have to lower premiums. Hurrah economics!!
Caveat: The public option needs to operate at premiums substantially lower than private. Since the average american pays 10% of their income for health insurance premiums, a public option that has approx 6% premiums would save many americans thousands of dollars. But since conservatives are whining that we’d undermine the insurance industry, it’s tough to get something even that good through even though Americans would quickly jump on the cheaper product with better results. Basically, we wouldn’t be in this mess if insurers had their customers in mind instead of stock holders.
A very sick person who is being denied coverage, is in no position to sue the Insurance panel’s refusal to pay for the treatment. They are flat on their backs, and not up to such a chore as going the legal route, at the time they need the treatment.
I love how some opponents of reform, both call for tort reform, because there are two man lawyers involved, and then turn around and advise that using lawyers to sue the Insurance DEATH PANELS is the proper way to go, instead of requiring universal coverage.
Patches:
The part that would have the public option setting the baseline for what basic quality insurance should cost.
But how does it know what insurance “should” cost? In the absence of a free market, how does anyone know what something “should” cost”? How do you know that what it “should” cost will be lower than what it costs now?
But since insurers really offer no service other than to be middle men for the exchange of money between patient and doctor, they’d likely have to lower premiums. Hurrah economics!!
In one (surely unintended) respect, you are actually quite right. As I pointed out earlier, when an insurance company collects premiums from an employer, who has withheld the money from the employee’s paycheck, in order to pay out known and predictable (ie non-insurable) costs, it is not acting as an insurance company, and is, as you suggest, acting as a middleman. I advocate ending the practice (by changing the tax laws), and leaving insurance companies to provide real insurance coverage, ie establish risk pools for unpredictable, catastrophic costs. Unfortunately the plan you support does not do so, and indeed will inevitably and unavoidably compound the problem.
The public option needs to operate at premiums substantially lower than private. Since the average american pays 10% of their income for health insurance premiums, a public option that has approx 6% premiums would save many americans thousands of dollars.
What if 6% does not cover costs? And if that doesn’t matter, why 6% and not 0%? You mistake arbitrarily lowering premiums with lowering cost. As I have said a million times here, transferring costs to the taxpayer is not the same as lowering costs. What about that is so difficult to understand?
@patches: “What part of the plan could possibly lead to lower insurance premiums? The part that would have the public option setting the baseline for what basic quality insurance should cost…insurers really offer no service.”
The CBO estimates the public option would only cost about 10% less and that it would not lower private insurance prices. Moreover, single persons making over $44,000 would be forced to purchase insurance, without benefit of a subsidy, or face a new tax. The CBO estimates this would leave 8 million without insurance and increased taxes.
Your notion that the insurers provide no service indicates to me that you have put no effort into looking into the purpose of private health insurance.
Let us distill the opponents’ reason for not wanting a government funded Public Option.
They say that a government funded operation would be very poorly run, and extremely inefficient, because government never works well.
Then the Private Insurance Gang chimes in with;
A Public option is something that we could not compete with, and it would drive us out of business.
So to sum up, boys and girls; The Insurance Gang says that we just can not compete with a Public Option that will not be managed well, and be extremely wasteful.
There you have it; The Insurance Gang openly confessing, that they would not be able to compete against what it’s supporters claim would be vastly wasteful and badly run Public Option.
Since the Insurance Company just admitted, that even in the face of competition from a public option, they would never be able to clean up their act, then why waste time with a Trigger option,since the Insurance Company already confessed that they will never be able to improve to the point where the trigger option will never have to kick in.
The said the can’t compete against a public option, so why would you expect them to compete to a level that would eliminate the need for the Public Option.
Liam @ 3:20
A very sick person who is being denied coverage, is in no position to sue the Insurance panel’s refusal to pay for the treatment. They are flat on their backs, and not up to such a chore as going the legal route, at the time they need the treatment.
I love how some opponents of reform, both call for tort reform, because there are two man lawyers involved, and then turn around and advise that using lawyers to sue the Insurance
I see you elected not to offer any data. I looked around for a few minutes, and didn’t find any, so perhaps it would take some digging.
On your first point, one might assume that the patient, or their heirs, would file suit after the fact if the denial was material, e.g. “I broke my leg, the insurance company wouldn’t honor the claim, I paid or borrowed or the health care provider wrote it off, and now I’m filing suit to get repaid plus cost, etc.”.
Not perfect, but I’d guess it would work reasonably well. After a string of losses, the insurance company would change their practice to avoid future losses. It works that way in other areas of business.
On your second point, tort reform – as normally discussed – refers to suits by patients against health care providers, not contract disputes between policy holders and insurance companies.
The primarily rationale for tort reform is to reduce the incidence of defensive medicine, where a test is run or procedure performed at least in part to prevent patient malpractice suits against care providers, with “jackpot” awards. (A secondary rationale is to reduce medical malpractice premiums, but that’s really lost in the noise here.)
Contract enforcement and avoiding jackpot malpractice judgments are not the same thing at all.
One final point. Contracts work both ways. While the insurance company should pay what they have promised, the policy buyer should not expect to get what they have not paid for.
An analogy – while its not fair for the insurance company to sell seats on the 50 yard line, and then only allow access to seats in the end zone at game time, its equally not fair for the policy holder to pay for tickets in the end zone and then demand access to seats on the 50 yard line at game time.
I know you would like to get the discussion bogged down in the morass of data, that is mostly kept private, but the sky rocking costs of coverage, for even the very healthy, the growing number of businesses that can no longer afford to provide health insurance, and the growing numbers who will not be provided coverage is all that really matters. After the fact lawsuits are not going bring someone back to life, if they were refused timely critical and urgent treatment.
Keep in mind that the Private Insurance Gang do not cover the vast majority of the elderly, and millions and millions of children. The government does. I would like to see one of two things enacted. Either the government covers all from cradle to grave, or the Insurance Gang must be required to cover all, without any government funds being provided.
As it stands now, the government is the one covering those that the Insurance gang does not feel would be good for their stock options, and bonuses, and they cherry pick who they will cover from the healthiest pool.
One last point on suing after the fact.
All those people who are covered by their employer’s plan, are usually not allowed to sue the Insurer, and most would be afraid to risk losing their jobs, by rocking the boat.
Finally,
Here is a figure for you to wrap your head around. It is from a whistle blower.
Signa purged 8 million members from their covered rolls, because their number crunchers deemed them to be too risky, meaning too risky to the bottom line.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/potter_testimony.html
Excerpt: Read it all folks. It is a damning revelation about how callous the Private Insurance Cabal really are.
“To help meet Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations, insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick. Insurers have several ways to cull the sick from their rolls. One is policy rescission. They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment.”
“
Liam:
The Insurance Gang says that we just can not compete with a Public Option that will not be managed well, and be extremely wasteful.
The inability to compete has nothing to do with how well the government option is managed. It has to do with the ability of the government to access taxpayer funds to subsidize the premium it charges. No matter how much more efficient than the government a private insurer is, the government can always undercut the private insurers price, because the government can run the program at a loss in perpetuity. Which, of course the private company cannot.
Having said that, I actually do not think insurance companies will disappear altogether no matter what the government does. Because of the rationing that will necessarily occur under a government run system (long waiting times, restrictions on doctor/service), there will always be a demand, from people who can afford it, for more and better service. Hence, there will be a demand for private insurance.
What this will mean is, unlike what we have now, a 2-tiered system. There will be a tier for insured people (ie well-off people) who will get better and faster service than everyone else, who will be relegated to the second tier. This is what prevails in the UK, where “private patients” can call and get an appointment for tomorrow, while NHS patients have to wait, say, 3 weeks for an appointment. Or, for example, where “private patients” get their own room after having an operation, but NHS patients get put into a room with 7 other patients.
It is, probably, wrong to suggest that insurance companies will disappear altogether. There will of course be fewer, but they will service an elite clientele, who will get better service than everyone else.
Fine, I have no problem with that. The Insurance companies are the ones making all the claims about how a public option would drive them out of business. So they clearly would also get driven out later on when a Trigger option kicks in, because in order to avoid the Trigger from being pulled, they would have to be able to provide universal coverage for all, without any government funding, and I mean all, from cradle to grave. If they are not going to do that, then like it or not, the government is going to have to do so.
We can not be just a little pregnant when it comes to wanting to keep the government out of funding health care coverage. I dare the Republicans to propose covering all the elderly and all ths SCHIP members, through private insurance, and without spending any government money. That is the logical extension of their arguments against having government involved in health care coverage, so I dare Republicans to have the courage of their convictions, and propose the removal of all government expenditures from health care coverage.
I Triple Dog Dare Them.
Your notion that the insurers provide no service indicates to me that you have put no effort into looking into the purpose of private health insurance.
Other than to create a risk pool, it really doesn’t. Health insurance doesn’t provide health care like doctors do, education like schools do, pharmaceuticals like drug companies do, etc. etc. all which are fine with me being private
Look at it this way, we could create a private system of police enforcement. But to have only the victim pay for the investigation, evidence gathering, suspect pick-up, prosecution, and incarceration is both inefficient and more costly than to distribute those costs over society. The same goes for health care, schools, fire protection etc.
Now, as for the CBO, I don’t believe they are capable of scoring things like changes to delivery systems, tort reform, etc. Things like that can bring costs down, which save everyone money both private and public. Thus many of the cost saving measures can’t be scored. We do know that private administration costs are approx. 20% (mostly going to company profits) while public administration costs are about 3% (no profits-> lower costs). So there is about 17% in savings right there. Approx. $1000/yr/household simply goes to company to make profit. That’s an absolute waste of money that can go to actually providing health care.
It’s not so much where the free market comes into health insurance, it’s that it shouldn’t be private entity at all.
So much economic nonsense being floated around here it is impossible to know where to start, but this is as good as any:
“Approx. $1000/yr/household simply goes to company to make profit. That’s an absolute waste of money that can go to actually providing health care.”
The same can be said about every other good or service. For someone to make a profit in providing me a service or good is an absolute waste of money. It shouldn’t be allowed. The government should do it. Then it would be cheaper for everyone.
It is astonishing that people can actually believe this stuff.
As to the supposed contradiction between the inefficiency of a government program (a given) and inability of insurers to compete, it could go in various directions depending on what “reform” actually looks like, but an inefficient government program will always tend to be subsidized with tax money. That is the whole point and the whole problem. No contradiction by opponents at all.
The Private Insurance Cabal does not earn that profit. They are not in the medical profession. They have never applied a single bandage to one patient. They are just leeches, who are sucking up to thirty percent out of the available pool of health care funds.
Sick people are not a commodity to be used as pawns, in order to enrich a bunch of financial leeches, who add no value to the medical treatment of the sick and injured.
So in your world, insurance has no economic value. Medical insurers don’t apply bandaids, auto insurers don’t fix fenders, fire insurers don’t rebuild houses. So they serve no purpose.
Okay. I guess people have been mistaken for centuries.
If you were right, of course, then the whole idea of government “insurance” would be just as pointless.
But they aren’t making a profit off a service they are providing. Every time they pay for a medical procedure, it’s a loss. So they jack up premiums and deny payment. I give you money, you give me a service. They operate on I give you money, then once I pay X amount of my own money again, you’ll pay some of the cost (unless we need to reciss you because you got cancer or fell into a loophole). That’s not capitalism, that’s robbery.
As to the supposed contradiction between the inefficiency of a government program (a given)
/facepalm. Ideological blinders off please. Gov’t used to be fairly efficient, and then taxes got cut, and again, and again, until schools can’t pay teachers, PD’s can’t train officers etc. etc.
If you want government to be efficient:
Elect good gov’t people instead of those who see gov’t as too big or too small. People who want to OPTIMIZE gov’t rather than fiddle with the size.
Don’t cut corners. Businesses do that for profit, Public entities can send that money back into delivering quality services.
Make representatives write better legislation. That goes back to electing better reps but they are god awful at writing laws.
Reagan is dead and Reaganism failed. Evolve or fade away.
You didn’t describe anything but insurance. You said nothing different. You just said insurance is robbery.
“Gov’t used to be fairly efficient, and then taxes got cut, and again, and again, until schools can’t pay teachers, PD’s can’t train officers etc. etc.”
ROTFLMAO I am not even going to try to unpack all the nonsense that comes after that. Government used to be efficient, until taxes were cut, and that ruined everything. Right. I am guessing you aren’t old enough to remember the 70s and how things were going then. I’ll just leave it at that.
I will give you that our reps should write laws better than they do. But they also need to write a lot less. Writing so many unnecessary and harmful laws is one reason they write them so badly.
I have news for you. Liberalism is as dead as Ted Kennedy. You were able, with a smooth demogogue who masqueraded as a moderate conservative, to win an election after Republicans did everything in their power to self-destruct and ran a terrible, moderate candidate. Half a year in, the country has already had enough, and it is only going to get worse.
Liam/Patches:
The level of ignorance, economic and otherwise, displayed by you two is truly staggering at times.
As an uninsured American, a public option plan would benefit my wife and me, but I don’t want to see bad health care reform legislation rammed through Congress without careful thought just because there are thousands of other uninsured people like me out there.
In addition to being uninsured, I am also a conservative (ideologically), and the Republican party has yet to introduce any real alternatives to what Obama and Congress have proposed. Not that anyone would listen to them even if they did, but it would be a moral victory anyway.
This is an issue that deserves careful, conscious thought. I hope Obama plainly spells it out tonight in a way most of us can understand, and I read on another news service that Boustany is expected to introduce a few of the Republican ideas for reform that haven’t gotten much attention in his response to Obama. I will be eager to hear from him as well.
What I don’t like about a national plan, at least ideologically, is that it insures even the 700 pound couch potato who sits around eating potato chips and watching soap operas all day whilst contributing absolutely nothing to society. Why should my tax money, which will be used to fund a public option plan, go to insure such an individual. Or someone who claims he or she cannot afford health care, then proudly points to their $3,000 big screen television they “splurged” on last week?
That’s just a question to think about.
Independent rep selling to surgeons, hospitals…ugh!! Was fun and “easy” until BUDGET FREEZE!! I’ve worked hard building an accomplished business while putting kids through college. Just notified yesterday that my health insurance is increasing $300 month!! More than mortgage payments! Can’t seem to find another source that will accept “pre-existing” therefore, I’m in question. This is NOT right! Someone is putting US into further debt.