Who Really Doesn’t Understand ObamaCare?
From the very moment public opinion started going south on the president’s health plan, the White House and Democrat leaders in Congress began sounding a familiar refrain: The public does not understand the bill; they’ve been lied to, deceived and misled by the opponents; and once they learn how it really works, familiarity will breed…well, something other than contempt.
I have four problems with this point of view:
- If it is sincere, you would think the Obama Administration would have made a major effort to educate the public about how the bill really works; in fact, they have made no effort whatsoever.
- Since ObamaCare is modeled after the Massachusetts health plan, voters in that state should be better informed than even Obama himself about how it “really works”; yet Massachusetts voters resoundingly rejected the president’s plan in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election.
- There was a lot of misleading information flying in all directions at last summer’s town hall meetings; but on balance, the average protestor appeared to be better informed than the average member of Congress.
- Among the chattering class — who are paid to express informed opinion — the proponents of ObamaCare are far less knowledgeable than the opponents.
“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On”
Cognoscenti are in the Dark. Let’s take the last point first. How many editorials have you seen where the writer rattles off a laundry list of health care problems and then concludes with “that’s why we need health reform”? Each of these editorials makes the same two mistakes: (1) They assume that ObamaCare will solve the problems they are writing about and (2) they assume it’s either ObamaCare or nothing. This second mistake is called the fallacy of the excluded middle.
As we have pointed out many times, ObamaCare is not going to solve our most serious problems. It will make costs higher, not lower. It will lower, rather than raise, the quality of care. It will “solve” the problems of pre-existing conditions by substituting problems that are even worse. And it may not even increase access to care.
Then there are the writers who bypass the details altogether and jump straight to wild claims. Here are two:
[ObamaCare] will give Americans what citizens in every other advanced nation already have — guaranteed access to essential care.
| Paul Krugman | |
| in The New York Times |
For the first time, we will enshrine the principle that all Americans deserve access to medical care, regardless of their ability to pay.
| Eugene Robinson | |
| in The Washington Post |
Now you would think that anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave in some remote spot would know that access to the care they need is exactly what many Canadians and Britains do not have. And if they do not have the money to buy that care in the private sector or in another country, they are forced to go without because of lack of “ability to pay.”
Bay State Folks Know What’s Happening in Their State. We don’t have to go all the way to Britain or Canada to see where Krugman, Robinson and others have missed the boat, however. Massachusetts will do just fine. Bay Staters are not clamoring to repeal what they have. But they are acutely aware of the problems that haven’t been solved. And one of them is lack of access to care for people who lack the ability to pay market prices. As previously noted, the wait to see a new doctor in Boston is more than twice as long as in any other U.S. city. Further, the number of people going to emergency rooms for nonemergency care in Massachusetts is as great today as it was before health reform was enacted.
The White House is Doing Nothing to Educate the Public. It’s not just the general public that is being kept in the dark. Obama is the same way with his base. Since June, the president has been sending a weekly e-mail to an estimated 19 million faithful about health care. Strangely, these letters are never truly educational. Instead they are cheerleading messages — the sort of thing you would expect at a pep rally. (By contrast, the NCPA’s weekly messages to 1.3 million petition signers tend to be very informative.)
Voters on the Whole are Very Informed. There has probably never been a major piece of legislation before Congress about which voters were better informed. I continue to believe that the average “activist” who opposes the bill knows more about it than his/her congressional representative. Rasmussen found that after an initial poll question, people were just as negative — if not more so — when pollsters described ObamaCare in some detail.
As Lanny Davis said the other day, “It’s the substance, stupid.”
Good post. It’s not just the politicians who just don’t get it. It’s also the chattering class.
I agree with all four points.
Good video. There is a whole lot of shaking up going on.
Reminds me of a high school jock in a made-for-TV-movie trying to rationalize date rape.
Bart, ObamaCare IS date rape.
For a risk to be insurable, it should satisfy the following criteria:
1. Potential claims should be substantial.
2. Potential claims should be rare.
3. Both insurer and insured should be committed to
avoidance of claims.
Traditional health care insurance and Obamacare fail all of these criteria. Compare will all other types of insurance.
Politicians and patricians such as the liberal elite, and academics such as those EINO types (economists in name only, recently coined in a blog posting) are intent on applying patches to symptoms – hence the belief that just stating all that is wrong with the current system is the only justification for Obamacare required – rather than doing what is necessary to fix the problem at its core, which is fix the pricing mechanism for both medical goods and services, and, supplementally, the one for medical expense insurance products. That is necessary to establish, finally, a usable metric for determining what something really costs, being able to compare it with alternatives (both prices and treatments), and evaluating quality, effectiveness, efficiency, and overall value. Of course, they would have to admit the majority role of Medicare and Medicaid forced reimbursement/price-fixing in bringing the system to the mess in which it finds itself, and they would be loath to let go of that power and recognize that many of those prices need to rise in order to bring some semblance of equilibrium to the remainder of the market. But that would mean admitting lying for decades to the American people about what Medicare and Medicaid have really been costing us. Not much chance for that, I’m afraid.
As a doctor treating government sponsored Medicare patients who deserve care, but pay less each year through the cuts in Medicare demanded by Congress, I can say that government medicine will only add to costs and disenfranchise those who already consider opting out of the program of Medicare. It is not financially a sound business decision to continue supporting entitlements in this country. The Mayo Clinic has already dropped out of Medicare.
This must be Jerry Lee Lewis day for the blog.
Well said. I have talked to many people lately and they do not understand this legislation. They believe that things are going to be wonderful through their rose colored glasses.
we are all potential patients thus making health care very personal. Health care delivery is not liberal or conservative, its about us.
They said costs are too high, but another couple of trillion is Ok
They said we must insure the uninsured, but they will wait and not all will be covered ie Medicaid
We will burden the states with huge costs and care givers will be scarce for Mediciad, thus swamping the EMR
Costs will increase
care will decrease
We can do this correctly and really improve the overall system with total Congressional support but we are not addressing the problems in the system which need to be corrected.
John, I attended a town hall meeting. My Congressman is a first term Democrat in a seat formerly held by a republican. The district (19th) is about 50/50 with a large % off independent voters.i.e. Non-enrolled. The questions were three quarters negative or challenging, primarily focused on the costs of all of these: stimulus, bailout and healthcare “reform”. Of the remaining 25% of the audience , about 10% were in favour of the democrats initiatives an 15% neutral. This is a somewhat higher educated and wealthier district, but I believe it reflected accurately the feelings of most Americans.
John, thanks for organizing the education of those who want to learn about health care insurance and health care access. It helped circulate the word.
Thank you so much for sharing, but after watching the interview with George I began to realize that he doesn’t have a clue and really never has. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. As you know, sometimes the uneducated can be educated that stupid is forever. I appreciate your hard work and am hopeful that last night’s election may be a turning point. Larry
I have been amazed at the level of frankly, ignorance from public editorials in my local paper from supporters of Obamacare. The majority believe they will not have to pay another healthcare bill or their insurance premiums will be markedly decreased. They have been led to believe that nothing will change other than the price of healthcare. Many use the claim that Medicare is a successful popular government run healthcare plan and believe the proposed legislation will essentially be Medicare for all and ridicule townhall protesters carrying signs saying “Hands off my Medicare”. Some of the elderly letter writers proclaim how great Medicare has been for them and marvel at just how cheap it is. Unfortunately, they don’t realize that the proposed legislation makes this their Medicare heyday and are unaware of the bullseye on their backs.
Excellent points by Dr. Kendick…
The spoke in the wheel IS primary care…
We order the tests and refer.
Toaccomplish your three points, we need more PCP’s
working for our patients and spending the appropriate time deciding which tests are needed.
We know that direct practices (concierge) accomplishes this b/c costs are affordable for patients (the bean counters are gone) and CYA is not a worry….
My sense of it is that Democrats are in love with the IDEA of universal health care, without ever having investigated how it works in practice. Tom Daschle was, according to reports, really impressed with Britain’s NHS’s NICE. How could anyone look at the British system and admire it?
The idea of a bunch of ill-informed bureaucrats sitting in Washington DC and deciding, by looking at some government statistics, what the right treatment for my life-threatening condition is scares me to death.
Hear! Hear!
Keep the good news coming. I and, I am sure, many others like me appreciate your newsletter.
Jay Hughes
I greatly appreciate what you are doing to educate the American academic, individual and professional on economic and health care issues.
[…] is better informed than the average member of Congress. As explained in my last Health Alert, the voters in Massachusetts probably understand the Senate bill better than Barack Obama understands […]