Krugman Over the Top
My Monday Health Alert seemed almost unremarkable. (How much more is there to say about Census numbers on the uninsured?) Yet it provoked quite a stir, including this editorial from Paul Krugman in today's New York Times.
At my blog I wrote that millions of those without health insurance could become insured if the need arose. For example, one in four qualifies for free government insurance, but has not enrolled. Many of them can and will enroll when they seek care in an emergency room. This is one of many reasons why Census statistics on the uninsured are misleading and unhelpful.
Krugman interpreted this to mean that I (and through guilt by association the entire Republican party) believe people have no problem accessing or paying for care and that I believe people do not need health insurance. This is not my position and Krugman should know better.
In a column last week, Krugman advised Democrats to "accentuate the negative" because "politics is ugly." I now see what he had in mind.
More distortions form the New York Times’s mater of distortion.
Just a note from a mother/grandmother who has been through the process of helping adult children try to get the medical aid that supposedly so many people qualify for.
Mr. Goodman, you clearly have never had to apply for government aid. The process is brutal, dehumanizing, and nearly impossible for poor people who don’t have cell phones, cars or child care in order to traverse the many, many appointments, calls and paperwork needed. My son is married with four children, lost his job, and was actually KICKED OFF of medical aid because he was on unemployment. The $880 per month he received was too much income for a FAMILY OF SIX to qualify. That’s what he was told. I don’t even know if it’s true. We couldn’t get the Social worker to answer our calls.
There is far less aid out there than you imagine, and it’s so hard to access, it might as well not exist.
Before you write these cold-hearted, elitist columns, perhaps you should really consider what you are saying and do some research. Mr. Krugman was right on about you.
So true, Lohrae. This man has obviously never looked into what it takes to qualify for this abundance of aid he claims is available.
Moreover, its pretty obvious that he hasn’t been to an emergency room lately — and what his glorious plans mean for the insured. I am insured. I did make use of the local emergency room….I was there for 45 minutes while an ankle was bandaged and I was referred to a local orthoped. Two X-rays were taken.
The bill? Over 4k, which the insurance grandly agreed to pay a whopping $325 on. why? Well, to stay solvent as the hospital administrator told me, they had to charge $240 per x-ray. Then, there was the $2300 facilities fee. Then there were three different “consults”, even tho I saw only one doctor. And it went on and on…..So now the insurance company is not going to pay because of “overbilling”, and the hospital is claiming without gouging the insured, they are going to go broke.
and I’m in the middle…..and apparently, I’m not alone in this situation, there’s a virtual war going on in New England.
peachy that the McCain plan calls for more extensive use of the emergency ward….and that if everyone who could, according to Mr. Goodman here, would apply for the mythical government aid plans, there would be no problem.
Right. I’m with Krugman. The level of ignorance here about what is really happening is just mindblowing. Or, as I suspect, they just don’t want to know. The contributions from the insurance lobbyists are just too much to pass by.
And we “little people”, the great unwashed masses really don’t count any way except to pay the vig to the insurance companies once a month.
KC and Lorrae represent the victims of the employer based health care that has been responsible for driving health care costs through the roof. Too bad they are blaming John Goodman for pointing it out rather than the price control ideologues like paul Krugman whose solution is more of the same. One world view looks for conspiracies of the rich and powerful, the other analyzes how a well intentioned intervention produces unintended consequences that penalize the benficiaries. Take heart, John, at least Krugman has read your point of view, even if his dogmatic blinders don’t permit him to see beyond his preconceptions.
I, at 25 and a type one diabetic, went to the ER for chest pains. It was late at night and my normal PCP had closed up for the day. I waited there at 12 A.M and was finally released at 8 A.M. Most of my time was spent waiting – I had one X-Ray done and was seen a grand total of 15 minutes by the doctor on duty. When the bill made it’s way to my house I discovered that my insurance company wouldn’t cover the visit because the doctor that I had been assigned to in the ER wasn’t in my ‘network’. I went through all that crap and I had insurance. I can’t even imagine what those without go through. I was barely making money at the point, since I was just starting out in my career at the time, and struggled for months and months after ward to pay off the bill.
With McCain’s proposed health plan we’ll be going even deeper into situations like that. While he is creating a “free” market he is still leaving the cherry picking practicies in place. Did you know that in the state of Florida (where I currently reside) I cannot purchase an insurance plan on my own? It isn’t for lack of money, but lack of willingness on behalf of the insurance companies to take on a diabetic policy holder. Since he would be taking away incentives that employers currently have to offer employees insurance I’ll likely be without insurance at all. I’ll be tossed into a high risk pool which offers plans that are historically at least 1.5 to 2 times more expensive then plans that are offered to my healthier counter parts. Many of the Republicans that I’ve mentioned this to told me to get a job. When I inform them that my husband and I both work two jobs I am told by the same people to get a third.
The NY Times article was spot on in my experience. As someone who has tried to explain how hard it is to obtain and maintain insurance with a pre-existing condition I am far to aware of how self-centered much of the Republican party supporters are.
Sad to see the ugly head of politics taking a bite out of John Goodman who is merely making an observation about the meaningless uninsured numbers of 47 (er….adjusted now to 46) million people in America.
Of course, John should have known that he would invite criticism of this sort and require McCain to distance himself from Goodman…that is why John is not a politician.
Those who think level-headedly and work on logic are often the subject of such attacks.
The fact is that the 46 million uninsured number is all about propaganda. Propaganda that would be used to create or expand further bad health system reform policy. The ensuing editorial by Foster in Raliegh News and Observer (NANDO for those of us who once lived in the triangle) demonstrates the biases in the media on this topic and all related reporting.
Foster writes, adding, “A reasonable discussion would start by considering what level of basic care can we guarantee to all citizens.”
The assumption that any central planning effort can determine what “basic level of care” we can “guarantee to all citizens” demonstrates the leanings of the media that think all great solutions come from above.
In the end, the best way to assure that all Americans have the best access to the best health care at its most basic level is to significantly shrink the third party control of health care financing by government and corporations and put the control in the hand of more and more individual patients.
This gem from Chicago Sun-Times on Palin: “seemed confused about entitlement programs — and unaware that Congress cannot significantly cut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.”
Really? The government can’t cut expenditures that it created? Really?
The level of discourse in this country is disgusting at the level of the polticos and the media. That is why we need to turn control over to those who sit at the kitchen table at night and pay their own bills….they are more in touch with the realities of how to fix economic problems than any elitist group of politicians and their supporters.