The Prospect takes on Health Care Reform

This article intends to be without bias, but the Prospect editors generally support health care reform and the public option.

Let’s begin by saying the Health Care Reform Debate is not about health care at all. It’s about paying for health care and only secondarily about actual illness and illness care. The discussion we should be having, our national obsession with doctors and death, isn’t going to happen (anywhere else: we occasionally talk about it here). It would include topics like "when is it simply cruel to prolong life". We would find that many "values" and subsequent practices find their roots not in caring for people, but in the dollar (shock!). Doctors dislike being sued, pharmacuetical and high tech equipment manufacturers like to sell products, insurance companies like to take money to protect against things they are pretty sure won’t happen, and lawyers are happy to sue everyone. These market forces, more than science, guide our health care.

But, that’s a really complicated debate, and our society and its 3 minute attention span can’t handle an actual debate about anything important.

We can barely handle what turns out to be a fairly simply question: how much healthcare should the average person expect, and how shall we pay for it?

The debate is split into many different camps, but the arguments all fall out into just a few basic themes.

In these corners: pro-reform viewpoints
On the one hand are people who are struggling under the high cost of health care. These include real people, but also legal people like hospitals, employers and government.

These people note that many Americans have no health insurance. For uninsured people, it is cheapest to wait until an illness becomes life threatening and then go to the ER. This is the most expensive health care you can have, with the poorest outcomes.

Some pro-reform groups want to reduce the cost of health care; others want to improve health care delivery for people who can’t afford the health care they need. While the two goals sound familiar, they play out very differently, since the first group wants to restrict health care and the second wants to expand it. Either way, both groups want affordable coverage for all U.S. citizens. A few even want basic health care for all humans in the U.S., an idea which drives some conservatives comically wild.

These people in general can be represented by this document HERE which is from the radical group formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, but now is just AARP. We encourage to you look at this document, which shows graphically why health care reform is needed, though perhaps not the health care reform we’re likely to get.

The most radical health care reform is single payer health care. Currently, in the U.S., Medicare is a single payer plan. Because single payer plans cut into the bread and butter of the insurance industry, they oppose it. Likely, however, if single payer passed, people would be able to buy private insurance as supplemental insurance, but still the industry would shrink.

The pro-reform groups have an uphill battle, because the health care insurance industry is huge and entrenched and has many powerful friends, and most of all because all the anti-groups have to do is make sure nothing happens, which is much easier than making something happen. Their biggest challenge, though, is to produce health care reform that is actually better, cheaper, and more widely accessible, instead of some ugly American mutant child that does nothing very well except give more money to corporations.

Among average persons who seem to be "pro-health insurance reform" are people who can barely afford insurance or who are already ill and broke, and those who believe basic health care is a right, and those who are simply following Obama because he’s a smart guy and they hope he knows best.

In these corners: no reform or minimal reform viewpoints
Anyone who says the U.S. has "the best healthcare on earth" better have insurance to cover mental conditions, because they’re delusional. We spend more than most countries on health care, and we do have shortages and rationing, and our health isn’t that great.

Even so, a huge number of people, nearly all conservatives, have stepped forward to complain about reform.

An odd player in this arena are the conservative Christians. At first glance, is isn’t odd, because conservative Christians as a general rule support the most restrictive social policies possible, and restricting health care falls into that. But the serious motivation for some conservative Christians is their obsession with other people’s reproduction. Many conservative Christians oppose health care reform because they are afraid little babies will be killed using public money. Killing babies with public money is against Christ’s teaching, unless they are Iraq or Afghan babies, then it’s OK, we guess, because these same groups tend to support Bush’s wars.

Because of this militant fringe, public health care probably won’t cover these kinds of gynecological health issues.

Other conservative groups weighing in are all largely representing the health care lobby, including pharmacuetical and insurance companies. Most often, these groups proclaim they are "educational" groups who are interested in "patient’s rights." One such group, Conservatives for Patient’s Rights, is headed by Richard Scott, former health care executive who was forced out because of a dirty billing scandal.

So far, it is estimated that the health care industry has spent $380 million fighting health care reform, and according to the Guardian, there are six registered healthcare lobbyists for every member of Congress. 

Currently, the big sticking point is the public option. This means that people would be able to purchase health insurance from the government, or more likely contractors with the government. The California legislature has twice passed a single payer plan for California, but the Governator, who has great health insurance, vetoed it both times.