Health Care Excuses

Here we have an opinion piece by an author for the New York Times. He tries to go over some excuses that people use when they say our system is pretty good despite the fact that our life expectancy is less than other countries with different medical systems. Other factors including the size and diversity differences between the countries are always ignored by people like this author.

He points out four different 'excuses' that people against the government paying for health insurance use and tries to explain why they are wrong. The first part of the article where he makes fun of President Bush saying that everyone gets health insurance when they go to the emergency room. The fact of the matter is that everyone knows this - even illegal aliens. It is against the law to deny someone health care in an emergency room. In the article he claims it means that they qualify for Medicaid if they don't have insurance when they arrive in the emergency room. Most people in the Hispanic population WILL NOT purchase health insurance because this is their mantra. If they get sick, they will just go to the emergency room and get care for free. This author does not know this. He probably doesn't talk to many Hispanics about health care.

The second excuse he makes fun of is the fact that people's lifestyle choices are to blame for the high cost of health care. We are in fact the fattest country on the planet. The poorer the group, the fatter they are. Obesity contributes to diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and early deaths. All of these issues other than early death are extremely expensive for our health care system to treat on a chronic basis. If you add our large population of homosexuals and include their expensive drugs needed for contracting AIDS at a much higher than normal level, and you would have to assume that lifestyle choices at least contributes to our high cost of health care.

Then he says that all claims against socialized medicine are wrong because of . . . Medicare. That's right, Medicare will solve all of our health care problems according to this author. He doesn't mention that the system is going broke and probably won't be available by the time I turn 65. He doesn't mention that the government is trying to privatize Medicare as fast as they can through a Medicare Advantage system. He doesn't mention that doctors are turning away Medicare patients because their reimbursement rate is too low for their services. Other than that, Medicare is a perfect example of a good socialized medicine program.

Anyway, this author is wrong, but I will link to his article and let you decide. This is the problem with the debate though. People don't understand where the actual problems are. They claim to be knowledgeable when they really don't know. Enjoy this article. I certainly got a laugh out of reading this 'smart guy's' misinterpretation of the problem.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The United States spends far more on health care per person than any other nation. Yet we have lower life expectancy than most other rich countries. Furthermore, every other advanced country provides all its citizens with health insurance; only in America is a large fraction of the population uninsured or underinsured.

You might think that these facts would make the case for major reform of America’s health care system — reform that would involve, among other things, learning from other countries’ experience — irrefutable. Instead, however, apologists for the status quo offer a barrage of excuses for our system’s miserable performance.

So I thought it would be useful to offer a catalog of the most commonly heard apologies for American health care, and the reasons they won’t wash.

Continue reading the article here.