EDITORIAL: Health care debate full of misinformation

I’m glad August is over. The dog days of summer turned into a virtual fist fight over health care reform on cable news networks and talk radio. Televised town hall meetings and protestors screamed across TV screens for too much of my summer.

To me, cable news had the time (24 hours a day) to dig into the 1,000-page bills and discuss and detail every aspect rather than just replay snippets of folks yelling and rehash the same two or three topics.

For at least a solid week, death panels were the only topics of the health care conversation. The bills did not create such panels. Instead, the proposals allowed participants to have medical directive and living will discussions during a doctor’s visit paid for through insurance. Hospitals are required to keep you alive through any means necessary unless there is a medical directive that states otherwise. If your doctor hasn’t entered into your medical records that you don’t want to be on a respirator, your wishes won’t be followed without a legal battle. How is that a death panel? Since the media blitz, this has been stripped from the legislation.

Our own Sen. Jim DeMint held a town hall meeting in Florence on Aug. 27. Sadly, I didn’t hear about until after the fact (and I’m on his e-mail list). I would have enjoyed the chance to hear his ideas and solutions and give him my two cents. Maybe only campaign donors were invited.

“We need to make sure every American has access to an affordable health insurance policy,” DeMint said. “But the way to go toward that is not a government takeover. No matter how you describe what the president is trying to do, it is a government takeover of health care. Creating a government tax-subsidized plan is going to run private insurers out of business.”

The plan being proposed in Congress is not a government takeover. Nowhere near it. If anything, it’s closer to a giveaway to the insurance companies because health insurance will become mandatory. They gain 45 million new customers who have to buy something from them regardless of its quality.

A government takeover of health care would have been extending Medicare to every American. While this has been proposed in HR 676 many times by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), it hasn’t gotten any traction because of the money flowing into Congress from insurance companies and the health care industry. Medicare, while government-run, works more efficiently than private insurance with overhead costs of 3 to 4 percent compared to 10+ percent for private companies. If cost is the reason for reform, this would fit the bill.

Additionally, private insurers would not be run out of business. Even if every American had Medicare, the insurance industry would survive despite the doom-and-gloom prophets of the right-wing. The market would shift to supplemental and specialty insurance plans instead of the current focus on HMOs. In Europe and Canada, where socialized medicine exists, private insurers still thrive just on a different slice of the market.

DeMint said health care has been his top priority, but he’s not on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He voted against the extension of State Children’s Health Insurance Plan twice. He voted against the ability of Medicare Part D to negotiate drug prices to lower costs and against negotiating bulk purchases for Medicare Part D. He voted against increasing rebates for Medicaid using generic prescriptions, which would have saved the government billions over the long run.

On the plus side, he voted for bills to allow small businesses the ability to group together to purchase health insurance for employees. He also voted to establish tax-exempt Medical Savings Accounts. He has championed Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for many years, but most lower- to middle-income families often don’t have the money to fund those accounts. While HSAs may prove advantageous, they won’t solve the big problems with our health care system. They can be part of the solution just not the only part.

“Democrats have for years blocked things that would have made health insurance more available and affordable,” DeMint said. “They’ve been against interstate competition; they’ve been against fair tax treatment to people who don’t get their health insurance at work.”

The interstate competition DeMint talks about is a defeated amendment he offered this year. Taken to the extreme, this could end up working similar to the way credit card companies operate. The insurance companies choose the state with the least effective regulation and make that their headquarters. Ever notice how most credit card companies are headquartered in Delaware and the Dakotas? When you have a problem or complaint, you not only have to contact your state officials but state officials thousands of miles away. Do we really want to make that mistake again?

Increasing competition would be a good thing in the market, but, as history has shown, big companies merge and grow, creating something just shy of an oligarchy.

Beyond that, health care is not a commodity like wheat or a concrete good like a loaf of bread. The laws of economics don’t apply in the same way. You can decide you won’t eat bread if the price of a loaf goes above $3. You cannot decide against getting a stent because of the price tag if your life is on the line.

DeMint also has introduced S. 2835, the Health Care Equity Act, as part of health care reform. The bill “allows all Americans who do not receive health insurance through their employer to deduct 100 percent of their health insurance premiums from their taxes.” This idea could work, assuming health care benefits aren’t going to be taxed for everyone anyway.

Will DeMint work to add his ideas to the current legislation? Or will he say, “If you don’t do everything I want, I’m not voting for it” ?

If we can work together rather than say “my way or no way,” maybe we can see progress on this issue. Give and take only works when both sides participate. Both sides of the aisle need to be willing to vote for a compromise bill. That is how the sausage of legislation is made.

We also need a substantive debate on this issue full of specifics. There are a number of ideas and proposals out there. We need to discuss all of them, not focus on the tidbits magnified on cable TV.

Lisa Chalian-Rock is editor at The Messenger. You can contact her by phone (843) 332-6545 ext. 19 or by email .