Obama's Health Care Address to the Nation

Obama Care, to the Rescue

The series I’ve been writing on the history of the American Revolution, and how it relates to today is being interrupted for this blog. Having watched President Obama’s address to the nation, I feel the need to address that topic.

Let me qualify by saying I actually took notes during the address. I get impatient with stating things from memory only to have the opposing side say, “He didn’t say that.” So, I have my notes. If you disagree, please find the content of the speech online and come prepared with specifics - not recollections.

President Obama started by making sure all in the audience understood that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression. President Clinton said the exact same thing. It seems to be a theme with the last two liberal administrations. While I can’t support Bush in many of the policies he pursued, let’s judge each president by what he actually did. I was appalled at President Bush II urging that Congress rush the Stimulus Act through. As am I appalled at the actions of Obama tripling the national debt inside 6 months. Which action is worse? Eight years of slow economic deterioration, or 6 months of a sudden trifold in your debt? Put this on a personal level: Let’s say you were involved in 2 marriages. The first put you $10,000 in debt before a divorce pursued. The new spouse took the reins of your existing debt and within 6 months increased your indebtedness to $30,000 by trying to spend his or her way into recovery. (Personal examples always help me get back to basic understanding.)

Despite our present situation, President Obama claimed, during the speech, that he had brought the economy back from the brink. Bringing something back, to me, means moving in the opposite direction. How is it that you are bringing something back, when actually the problem gets worse? 

Obama stated that we, the new administration, did not come here to clean up crises, but to build a new future. The astute listener must ask himself, “build what future”? What many voters did not choose to hear prior to the election was Obama’s promise to re-form America. That’s exactly what he is trying to do. Barack Obama does not cherish our American legacy, despite what he may say in any speech. He truly does want to re-form the fabric and structure of this country. Otherwise, he would say that he wants to grow, capitalize on, strengthen, improve, adhere to, etc. Re-forming means change the form of. Many Americans, myself included, have absolutely no interest in abandoning the Constitution and the legacy left us by the Founders and Framers. If you’re in doubt, Obama said that you could judge his administration by the people he surrounded himself with as advisors. Take a look at them; check their pasts and their writings. Using this as the litmus test, Obama has very little interest in preserving the Constitution, the tenets of the Declaration of Independence, and the legacy of our American heritage.

Obama stated that coverage for an individual seeking health care costs three times as much as if that same insured obtained group coverage. Problem: If I obtain coverage with a group, I obtain a “group average” rate. If I am obese, have pre-existing health issues, am a smoker - well, Obama’s probably correct; I will get the benefit of healthy people subsidizing my poor health choices. However, if I’m of an appropriate weight, don’t have pre-existing conditions, am a non-smoker, well, I’d probably be better off seeking my own insurance rates than going for the group average. Because in this second scenario my good habits provide the insurance company with surplus premium dollars used to subsidize the the unhealthy insureds within the group. It’s not a mystery, it’s just a “spread of risk” function of insurance. Insurance companies cannot invent the statistics - they justify their rate structures to the state insurance commissioners before they’re approved. Further, Obama said we are the only country that allows 14,000 insureds to lose their coverage daily. I wonder why? Did they lose their jobs because of the recession and lost their health benefits? (Probably.) Did they walk away from their private insurance? (No.) Obama said, those with insurance have less security than ever. Why is that? Again, it’s not the insurance, it’s the economy. He went on to site one patient who had gall stones as a pre-existing condition, and another with acne; both patients were reportedly denied benefits for non-related life threatening problems, which  eventually led to the deaths of these people. As a person who works in the insurance industry, I’d really like to know why, if this truly did happen, the companies which denied benefits were not sued to the full extent of the law for failing to live up to the policy provisions. Once insured, customers are not excluded from benefits during the policy period, unless that it can be proved they lied during application. Acne? Come on.

At one point, Obama brought up Medicare and Medicaid, stating that private insurance puts pressure on it, inferring that these two governmentally administered programs are suffering financially because of the existence of private insurance. Hmm. Obama went on to assert, “Nobody disputes this.” He never did explain what he meant. What I have observed is that providers and suppliers who have worked with Medicare are attempting to distance themselves from it as government prescribed payments are so restrictive, those entities cannot stay afloat economically if the number of their patients on Medicare exceeds are certain percentage. Secondly, the red tape involved in dealing with the government programs puts an unrealistic burden on the administrative staff.

Obama stressed these points that he says should be mandatory inclusions of national health care: 1) Insurance cannot exclude applicants based on pre-existing conditions; 2)  Insurance cannot drop an insured nor change his/her coverage when the insured is sick; 3) The can be no “arbitrary” caps on limits to insurance; 4) there must be a limit to out-of-pocket expenses on the part of the insured; 5) Insurers are required to cover the costs of procedures such as mammograms and colonoscopies. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think #2 is a moot point; I don’t know of medical coverage that is allowed to practice changing or dropping insurance when an insured experiences illness. As for the  other 4 points, these are all accomplishable, assuming that price is no consideration. Again, let’s apply this to a personal level: you own a small business and you decide to provide medical insurance for your employees out of your own pocket. Your employee association, a group of 10, come to you with these demands: 1) you have no right to know whether we have diabetes, HIV, cancer, or heart disease; 2) No matter how expensive coverage gets, you can have no limits to what you pay; 3) After we pay up to $500, our personal obligation is over and you’re on the hook for everything else; and 4) we demand that you pay for tests that we deem in our best personal interest. As a private employer are you going to be able to live up to these terms? Why then, when we extend this to several thousand insureds do we think the practicality of these concerns goes away? I’ll tell you why Obama and the National Health Care advocates think they go away. Because ultimately the bill will fall to the responsibility of the taxpayers - in the eyes of government, a veritable bottomless pit.

Following this, President Obama discussed the concept of an insurance exchange. For those who could not access private insurance through employment, they would be able to obtain it through the exchange. The collectivity of this group would be large enough to provide the same negotiating power as groups such as say, the teacher’s union. However, if this group is organized by the government as their “group,” we must assume that anyone stepping forward to insure them would have to live up to the demands listed in the previous paragraph, as outlined by Obama: no pre-existing condition underwriting, no caps on coverage, limited out-of-pocket costs to the insured, and mandatory testing on prescribed health concerns. It was inferred that these people would have manageable costs due to the fact that they were forming a “group.” Two things: 1) Every group plan I’ve participated in had me paying a portion of my care, and my employer paying the other half. Who is the employer in this case? For instance, in my last job in teaching, I paid about $800 per month while the school district paid another $800 in the form of paid benefits. That’s $1600. Will the government pay the second half? (That is, the taxpayer.) Or will those in the exchange come up with the full $1600?

Then, there was that group which Obama said didn’t have the means to participate in the exchange. For this group, he simply said they would receive tax credits to help them access health insurance. What this means, he didn’t exactly explain. Are we to assume that the poor will receive a federal tax cash refund to pay for insurance? If so, how will we be sure the poor use it to actually pay for health insurance? But let’s presume that it’s not cash, but some type of voucher which must go toward health care. Are these vouchers susceptible as a “black market” currency, such as food stamps? Will this type of care be susceptible to the same abuses as Medicare, which have left this program bankrupt? If not, why not? The President didn’t say.

President Obama stated, “I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business...I just want to hold them accountable.” He claimed the not-for-profit-public option would do that. How, again, he didn’t say. In a free market system, the absolute best force available is competition. Competing companies will hold one another’s feet to the fire while honing better and better products at the best price. But competition is currently being stifled by interstate laws preventing insurance companies from competing freely throughout the country. If you want to see improvement today, allow all insurers to compete freely in all 50 states.

Obama likened his proposed national health care agencies to universities, saying they would be self-sufficient, earning their way just as the private companies do. Do you follow the budgets of state run colleges? Name one public college or university that pays its own way. Last time I checked, they are ALL heavily subsidized through taxation.

The President pledged that he would not sign a plan that added one dime to our deficit, now or in the future, period. To prove it, he said, he’d make the spending cuts to make up for it. Time out. Did you notice the inconsistency here? A minute ago, he said the national health care would pay its own way. In this breath, he’s saying that he pledges to make up the difference by making spending cuts. Whoops. Obama is conceding this will cost more than we have. He went on to say that the money could be found in existing wasteful spending. Time out again. Wasteful spending exists, and we added to it with the Stimulus Bill? I thought every penny was needed to oil the mechanism of government programs for the good of the economy. Now, he saying he knows of wasteful spending. How come we didn’t go after that before passing the Stimulus Plan, and why don’t we assess that wasteful spending today to determine what useful means those salvaged dollars may be put to?

The absolute biggest arguments put forth by conservatives to combat spiraling costs of health care is in the way of tort reform. Let me repeat: THE BIGGEST. Limiting court costs, frivolous lawsuits against physicians and drug companies, and bringing about malpractice insurance that is not prohibitive - these are changes that can be made without overhauling the best health care system in the world. Obama devoted less than 30 seconds to this; maybe a sentence or two. Short shrift. He dismissed it. Obama is a lawyer, elected by lawyers, as are most in Congress. Follow the money.

The critics of the bill were characterized in Obama’s speech, once again, as disseminators of misinformation. The President raised the controversial points “a plan to kill off senior citizens” which he said was a lie, plain and simple. The root of this argument has to do with whether bill will result in health care rationing. The proponents say there is no such stipulation; the critics contend that necessarily, the tax sustained plan will have limits, and policy makers in Obama’s inner circle embrace prioritizing the contributors of society, making sure they are guaranteed societal provision, whereas infants and the elderly don’t have as much to contribute and are therefore, more expendable. So, say the critics, the plan doesn’t need to spell these terms out, it will just be a reality of a brave new world where limited resources are distributed according to the ruling party’s philosophy concerning the sanctity of life. Several key players in Obama’s inner sanctum embrace attributing relative value of life based on what the individual has to contribute (Sunstein, Holdren, Jarrett, and the recently departed Jones). Obama also cited misinformation as far as critics saying illegal aliens would have access, and that abortions would be funded. Again, calling it misinformation is dodging the point: those things are currently happening. Why would we think that practice would suddenly change?

Okay, so it sounds like I’m just a big naysayer. Just like I was a naysayer concerning the Stimulus Plan. Does our country need health reform. Yes. Do I have a better answer? Well, I think serious tort reform, restricting health care to citizens, opening state markets to all insurance companies, and requiring patients who show up without insurance and have no intention of paying private providers to set up a payment plan would make a dent in some of the need. And by the way, I’d like health insurance and don’t have it. So I’m not sitting in my ivory tower untouched by the reality of the need. But this health care bill doesn’t work at fixing our system; it is the beginning of a replacement for our system. It’s a move toward Canada and Great Britain. 

Despite President Obama’s promises and assurances, the economics of his plan don’t make sense. As the Stimulus Plan doesn’t make sense. The Obama administration and Congress are rushing to make policy upheaval within a very short period of time while they don’t even take the time to fully understand, or even read the bills that special interest groups and advisors are writing as opposed to the Constitutionally planned legislative model of elected legislators. When changes are as significant as the Stimulus Plan which puts future generations in debt, Cap and Trade which would further sidetrack our private sector from providing free market economic recovery, and this National Health Care Act which is the mostly hotly debated legislation in over 40 years, it just doesn’t make sense to ignore at least half of the constituents in America. Even if you do have a majority in Congress.