Well now that Dingy Harry and his statist cohorts in the Senate have formulated their version of a socialistic take-over of Americans very health I feel this compilation of compelling argument(s) requires more visibility and understanding of the situation at hand.
All the following is provided by www.publicplanfacts.org with sources and encourage all to visit their site.
Copy and e-mail it to all you know. Print it so you can, as Glenn Beck would say, “to argue with idiots”.
Americans agree that we should increase access to affordable quality health care.
But creating a massive, new government-run public health care plan is a poison pill.
Proponents of the “public plan” continue to assure Americans that expanding the government’s role in providing health insurance will lower costs, increase competition and improve quality.
Really?
Here is the reality:- ON COMPETITION,,,,,,Liberal-Statist Dream World:• “Advocates of a public option believe a government insurance plan is needed to bring more robust price competition to the market…”(1)
• “One of the best ways to introduce this much-needed competition is for the federal government to offer a public health insurance plan that can compete with private insurers…” (2)
Reality:• “A public program won’t compete in a way that any normal business would recognize.” (3)
• “The choice is between giving consumers a real market of competing insurers and steering them steadily toward a single-payer.” (4)
• “There is simply no example, worldwide, of a robust private health insurance market co-existing with a government plan that’s open to all.” (5)
• “But government never competes in a private market; it takes the market over.” (6)
• “The problem with this arrangement is that Medicare is so powerful that it can get away with paying only 80 to 85 percent of actual costs, forcing doctors and hospitals to overcharge private insurers to make up the difference.” (7)
- ON LEVEL PLAYING FIELD,,,,,,Liberal-Statist Dream World:• “We can create a level playing field.” (8)
Reality:• Doug Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget Office – “More generally in health care reform, when people talk about public plans competing with private plans, I think designing a system in which a public plan could compete on a level playing field is extremely difficult.” (9)
• The Washington Post Editorial Page – “It is difficult to imagine a truly level playing field that would simultaneously produce benefits from a government run system.” (10)
• “Yet creating a marketplace where private insurance plans could compete fairly with Medicare for the under-65 population would be difficult and complex...” (11)
- ON ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS,,,,,,Liberal-Statist Dream World:• “Government-run plans have lower administrative expenses than private plans…” (12)
• “Public plans are attractive because…they have lower administrative costs…” {13)
Reality:• “The comparison between public and private plans is a false comparison.” (14)
• “The AMA believes…that administrative costs are actually lower than generally reported in the private sector and higher than generally reported in the
public sector.” (15)
• “Medicare’s supposed administrative and medical cost advantages are not real.”(16)
• “This argument ignores the problem that one of the main reasons Medicare’s administrative costs are low as a percentage of its overall spending is that it fails to control both wasteful spending – as much as one-third of all Medicare spending – and fraud.” (17)
• “Single-payer and ‘public plan’ option advocates erroneously cite a much higher figure of up to 13 percent of premium for the private insurance market. What advocates are doing is wrongly comparing what is in fact only one part of Medicare “administration” costs to the whole of private insurance “administration” costs.” (18)
• “Medicare’s ‘overhead’ costs for claims administration, as a percentage of the program’s ‘premium income,’ are really about the same as claims administration costs in the private large group health plan market.”
- ON PRICE CONTROLS / NEGOTIATING,,,,,,Liberal-Statist Dream World:• “Public plans are attractive because…they can be large-scale purchasers with a strong negotiating position with providers.” (19)
Reality:• “Price controls create large incentives to increase rather than decrease use of unnecessary health care.” (20)
• Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) – “This plan will almost certainly use a price-control system similar to the one in place for Medicare, allowing it to charge artificially low premiums by paying fees well below private rates. These low premiums will serve as a magnet for enrollment and will devastate the private companies trying to compete in the health-insurance market.” (21)
• “The creation of a ‘Medicare-like’ plan, in particular, would entail creation of a Medicare-like financing system – a shell game in which prices are held artificially below market rates while costs are shifted to private carriers and growing liabilities are shifted to the next generation of taxpayers.” (22)
- ON QUALITY AND ACCESS TO PROVIDERS,,,,,,
Liberal-Statist Dream World:• “Public Plan Choice will create incentives for effective performance just as today’s Medicare program promotes quality alongside cost containment.” (23)
• “…over the last generation, public insurance has pioneered new payment and quality-improvement methods…” (24)
• “Public plans are attractive because they can offer better access to necessary care for diverse
populations…” (25)
• “The central argument for public plan choice is that such a plan…offers Americans quality, affordable health care through a broad choice of providers in all parts of the country.” (26)
• “Nor do access and participation measures suggest that Medicare is increasingly shortchanging providers: Most data show relatively stable access and participation, and none shows the dire picture sometimes painted.” (27)
Reality:• “And private insurance plans are far ahead of Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs on reforms such as pay-for-performance medicine, chronic disease management and disease prevention.” (28)
• “A Texas Medical Association survey of that state’s doctors found that while 58 percent of Texas doctors accepted new Medicare patients, only 38 percent of primary care doctors did so.” (29)
• “One in five Medicare patients ends up back in the hospital within a month of discharge.” (30)
• “…Med PAC warns that Medicare’s well-known design deficiencies and its financial problems will certainly inhibit its delivery of high-quality care.” (31)
• “Some doctors…are no longer accepting Medicare…The doctors’ reasons: reimbursement rates are too low and paperwork too much of a hassle.” (32)
• “… a new government plan is merely a diversion from the core issue that under existing Medicare administrative payment systems – precisely the payment systems that champions of the new government-run plan routinely applaud – inefficiency is richly rewarded and innovation is
soundly punished.” (33)
- ON COST CONTAINMENT,,,,,, Liberal-Statist Dream World:• “Furthermore, experience with Medicare suggests that public insurance is better equipped to control spending over time…” (34)
• “The great virtue of public plan choice as a means of cost control is that it proposes relatively minimal disruption to existing arrangements compared with other comprehensive reform proposals.” (35)
Reality:• “Medicare keeps costs under control in part because of its 800-pound-gorilla capacity to dictate prices – in effect, to force the private sector to subsidize it.”(36)
• “…there is no evidence that Medicare has been successful at controlling spending growth.” (37)
• “Moreover, Medicare, despite its assured market and huge buying power, is headed for insolvency; thus, it is a poor model for a new program that would be dependent on voluntary enrollment in a competitive marketplace.” (38)
• “…Hacker’s contention that ‘Medicare has increasingly out-performed private plans in restraining the rate of increase of health spending while maintaining broad access’ that is the real problem with his argument for a public plan option.” (39)
• “Medicare will run out of money to pay claims in 2017 under current projections.” (40)
• “Medicare is accumulating trillions in unfunded liabilities, promises benefits without dedicated financing, while annually shifting billions of dollars in health costs to individuals and families in private health insurance.” (41)
Sources:
1 The Washington Post, Steve Pearlstein, “A ‘Public’ Fix for Health Care Need Not Abandon the Market,” April 10, 2009.
2 Harbage, Peter and Davenport, Karen, Center for American Progress, “Competitive Health Care: A Public Health Insurance Plan that Delivers Market Discipline,” March 2009, p. 1.
3 The Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2009.
4 Investor’s Business Daily, “Trojan Horse Alert,” March 10, 2009.
5 Lechleiter, May 14, 2009.
6 National Review, May 15, 2009.
7 The Washington Post, Pearlstein, April 10, 2009.
8 Hacker, Jacob S., The New England Journal of Medicine, “Health Competition – The Why and How of ‘Public-Plan Choice’,” May 28, 2009, p. 2269.
9 Testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, Doug Elmendorf, March 10, 2009.
10 The Washington Post, April 27, 2009.
11 Nichols, L. and Bertko, J., The New America Foundation, “A Modest Proposal for a Competing Public Health Plan,” March 2009, p. 7.
12 Holahan, J. and Blumberg, L., Urban Institute, “Can a Public Insurance Plan Increase Competition and Lower the Costs of Health Reform?,” 2008.
13 Holahan and Blumberg, p. 5.
14 The Wall Street Journal, Kerry Weems and Benjamin Sasse, “Is Government Health Insurance Cheap?,” April 14, 2009.
15 American Medical Association, “Administrative costs of health care coverage,”
16 Paduda, May 28, 2009.
17 Francis, Walton J., The Heritage Foundation, “Why a New Public Plan Will Not Improve American Health Care,” May 5, 2009, p. 14.
18 Schiffbauer, William G., BNA’s Medicare Report, “The Level Playing Field Myth: Comparing Administrative Costs for Public, Private Health Insurance,” April 24, 2009.
19 Holahan and Blumberg, p. 5.
20 Francis, Walton J., The Heritage Foundation, “Why a New Public Plan Will Not Improve American Health Care,” May 5, 2009, p. 9.
21 The Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2009.
22 Moffit, Robert E., The Heritage Foundation, “How a Public Health Plan Will Erode Private Care,” Executive Summary, December 22, 2008.
23 Harbage and Davenport, p. 2.
24 Hacker, December 2008, p. i.
25 Holahan and Blumberg, p. 5.
26 Hacker, Jacob S., Institute for America’s Future, “Healthy Competition: How to Structure a Public Health Insurance Plan Choice to Ensure Risk-Sharing, Cost Control, and
Quality Improvement,” April 2009, p. i.
27 Hacker, “Healthy Competition,” p. 17.
28 Kondracke, Morton, Roll Call, “Everyone Will Have Health Insurance — But It Will Be Costly,” May 7, 2009.
29 Smith, Dennis G., The Heritage Foundation, “The Real Price of a Public Health Plan: Less Innovation and Lower Quality,” April 24, 2009, p. 4.
30 Nano, Stephanie, Associated Press, “1 in 5 Medicare patients readmitted within month,” April 1, 2009.
31 Smith, p. 5.
32 Connelly, Julie, The New York Times, “Doctors are Opting Out of Medicare,” April 2, 2009.
33 Smith, p. 6.
34 Hacker, NEJM, p. 2270.
35 Hacker, “Healthy Competition”
36 The Washington Post, “Reforming Health Care,” April 27, 2009.
37 Pauly, Mark V., The New England Journal of Medicine, “Public Health Care and Health Insurance Reform – Varied Preferences, Varied Options,” May 28, 2009, p. 2272
38 Fuchs, Victor R., The New England Journal of Medicine, “The Proposed Government Health Insurance Company – No Substitute for Real Reform,” May 28, 2009, p. 2275.
39 Paduda Joe, Campaign for America’s Future Blog, “Medicare for All: The Wrong Answer To The Right Question,” May 28, 2009.
40 Dowd, B., Pizer, S., and Feldman, R., Progressive Policy Institute, “What Voters Look for in Health Insurance Reform,” May 18, 2009.
41 Smith, The Heritage Foundation, p. 7.
A couple of points here, the term ‘phoenix’ used here is very apropos being it refers to a mythical creature and that is exactly what ‘man-made’ global warming is –A MYTH. And in full context; ‘a phoenix rising from the ashes.’, proponents of this myth are really admitting the firestorm unleashed due to the hacked emails revealing their deception.
Now those quotes are from media in the United Kingdom which is where the emails originated from in the first place. Climategate is not just a concern of American’s nor are ‘skeptic’s’ or as I refer to as realist’s confined between our shore’s.
This goes to a point I have been pondering myself about how Galileo was treated by The Holy Sea at that time and how realist's and real scientist's are treated now by the new progressive religion of 'man-made' global warming.
