Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Experts: Obama's 'Public Option' Insurance Will Abandon 100 Million Citizens
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:22 PM
By: David A. Patten
Up to 100 million people would lose their current healthcare plan within the next three years if Congress passes the "public option" health bill now making its way through Congress, policy experts tell Newsmax.
Defections on that scale would mean the death of the health-insurance sector within five years, a leading GOP congressman says.
These findings fly in the face of President Obama's assurances.
"Under our proposals," Obama told the American people during his July 18 weekly radio address, "if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story."
Not so, according to a report released Monday by the Lewin Group, a nonpartisan Falls Church, Va., firm that provides consulting services to the healthcare industry. The D.C.-based Heritage Foundation sponsored the study.
The study concludes that, although the government won't actually order people to leave their private insurance plans, it will induce their employers to do so. The taxpayer subsidies in the public option will tilt the economic scales so much that employers and individuals will abandon the private insurance market by the millions, the Lewin Group study indicates.
Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., an orthopedic surgeon and senior ranking Republican on the Health subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee, tells Newsmax the imbalance will kill private health insurance as it currently exists in less than a decade.
"I don't see how it can go longer than somewhere between three and five years," Price tells Newsmax. "The phase-in makes it so that we'll see tens of millions go from private plans to the government-run plan within a year or two. And then five years is the drop dead date where everybody is forced off."
The mainstream media is beginning to question Obama's presumptions as well.
ABC senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper writes on his Political Punch blog that the president has admitted his statement is not literally true.
The government "might create circumstances" that would lead to a widespread change in policies, Tapper writes.
"I can't pass a law that says, 'I'm sorry, employers, you can never make changes to the healthcare plans that you provide your employees," Obama recently told ABC's Diane Sawyer. "What I can say is that the government is not going to force . . . your employers or you to join a government plan, for example."
Tapper reports that Obama later appeared to hedge on his promise during ABC News' healthcare forum, saying: "If you are happy with your plan, and if you are happy with your doctor, we don't want you to have to change."
Yet that is exactly what would happen to tens of millions of policyholders if Congress passes the current plans, Lewin Group and other experts say.
Obama has justified the public option as a means of policing private insurers, saying it "will keep them honest and help keep prices down."
The reality, critics say, is that Obama's proposal would go far beyond that, possibly even driving the private health-insurance sector out of business altogether, at a time when the economy already is closing in on 10 percent unemployment.
The Lewin Group appears to support Rep. Price's conclusion that public-option healthcare will bring radical changes to voters' health insurance coverage.
That consultant's analysis finds that the average monthly premium under the public option would be $179 less than the average private premium.
Lewin's analysts calculate that this would induce 83.4 million Americans and their employers to change plans. Because the employers usually make the decision, millions of those individuals would have little or no say in whether they would join the public-option plan.
Lewin concludes that 103.4 million Americans would sign up for the public plan, cutting the size of the private-insurance market just about in half. In three years, 48.4 percent fewer people would be covered by private insurance.
"The president simply isn't telling the truth," Price charges. "I don't know if that's because he hasn't read the bill, or he doesn't know what his cohorts up here on Capitol Hill have done to the legislation, but it's very, very clear."
He adds, "This will destroy the individual private insurance market in this nation. And if you talk to the folks who authored the plan, they admit it. They aren't trying to hide that at all. It's just the President who's trying to hide that."
One reason that healthcare policy experts cite for the profound impact the public-option would have on private insurers is "cost shifting."
Hospitals and physicians now defray the cost of the billions of dollars of free medical care they provide to uninsured people � known as "uncompensated care" � by increasing their fees to private health plans. As the number of people covered by private plans diminishes, fewer policyholders remain to absorb the cost of uncompensated care, which raises their premiums and results in an ever-narrowing base of privately insured.
"It�s a death spiral," Price tells Newsmax, "because as you take people out of personal insurance market then you are decreasing the number of individuals for whom risk is spread across. As you do so, the cost increases for each individual that remains in the private market. With the bill, you get to that point relatively quickly."
Advocates of the bill maintain, however, that by boosting the level of healthcare enrollment to about 95 percent of the populace, uncompensated care should diminish drastically. So far, the president's biggest hurdle comes from members of his own party, who are nervous about projected budget deficits and a surtax of up to 8 percent on the wealthy that would be used to reduce the plan's estimated budgetary impact of more than $1 trillion over the next decade.
"Congress needs to strive for a bill that's deficit-neutral over the long term, even beyond 10 years. All the bills so far have run deficits in the first 10 years, and would likely run massive deficits in following decades," senior Heritage analyst Brian Riedel tells Newsmax.
Riedel voices open skepticism about current projections for the plan's impact on the deficit: "The healthcare estimates are almost certainly underestimating the cost of health care. For starters, government healthcare programs almost always cost substantially more than is projected," he says.
"In this instance," Riedel adds, "many are assuming that the public plan will create all of these efficiencies that hold down costs, and I'm not sure that's going to happen. Additionally, there's always a chance that taxpayers are going to be asked to subsidize the public option, in order to give it a competitive advantage over private health care. That will raise the cost as well."
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:22 PM
By: David A. Patten
Up to 100 million people would lose their current healthcare plan within the next three years if Congress passes the "public option" health bill now making its way through Congress, policy experts tell Newsmax.
Defections on that scale would mean the death of the health-insurance sector within five years, a leading GOP congressman says.
These findings fly in the face of President Obama's assurances.
"Under our proposals," Obama told the American people during his July 18 weekly radio address, "if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story."
Not so, according to a report released Monday by the Lewin Group, a nonpartisan Falls Church, Va., firm that provides consulting services to the healthcare industry. The D.C.-based Heritage Foundation sponsored the study.
The study concludes that, although the government won't actually order people to leave their private insurance plans, it will induce their employers to do so. The taxpayer subsidies in the public option will tilt the economic scales so much that employers and individuals will abandon the private insurance market by the millions, the Lewin Group study indicates.
Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., an orthopedic surgeon and senior ranking Republican on the Health subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee, tells Newsmax the imbalance will kill private health insurance as it currently exists in less than a decade.
"I don't see how it can go longer than somewhere between three and five years," Price tells Newsmax. "The phase-in makes it so that we'll see tens of millions go from private plans to the government-run plan within a year or two. And then five years is the drop dead date where everybody is forced off."
The mainstream media is beginning to question Obama's presumptions as well.
ABC senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper writes on his Political Punch blog that the president has admitted his statement is not literally true.
The government "might create circumstances" that would lead to a widespread change in policies, Tapper writes.
"I can't pass a law that says, 'I'm sorry, employers, you can never make changes to the healthcare plans that you provide your employees," Obama recently told ABC's Diane Sawyer. "What I can say is that the government is not going to force . . . your employers or you to join a government plan, for example."
Tapper reports that Obama later appeared to hedge on his promise during ABC News' healthcare forum, saying: "If you are happy with your plan, and if you are happy with your doctor, we don't want you to have to change."
Yet that is exactly what would happen to tens of millions of policyholders if Congress passes the current plans, Lewin Group and other experts say.
Obama has justified the public option as a means of policing private insurers, saying it "will keep them honest and help keep prices down."
The reality, critics say, is that Obama's proposal would go far beyond that, possibly even driving the private health-insurance sector out of business altogether, at a time when the economy already is closing in on 10 percent unemployment.
The Lewin Group appears to support Rep. Price's conclusion that public-option healthcare will bring radical changes to voters' health insurance coverage.
That consultant's analysis finds that the average monthly premium under the public option would be $179 less than the average private premium.
Lewin's analysts calculate that this would induce 83.4 million Americans and their employers to change plans. Because the employers usually make the decision, millions of those individuals would have little or no say in whether they would join the public-option plan.
Lewin concludes that 103.4 million Americans would sign up for the public plan, cutting the size of the private-insurance market just about in half. In three years, 48.4 percent fewer people would be covered by private insurance.
"The president simply isn't telling the truth," Price charges. "I don't know if that's because he hasn't read the bill, or he doesn't know what his cohorts up here on Capitol Hill have done to the legislation, but it's very, very clear."
He adds, "This will destroy the individual private insurance market in this nation. And if you talk to the folks who authored the plan, they admit it. They aren't trying to hide that at all. It's just the President who's trying to hide that."
One reason that healthcare policy experts cite for the profound impact the public-option would have on private insurers is "cost shifting."
Hospitals and physicians now defray the cost of the billions of dollars of free medical care they provide to uninsured people � known as "uncompensated care" � by increasing their fees to private health plans. As the number of people covered by private plans diminishes, fewer policyholders remain to absorb the cost of uncompensated care, which raises their premiums and results in an ever-narrowing base of privately insured.
"It�s a death spiral," Price tells Newsmax, "because as you take people out of personal insurance market then you are decreasing the number of individuals for whom risk is spread across. As you do so, the cost increases for each individual that remains in the private market. With the bill, you get to that point relatively quickly."
Advocates of the bill maintain, however, that by boosting the level of healthcare enrollment to about 95 percent of the populace, uncompensated care should diminish drastically. So far, the president's biggest hurdle comes from members of his own party, who are nervous about projected budget deficits and a surtax of up to 8 percent on the wealthy that would be used to reduce the plan's estimated budgetary impact of more than $1 trillion over the next decade.
"Congress needs to strive for a bill that's deficit-neutral over the long term, even beyond 10 years. All the bills so far have run deficits in the first 10 years, and would likely run massive deficits in following decades," senior Heritage analyst Brian Riedel tells Newsmax.
Riedel voices open skepticism about current projections for the plan's impact on the deficit: "The healthcare estimates are almost certainly underestimating the cost of health care. For starters, government healthcare programs almost always cost substantially more than is projected," he says.
"In this instance," Riedel adds, "many are assuming that the public plan will create all of these efficiencies that hold down costs, and I'm not sure that's going to happen. Additionally, there's always a chance that taxpayers are going to be asked to subsidize the public option, in order to give it a competitive advantage over private health care. That will raise the cost as well."
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Our friend wrote Senator Jim Inhofe
this is a real letter just received from Senator Inhofe regarding health care from a friend of ours.... I did not know if she wished her name to be used... but here is the note.
~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Mrs. Han***:
Thank you for contacting me with your thoughts on health care reform. As your voice in Washington, I appreciate being made aware of your thoughts and concerns.
I am dedicated to providing quality health care for my fellow Oklahomans and all Americans and desire to see everyone receive the best possible health care with the most choices. Yes, there is a health care crisis that needs to be addressed, but a greater crisis is having a Washington bureaucrat get between you and your doctor, denying you the medical care you need. Therefore, I am committed to a balanced, common sense approach to health care that provides assistance to those who truly need it and keeps healthcare patient-centered rather than government-centered.
Like you, I believe the Federal government has no place in our personal health care decisions, choices, and treatments. Even with our increasing health care costs and concern for the uninsured, we still have the best health care system in the world, and I do not want to jeopardize the quality of care that already exists in our country. Socialized, government-run health care, touted by many as the only solution, is not the answer. This is made evident by the state of health care in other nations that use this model, like Canada or Great Britain.
There are many examples that show the failure of this type of system. Of the numerous articles, let me provide examples of a few. The Wall Street Journal featured a story earlier this year of a Canadian citizen, Bill Murray who waited in pain for more than a year to see a specialist for his arthritic hip. The specialist recommended a state-of-the-art procedure, but government bureaucrats determined that Mr. Murray, who was 57, was "too old". In the end, he was also denied the opportunity to pay for the procedure himself. The Mayo Clinic' website features the story of Shona Holmes whose Canadian family doctor discovered a tumor in her brain. Ms. Holmes knew she could not wait the six months it would take for her to get an appointment with a specialist. Instead, she was able to call the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and got an appointment that the same day. The British newspaper, The Press reported that a British citizen, Ian Dobbin, was informed by the British National Health Service that since it would not pay for his life-saving cancer treatment, he needed to pay ?25,000 (over $40,000) to obtain the treatment in order to survive. He was quoted in the article saying, "I've been paying my national insurance all my life and when it comes to the point that I need it to keep me alive, they are not prepared to help."
These stories and many others illustrate some of the problems that can rise when the government gets involved in health care. Furthermore, statistics show that the United States already has a superior and more effective health system. According to recent publications, the mortality rate in Canada is 25% higher for breast cancer, 18% higher for prostate cancer, and 13% higher for colorectal cancer than in the U.S. Additionally, studies show that only 5% of Americans wait more than 4 months for surgery, compared with 23% of Australians, 26% of New Zealanders, 27% of Canadians, and 36% of British citizens. In fact, nearly 1.8 million people in Great Britain are waiting for hospital or outpatient treatments at any given time. Even more telling, a Canadian doctor now practicing in the United States reported in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons that the average wait time to see a specialist in Canada is 17 weeks. If we give the Federal government more control over health care, I am very concerned that Oklahomans and all Americans will quickly feel the effects of the rationing of health care.
Supporters of a "public plan" or government-run health insurance option claim that a public plan will bring competition to the health insurance market and lower prices. However, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has made it clear that introducing a government-run health plan into the market would have minimal impact on cost reduction. In fact, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf testified to the Senate Budget Committee that "in the legislation that has been reported [they] do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs". I am concerned that a "public plan" option will run private insurance out of business leaving us, as consumers, without choices and options. An estimated 15 million could lose their current health insurance offered by their employer if current proposals are enacted. As an American citizen, I do not want bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. deciding which doctors I am allowed to see or which treatments are available to me.
President Obama has promised the American people on numerous occasions that if you like your current health insurance, you can keep it. However, CBO estimates and has testified that several million Americans will lose the health care coverage currently offered by their employer if the Kennedy/Dodd bill were to become law. Again, we see that this comprehensive health care proposal is leading us down a path that takes choice away from individuals.
As an alternative, I am a cosponsor of S. 1099, the Patients' Choice Act. This bill strengthens relationships between patients and physicians by using choice and competition rather than rationing and restrictions to contain costs while ensuring that affordable health care is available for all Americans without interference from the Federal government. While promoting healthier lifestyles and disease prevention through incentives for States, S. 1099 also provides a refundable tax credit of $2,300 per individual or $5,700 per family for the purchase of health insurance. To enable individuals to choose a health insurance plan that best meets their needs, the bill creates State Health Insurance Exchanges allowing Americans to compare different health plans and makes Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) more accessible and easy to use.
Thank you again for contacting me. As Senators, we are here to represent the interests of our constituents, not Washington, D.C. As the healthcare debate further develops and more proposals are introduced, I will work to develop and enact legislation that ensures affordable health care is available to all in a fiscally responsible manner with the most choices available
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