'Disingenuousness' on health care

Amid the deafening din of what passes for health-care debate in this country, at least two facts are often overlooked, while the positions of those such as myself are routinely misrepresented.

First is is the preposterous notion that “public option†skeptics would rather “do nothing†and are simply opposed to “reform.†In most cases, nothing could be further from the truth. People like me, who are wary of the Democratic plan, have plenty of ideas about how to lower costs and increase coverage, but they generally do not involve getting the government into the health-care business.

In an op-ed piece in last week’s Wall Street Journal (find a link on my blog at tcextra.com), John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, served up those other ideas in compelling fashion. Among the alternatives to Obamacare he enumerated:

1. Equalize the tax deductibility between employer-provided insurance and individually purchased insurance (this would help the self-employed buy coverage).

2. Repeal laws that prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.

3. Enact lawsuit reform limiting the punitive damages that are driving physician malpractice insurance premiums through the roof and costing tens of billions of dollars a year in defensive medical tests and procedures.

4. Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs) that companies like Whole Foods offer.

For daring to advocate anything but the Democratic health-care plan, Mackey and others are labeled anti-reformists who would “do nothing.†Please, let’s be fair. Almost no one wants to do nothing. The hard thing is agreeing on what to do.

    u    u    u

The second element of the debate that’s missing is how the public option will affect the private-sector insurance companies. President Obama insists that the public option would only force the insurance companies to “compete†for customers. But that will never happen for one big reason: You can’t undersell the government.

The president has already gone on record as saying he is for a single-payer, government-run health-care system similar to the one that’s been in effect in Canada since the 1960s. Obama is smart enough to realize that proposing that type of system in the United States would never fly. So what’s the next best thing? Propose a subsidized “public option†that will eventually drive the insurance companies out of health care, leaving the federal government as the default provider. To his credit, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has admitted that such is the intended effect of the Democratic legislation.

It is fundamentally dishonest of the president to present his health-care vision in this way. I say let the debate about single-payer begin. Who knows? It may be that in the long run there is no other way to control costs per patient and insure everyone. Of course, that’s not the debate the president wants because he knows he will lose it.

    u    u    u

Furthermore, it may be that the only way to cover everyone is for the Terry Cowgills of this world to give up their generous health insurance policies. But Obama’s “guarantee†that you can keep your current insurance if you want to is a whopper. He has no control over whether your employer abandons your current policy and dumps you into the cheaper public option.

Obama is correct when he brands health-care protesters who talk of “death panels†as “disingenuous.†But unfortunately, so is our president.

Terry Cowgill is a former senior writer for The Lakeville Journal. His blog can be found at tcextra.com/terrycowgill.