Busting healthcare myths

Published: 2009-10-06 10:40:59
Author: Karen Greenrose | The Hill | September 22, 2009

Watching the healthcare reform debate grow increasingly rancorous, I am reminded of the oath taken by doctors and nurses when they begin practicing medicine: First, do no harm. As a former nurse, I know that this oath is the cornerstone of our work. Which is why, as this debate unfolds, I wish that the politicians were also bound by this important oath.

From scary warnings about death panels to missing facts about the insurance industry’s willingness to play its part in reforming the system, the past several weeks have demonstrated that it’s business as usual in Washington. This lack of information and misinformation — you might even call it myth-information — is harmful to American seniors, families, small-business owners, providers, hospitals and, especially, all patients, regardless of income level.

Here are just a few of the worst examples:

• Any plan that is signed by President Obama will not add “one dime to our deficits now or in the future. Period.” One bill House Democrats offered would add $220 billion to the deficit over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Democrats and the administration have characterized the bill as deficit-neutral because they are not counting the estimated $245 billion cost of adjusting Medicare physician reimbursement rates. Further, CBO Director Elmendorf is on record as saying that none of the proposed pieces of legislation to date would create “the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”

• The public option will reduce healthcare costs by creating more competition. Unfortunately just the opposite is true. By design, a nonprofit, government-run and subsidized plan would have an unfair competitive advantage. Public entities generally do not have to adhere to state pricing or regulatory guidelines. Today, nine times out of 10, the reason certain markets are dominated by one or two large insurance companies is that state regulations make it challenging or impossible for smaller, private insurers to compete. A public option will only make this situation worse. In such an anti-competitive environment, private insurers — entities that are facilitating access and choice for millions of Americans today — would be forced to reassess whether it is viable to offer coverage in markets across the country.

• If you like your current healthcare coverage, you can keep it. That will be hard to do if your employer changes your health plan options, switches to the public plan or drops insurance coverage altogether — all possibilities under the proposed plan. A CBO analysis of the healthcare bill written by House Democrats showed that an estimated 3 million people with employer-based care would lose that coverage by 2016 because their employers would stop offering it.

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