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Wednesday, June 10. 2009
The Politics of Health
It’s quite interesting and entertaining to watch and hear members of the Republican Party resort to the same tactics that led to them being rejected by the vast majority of voters in 2006 and 2008. One of the tactics they have used for over 15 years now, uniformly using talking points and buzzwords created by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, worked to grab both houses of Congress from the Democrats in 1994.So it’s no surprise Newt Gingrich, the “star” of the 1994 Republican revolution, peppered his speech this past weekend with buzzwords suggested by Luntz. Terms like “rationing,” “government bureaucrat” and “politician” to counter the demand for public health care for the tens of millions of Americans who are either under-insured or not covered at all.
Frank Luntz is the guy who changed the definition of the word “Orwellian” from negative to positive by stating, “To be ‘Orwellian’ is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening … and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever.”
Before Luntz, to be “Orwellian” was to use double-speak and lies to manipulate the public to promote a political agenda.
He also framed the debate on global warming with his insistence on using the term “climate change” instead of global warming, which, he contends, sounds more severe than “climate change.” With that little change in the name of the debate, non-scientists could question or even denounce the research on global warming by pointing to the Earth’s natural cycle of “climate change.”
Frank Luntz has a long history that includes rebukes from his peers for not providing data to back up his polling claims and for actually “mischaracterizing” the results of his polls during the 2000 presidential elections. Maybe “lying about” would be a better term than “mischaracterizing.”
The fallacies of the latest Luntz-created buzzwords were quickly pointed out by talking heads on several news channels. In regards to “politicians” getting between our doctors and us, by denying a public health care option to compete with the private, for-profit insurance funding the Republican Party, politicians, Republicans primarily, are getting between us and our doctors by limiting our choices.As anyone who has paid for private health insurance knows, the insurance company can deny a request to see a specialist or drop a doctor from its coverage forcing the patient to find another. The insurance companies certainly are a force between the patient and his/her doctor.
Then there is “government bureaucrat.” Insurance companies have the same workers, the only difference being they answer to a corporate headquarters that directs them to make decisions based on increasing profits. In my dealings with both private health insurance and a government program, the Veterans Administration, the V.A. has at least been honest when they denied me services: due to budgeting, I was no longer a priority. That seems to have changed in the past two years, the excellent care before during and after my heart surgery being the prime example.
The private health insurance company didn’t even bother to inform me services had been denied; I had to call my doctor to ask when the requested cardiac rehab was to start. It was at that time I was told the insurance provider had rejected the rehab. Worse still, to avoid prescribing services and therapies that may have impacted their payments from the insurance companies, none of the doctors involved ever told me of my second heart attack, suffered in January of 2005. They didn’t use it in their correspondence with me or in my records at all.
It wasn’t until five months later, when seeing my health care provider at the V.A. that I was told the incident in January was a heart attack. They withheld vital information, by not using a particular term, to save the insurance company and themselves money. It could have cost me my life.
Then there is the subject of “rationing.” The Republicans insist the government will start “rationing” health care if a public option is created. What they want us to believe is the federal government will dole out health care based solely for financial reasons; each patient covered being allotted only so much coverage.
Well, as I found out in 2005, health insurance companies have been doing that for years. They did it to me. If a health insurance company doesn’t want to spend money on your health care, they won’t and there’s really nothing you can do about it, certainly not in a timely fashion.
The chatter from the people opposed to providing health care for all Americans fill the airwaves with all kinds of bullshit. Heard this Wednesday from Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming: Most of the high cost of health care comes from 15% of the people in America who eat too much, don’t get enough exercise and smoke. If we address that 15% the cost of health care would drop and everyone could afford private health insurance.
Ironically, the man making that statement, on the Ed Show on MSNBC, is a doctor. Why he holds that view is beyond comprehension, other than he wants to adhere to the party line. Sure, the people like me who are suffering from heart disease and diabetes, among other degenerative diseases, require more costs than those who don’t, but does that explain record profits the health insurance companies have enjoyed over the past few years? Not really.Senator Barrasso trotted out the old lies about the country becoming a single-payer health care system like Canada or France (they always trot out France when they want to denigrate something), and that Canadians are driving down to the United States in droves to use the American health care system. I have some friends in Canada and yes, they say sometimes they have to wait to see a doctor, but when I asked them if they’d come to the U.S. to get that same care, they all said no.
A more telling contradiction to Senator Barrasso and those who believe as he does, it was the United States that passed laws to prevent American citizens from going to Canada to obtain prescription drugs at far cheaper costs than what are available here.
Fourteen thousand people lose their health insurance every day. The greatest burden on our national treasury is health care; we spend more on our health care than any other nation in the developed world and yet we rank 30th in quality health care, behind nations like Cuba.
The Republicans are out of step with the American public on this issue and it’s one of the reasons there are not only out of power, but nearly irrelevant in national government. Hell, they lost a significant number of state governor offices as well.
If the Grand Old Party wants to still sing the corporate health insurance tune, it’s a good bet they will continue to lose seats in national government. I don’t know, maybe that’s a good thing — for now.
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