Opponents of the current health care reform legislation are attempting to boil it down to language that will support their efforts to enlist others in working to defeat the bill. And they don't care if they exaggerate or get it totally wrong; they’ve got to kill this thing. Right now, the bill in question is HR 3200. It is 1,018 pages, not the 1,800 pages frequently claimed in e-mails circulating on the Internet. And most critics will be quick to claim members of Congress have not read the bill. A comment on that in a moment.
BTW, HR 3200 is not the only bill working its way through Congress. There are three bills being considered by House committees and at least two in the Senate. The Senate is not as far along as the House but we are a long way from setting language in concrete. You wouldn’t know that from the scaremongers who are using the draft to claim every evil known to man is about to be visited upon us.
The e-mail I received listed 31 so-called “egregious acts of government intervention in our lives” if health care reform passes. Here’s the first one:
Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS THAT SELF-INSURE!!
Not true. It actually says “The Commissioner…shall conduct a study of the large group insured and self-insured employer health care markets.” [Underline added by Ben]
Several criteria are listed for the study but the one that troubles most opponents is the one:
(C) The financial solvency and capital reserve levels of employers that self-insure by employer size.
In other words, the new Commissioner will be required to conduct a study of the solvency of self-insured employers and provide recommendations to Congress on how to make the program work better.
Because the study will take a look at the "solvency and capital reserve levels" of employers, the author of the scare e-mail interprets that to mean the government will audit your books. That's not what the language says...but, wait a minute, isn't it true that government already has the authority to audits the tax returns of businesses, and individuals?
The next item in the e-mail says:
Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC bill - THERE WILL
BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get
Not true. Language in the bill actually says there will be a public/private advisory committee established to recommend covered benefits.
The proposal says there will be 26 members appointed by the President and Congress to serve on this advisory panel…and more than government will be represented on it. Here is the actual language of the bill:
(1) PARTICIPATION- The membership of the Health Benefits Advisory Committee shall at least reflect providers, consumer representatives, employers, labor, health insurance issuers, experts in health care financing and delivery, experts in racial and ethnic disparities, experts in care for those with disabilities, representatives of relevant governmental agencies. and at least one practicing physician or other health professional and an expert on children’s health and shall represent a balance among various sectors of the health care system so that no single sector unduly influences the recommendations of such Committee.
Does that sound like "a Government Committee will decide your benefits?" Hardly. The advisory committee even includes "consumer representatives" and -- note the last line -- "so that no single sector unduly influences the recommendations of such Committee." That doesn’t sound very malevolent to me.
The person who wrote the e-mail I received attempted to cite 29 additional provisions of the new proposal that convinced him there should be no law passed to address health care reform. His exaggerations undermine his argument for as soon as they are exposed for the exaggerations they are, and in some cases, outright falsehoods, his argument is dismissed. But his hard-line ultra right wing view is shared by many members of Congress who think it best that America not address health care reform.
Finally, don't let anyone get away with telling you Members of Congress don't read the bills they pass into law. When it comes to important landmark legislation such as health care reform, every member will read every word. Most of them will read and re-read the most important sections of the bill many times.
Those who don't want health care reform to pass claim members have not read the bill because THEY DO NOT WANT YOU TO READ THE BILL. They want you to think the task is too daunting and you should be happy they are reading and interpreting it for you.
At some point, we must stop listening to those who only want to scare us, and start listening to those who want to genuinely lead us.
Change is coming. The status quo of our health care delivery system is untenable. Of course, there are those who don't want any change. I say to them, take a look around you.
Collection boxes for US Mail are going away. They will soon be relics of our past because Americans have adopted new forms of communication.
Cars will soon be run on energy other than fossil fuels because the supply of fossil fuels is finite and will soon disappear altogether. And our cars will be made of material that doesn't break in a crash, only bends.
In our lifetimes, most of our electricity will be generated by means other than fossil fuels.
Change is part of who we are. Change is not something we should be afraid of.
We have 47 million (or more) Americans who don't have any health care coverage. It is costing us an arm and a leg to take care of them in Emergency Rooms across this nation. We can't continue to do so. Our hospitals and other aspects of our healthcare delivery system are suffering.
In addition, you and I and others who have health insurance, have seen our premiums soar annually in double digits for the past 25 years (that's my own experience) and even the rates we pay, exorbitant as they are, are unrelated to the true cost of health care. That true cost, which most of us never see, impacts us all and robs our nation of precious resources that could be used to help us achieve higher productivity.
President Obama is trying to do something very difficult. He needs the help of a lot of people. Mostly he needs citizens to have a little faith in him, and believe he has our nation's best interest at heart...because he does.
2 comments:
For those who oppose health care, the double incentives of acting against (and, they hope, crippling in general) President Obama and serving the interests of the various health industry components whose power and wealth will be reduced to more appropriate levels are intoxicating. When you combine the time-tested tricks (like the ones you mention: lying, distortion, counting on the public to be lazy, etc) with one very bad habit we have, the threat to health care reform is very great in my view. The bad habit? When something looks (or is portrayed to us) as being complex and containing uncomfortable elements, we too often opt to live with the status quo. As if the fact that something hasn't killed us yet justifies continuing with it, we are pretty good at ignoring the coming storm.
You are absolutely correct on all points.
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