More Email Misinformation

Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform appeared in my email last night. What  a masterfully scary speech!  It appeals to our pride in America and to our sense of justice. And it raises huge doubts about the major health reform bill in the House. The only trouble is that the speech is filled with distortions. Have a listen and then come back for analysis.

Claim 1: We’ve missed the opportunity to put really good health reform in place.

Not at all. The bills are still being hashed out in Congress. Whether we miss our opportunity remains to be seen.

Claim 2: The current health care system works for 85% of Americans.

No, Rogers is only accounting for the completely uninsured, which some estimates put at 43 million before the recession.  That’s somewhat more than 15% of the population, so that leaves the 85% Rogers is talking about.  But millions more are underinsured, bringing the percentage of uninsured and underinsured to nearly 70 million.  Premiums, high deductibles, and denials of coverage are rising rapidly. Without significant reform, average health premiums for families are projected to rise from  $12,298 in 2008 to $23, 842 in 2020.

Claim 3: We would “abandon American principles” by punishing those who have “earned” health care to provide for those who haven’t.

Sorry, but most of those who are uninsured or underinsured are in working families. Is Representative Rogers claiming that people who are uninsured deserve to be uninsured? I hope not.

Would those with “earned” health care be punished? The answer is complex. (1) Health reform will slow the rise in costs that will be punishing everyone.  Rising costs are inevitable under our system, and the problem is big enough that it will not be solved under the current plan because the underlying reasons for the costs will not be addressed. But the plan will help, especially if there is a public option to provide real choice to individuals. (2) The money for health care reform will have to come from somewhere. We will have a higher deficit for a while, but it the long run we need to invest in better health care for the health of our economy, which is sinking under the weight of these costs. (3) For some people, there may be gains in individual plans.  For instance, plans will have to include preventative care, and your plan won’t be able to drop you because you get sick.

Claim 4: The government will be able to “go in and rip you off your own individual plan.” Rogers cites Section 141, on p. 41 of HR 3200.  He says the administration will have the power to “disinroll individuals” or “disinroll the whole plan.”

This is a blatant distortion.  Section 141 is about establishing an administrative post to oversee what the bill institutes.  Since the bill is reforming the rules for health insurance, someone has to make sure that the rules are followed and run the public option, just as someone now has to run Social Security.  That new official will be the Health Choices Commissioner. The duties and authority of the new official are spelled out not in Section 141 but in 142, which I’m sure Rogers meant. The job does not include kicking you off your insurance plan. What the section says is that if an insurance company doesn’t follow the rules laid down in other sections—for instance, if it doesn’t provide preventive care or maternity care or limit its premium increases to 150% of annual medical inflation—then the Commission can fine the insurance company or not let them enroll consumers until they comply. If they repeatedly fail to comply, then yes, they may be “terminated.” This is a last resort for wayward insurance companies to comply.

Claim 5:  If you are a small business owner with a payroll of under $250,000, the government can disenroll your whole plan.

This claim is quite puzzling. Unfortunately, Rogers doesn’t mention what section he’s looking at.  I can only assume he’s talking about the same section as in Claim 4 above, already covered. Or perhaps he is referring to the provisions made for small businesses, many of which now do not provide coverage for employees. Under this bill, such employers are either given help in the form of tax credits to provide coverage for employees, or they are required to pay a small charge to help offset the cost of providing to help provide insurance to employees in another way. (See Sections 313, 412, and 421 with 45R.) For a discussion about why it’s necessary to make special provisions for businesses, see this explanation of “Pay or Play.”

Claim 6: Canada’s system proves that we don’t want this health care reform.

Rogers lays out a comparison between cancer survival rates in the U.S. and Canada, picking numbers that seem horrific. With calculated chivalry, Rogers insists that he will not subject our women and girls to such a system.

But wait—one major problem with this claim is that a system like Canada’s single payer system is not part of any of the proposed bills.  Whether or not you think it should be, it simply isn’t.  Thus the scary figures that Rogers gives are comparing apples to oranges.

Another logical fallacy in this claim is that there is no reason to pick Canada as the basis for comparison. All of the major industrialized nations other than the U.S. have universal care. Among these we can find a variety of systems, not all single payer. Overall, the U.S. shows up well in some outcomes and not as well in other outcomes in comparison to these countries. A 2007 study done for Congress—before the current debate—found that reference to these other countries, “research comparing the quality of care has not found the United States to be superior overall. Nor does the U.S. population have substantially better access to health care resources, even putting aside the issue of the uninsured.” P. 1, summary. A growing body of research calls into question the popular belief that while our medicine is expensive it’s clearly the best.

If we decide to look at Canada anyway—remembering that a Canadian style system is not on the table here, is Canadian health care worse than US health care? Here we have to say, worse at what? Picking out the areas in which the U.S. has the lead makes for great sound bytes, but it doesn’t tell the whole truth.  Canada could counter with their higher life expectancy and infant mortality or their lower mortality rates for asthma, cervical cancer, lung cancer, or non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

 But such isolated statistics on either side  are not conclusive. For an interesting comparison, take a look at this article or this one.  Scare tactics similar to Rogers’ have also been used about the U.K.’s health system. Check out this FactCheck article.

Claim 7: The health care reform bill is saying “we give up.”

Hardly. American ingenuity is not based and will not be based on the kind of health system we adopt. Nothing in the bill will prevent entrepreneurs in pharmacology, equipment, genetic research, medical experimentation, and so on from pursuing new breakthroughs. What the bill is meant to do is to provide more competition and more ways for consumers to access healthcare that works for them. Whether or not a bill with teeth can make it through Congress remains to be seen.