Health Insurance Industry Lies

The campaign by the health insurance industry to stop enactment of a governmental health insurance program (the “public option”) has begun with a string of dishonest and misleading commercials warning that enactment of a public option will result in 119 million people being without health insurance coverage. It is a blatant lie! Nobody will be without coverage. John Sheils of the Lewin Group, the group that did the study used by the insurance industry to come up with the 119 million figure, admitted to CNN that: “No one is going to lose their private insurance. We think 119 people will voluntarily move to the public plan.”

The insurance industry claims that a public option will lead to socialized medicine and that socialized medicine has been a disaster for the countries that have it. This is false on several counts. First, the public option will not lead to socialized medicine. It will be no different than the several other forms of governmental health insurance we already have, including Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and Government Employees Health Insurance. We will still have a private health care system with private doctors and hospitals and individual choice of such doctors and hospitals.

Secondly, it will not lead to the kinds of problems they claim for countries with single-payer systems--longer waits for necessary procedures, rationing of health care, and bureaucratic meddling in health care decisions. Just as none of this has been true under Medicare, it will not be true under a public option. When you add 47 million new people to the heath care rolls, it might result in slightly longer waits for elective procedures. People who have put-off necessary medical treatment will now be able to go in before it is too late. This might cause some delays due to the need for more doctors and health care personnel. But that is a good thing, not a disaster to be avoided.

A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund of six highly industrialized countries found that waiting times for elective surgery in European countries with single-payer systems were no worse than in the United States. While Canada has longer waits for elective surgeries than the United States, it has no waits for emergency surgeries. It also does not have 47 million people who are uninsured. In Canada, everyone has a national healthcare card guaranteeing health care from any doctor or hospital they choose. And Canada does not burden insured people with rising deductibles or co-pays.

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), Canada surpasses the U.S. in a broad array of health barometers, including life expectancy, infant mortality rates, adult mortality rates, and years of life lost to injuries and communicable diseases.

America has by far the most expensive health care system in the world. Yet the WHO ranks the United States as 37th in the world in the quality of health care. Americans in droves are going abroad for medical treatment, especially surgery, to countries with single-payer medical systems.

The insurance companies want people to think that there is wide opposition to a public option. However, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out June 17, 2009, showed that 76 percent of Americans support creation of a public option. Other recent polls show similar majorities in favor of a public option (83 percent by EBRI, a conservative business research organization, and 72 percent by a CBS News/New York Times poll).

The only thing that is keeping the Congress from enacting a public option now is the sheer money, power, and influence of the health insurance lobby and the subservience of its Republican lackeys in Congress. I confess that I do not understand why any people are standing-up for these greedy, dishonest insurance bandits when we need universal health care so badly.