Health-Care Reform: Busting The Medicare Myths
Christopher Beam has a column up on Slate about health-care reform and the Medicare related myths being spread by the Right. Scaring Grandma
Page 425(pdf) of the House health care bill: The Right is trying to convince the elderly that they must be consulted about how they wish to die. Some how this comes out of right-wing sites such as World Nut Daily that Obama is going to kill old folks. Echoed by veteran enemies of health-care reform like Charlotte Allen.
In fact, the bill says the meeting must include “an explanation by the practitioner of the end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice”—not a recommendation of it. (Emphasis added.) Still, Obama pointed out that it’s not too late to remove the language: “If this is something that really bothers people, I suspect that members of Congress might take a second look at it.”
No wonder the Right wants to give this passage the Pravda treatment, its a twofer. Few people are going to read the actual bill so they get away with portraying Democrats and Obama as death merchants. The language of the actual bill protects patient rights regarding one of the most personal and important decisions people will make in their lives. The bill contradicts the Right’s propaganda about heath-care reform that allows the government controlling every facet of your care.
Betsy McCaughey, another propagandist is red flagging a passage that reads in part ( nothing makes for good spin like lifting a few words out of context) “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration”. McCaughey claims this says the government gets to kill you when its convenient. She’s not even close, but rumors like this have their way into retirement and nursing homes,
But the bill specifically says that an order to withhold, say, an IV drip, must be one that “effectively communicates the individual’s preferences regarding life sustaining treatment, including an indication of the treatment and care desired by the individual.” In other words, a doctor can’t make you do it.
These subjects are difficult to talk about and to contemplate, but there may come a time that we as patients will have to make decisions about whether we want doctors to go to extraordinary means to extend our lives or to what degree we want them to go. Fear mongering ideologues like Allen and McCaughey want everyone to believe those decisions will be placed solely within the province of government bureaucrats. Democrats and a few enlightened Republicans created Medicare. A program that has, saved lives, improved the quality of life for America’s seniors and extended their life expectancy. Medicare among other progressive accomplishment take pride of place on the Democratic Party’s resume. If nothing else, it makes no political sense for Democrats to undermine a successful program about which they have historical bragging rights.
Blue Cross praised employees who dropped sick policyholders
Blue Cross of California encouraged employees through performance evaluations to cancel the health insurance policies of individuals with expensive illnesses, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) charged at the start of a congressional hearing today on the controversial practice known as rescission.
The state's largest for-profit health insurer told The Times 18 months ago that it did not tie employee performance evaluations to rescission activity. And executives with Blue Cross parent company WellPoint Inc. reiterated that position today.
But documents obtained by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and released today show that the company's employee performance evaluation program did include a review of rescission activity.
The documents show, for instance, that one Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of "5" for "exceptional performance" on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.
WellPoint's Blue Cross of California subsidiary and two other insurers saved more than $300 million in medical claims by canceling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period, the House committee said.
"When times are good, the insurance company is happy to sign you up and take your money in the form of premiums," Stupak said. "But when times are bad, and you are afflicted with cancer or some other life-threatening disease, it is supposed to honor its commitments and stand by you in your time of need.
"Instead, some insurance companies use a technicality to justify breaking its promise, at a time when most patients are too weak to fight back," he said.
President Obama Holds a Tele-Townhall Meeting on Health Care with AARP Members
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
I am just going to provide some brief remarks, and then I want to hear from you. It is wonderful to be here today. I want to thank Mike for moderating this discussion. I want to thank Jennie and Barry for their extraordinary leadership here at AARP.
Some of you may know that, 44 years ago today, when I was almost 4 years old, after years of effort, Congress finally passed Medicare, our promise as a nation that none of our senior citizens would ever again go without basic health care.
It was a singular achievement, one that has helped seniors live longer, healthier, and more productive lives. It's enhanced their financial security, and it's given us all the peace of mind to know that there will be health care available for us when we're in our golden years.
Today, we've got so many dedicated doctors and nurses and other providers across America providing excellent care, and we want to make sure our seniors and all our people can access that care. But we all know that right now we've got a problem that threatens Medicare and our entire health care system, and that is the spiraling cost of health care in America today.
As costs balloon, so does Medicare's budget. And unless we act within a decade -- within a decade -- the Medicare trust fund will be in the red.
Now, I want to be clear: I don't want to do anything that will stop you from getting the care you need, and I won't. But you know and I know that right now we spend a lot of money in our health care system that doesn't do a thing to improve people's health, and that has to stop. We've got to get a better bang for our health care dollar.
And that's why I want to start by taking a new approach that emphasizes prevention and wellness so that instead of just spending billions of dollars on costly treatments when people get sick, we're spending some of those dollars on the care they need to stay well, things like mammograms and cancer screenings and immunizations, common-sense measures that will save us billions of dollars in future medical costs.
