August 13, 2009
Stop the fear-mongering about health care reform
You can’t turn on a news channel or check your e-mail these days without being bombarded with a steady diet of half-truths, false allegations, wild speculation and blatant fear-mongering about what evils a public option in health care will bring to Americans.
It seems that those opposed to making sure American workers have access to quality, affordable health care, will stop at nothing to distort the truth to suit the needs of the moment. Which leads one to question where the money is coming to finance these campaigns of distortion and who is worried their sacred cow may be going to market.
Decades ago Americans determined that health care was a basic right for the elderly, for the disabled, and for the poor, not to mention thousands and thousands of government employees and veterans. Apparently, the working stiffs who foot the bill for everyone else’s health care shouldn’t be entitled to even a basic level of affordable health care. Or at least that is the message that comes through from those who oppose any sort of government-payer plan for all Americans.
The fear-mongers tell us that government plans will result in rationed care, of not being able to choose our own doctors, of having to wait months in order to see a specialist and having petty bureaucrats tell us we cannot have needed procedures because they are not covered.
All of these things sound disturbingly familiar to anyone who has spent time filling out insurance documents or reading their policy manuals, if you are lucky enough to have an employer who offers health insurance.
Rationed care? How is that different from the lifetime maximum payouts most insurance companies are imposing? Choose your own doctor? Get real, a private pay insurance company lets you pick, so long as the doctor is on their list. Having to wait for months for a specialist? Obviously they haven’t tried scheduling an appointment lately. And instead of bureaucrats we have cubicle-dwelling bean counters deciding what medical treatments are too expensive to be covered, provided of course that someone along the line didn’t mistype the code for the treatment received or knew the subtle difference between Urgent care, walk-in clinics, and the emergency room on a slow night.
The health reform efforts being promoted by President Obama’s administration are not perfect, nothing crafted by mankind is, but it is an effort to do something other than sit around and hope the problem disappears on its own.
There needs to be debate and discussion and compromise about the proposed health care reforms. In that debate let’s leave the half-truths and fear mongering tactics at home and concentrate on how we can guarantee access to affordable health care for all Americans regardless of if they work at giant corporations or own a shop on Main Street.
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