Edwards’ Health Plan–the Rest of the Story

In the first direct “debate” of the next election cycle, John Edwards seemed the most cordial and candid. His strength seems to be a willingness to tell the truth–even if it hurts.

But when John Edwards talks about national health care, and admits it is going to cost a lot of tax money, he’s only telling a half-truth. While it’s almost impossible to explain to “the guy at the 7/11” and my Limbaugh-loving father, it’s not having national health care that is bankrupting this country, both economically and ethically. Follow the trail of facts below…

Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache [February 25]…A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

Instead, he spent two months in intensive care before he died, at an estimated cost of $250,000, and further impoverished our country’s “culture of life.” Who knows what contributions Deamonte Driver might have made to our society had he gotten his tooth pulled, returned to school, and joined the adult workforce?

Here’s the question that will stump that guy at the 7/11: “Who pays the quarter of a million dollar bill for a brain infection that should never have happened? The answer, of course, is all of us. The cost of indigent patients is spread among the other fees at that hospital, added to insurance bills. The insurance rates go up, for both private payers and for employers, who pass that increase on in the price of their products and services. It’s the same thing that happens when an untreated cold progresses to pneumonia and an uninsured Wal-Mart employee ends up in the emergency room.

Then there are the economic costs. As Toyota claims the #1 spot in American auto sales, and Chrysler struggles to stay in fifth place, most pundits talk about fuel economy. But to get an understanding of what’s really happening in American industries like automotive manufacturing, you have to not just look at final assembly but each of the component parts–most of which are made in Canada or Mexico. Here’s part of the secret in the words of David Lindorff:

Certainly over the last decade or so, GM, along with competitors Ford and Chrysler (now DaimlerChrysler), have been shifting production out of Michigan and across the Detroit River into Ontario as fast as they can, making Windsor, Ont., and not Detroit, the real “Motor City” of North America today…The reason for this capital flight, which has taken tens of thousands of American jobs with it, is health care costs. General Motors executives, who even now are demanding that the United Autoworkers Union agree in this round of bargaining to a contract that for the first time would require workers to pay for part of their health benefits, complain that health costs currently account for $1500 of the cost of production of every vehicle made in the U.S. In Canada, the figure is only a small fraction of that…So much does General Motors love Canada’s socialized, taxpayer-funded “single-payer” health care system, that the company’s top executives in Canada, along with the top execs of Ford, Chrysler and a host of other U.S.-owned subsidiaries in Canada, actually have been lobbying the provincial and federal government to expand the system to include other services such as pharmacy and home health care-and to increase funding of what is known in Canada as “Medicare.”

And finally there is the cost in human potential. In this country there are about 50 million disabled people, about half of whom are considered “severely disabled” and unable to work. Let’s “tell the truth” about just one segment, the nation’s estimated 250,000 paraplegics. While aggressive long term physical therapy has been shown to produce good improvement, no commercial insurer pays for more than minimal maintenance therapy. Therefore, as few as 13 percent of paraplegics actually work. The rest collect disability. Who pays? You got it!

Another diary at this same site this morning talks about the hundreds of thousands of homeless persons in this nation. Why are they there? In many, many cases it is because of untreated mental illness. To access even the most minimal mental health support in this nation is almost impossible without private payer insurance, and that requires a high level of employment. Medicaid plans require more persistence and paperwork than most victims could ever muster.

Finally, there is the cost to our national conscience. The disabled, the homeless, the poorest of the poor, are people want and need to be productive members of our society. Wasting them by relegating them to disability or unemployment checks, because commercial insurers will not support their return to the workforce, is not only economically stupid but immoral.

So Mr. Edwards–and everyone else talking about national single payer healthcare, tell the truth. This is something we cannot afford to go without.