Paul Krugman, not always a fan of Obama, has decided not to be a slave to the perfect and an enemy of the good. His latest column comes out fully in support of the current health care reform bill before Congress despite the lack of a public option which he championed. He basically gives two reasons for his support of what he acknowledges is an imperfect bill:
Reason One:
As it happens, Reuters published an investigative report this week that powerfully illustrates the vileness of our current system. The report concerns the insurer Fortis, now part of Assurant Health, which turns out to have had a systematic policy of revoking its clients’ policies when they got sick. In particular, according to the Reuters report, it targeted every single policyholder who contracted H.I.V., looking for any excuse, no matter how flimsy, for cancellation. In the case that brought all this to light, Assurant Health used an obviously misdated handwritten note by a nurse, who wrote “2001” instead of “2002,” to claim that the infection was a pre-existing condition that the client had failed to declare, and revoked his policy. […]
The truth, widely documented, is that behavior like Assurant Health’s is widespread for a simple reason: it pays. A House committee estimated that Assurant made $150 million in profits between 2003 and 2007 by canceling coverage of people who thought they had insurance, a sum that dwarfs the fine the court imposed in this particular case. It’s not demonizing insurers to describe what they actually do.
That is reason enough for me, but he doesn’t stop there. Here is his second reason, and it is based on the CBO analysis of the cost of HCR:
Can we afford this? Yes, says the Congressional Budget Office, which on Thursday concluded that the proposed legislation would reduce the deficit by $138 billion in its first decade and half of 1 percent of G.D.P., amounting to around $1.2 trillion, in its second decade.
But shouldn’t we be focused on controlling costs rather than extending coverage? Actually, the proposed reform does more to control health care costs than any previous legislation, paying for expanded coverage by reducing the rate at which Medicare costs will grow, substantially improving Medicare’s long-run financing along the way. And this combination of broader coverage and cost control is no accident: It has long been clear to health-policy experts that these concerns go hand in hand. The United States is the only advanced nation without universal health care, and it also has by far the world’s highest health care costs.
I don’t like the failure to have a public option, but I’m not going to say we should kill this bill because it doesn’t have one. Hopefully, the momentum we get from finally addressing our health care crisis, however inadequately this bill does that, will keep the ball rolling until someday soon, Medicare for all is a reality.
As Krugman says, he can imagine a more perfect bill. We all can. But change can’t come if we allow ourselves to make every attempt an all or nothing throw of the dice. This bill eliminates the abuses of the current system in which people with pre-existing conditions can’t get coverage and where insurance companies deny coverage anytime someone gets a truly serious illness. According to the CBO it also cuts costs. Not as much as a public option or single payer program would but this is not a perfect world. You take what you can get.
And then you keep grabbing for more (thank you Rep. Grayson, btw). One thing you don’t do is throw a hissy fit like this guy because he didn’t get everything he dreamed he’d get:
A liberal Democrat says he won’t vote for President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare bill, asserting that the measure is a giveaway to large health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
“We’ve paid the ransom, but at the end of the day the insurance companies are still holding the hostages,” Rep. Stephen Lynch said in an interview with the Boston Globe on Thursday
Rep. Lynch your principles are all fine and good, but if I lose my health insurance, my daughter and I, who have pre-existing conditions will be unable to get insurance anywhere. And that could happen oh so easily. I’m disabled (but not eligible for Medicare), unemployed and too young for Medicare. My wife is disabled and we rely on her lousy COBRA insurance ($2,440 deductible before co-pays kick in) to cover my daughter, my son and I. If I get cancer will my insurance company kick me to the curb? Probably in a heart beat. So, Rep. Lynch and don’t take this the wrong way when I say: “Go Cheney yourself!”
And Professor Krugman, thanks for pointing out that while the war against our rapacious, immoral health insurance corporations and pharmaceutical companies hasn’t been won yet, you can’t win a war without winning a few battles. We’ve been losing the health care war for years and people have literally died because of it.
Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002. […]
The study, which analyzed data from national surveys carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), assessed death rates after taking into account education, income, and many other factors, including smoking, drinking, and obesity. It estimated that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 excess deaths annually.
Time to win at least one battle. That time is now.
