USS Healthcare Has Taken Some Hits – Can it be saved?

Dr. Errington Thompson

For reasons completely unclear to me, the Democrats thought they could take their August recess and leave the USS Healthcare on autopilot. While the Democrats were asleep at the wheel, conservatives pounded the USS Healthcare. Death panels. Socialism. Marxism. Republican Congressman Phil Gingrey stated that we don’t need to regulate private insurance companies, that the marketplace will regulate them for us. Senator Chuck Grassley actually told his constituents “you have every right to fear.”

I find it ironic, in the age of information and the Internet, that there can be so much misinformation. There are no death panels. No such thing exists in any of the three bills in the House or in the one bill that’s percolating in the Senate. Anyone with an Internet connection can go online and look at these bills. Yes, these bills are long, but they are easily searchable. I cannot explain why the media has allowed this misinformation to ricochet around the airwaves.

As I see it, Republicans are playing some type of child’s game where
they claim to support healthcare reform. I don’t see any real effort to
support healthcare reform. Senator Mike Enzi is probably the best
example of this. He is supposedly negotiating for a bipartisan reform
bill. Just last week he told a group of supporters at a rally that he
was sure that healthcare reform was going to fail. Unfortunately, Mike
Enzi is a very important senator, on the Finance Committee and the
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Some Republican senators have said they won’t even read the
final bill. Democrats, liberals, and progressives need to read the
writing on the wall. If we truly want change, we’re going to have to
push for it. We are going have to march for it. We are going to have to
pull the rest of the country kicking and screaming to get it. This is
the only way that we are going to prevent the USS Healthcare from
sinking.

I came across an enlightening poll conducted by Research 2000
(8/31- 9/3). It asked whether individuals “favor or oppose a government
administered health insurance option that anyone can purchase to
compete with private insurance plans.”

This is the liberal public option. This is not including some
quasi-public option that only triggers when we have 50 or 60 million
Americans without health insurance. The question did not ask anything
about cost control or if the public option adds to the deficit. It was
a straightforward question. 58% of respondents favored the public
option. 57% of independents supported the public option. America, by a
three-to-two margin, supports the public option. This is even after a
month of misinformation and lies. The American people still want the
public option and not some watered down version of it.

Republican Representative John Kline of Minnesota gave the weekly address on Saturday, suggesting that we just start over.

Personally, I believe his suggestion was disingenuous, but let’s take his advice anyway. Let’s simplify the whole equation.

Medicare for all. Period. Fix the donut hole in Medicare part D. Allow Medicare to truly negotiate drug prices.

Finally, on a personal note, I’ve just completed one of the most
emotionally and physically draining two weeks of my medical career.
I’ve had to sit down with a number of families and tell them that their
loved one was not going to make it. These end-of-life discussions, even
under the best of circumstances, are obviously extremely difficult.

To have elected officials, even senators, tell their
constituents that there are “death panels” in any of these bills is
beyond reprehensible. I know that there is a special place in Dante’s
Inferno just for these liars.