Yesterday I received an email from a member of the bleeding disorders community. The email began with “this is NOT a health care plan but a system to further invade your life/privacy, take your money, ration health care, control salaries of medical professionals and prescribe your death plan”. The email highlighted sections of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3200), with short interpretations following the highlighted section.
Excerpt from the email:
Page 50 Section 152 – Health Care will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise
That is not what page 50, Section 152 says. Therefore, it is really important to become an “informed consumer” and know the facts. The best way to learn the facts is to read the bill. Unfortunately, not everyone has the time to read a bill over 1000-pages. Furthermore, legislative language is not always easy on the eyes. But it is important to distinguish fact from fiction. Last week’s HFA Friday Update included a link to the Kaiser Family Foundation legislative side-by-side comparison charts. Additionally, the House Tri-committee’s have provided a section-by-section analysis and summary of H.R. 3200. The summaries and charts are a starting point for the “fact check” process.
To read the H.R. 3200 (and page 50, Section 152) and bill summaries, please visit the Advocacy in a Box section on the HFA website.
2 Responses to “Have you actually read H.R. 3200?”
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Thank you for this valuable post. It changed my idea.
I think a lot of our health care debate is being spent trying to figure out truth from fiction. The administration is painting a picture of rainbows and unicorns where everyone in this country has the best care in the world. Yet, they make cost comparisons to the Canadian system and surveys show the overwhelming number of Canadians think their system stinks.
On the far right, we have fear mongering that reform will kill our elderly, giving government pencil pushers the authority to deny or delay proceedures based on age and previous health history. Some say that all private payers will be forced out of business if a government plan is enacted because the insurance companies can’t compete with the cheaper government plans. Show me the statistics on what happened to private payers in Canada and Germany when their Government programs started. Show me statistics on the average wait time for heart caths on a 70 year old vs a 40 year old in Canada and Germany.
The “rising costs” of our health care is the focal point of this debate. Yet, when we see comparisons of the costs of health care from other countries, it usually focuses on being able to walk in to a clinic and not pull out the checkbook in those countries. It’s “FREE” health care, paid for primarily by taxing the companies, businesses, and citizens that operate or work in those countries. Common sense says that if a company has higher costs, (taxes to support government health care) then that company will charge more for their goods and services. That means higher costs of living. Statistics support this, showing countries with socialized health care sporting much higher Costs of Living. Canada, Great Britain, and Germany also have much slower growth in their economies as measured by their GDP or Gross Domestic Product numbers. Many economists attribute slower economic growth to the higher tax burdens on businesses in those countries.
My view is that we need health care reform, but we need to think long and hard on wheather a government program or a better regulated private payer system is what we need. Enforcing the “Any Willing Provider” law on both major medical and pharmacy benefits that many states have in place would solve the single source provider issue many hemophiliacs have conflicts with on their insurers. We are currently attempting to form a coalition of Home Health and Specialty Pharmacy companies that can show the purchasing power equivalent to the CareMarks and Accredos that we compete with. This will give us the same rebates from the manufacturers that the larger companies are getting and allow us to compete with those companies in competitive bids. Small Home Health and Specialty Pharmacies could potentially increase their profit margins while reducing the cost to our insurers by another 5% or more.
What are some of the ideas and suggestions coming from HFA on how we can help maintain or improve care while reducing costs? I look forward to hearing from you.
Eric Mosley