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Health plan leaves little hope
After four months of delay, the
nation finally got a look at
President Clinton’s health
care plan last Wednesday.
Clinton’s speech was more a cam
paign tub-thumper than blueprint.
Most of the numbers or specifics
Clinton did give, you might as well
forget. Congress is going lobe writing
this one—like the budget—because
Clinton simply lacks the leadership to
present a plan and make it stick.
Reaction to the speech is sobering.
Clinton’s approval rating shot up to
56 percent by the weekend. When
asked what they liked about the plan,
74 percent of the people said that
“everyone will be covered,” and 69
percent offered the inane response
that “it’s belter than doing nothing.”
Such is the stuff of totalitarianism;
people are now willing to fork over
their liberty based on fear of being “a
pink slip away from being uninsured.”
The media-manufactured hysteria
began in late 1991 when only 6 per
cent of the people thought it was an
issue. Along came Harris Wofford,
winning a Senate seat in Pennsylva
nia over Bush crony Dick Thornburgh
by harping on health care, and the
crisis was on.
Throughout this period, and espe
cially in the president’s speech and
his appearance on “Nightline” the
following evening, all we heard were
pathetic sob stories. Touching, yes,
but hardly a reason to enact the big
gest government bureaucracy since
the New Deal.
The claim that 37 million Ameri
cans don’t have insurance has gone,
unchallenged. But a recent Cato Insti
tute study put the figure at 6 million
people wno truly want and need insur
ance but cannot get it. It omits those
who voluntarily go w ithout or who arc
between jobs. No one wants to believe
it.
As with the budget, logic and rea
son seem to have flown out the win
dow. Pushed by the crisis mentality
Such is the stuff of totalitarianism;
people are now willing to fork over
their liberty based on fear of being
“a pink slip away from being
juninsured.”
that something must be done, what
will the nation get?
The government will form a series
of regional health care alliances to
buy insurance for everyone, and at a
lower price since it will have so much
clout. Bear in mind that this is the
same government that Vice President
A1 Gore ridiculed for its regulations
on ashtrays just the week before, the
same government that pays $600 for
EMP-hardened toilet seats.
The $700 billion spent over the
next five years will be paid for in part
by cutting $238 billion from Medi
care and Medicaid growth. When has
government spending on anything
shrunk? Even Pat Moynihan, a rare
liberal grounded in reality, called this
one a “fantasy.” -
Abortion aside, the most troubling
expenditure in the plan is for mental
health services, a sop to Tipper Gore.
Drug rehabilitation and counseling
for other disorders sounds fine, but
watch daytime TV and you realize
that everything from youth violence
to overeating is blamed on someone
else and can be straightened out with
just a few therapy sessions. Do you
want to pay for some junkie’s rehabor
for people who blame their entire
screwed-up lives on their parents?
But by far the two most frightening
words in the whole scheme are “em
ployer mandates.” Employers would
be forced to pay 80 percent of em
ployee premiums. Even though small
businesses would get a partial subsidy
of 3.5 percent to 7.9 percent coming
on top of the tax increase in the ’94
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judget, more than a few will be forced
o lay off workers. Even the subsidies
vill be phased out.
The sad part of this mess is that,
mce again, the American people have
seen trained like rats to pull the fed
eral lever whenever they face the
si ightest difficul ty. Even the GOP has
bought into the crisis mentality,
though to a lesser extent, for fear that
opposition to health care will make
them public enemies, obstructionists
with their hands clamped firmly down
on the lid of the cookie jar that is the
federal budget.
It’s not a done deal, though. Cl inton
still has the 1995 Fiscal-year budget
and the North American Free Trade
Agreement to pass, two potentially
costly Fights. By the time the health
plan is ready for a vote, in July or
August, two things will happen. First,
the recessionary effects of the ’94
budget will be in full force. Second,
with this in mind, few Congressmen
will vote for another spending plan
just before an election. It may get
postponed until 1995, and a drastical
ly altered Congress could be in place.
We’ve been here before. Recall
the Catastrophic Insurance Act of
1988, which passed with much enthu
siasm in a similar crisis atmosphere.
The people it beneFited, the elderly,
found out it cost too much and cut
their services. It was repealed less
than a year later.
It’s not too late to hope.
KepAeld Is • graduate itudeat la history
and a Dally Nebratkai cohmulst.
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Compromise key to health reform
The United States is on the
verge of health care reform:
Something everyone wants
and no one wants to pay for.
' At least if we're going to have to
pay for it, we all want a say in how it's
going to work, where the money comes
from and what gets covered.
The trouble is, if we all get our two
cents in, there won’t be any system
left — or any way to provide it. We
can't possibly run our government on
consensus; it’s just too big and com
plex for everyone to agree.
Lots of things are like that: issues
too big for agreement and seemingly
much too important for compromise.
But compromise we will. We must
to get anything done at all.
So before legislative debate gets
too far under way, 1 think it’s crucial
to take one last look at the
:ms and decide just which ones
we want to solve.
Because that’s what compromise
will mean — deciding which prob
lems to solve.
Central to the whole debate is the
sense many people have that medical
care costs too much. The poorest can ’ t
afford it at all, and too many others
receive inadequate care.
From that assumption I am still at
something of a loss to discover where
the insurance industry enters into it.
If we could lower medical costs in
a more direct way, we would elimi
nate the red-tape factory that is the
modem insurance industry.
And talk about your evil empires
—graft, shady business practices and
dishonesty are endemic to the indus
try that subsidizesother people’s mis
fortunes at an enormous profit.
It seems much more rational to
attempt a reduction of the cost of
medical care directly, cutting out the
corporate middle man.
But there are powerful adversaries
of this idea.
Perhaps the real enemy is not the
government or big business, but the
Perhaps the real enemy is not the
government or big business, but
the American Medical Association,
rhe AMA has lobbied powerfully
in this country in order to
maintain its corrupt monopoly.
American Medical Association. The
AMA has lobbied powerfully in this
country in order to maintain its cor
rupt monopoly.
Far short of socializing medicine
— a course that, for some reason,
appears out of the question — there
are several alternatives that could still
be considered along with the presi
dential package.
We could:
• De-prcscriptionizc a large num
ber of drugs.
There is no reason in my mind why
an adult who can read a label should
be forced to get a prescription for high
doses of ibuprofen or lindane, a 1 ice
killing shampoo. But they are.
I myself remember when you
couldn’t get Actifed without a pre
scription and the excitement that came
with its “liberation.”
Suddenly, people like myself who
had suffered with allergies for years
were relieved of the extra burden of
having to pay doctors to tell them to
get the drug they knew they wanted.
■ Many, many drugs could be freed
in this way, and medical costs would
plummet.
•Grant largerpowers to the “nurse/v
practitioner.”
Many drugs that really should be
offered only under prescription could
be prescribed by trained aiki experi
enced nurses.
These men and women are highly
trained and many have years of expe
rience, but not one can currently get
you a prescription for penicillin with
• ... ‘ ’ ; . • .1 •
out a doctor lurking somewhere in the
works.
This, plainly, is ridiculous.
• Grant larger powers to pharma
cists.
People already trust the experi
ence and knowledge of local pharma
cists to help them make choices and
direct them to appropriate drugs.
Though pharmacists might not pre
scribe drugs, they would be more in
demand in helping customers obtain
newly de-prescriptionizcd drugs.
• Decriminalize non-traditional
forms of treatment.
Why on earth should homeopathy
be illegal in Nebraska?
Yet it is. If I give you ginseng for
your menstrual cramps or something,
1 can be busted for practicing a non
liccnsed form of medicine.
Any of these measures would serve
to free up the individual’s medical
care options.
They would break the M.D.s’
throttlehold on medical care without
altering the quality of that care. Doc
tors are not infallible, and one needn’t
be a doctor to know what’s what.
And costs would fall as medical
care options proliferated.
But immense forces in the AMA
are marshaled against such common
sense ideas.
And to the extent that the AMA
wins, the poor and uninsured must
lose.
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