The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn’t get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment.
[….]The campaign is being coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the “Swift boat” attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, and is inspired by the “Harry and Louise” ads that helped torpedo health-care reform during the Clinton administration.
I’ve probably already used up my supply of Sully bait, but I wonder how he feels about making common cause with this sort of thing.
Michael
I’d call Scott a douchnozzle, but that’s an insult to douchenozzles.
Put plainly, were revolutionary cadres on the prowl, Scott would be one of the first lined up on the wall, and would go unmourned and unmissed by pretty much everybody.
Mr. Stuck
Yes, I saw that garbage ad. It’s only a sample of the shitstorm of wingnutty PR we will see when the bill reaches congress for debate. My first thought was the gaping hole, where should have been mentioned, the 40 million without any insurance who would be grateful for the opportunity to wait a bit for surgery.
Zifnab
So let’s just assume there was a progressive campaigner for health care reform that did a movie about how Cuba has a more comprehensive health care policy than its northern neighbor. And let’s say he highlighted people with insurance that suffered and died waiting for the coverage they’d paid for while agents dithered. And let’s say that this individual was fat.
Seriously, who would take a movie like that seriously?
Complaining about health care! IOKIYAR!
asiangrrlMN
Yes, because we don’t already have long lines and shitty care right now. I have only catastrophic insurance, and let me tell you, healthcare in the US isn’t any paradise.
As for Sully, well, he is a conservative. He thinks there’s nothing wrong with the US healthcare system. In fact, his insistence on this point is one reason I stopped reading him.
Zifnab, as you well know, that film was done by a crack-pot liberal, so it doesn’t count!
Michael
Michael Medved (fuck him and the horse he rode in on) was busy this week telling his own callers and fans that they must be mistaken – that healthcare is in great shape and that everybody is happy with it because John Shadegg told him that everything was fine according to polling data.
Meanwhile, if you roll the numbers of the uninsured with the numbers of the screwed insured, you probably get a majority of the working population of America.
Makes me want to start humming me some Lee Greenwood…..
The Other Steve
After watching how my mother was cared for, the fact that she wasn’t properly diagnosed quickly, and the problems we had with getting records from her clinic up here to Mayo and from Mayo to the oncology clinic up here…. and all the other nightmares. Not to mention the fact that the funeral home had a near impossible time getting a signature from the doctor for the death certificate.
The US system just ain’t that great.
That being said, they did a pretty good job with the birth of our son. Interesting though that the delivery nurse was from Nigeria. We’ve had a nightmare with billing and insurance though.
And the ICU nurses who cared for my mother in her final days were outstanding. That has to be a hard job, although for every patient who dies I’m sure they witness a half-dozen who make a recovery.
Kryptik
@Zifnab:
Exactly. I mean….it’s not like HMOs and private insurance are doing much to prevent long lines and waits. The only difference here is that HMOs make their decisions seemingly solely out of the idea of what will make them profit.
I hold no illusions that National Health Care, government Health Care, single-payer, and the other alternatives we have are going to be flawless. But unless you can afford to pay out of pocket in the US, you’re pretty well and screwed if insurance companies decide to screw you.
DougJ
I think he’s still worth reading. It’s a very good blog.
DougJ
And for the amount of money we pay collectively, it should be great. If we paid nothing and got nothing, that would be one thing. But we’re paying a fortune for shit.
Kryptik
@DougJ:
Well, here’s the issue:
We have pretty bang up care. As in, the actual medical service. For the most part, it’s pretty damn good.
It’s the hoops and barriers set up in getting that care that’s the problem, which often feels more than a little arbitrary.
asiangrrlMN
@DougJ: Eh. He is just not my cup of tea, partly because he doesn’t have comments. Plus, I saw him on Maher once, and he was a total ass. I much prefer to get my political discourse here and on other blogs. However, because I esteem your opinion, I will give him another shot.
P.S. I agree that the medical service we get is pretty damn good. I love my doc to pieces. However, it’s getting to that service and care that can be daunting.
TenguPhule
And this is different from the current situation..how?
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
I wonder if the ad distorts as badly as this one.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Kryptik: it’s not like HMOs and private insurance are doing much to prevent long lines and waits.
I’ve been wondering how well the new round of Harry and Louise ads would do – I didn’t know what form they’d take, but I knew they were coming, just like everybody else here did.
I’m thinking they might not be so well received this time around, because people are in the thick of how bad U.S. health care is. The economy reached a point where the Republicans could no longer convince people “the fundamentals were strong” and “the democrats are worse!”, and I think health care might be there too.
KG
Sullivan’s opposition to a single payer system seems to come from his own experience in the English system. Personally, I don’t know the answer to the issue, so I’m willing to listen to ideas. I also say all this being someone who doesn’t remember the last time he went to the doctor, and grudgingly maintains low cost insurance.
MTiffany
As has been said many times before by many other people…
The United States already rations health care. We just let the private sector do the rationing based upon a person’s ability to pay and call it “free market economics.”
Bureaucrats already interfere with patient care and decide what procedures a doctor can and cannot perform. It’s just that these bureaucrats work as middle management in HMOs and private insurers and for-profit hospitals.
Rationing and bureaucracy already plague our healthcare system in the Untied States, but are just carried out by the (not so) free market instead of the government so it’s capitalist blasphemy to call them such.
asiangrrlMN
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist: Yeah. I remember a commentator who said that it’s hard to scare Americans with the spectre of the big bad government because most of Americans WANT the government to help out right now. In addition, many Americans have butted heads with bureaucratic tape while wrestling with a healthcare issue, so they are more sanguine to the idea of streamlining the whole system.
@KG: Yeah, I know. I don’t have a problem with him not liking the British system, but I do have a problem with him continually rah-rahing for the American system. He thinks it’s innovative and just fine, thank you very much.
In addition, he is against a progressive tax because he think rich people deserve to keep the money they earn and should not be ‘punished’ for making more money than other people.
I mean, he is a conservative. I am not.
P.S. I am not sure if I’m in favor of a single-payer plan or not. I just know that it’s a disgrace that we are so far down the list on overall healthcare in the world. I firmly believe it’s a right for everyone to have health insurance.
Comrade Kevin
@MTiffany: Yes, but DMV BLAH BLAH BLAH POSTAL SERVICE BLAH BLAH BLAH
Steve
He didn’t read the Frank Luntz talking points apparently. Luntz says nobody is going to believe you if you deny there’s a health care crisis. Anyone that says so loses credibility automatically.
PeakVT
@KG: The UK’s problem is that it has a single-provider system, which I wouldn’t recommend be implemented here for anything other than veterans and their unique needs. If Sullivan is confusing the two he is either an idiot or a liar.
What we want is a single-payer system, which could also be called a national health insurance system.
MTiffany
@Comrade Kevin: Wait, wait, don’t tell me. I think I know this routine. Yes! Johnny Carson and the Amazing Karnak.
(Opens envelope) “Name two things that have quicker wait times than your doctor’s office or a hospital emergency room.”
KG
@ asiangrrllMN: I’ll agree the system is fucked up, which is why I’m willing to consider alternatives (even being a libertarian). As far as the progressive taxation issue, my main problem isn’t that it punishes the successful (of those that much is given, much is expected), it’s that, taken too far, it hampers social mobility. But going from 33% to 37% for income over $350k/yr is not the kind of thing I’m going to get ramped up about.
Zifnab
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
If this was a referendum on health care, I’d agree with you. But it’s not. We’re looking at Congressional Legislation to update health care. These ads aren’t really interested in shifting popular opinion, they’re just interested in making enough news and enough noise that legislators start to second guess themselves.
The Harry and Louis stuff might have been effective on the handful of people that actually saw it, but how many people actually tuned into that swill? Other than the politicos and pundits that inform us of our own opinions, that is.
El Cruzado
Funny how it’s always UK and Canada (I dunno about Canada, but I know the UK system is pretty barebones. They do it on the cheap). Let’s see them do some horror stories about, say, Germany or (God forbid) France.
Plus what everyone else said. There’s not that many people that will see The Horror Story from Abroad and be reminded of the dozens of Real American Horror Stories they know first or second hand.
MTiffany
@Steve: For some reason I just can’t picture Michael Medved bothering to read an opinion which would even ever so slightly deviate from conservative orthodoxy. Perhaps that’s just a failure of my own imagination.
Zifnab
@KG:
Bullshit. Progressive taxation doesn’t just suck money up into a vortex in space. You are supposed to be spending the money on productive progressive causes. If the government taxes in an extra billion dollars in revenue and spends it on Pell Grants or FBI or highways, the act of educating and protecting and connecting individual citizens creates more and better options for people to engage in greater social mobility.
I have a friend that wants to start a restaurant in a couple of years. He has the training and he has start up capital, but he also has a heart condition, so he absolutely needs private insurance. Until he can afford to cover his own premiums for the time necessary to get a new business of the ground (an expense that raises his financial needs by five or six grand a year), he can’t strike out on his own without risking a medical trauma that would ruin him.
Explain to my friend how the current health care system encourages his social mobility over a universal or single-payer model.
Dennis-SGMM
A much more effective ad would have listed the dozens of countries that wised up and ditched their oppressive and inefficient UHC schemes for the superior American model. They could start with… Well, there’s always the example of…
And who can forget…
Never mind.
Zifnab
@Dennis-SGMM: Somalia! Libertarian Paradise!
Darkrose
I think those ads should run during reruns of season one of Leverage–especially the ones that include flashbacks of Timothy Hutton watching his son die because the insurance company he worked for denied the claim for cancer treatment.
robertdsc
Even with the President’s considerable mojo at stake, I don’t have a lot of hope that a workable system is going to be implemented. Dick Durbin’s lament that the bankers own the Senate is why I feel the way I do.
MTiffany
@Zifnab:
Now you did it. The Universe in which every Ron Paul supporter lives just collapsed in upon itself under the weight of its own logical fallacies and contradictions, compressing itself at one end into a Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge and dumping them all out the other end into the real Universe where the laws of Nature cannot be suspended through mere wishful thinking.
And I thought the whining and bitching and moaning from the Republican’s was bad…
Thanks, Zifnab.
Steeplejack
@KG:
My problem is that the “unhampered” social mobility we’ve had for the last 40 years has been mainly downward for 80 percent of the population.
MTiffany
@Zifnab: Because government is the problem, and now you have cholrea.
Jennifer
I’m not sure trying to scare people off of “national health care” is gonna work this time, since no one is proposing it.
Obama has proposed having a public health insurance option, a key provision of which is: if you have private insurance now and want to keep it, fine.
Of course, as Senator Nelson so helpfully pointed out, if we get the “option” of public health insurance, it will probably put the private insurers out of business in short order. For one thing, as outlined by Obama during the campaign, the uninsured will be required to carry the insurance – with premiums and co-pays tied to income level of the insured. If the plan remained the same, overnight the new public health insurance plan would be the nation’s largest provider, with close to 50 million insured. That’s a pretty large sample size, and if it’s cheaper (it will be, since there won’t be a 30% markup for profit) and no more maddening than the current system, it won’t take long for everyone to start jettisoning the private insurance. So that’s the reality, and it scares them shitless, as it should. Because thanks to the jujitsu, their argument really boils down to “it is imperative that NO ONE provide access to health coverage for the uninsured.” Because the private insurers ain’t gonna do it.
There are several other turds floating in this particular punchbowl as well, such as the fact that currently, private health insurers pretty much get to dictate where you can work – if you have a health condition, you either work for someone who provides insurance or marry someone who has it. Otherwise, forget being an entrepreneur – or at least accept that everything you build is one illness away from being wiped out. If ever there was a constraint to the free market, this is it. Your child born with diabetes or other chronic health conditions will have his career path circumscribed by some faceless health insurance corporation bureaucrat. (And this is what I really don’t get about Sully’s “for-profit healthcare good!” attitude – the system, in practice, grossly distorts the free market.)
Then there’s the fact that private insurance isn’t doing such a good job of “insuring” many of the people supposedly covered. Having insurance is no guarantee against going bankrupt due to a health issue. It makes it less likely, but it’s a crapshoot, and pretty much everyone by now at least knows someone who was financially destroyed by an illness in spite of having health insurance. And I doubt there’s anyone out there who hasn’t been screwed in one way or another by a private health insurer – unless they’re one of the folks who have never had insurance.
Add to that the fact that we’re paying for health care for the uninsured already, except we’re overpaying by at least 10 times, because the uninsured don’t seek care until they have an acute problem, and then they show up at the emergency room – the most expensive place to seek care. The hospital has to recoup costs on uninsured patients, so they jack up the cost of rooms, materials, labor – everything – by enough to cover it. And then the insurance company raises its premiums (+30% profit) to cover the higher costs billed by the hospital.
It’s a stupid system. You couldn’t design a worse system if you set out to do it. And that’s just the practical aspects. The more important underlying principle is that some things aren’t appropriate as a “for-profit” system, and health care is a prime example. Any time you set up a system in which someone stands to profit by denying needed care, some people are going to die so others can make a few more dollars.
We’ll hear all of these arguments – minus the last one – as pushback against their attempts to Harry & Louise health care reform this time around. And I don’t think they’re going to win, because their “alternative” is to allow 50 million people – and growing – to continue going without health insurance and health care. That’s getting close to 20% of the population. If you want to knock down healthcare reform now, you’ve got to offer up some idea of how to address that problem. Because no one is buying that it’s not a problem anymore.
TenguPhule
Fuck, it’s Ice Pirates all over again.
TenguPhule
The Republican Party would like to prove you wrong.
Private Subcontr4tors, Bitches!
Steve
@MTiffany:
Frank Luntz IS conservative orthodoxy. That’s the thing.
MTiffany
I have to wonder, what kind of surgeries? Did some slag need new boobies because she was out-competed by a bigger skank with bigger fake boobies? Or perhaps a new hip for a 90 year old who broke theirs? Would these drugs have cured these people and allowed them to return to their normal lives? Or are we actually not being told that these drugs that were so inhumanely withheld were only going to provide minimal extension of life with low quality of life at maximum expense?
This code word ‘rationing’ that keeps getting tossed about to scare people, whether health care is reformed or not, eventually we will have to come to grips with the fact that we cannot afford all treatments at any cost. Should the guy that sucked down a fifth of scotch a day for thirty years get a new liver or should we spend that money to pay for medication for people living with HIV? Should we replace that bad, worn out hip joint of the retired high school teacher or should we instead spend that money on vaccinating children?
Canada and the UK have already had those debates about who gets to decide what’s ‘doable’ and who’s ‘saveable.’ Not every life can be saved, not all disease can bu cured.
MTiffany
@TenguPhule: Yeah, but Ice Pirates was far better written and thought out than most libertarian screeds.
“Government bad BLAH BLAH BLAH.” “Only gold is real money BLAH BLAH BLAH” “Federal reserve unconstitutional BLAH BLAH BLAH” “Department of Education unconstitutional BLAH BLAH BLAH” and on and on and on.
asiangrrlMN
@MTiffany: Right on! The insurance companies already make these kind of decisions all the time. In addition, they have that little thing called a preexisting condition. They also try to find ways not to pay for treatments that people desperately need. I think I’ll take my chances with a government-owned option.
MTiffany
@Zifnab:
I think you’re partially correct. I believe these ads are more a sort of thinly veiled threat to lawmakers. It’s sort of the private health care industry’s way of ‘reminding’ Congress that even if Congress were to nationalize the entire health care system tomorrow, the for-profit health care corporations might be out of business immediately, but their owners and lobbyists and hired guns would still have enormous amounts of money to throw around in the coming election cycle. And they would be looking for retribution and restoration and they would fund every challenger and opponent.
sab
My mother broke her foot in August, due to a fall from a neurological disorder. SHe made an appointment to see her neurologist right away. He could see her the following May, and then they could schedule an appointment with a physical therapist. And we don’t have waiting lists. Just doctors’ calendars scheduled out years in advance.
I need to see my dermatologist. I called this week ( May). He can schedule me in July. That’s not a waiting list- it’s just an appointment calendar.
asiangrrlMN
@MTiffany: Kinda how the bankers still have their hands in the Congress people’s pockets. Big business of every kind will do everything they can to preserve the status quo.
sab, I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or not, but that’s a waiting list in my mind.
Calouste
@Jennifer:
There is a solution to that, and that is the Dutch system. Single payer up to a certain income level, and private insurance (with profit caps and no exclusions) above that.
MTiffany
@sab:
Not to be too snarky, but for f*s sake, it’s only two months. What? Is your skin sloughing and peeling off in giant chunks leaving your innards drooping out? It’s two months. And, sorry about your mom, but did she get that broken foot of hers into a cast? I do truly hope so. Again, not to be snarky or rude, but the more immediate problem would appear to be taking care of her broken foot than the underlying neurological condition which caused her fall.
But here’s where I am going to get snarky – what the hell do you think that people who can’t even afford to see a doctor go through? Because in case you hadn’t heard, there was a little boy who died of brain infection for lack of access to a dentist to have an abscessed tooth pulled. For people without the means, their waiting list, excuse me, appointment calendar, is essentially booked up until the fifth of never, so quit your whining and suck it up. There really are people in this world worse off than you.
No offense.
MTiffany
@asiangrrlMN:
Oh no, he’s being sarcastic. And he even raised the stakes by putting his sick mother into the pot. To which I say, “I’ll see your ailing mother and raise you one dead child. Now show me your cards.”
asiangrrlMN
@MTiffany: I mean, I think s/he might have been snarky about not having waiting lists. The delivery was very dry, so I couldn’t really tell. In other words, s/he might actually be agreeing that our system is shitty.
bob h
My wife and I have no waits whatsoever for medical procedures, and that is probably typical of most Americans with insurance. If the number of people insured increases by 47 million/300 million = 15%, is that likely to lead to horrendous waits? Especially if the numbers of healthcare professionals are expanded?
Carol Duhart
@asiangrrlMN
And we can vote on the people who appoint the people who run the Government option. Writing to my congressman or governor with my complaints might actually get something done or somebody fired. The unappointed, unelected heads of private insurance companies-maybe they will listen, maybe not.
Josh Hueco
Normally, I like Sully, but jeezy creezy he’s an ass when it comes to health care. You’d think a pozzie would have a more ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ attitude towards those who don’t have health care, but dammit he’s got his and the rest of us can go eat a shit sandwich.
arguingwithsignposts
I so wish there was a monied interest in this country that would do the exact same ads about health care waits in this country. I’ve spent time in an ER behind people who had no health insurance who were waiting for hours at a time to get into a bed in the ER just because that’s the only option.
Our health care system is so fucked. I’m ashamed of it. And yet these people continue their mind-games. Here’s a deal. YOU A**HOLES stop your private insurance and see how you like it. Talk about the glories of the U.S. health insurance system then. Until that time, STFU.
wvng
Here’s a superior piece on 10 Myths About Canadian Health Care, Busted. Well worth your time.
noncarborundum
Bingo. This wasn’t obvious?
Dennis-SGMM
You just know that some GOPer is going to stand up on the floor of Congress and rail about throwing HMO employees out of their jobs when millions of other Americans are already losing theirs. That’s only natural; denying health care to the insured is a much more noble calling than, say, making automobiles.
Zifnab
@wvng: But do all the doctors still say “Aboot” and “Eh?” Because, as an American, I won’t tolerate that crap.
Napoleon
@PeakVT:
My understanding is that that is not the biggest problem, but that they spend next to nothing on the system. They pay per citizen near the bottom of those countries with a government system. Although how much you spend isn’t everything (just look at the US) certainly other things being equal at some point it does make a difference.
Napoleon
@MTiffany:
It is elective/non-emergency type stuff. Makes sense, if you have a system that doesn’t make decisions base primarily on who can pay and who can not you base it on medical need. On the battlefield or mass casualty situation its called triage.
slightly_peeved
Bingo; the UK spends lower amounts per capita than most other OECD countries, let alone the US. In 2003, the UK spent $2,317 per capita – significantly less than half the US spent per capita ($5, 711) and less than most other OECD countries. For comparison, France spent $3,048 per capita. All comparisons with the UK have to bear in mind that as of 2003 at least, the UK healthcare system cost less than HALF the US system.
@KC:
Studies have shown that many western nations have greater income mobility than the US; for an example, see here. The data doesn’t suggest the US has any current advantage in this area despite their more regressive taxation system.
Krista
That’s exactly it. Nobody here has to wait for lifesaving surgery or treatment. Any wait times are for elective or non-emergency stuff. Oftentimes, when you hear of Canadians going down to the U.S. for their surgery, it’s retirees with money who need joint replacements, and they don’t want to wait. And I can sympathize, as they’re probably in a considerable amount of discomfort.
But they WOULD have gotten their surgery eventually. And that’s the difference, I think. Our system’s flaws are equal-opportunity. :) If you have to wait, you have to wait, and nobody gives a shit how much money you have. You can’t buy your way into faster treatment. With the U.S. system, it appears to be very inequitable, with the poor often forgoing treatment altogether because they just can’t afford it.
While our system has a lot of flaws (wait times for certain diagnostics is one of them — that’s something we really have to work on) and is in no way perfect, there’s no way I would trade ours for yours. I’d rather have to wait for a treatment than never get it at all because I can’t afford it.
And yes, I do have private insurance — there always seems to be that myth that private insurance is illegal up here. It’s perfectly legal. It’s just used as a supplement to one’s public health coverage. So my Blue Cross covers prescription meds, vision care, prostheses, physiotherapy, psychology, etc. And while private insurance companies here aren’t raking in as much dough as their U.S. counterparts, I don’t think they’re exactly suffering, either. Great-West Life, which is based out of Winnipeg, generated $326 million in net income in Q1 – it’s a 50% drop from last year, due to the markets, but I would still call that a fairly tidy profit, no?
cosanostradamus
.
Amazing the scumbags they choose as their spokesmodels, these Repukelickins. Show them how effective they are by signing the petition in favor of universal single-payer national health care.
.
itsbenj
when will they stop looking to Andrew Sullivan for any kind of moral consistency?
HyperIon
@Comrade Kevin …oops, I mean asiangrrlMN:
I do NOT want health insurance.
I want health care.
and I want medical bankruptcy to GO AWAY.
Charity
My husband’s aunt last year was misdiagnosed and misdiagnosed, and by the time they finally figured out she had lung cancer, it was Stage 4 and nothing could be done. Now the lady hadn’t lived the healthiest life, and I don’t know what her insurance situation was, but that is insane.
Also, I think (and hope) anyone who’s had to declare bankruptcy because they couldn’t pay medical bills won’t buy these stupid scare ads. I don’t pretend to know what the answer is, but they’ve got to admit something needs to be done.
Charity
Just found this story on MSNBC.com: people leaving the ER against medical advice because they can’t afford extra tests or admissions.
That ain’t right.
jcricket
If Democratically-aligned groups don’t rip Scott apart, they are fools. Read the WaPo article and tell me the ad doesn’t practically write itself?:
Sinister looking bald guy (Scott). Start with “a lawyer with no medical training”, “ousted by his own board of directors” after settling the biggest consumer healthcare fraud suit in the history of the United states. Then follow with actual Scott quotes: “I was never charged with wrong doing”, “other companies overbilled too”. End with, “These are the people that want you to trust them on healthcare? Trusting them gotten us to the point where 50 million people are uninsured and 50 million more can’t afford the insurance they’ve got?”
Republicans have as much credibility on the healthcare system as tobacco executives (“How do babies avoid second hand smoke? They eventually learn to crawl”).
jcricket
And about Sullivan. Fuck him. His rich, lazy, entitled ass has no idea how the healthcare system, pharmaceutical or medical research industries work. His naivete shows when he blindly assumes that Big Pharma is the source of most medical innovation. Couple that with his stupidity in repeating that the only alternative to our system is a woefully underfunded single provider system like the NHS in Britain.
Off the top of my head we could pick a model like Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Germany, Taiwan or France – all of which spend less than 1/2 of what we spend, and get better health outcomes on every measure you can think of while insuring everyone, and nearly eliminating healthcare-related bankruptcies. The doctor the wingers quote in their ads from Britain “warning” of the dangers of the NHS has said the only thing that’s worse is a system like the one we have in the US! Also, when polled, even the people in EU countries who have serious issues with their healthcare system also state they absolutely don’t want an American style system (i.e. it would be worse).
Much like anything involving math (see curve, bell), Sully’s reasoning on healthcare is to be avoided at all costs. It makes you dumber reading it.
Paul
The more important underlying principle is that some things aren’t appropriate as a “for-profit” system, and health care is a prime example. Any time you set up a system in which someone stands to profit by denying needed care, some people are going to die so others can make a few more dollars.
kay
@itsbenj:
when will they stop looking to Andrew Sullivan for any kind of moral consistency?
I don’t know. It’s a mystery. Identify how health care reform benefits Andrew Sullivan personally and we may find him “taking another look” at this ISSUE.
He’s one of those people. They have it, they’re happy with it, and they think spreading it around somehow takes something from them. If you’re seeing his gay marriage argument in the preceding sentence, well, that’s because you’re consistent.
Thankovsky
@itsbenj:
He can admit when he’s wrong. That’s a hell of a lot more than can be said for a lot of the left-wing blogosphere.
edit: I’m not sure how morality enters into it, either. Can’t he be wrong on this issue (and he is) without us assuming that he’s got some sort of malicious intent? This is what bugs me about the left-wing blogosphere, and about progressives nowadays in general: there’s never any room to assume that someone is wrong, but wrong in good faith. It always has to be that they’re wrong because they’re bad people. I really wish my fellow progressives would knock it off, personally. It makes us all look stupid.
kay
@Thankovsky:
Except, Sullivan relies on moral arguments for everything else. Leaving himself open to questions on this.
On health care, he’s a hard-headed pragmatist. That doesn’t make sense, and it isn’t consistent. If there is any issue where humanitarian/moral arguments come into legit play, it’s health care. Why does Sullivan flee from discussing just this issue in moral terms? His whole schtick is morality.
Thankovsky
@kay:
You’re confusing moral arguments for moralistic arguments here. Sully may argue that it’s immoral to institute a single-payer public healthcare system; a valid response upon the same lines would be to argue that it IS more to have a single-payer public healthcare system, for reasons A, B, and C. There’s no reason to disparage his personal morality in the process, though. That just brings us down closer to the level of right-wing commentators who do the same thing.
I imagine he would argue that the problems inherent in a single-payer system are so great that they eclipse its benefits, thus making it a “net-immoral” system. If that is his argument, he’s wrong on that, but I don’t think it makes him “morally inconsistent” – just wrong.
I’m not sure what you mean by saying his “whole schtick is morality,” either; that’s not the impression I get from him. The impression I get is that his worldview, like everyone else’s, is a mixture of pragmatism and moral principles. I don’t think that makes him morally inconsistent.
Wile E. Quixote
@MTiffany
So let’s see, we have the choice between spending money on a drunk who destroyed his liver by drinking for 30 years or for a bunch of irresponsible asswipes who destroyed their immune systems by shooting smack and having unprotected sex.
Wile E. Quixote
@MTiffany
I’m sorry, but as soon as you bought dead children in you engaged in the “It’s for the children” argument which is almost a Godwin level offense. By invoking dead children you have revealed yourself to be every bit as much of a fear-mongering, demagogic twat as William Bennett, Nancy Reagan and everyone else who is in favor of the War on Drugs, Michelle Malkin, Maggie Gallagher and everyone else who shits themselves at the mention of the words “gay marriage”, everyone who is in favor of the War in Iraq and everyone who writes at “The Corner”. Congratulations upon joining such august company.
TenguPhule
And another spooftroll looms their head over Alaska.
Wile E. Quixote
@Thankovsky
I’m confused by those who would claim that government provided single payer healthcare is immoral, I’m not sure if this is Sullivan’s position but I have heard this argument advanced by others. If government paid single-payer health care is immoral is a government paid single-payer police force similarly immoral? Or a government paid single-payer Army/Navy/Marine Corps/Air Force? OK, I know that there are hard core Libertarians who would answer “yes” to the questions above, and I will award them points for consistency, but I’m more interested in the conservatives who have no problem whatsoever throwing billions of dollars at the Department of Defense or spending billions to build new prisons and expand our police forces but who get the vapors if you mention single-payer health care.
What kind of mental gymnastics do you have to perform to believe that taking billions of dollars from the taxpayers each year and handing it off to a largely unaccountable oligopolies of weapons manufacturers (I think that anyone using the euphemism “defense contractor” should be beaten until they get their mind right) to produce weapons systems that we don’t need, that don’t work or both is “OK” and somehow a legitimate function of the government but that taking money from those same taxpayers to insure that they have a minimum level of health care is abhorrent.
Wile E. Quixote
Oh, and I think that until the tools who wrote the WordPress blogging software fix it so that blockquotes work properly that they should be denied all health care. Jesus this software is pathetic, it makes Microsoft beta software look stable and feature filled, with actual features that you might use as opposed to regular Microsoft “features”, by comparison.
Wile E. Quixote
I’d also like to know why everyone is bringing up Britain as an example of what a single-payer system would be like. Britain sucks, really, it does. Of all of the nations I visited in Europe when I worked there Britain was the filthiest, the most expensive and the rudest. I visited unreconstructed parts of East Germany that were cleaner than most parts of London and British tourists are actually even ruder than American tourists, if such a thing can be believed. In addition to this you have the fact that the British prime minister, Tony Blair, spent eight years on his knees sucking the shit out of George W. Bush’s asshole and the fact that British politicians and civil servants who have read 1984 seem to think that it was a cool idea to be implemented ASAP, hence the stupid Brit fetish for CCTV, and not a dystopia to be avoided. Given all of this is it any wonder that the British health care system is fucked up? “Cool Britannia” my ass, it’s more like “Airstrip One” with a positively Brezhnevian level of government incompetence.
Using the British NHS as an example of why the US shouldn’t have a single-payer healthcare system is as completely and totally braindead as using the French Army’s performance in the spring of 1940 or in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu as an example of why the US shouldn’t have a military.
MTiffany
@Wile E. Quixote: Almost a Godwin level offense? Dammit. I have to try harder.
slightly_peeved
You just answered your own question. Britain has this image; therefore the detractors use it.
Better results than the US system for half the price. Cheaper than many other European systems that get comparable results. It’s actually pretty effective, it just cuts back on some of the luxuries, and that’s why it gets picked on.
It gets a bit ridiculous, yes, but I’d take it over the US fetish for torture.
slightly_peeved
That being said, part of the reason Canada is used as an example is that you can’t buy your way into faster treatment. In a number of other public/private healthcare systems (Australia for one) the public system guarantees you surgery for these elective conditions, but private insurance and private hospitals allow you to get treated quicker. In that respect, it may be closer to what most Americans want in a health care system. And that’s why the people fighting single-payer health care don’t like mentioning it.
Well that, and the fact that the first Australian most Americans would think of these days is an action-hero/dancer with pectorals you could ski down. They’d probably think the Australian health care system features compulsory workouts or something.
gwangung
AH.
Now we know EXACTLY how to strike back. Automatic win with 51% of the population. Add Elle McPherson and you got the other 49%.
ellie
I have to wait for treatment here in the states. When I go to the gynecologist, the wait time is about three to four months, so if I made the appointment today, I would get in about August or September. I had to have surgery and the wait was four months. I must be going to the wrong doctors! And I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield, I am not on Medicaid either, lurking wingnuts. So please tell me, with universal health care I’m going to have to wait? Oooh scary!
ellie
Oh yeah, and the wait to get in to the skin doctor was SIX months! Glad I didn’t have leprosy.
Krista
There are small examples of that here. We don’t have private hospitals, and any private insurance is just to cover stuff that isn’t normally covered — it doesn’t affect the speed of your treatment.
However, there have been a few private MRI clinics that have popped up over the last few years. Proponents of them say that by allowing those who are willing to pay for quicker treatment to be able to do so, it shortens wait times for everybody (because you then have that many more people who are taken out of the queue for the public MRI.) Detractors say that people shouldn’t be able to buy their way to faster treatment, and that it risks setting up a system where doctors will want to work only for the privately funded/for-profit services, as they’d likely get paid more, resulting in even more and more doctors leaving rural areas, where you tend to just have your regular old publicly funded/not-for-profit hospital, with no privately owned healthcare services.
I can see both sides of it, and think that if we do inch in the direction of Australia’s system, we’ll want to do so very carefully and find out what their particular drawbacks are and how they could be circumvented.
slightly_peeved
The Canadian system is cheaper than the Australian system from the stats I’ve seen, and the gap appears to be increasing. So I think the Canadian system has some benefits when it comes to controlling the overall cost of health care.
I’d use Miranda Kerr, but it’s your country :).