By Bill Roy
The Topeka Capital-Journal, Nov. 6. 2011
The New York Times on Oct. 30 published the first of a promised series of articles by Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an oncologist, who is now professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Times bills Emanuel as a former White House adviser, which indeed he was during the writing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010. He probably had privileged access, because he is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, now mayor of Chicago, who was President Barack Obama’s White House Chief of Staff during that period.
Emanuel, who has the finest education in two disciplines, medicine and political philosophy, that America and Britain (Oxford) can offer, writes extensively. His writings were widely published during that critical period when a Democratic president and Congress were considering the most critical domestic legislation that can come before any U.S. Congress.
Emanuel and others ignored the fact that the health care systems of every other member of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development is, in one way or another, a single-payer health care system that covers everyone at a much lower cost than we are spending to insure only 5/6ths of our population.
The president, Congress and their advisers forfeited any chance of writing satisfactory health insurance legislation when they refused to let a single-payer system be considered. The Democrats followed the advice of the Ezekiel and Rahm Emanuels of the party, and wrote a crummy law that does not cover everyone, and will not control costs.
By their actions, they sacrificed the political careers of many of their members, a congressional majority and possibly a two-term Obama presidency. But most of all, they forfeited the health and money of the American people, who intend to make them pay dearly.
Surely, they had good reasons. Not so, read this statement by Ezekiel Immanuel and co-author Victor Fuchs, a celebrated senior Stanford economist.
“The biggest problem with single-payer is its failure to cohere with core American values. Single-payer puts everyone into the same system with the same coverage and makes it virtually impossible to add amenities and services through the private market.”
There it is, the smoking gun, the origin of the legislative mess now known to most Americans by the pejorative “Obamacare,” which will likely to be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or repealed by the next Congress.
As a recognized medical ethicist, Emanuel surely would like to avoid the 20,000 to 50,000 premature deaths a year resulting from the uninsured’s failure to seek and receive timely medical care.
But the deaths, anguish and suffering will continue, in part due to the hubris of two brilliant men who stepped out of their fields of expertise and decided “American core values” will not accept a basic system of health care for all.
The insurance companies won. They kept their current business and will receive more, compliments of the new law. They can still pay their executives $1 billion a year, as United HealthCare Group paid CEO William McGuire in 2006, and, assisted by AARP, rip off as much of the health care dollar as their greed and bookkeeping dictates.
While we cannot rely on Emanuel’s political judgment, we can probably depend on his facts, to wit.
Based on 2009 figures, health care cost us $7,960 each. Canadians paid $4,363 each; British paid $3,487 each; and Norwegians, with the second most expensive system, paid $5,352 each.
If each Kansan in a given year paid $6,000 per year for health care instead of $8,000,we could save $2,000 times our population of 2,723,507. Our savings would be $5,447,014,000. And, we would still be paying more per person for health care than any other nation.
The potential savings for Kansans of $5.44 billion is consistent with Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s observation that his state spent $8 billion on health care in 2010, while just to his north, Canadian Province Saskatchewan with a nearly identical population was spending $4.2 billion.
And, of course, Saskatchewan covered everyone, while Montana had more than 150,000 uninsured.
The Times and Emanuel will bring us interesting information. Maybe they will come up with the right answer this time. But they wasted our last, best chance.
Bill Roy is a retired physician and former member of Congress. He has a law degree and lives in Topeka. He may be reached at wirroy@aol.com.
http://cjonline.com/opinion/2011-11-06/bill-roy-health-care-legislation-botched#.Trfy03KwVbE