Paul Krugman: Health Care Reform Myth Buster
I was totally happy to see this piece by Paul Krugman in the NY Times today. It’s been driving me crazy to hear Rethugs repeat these lying talking points over and over.
Myth Number 1: Obamacare will result in a government takeover of 1/6 of the U.S. Economy
Myth Buster from Krugman:
Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs already pay for almost half of American health care, while private insurance pays for barely more than a third (the rest is mostly out-of-pocket expenses). And the great bulk of that private insurance is provided via employee plans, which are both subsidized with tax exemptions and tightly regulated.
The only part of health care in which there isn’t already a lot of federal intervention is the market in which individuals who can’t get employment-based coverage buy their own insurance. And that market, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a disaster — no coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, coverage dropped when you get sick, and huge premium increases in the middle of an economic crisis. It’s this sector, plus the plight of Americans with no insurance at all, that reform aims to fix. What’s wrong with that?
Myth Number 2: Obamacare will do nothing to control costs.
Myth Buster from Krugman:
[C]ritics point to reports by the Medicare actuary, who predicts that total national health spending would be slightly higher in 2019 with reform than without it.
Even if this prediction were correct, it points to a pretty good bargain. The actuary’s assessment of the Senate bill, for example, finds that it would raise total health care spending by less than 1 percent, while extending coverage to 34 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured. That’s a large expansion in coverage at an essentially trivial cost.
Myth Number 3: Obamacare will cost trillions of dollars and raise the deficit significantly
Myth Buster from Krugman:
How can people say this given Congressional Budget Office predictions — which, as I’ve already argued, are probably too pessimistic — that reform would actually reduce the deficit?
He also points out that many parts of the plan intended to reduce costs (providing incentives for preventive care, for instance) aren’t really quantifiable at this point and are essentially scored as not increasing or decreasing the costs. Krugman thinks, and I do too, that this kind of measure will in fact reduce costs significantly as time goes on so that the reform bill will result in greater savings than predicted.
Health care reform is within reach and that’s probably why the Rethugs are upping the ante on their lies and misstatements. We need to pushback against these lies whenever we hear them.
Posted by marindenver on 03/12/10 at 08:02 PM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Barack Obama • Bedwetters • Editorials • Health Care • Nutters •
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