Myrna Ulfik’s item in the Wall Street Journal says:
I didn’t run to Canada for [cancer] treatment. Medicare took care of my needs right here in New York City. To endure, I just need the freedom to choose my insurance, my doctors, and get the diagnostic scans and care I need. And one more thing: I need hope that a treatment will be developed that can control my diseases the way insulin controls diabetes.
Every cancer patient needs these things, especially hope. But the government’s plan to reform the health-care system in this country threatens all of this—particularly the development of new treatments.
Most people do not have the freedom to choose their insurance. Most people have insurance that is chosen for them by their employer. Lucky people may have the choice of several plans of varying costs through their employer. Unlucky people have their choice of overpriced and under-providing private policies. Myrna admits that she has Medicare, so she in fact has no control over her primary insurance, only her supplemental insurance. That’s strike one.
Most people do not have freedom, but rather they have limited choices for their doctor and hospital. They can either choose from a list of “preferred providers” published by their insurance company — many of which are closed to new patients and are only listed because they have existing patients covered by that insurer. Or, they can go “out of system” and commit to paying twice as much. This is not an option for most people. Myrna doesn’t address hospital care, but most people have even more limited options there. Why do hospitals advertise at all? The choice is almost always “the one the insurance company picks” or “the one closest to the accident.” So strike 2 for Myrna.
As for diagnostic tests, scans, images, and care, all these things are regulated now not by government bureaucrats, but by insurance company bureaucrats. It is routine for insurance companies to require inexpensive tests before authorizing more appropriate but more expensive ones. This requirement wastes time and money in many cases — time and money that could be helping a patient who is in pain. It is routine for insurance companies to require authorization for many treatments, and this authorization may require your doctor to submit piles of paperwork and sit on the phone for an hour. He could have seen other patients that needed help in that hour. Strike 3 to Myrna.
And as for the development of new treatments, I would like to point out that not a single new drug, not a single new treatment, not a single scientific breakthrough has ever been made by an insurance company. Pharmaceutical companies, research universities, and innovative physicians/scientists will continue to do these things, and their discoveries will continue to be tested scientifically before being administered to the general population.
Myrna goes on to talk about a cancer vaccine that has been held up by the FDA for over 20 years. She points out that if this treatment works, it could already have saved tens of thousands of lives. She has apparently forgotten that sometimes what appears to work in small research patient populations doesn’t work the same way for everybody. She has forgotten the many drugs the FDA has approved which have turned out to be harmful. This list includes but is not limited to Palladone, Baycol, Zelnorm, Rezulin, Trasylol, fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, and Vioxx. These drugs were all FDA approved, and all happily reimbursed — with an appropriate co-pay — by insurance companies.
People of privilege are trying to scare us by talking about how we could lose things we don’t even have, things most of us have not had for decades. Sadly, most of them are so out of touch that they honestly think everyone has the same privileges in the health care system that they do.
Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.
In closing: thankfully even the Obama Administration has started calling it insurance reform; don’t let reform get derailed over abortion, a controversial but sometimes life-saving operation; I love Howard Dean; it took economists to tell us that unemployed people can’t afford COBRA?; the political football called the public option; who would Jesus deny health care?; on the role of special interests (hint, it involves lubricant); glad I’m not in Detroit; “Cash for Clunkers” already out of money!; ok, this guy is even more angry at our Congressmice than I am; arcane rules of Congress being debated; GOP misogyny; 2 years into the financial crisis; and can you spare a few bucks for JurassicPork?