John McCain’s Health Insurance Solution, Deny There is a Problem
Remember the heat Reagan got for declaring ketchup to be a vegetable? Well, John McCain’s advisor John Goodman is now calling Emergency Room care a form of insurance, as if he’s happy people must resort to such care. Of course, he, like McCain, has no sense of how Emergency Room care plays havoc on the economy.
I found this on DailyKos, so a hat tip should go out to TexasTom of DailyKos. It is a quote from one of John McCain’s advisors, who says there are no Americans without health insurance. His reasoning is flawless, if inane. From the Dallas News:
But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)
“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.
“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”
Yeah, you read that right. Goodman is a McCain advisor and he thinks the fact that Emergency Rooms must admit all patients means that Americans are all covered with insurance. Of course, what he doesn’t say is that Emergency Room care is the most expensive of all care, and the vast numbers who depend on such are partly what causes overall healthcare costs to climb so high as a part of our economy. What it seems here is that John Goodman, a McCain advisor, is touting the worst aspects of our healthcare system.
There are reasons John McCain knows nothing about economics. He’s hired cretins who also know nothing to advise him.
I think this myth of emergency rooms must admit everyone needs to be killed. It is repeated over and over and over by the right wing and neocons as why we don’t need universal health care. Hospital emergency rooms are required to admit people in need of IMMEDIATE or life threatening care ONLY. This does include women in labor but it DOES NOT include people simply looking for routine medical care for strep throat, etc. They can turn people away without money or insurance and DO. When my son was in the emergency room over a year ago prior to being admitted to the hospital, I saw multiple people turned away that didn’t have life threatening conditions but just seeking routine medical care, I would assume because they didn’t have access to a doctor they thought they could get care there, but still can’t without plopping down the $400. plus fee up front. Medical care simply isn’t available at all in this country unless you can pay up front or show up in the emergency room with a life threatening condition, and by the way, once the crisis passes they can dump you out the door and will do so!
You are correct, of course, but a healthcare system which porovides for many with just emergency care inadequately cares t=for those and at such a high cost that the system is clearly broken. The implication is that broken is just fine for McCain.
Steve, kudos for hitting this topic.
a reputed 47 million lack health insurance — and even bush is said to have declared, “well, they can use the emergecy room!”!
what is not repeated frequently enough is that these costs are assumed by all of us, and worse, this situation avoids the preventative approach, where all citizens are encouraged to be the care-takers of their own bodies, eat right, exercise, etc.
such talk is an anathema, as you note, especially to those who champion health care in the US as “the best in the world”!
as a solution, what is going to happen, i think, is that fixing the system is going be a patchwork job, incrementally, as state-by-state, programs that cover everybody will be implemented.
here in WA state, for example, providing all goes well, the state will enact first a program that includes just children and seniors, with the idea that later — about 6 yrs — all citizens can be included.