The Daily Kos and the Shadows that Lurk Within

Today a tweeter that goes by the handle @biolawyer tweeted a challenge out to the Twitterverse:

“If you can reasonably dispute any of these 10 HC items, explain why. Otherwise, STFU.” with a link to a post on Daily Kos written by ShadowSD entitled “The Ten Health Care Talking Points Every Dem Must Repeat”. I thought to myself, it ought to be pretty easy to pick one of the items as @biolawyer suggested and dispute them.

When I clicked on the link and started to read this post I suddenly realized that I’m just not going to take one, that would be too easy.  I am going to address the entire post.

“1.  When you need life-saving care, private insurance companies only profit by denying you and letting you die.  If you have payed your premiums on time all your life, you’re as likely to be dropped by your private insurance company when you need life-saving care as you are to get treated. A public option gives you a lifeline.”

Here we go with the big bad insurance companies. Shhh – want to know who the biggest baddest insurance company is? Government run Medicare with a staggering $37 TRILLION of unfunded debt.  Shadow wants to make it seem like 100% of Americans has a 50/50 chance of getting their health insurance canceled.  In fact, when you actually look at the numbers, it’s the top 1 percentile of people with high medical expenses, greater than $35,543 who have a chance of getting their health insurance canceled.  You can see for yourself right here.

Let’s also discuss auto insurance as well.   Why should anyone have to pay higher auto insurance premiums because they have a higher incident of traffic accidents, right?  Let’s abolish all pre-existing records of accidents, traffic violations, and theft of cars too.

Should we take a look and discuss reform on preexisting condition insurance? Yes it’s worth discussing it and further studying it before making inflated claims.  Let’s also discuss how allowing health insurance companies to sell plans across state lines can increase competition and reduce the risk pool (a favorite of the current Administration).  While we’re at it let’s address tort reform as well (a taboo of the current Administration as trial lawyers gave millions to them).  These will lead to lower costs for ALL Americans.

“2.  Private insurance companies are spending over $1M a day to kill the public option by inventing phony citizen groups, and trying to scare the elderly about euthanasia and pro-lifers with abortion; they know the only way to kill reform is to get people of good conscience fighting, while they laugh all the way to the bank.  They don’t think very highly of our intelligence.”

Please, spare me the theatrics.  You want to talk about spending and phony citizen groups?  Allow me to introduce you to the biggest of them all – HCAN.  Just take a look at HCAN who has more than 1,000 member organizations in 46 states.  HCAN’s steering committee is a who’s who of big money contributors to the Obama Administration and Democratic members of Congress:

ACORN, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, AFT, Americans United for Change, Campaign for America’s Future, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Campaign for Community Change, Children’s Defense Fund Action Council, Communications Workers of America, International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), MoveOn.org, NAACP, National Council of La Raza, National Education Association, National Women’s Law Center, SEIU, UFCW, USAction, Women’s Voices, Women’s Vote and Working America.

As for phony?  We merely have to turn to our President’s Town Hall yesterday, August 12th to see how the Administration saw it fit to use a child for their self-serving interests – The Little Girl who Talked about Mean Signs.

“3.  We pay more than any other country to be 24th in life expectancy: while the average Canadian family spends less than $2000 a year on health care with no waiting periods, the average American family spends $29,000 a year, waiting for private insurance companies to approve every procedure.”

The Shadow uses an outdated WHO report from 2000, almost 10 years ago to propagate the life expectancy mantra.  This report was discontinued because of the complexity in the reporting. Translation: There were so many variables that it was inaccurate. See “Other Ranks” for the explanation

Canadians have no waiting periods?  Well you better tell that to the Canadians and the Canadian Government – Wait times in Canada.  In fact Canada’s wait times are so monstrous that they need our Health Care system to supplement them – Canada’s U.S. Options.

From above – it looks like the average American family spends about $29,000 per year on health care.  In fact the total 2009 medical cost for a typical American family of four is $16,771.  It’s further broken down into an employer contribution ($9,947), an employee contribution ($4,004), and employee out-of-pocket costs ($2,820).  So the actual American family spends $6,824 total, out of pocket, on health care.  Now the employer contribution could be seen as lost wages for the employee, however the employee is getting the wages back in the form of a contribution from the employer. By the way, all the taxes that the U.S. Government assesses on Americans can also be viewed as lost wages considering all the waste and fraud that exists within our Government.

“4.  14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day; 46M are uninsured.”

Could it be that 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day as a result of unemployment? Why yes it can!  In fact, it was based on The Center of American Progress’ study – authored by James Kvaal and Ben Furnas. It shows on page 12 of the report that as unemployment rises people lose their health insurance.  As we can see, Obama is doing great work on creating  jobs – NOT!  By the way The Center of American Progress is run by John Podesta and … surprise, James Kvall who co-authored the study joined the President’s White House National Economic Counsel.

As for the 47 million uninsured? Well, one only has to shine the light on the shadow to see how misleading that number is:

The Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005,” the Census data include 9.487 million people who are “not a citizen.”

According to the same Census Report, there’s 8.3 million uninsured who make $50,000 to $74,999 per year and 8.74 million who make $75,000 or more per year.  The math – Another 17 million who can afford health insurance.

Additionally the Census under-reported the number of people covered by private health insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare. The Kaiser Family Foundation, a liberal non-profit think tank, puts the number of uninsured Americans who do NOT qualify for government programs and make less than $50,000 a year at between 13.9 million and 8.2 million.

You can read all about the uninsured here – Health Care Lie: ’47 Million Uninsured Americans’

“5. 18,000 Americans DIE each year due to lack of health care: THAT’S 50 A DAY.”

Where’s the data to support that?  How does one measure a lack of health care? If a person has cancer and dies is that because of a lack of health care?  What if a person who doesn’t have health care dies in an auto accident? Does that count too?  What if someone who doesn’t have health care is murdered by an illegal alien? Does that count?  Just like the “47 Million Uninsured” myth light needs to be shined so that we can see ALL the facts.

“6. Two-thirds of American personal bankruptcies are related to health care costs.”

So logic would dictate if that is the case then a Government run Insurance Exchange and a Government run Public Option would save the day and personal bankruptcies would decline.  Ladies and Gentlemen and the Shadows that Lurk within, I give you the Fraser Institutes study on Health Insurance and Bankruptcy :

• The personal bankruptcy rate was actually higher in Canada in 2006 and 2007 (0.30 percent for both years) than in the United States (0.20 percent and .27 percent).
• Medical spending was only one of several contributing factors in 17 percent of U.S. bankruptcies — medical debts accounted for only 12 to 13 percent of the total debts among American bankruptcy filers who cited medical debt as one of their reasons for bankruptcy.
• Medical reasons were cited as the primary cause of bankruptcy by approximately 15 percent of bankrupt Canadian seniors (55 years of age and older).
• Non-medical expenditures comprise the majority of debt among bankrupt consumers in both Canada and the United States; the inability to earn sufficient income to cover these costs — not exposure to uninsured medical costs — is the real explanation for almost all bankruptcies in either country.

“7.  Businesses – particularly small businesses – cannot afford to provide health insurance for their employees under the current employer based private insurance system, and will be forced to either drop their coverage or go out of business unless a public option is passed.”

Let’s see what will actually happen if a public option is passed:

How a 5.4% Surtax Hits Small Business State by State

Families and Small Businesses to be Taxed to Pay for Health “Reform”

ObamaCare would Dump Americans into the Government Run Health Care

“8. One-sixth of all our government spending is on health care, twice as much as any other country spends out of its budget.  Our nation pays $2.5 trillion for care costing $912 billion .”

You want to talk about Government spending on Health Care? Yes, shall we? Let’s talk about how ObamaCare is going to cost us over $9.2 TRILLION in the long run:

House Health Care Bill yields $9.2 TRILLION in Deficits

“9. Every independent estimate says the public option will save us money, from saving 150 billion dollars (CBO) to saving 265 billion dollars (Commonwealth).  The Congressional Budget Office estimates the current bill in the House would leave a 6 billion dollar surplus. “

This is flat out not true. Don’t take my word for it though. Listen to the Director of the CBO himself:

“10.  So – if you’d rather spend more taxpayer money, bankrupt businesses, AND pay $29,000 a year for your family’s private insurance coverage in exchange for a policy that can be dumped the second you actually need it, then the current system is great for you.  If you’d rather spend less, wait less, have less of a chance of dying, and want to remove the corporate bureaucrat from between you and your doctor, then a public option is the way to go.  Right now, even if you’re lucky enough not to be dropped by your provider when you need urgent medical care, your private insurance company can overrule your doctor’s advice for life-saving treatment and only offer to cover something cheaper; a public option would remove that middleman and leave these decisions where they belong, between the patient and doctor.”

My response to # Ten?  As with the last 9 items on the Shadow’s 10 talking point for Dems, once you shine the light on darkness from the left, their BS disappears instantly.