The Obama White House hesitated not at all in labeling the AHIP
study “an insurance industry hatchet job.” The study in question
was one conducted by a policy group that is funded by the
industry.
The study said that premiums on the average family would go up
$4,000 if the Baucus bill — which cleared the Senate Finance
Committee recently on an almost straight-line party vote — is
enacted into law. The White House’s quick and dismissive response
said that of course the industry will howl — their ox is being
gored.
The lightning-fast reaction of the White House to the sound of
oxen being gored is interesting in a number of ways. Who else
would know better what the likely costs of an insurance scheme
would be than the insurance industry?
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) helped the Obama
administration’s case greatly by saying that the Baucus bill
would actually save taxpayers $81 billion. But CBO was scoring
not a bill, but a “concept.”
I’d like to try that gambit next time I buy a new car. I want to
know the likely cost of a concept of comfortable, affordable,
safe and portable transportation — as opposed to all those pesky
line items charges for things like brakes, automatic steering,
and catalytic converters. Those nasty details always seem to jack
up the bottom line. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
Another reason the White House “hatchet job” comments were
interesting is that they come just days after President Obama hit
all five major networks’ Sunday talk shows with a sermon about
“civility.” But here, when the first opportunity arises to choose
civility, all the President’s men — and most of his women, too
— come out with hammer and tongs.
So, Americans should all understand, if you want to keep your
current insurance policies — the ones that 85% of you say you’re
satisfied with — you are assured by this White House that those
policies written by those hatchet-wielding policy writers are
completely secure.
About your doctors: President Obama has said that pediatricians
too often take their scalpels to your kids’ tonsils. They do this
unnecessary surgery, he claimed, because “there’s gold in them
thar tonsils.” The pediatricians protested most vigorously
against this misconstruction of their practice. They do not
routinely propose to take out junior’s tonsils, they said, and
besides, if they do recommend tonsillectomy, pediatricians are
not the ones who would do it.
Do you get the impression that every time President Obama talks
specifics he gets in rhetorical trouble? Better to keep the focus
of his rhetoric on the clouds of hope and change. Somewhere over
the rainbow — that’s the kind of talk at which he excels.
Then there are those sawbones surgeons. The President complains
that they will charge thousands for amputating the feet of
suffering diabetics. Once again, he thinks they’re in it for the
money. In this, he must have read the wisecrack of Irish
playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw said he would never trust a
doctor who stands to make a “quid” with the decision of whether
his leg needed to come off. Shaw, of course, was also a famous
socialist.
Once again, the doctors in question, the doctors who had been
accused of cutting for profit, issued an anguished protest. It is
not true, they said, that they are eager to amputate, and
besides, the fee for such an amputation is generally a fraction
of the figure the President cited.
We need to pay close attention to everything this President says
about American medical practice. You can keep your chiseling,
hatchet-wielding insurers if you insist. You can still go to
those scalpel-slashing, sawbones physicians if you must. And
we all need to be more civil.
If this is the way he speaks about those with whom he disagrees
now, how will he treat them when they all work for him?
