Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

There was a lot of reaction to both the Democratic and Republican health care plans today. The tea baggers protested once again against what they have been misled to believe to be the Democratic Plan. Two groups which really understand both the issue and what is actually being proposed issued endorsements.  I received a two page fax from the American Medical Association this afternoon endorsing the House plan.The fax praised the plan for expanding care, reforming the insurance markets preserving patient-physician decision making, investing in quality care, prevention, and wellness, and repealing the flawed formula for calculating Medicare payments.

Obama discussed the significance of this endorsement saying members of the AMA “are men and women who know our health care system best and have been watching this debate closely. They would not be supporting it if they really believed that it would lead to government bureaucrats making decisions that are best left to doctors.  They would not be with us if they believed that reform would in any way damage the critical and sacred doctor-patient relationship.”

On this topic, the fax from the American Medical Association said:

Preserving the power of patients and their physicians to make health care decisions–rather than insurance companies or government officials–is of paramount importance to all physicians and to the AMA. While H.R. 3962 includes a number of new government oversight bodies, the AMA has not identified any new authority that would overpower the relationship between patients and their physicians. Furthermore, expanded coverage and choice should help empower patient and physician decision making.

He also gave one reason why so many physicians are endorsing health care reform:

They’ve seen what happens when patients can’t get the care they need because some insurance company has decided to drop their coverage or water it down. They’ve seen what happens when a patient’s forced to pay out-of- pocket costs of thousands of dollars that she doesn’t have, to get the treatment she desperately needs. They’ve seen what happens when patients don’t come in for regular checkups or screenings because either their insurance company doesn’t cover them or they can’t afford health insurance in the first place. And they’ve seen far, far too much of their time spent filling out forms and haggling with insurance company bureaucrats. So the doctors of America know what needs to be fixed about our health care system.  They know that health insurance reform would go a long way toward doing that.

Obama is certainly right on that. All the scare stories raised by the right wingers are nothing compared to the horror stories we see every day under our current system.

The other key endorsement came from AARP. Obama commented:

When it comes to the AARP, this is no small endorsement,” he said. “For more than 50 years they have been a leader in the fight to reduce the costs of health care and expand coverage for our senior citizens. They are a nonpartisan organization and their board made their decision to endorse only after a careful, intensive, objective scrutiny of this bill.  They’re endorsing this bill because they know it will strengthen Medicare, not jeopardize it; they know it will protect the benefits our seniors receive, not cut them.

The Republicans felt they had to come up with a counter plan rather than vote against the Democratic plan without having anything. What they came up with was worse than no plan. Ezra Klein reviewed the Congressional Budget Office’s evaluation of the plan noting how it compared to the Democratic Plan: “The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan.”

The Republican National Committee announced plans for a twelve hour online town hall to “explain the democratic health care bill.” Democratic National Committee Press Secretary Hari Sevugan issued the following response:  “We’re planning a twelve second town hall to explain every last detail of the GOP health care plan.”