Chuck Grassley Comments on Health Care

One of the fundamental problems with the current healthcare debate is that of inaccurate portayals of other health care systems worldwide. Opponents are continuously bringing up single-payer discussions as a method of attacking reform, when a single-payer (government) health care system is not even on the table. In interest of improving health care, we should be looking at what works/doesn't work from single-payer systems, private systems, and hybrids, and applying that knowledge to our own healthcare design. We should not be attacking any attempt at reform AS a single-payer "government run" system and only looking at the negative aspects of a single-payer system, often using false-negative statements on top off that incorrect context as well. This creates a smoke-screen of misinformation in an already complex debate.

Adding to the distortion of mischaracterizing reform as a single-payer "government run" system are many statements that are just flat out false. A terrific example is when the Investor's Daily Editorial page said that if Stephen Hawking had lived in the UK, the British health care system would have let him die. Specifically, they said:

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service (NHS) would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

Never mind that Hawking is actually from the UK, and credits the NHS with the treatment of his condition and his existence. A hilarious, short editorial on this was done by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post.

But the Investor's Daily editorial is printed. The unfortunate readers of the Investor's Daily are already misinformed, already repeating the rediculous statement on the golf course, or in their daily conversations, or on Facebook. The misinformation spreads rapidly, and it further entrenches opinions that are not based on fact.

Inaccurate editorials are one thing, and are bad enough. But when leaders involved in deciding the direction of our health care system don't get basic principles right, that worries me even more. Of particular interest were comments I heard yesterday from Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa concerning, again, the NHS in the UK. You can hear his comments here, but he said:

"I’ve been told that the brain tumor that Senator Kennedy has because he’s 77 years old would not be treated the way it’s treated in the US, in other words, they say well he doesn’t have long to live, even if he lives another 4 or 5 years. They’d say, well, we have to spend the money on people that can contribute more to the economy."

The problem with the quote is that it's completely false. As with the Stephen Hawking example, the NHS would care for a 77-year old with a brain tumor, plain and simple. There would not be a meter running next to the bed. There would not be a limit on care. There would not be refusal to treat based on pre-existing conditions, as in the US, and there would also not be a cutoff to what's covered - as in the US. Is the US treatment of cancer and some other critical conditions better than the UK? Certainly. But nobody is advocating throwing away all US medical knowledge and adopting the NHS system. Most thinking humanoids are advocating taking what works, and adapting it to the US system.

Lord Ara Darzi is one of the world's leading surgeons at St. Mary's Hospital, in London. Upon hearing Grassley's above comment, he replied,"That's the most ludicrous thing I've heard. Not just false, but lies to set fear against reform." He went on to say, "it's not just false and distasteful, it's not what I expected, someone in senior political roles to be disseminating fear against the system."

Grassley's misinformed comment goes along with whole concept of government-run, single-payer systems deciding who lives and who dies with "death panels." Even though that's not on the table as a White House-sponsored option, it's considered part of the "slippery-slope" argument, where if we cover the poor with a government plan then everyone will run from private insurance to public, and soon it would be government run. Two problems with this argument. The first is the basic fault of the "slippery slope" argument, that if you do this one little thing then the whole world will collapse. The second is that all of the health care systems that perform better than the US are government run. They are mostly universal, single-payer systems run in democracies - not socialist countries. Some socialists countries, like Cuba for example, do rank higher than the US on the WHO rankings, but most are democracies.

I would take more time to research a magazine article than Grassley is doing to make policy decisions, and that worries me. He's making decisions to shape our medical care, and he has no idea how things work in the UK.

And again, Grassley's comment is out there in the public. It carries weight because he's the ranking member of the Finance Committee, and he's working directly on health care reform. Talk shows will pick it up, run with it, and repeat it over and over. People will start to believe it's true, even though it's not.

The sad thing is that Grassley has some good ideas about health care reform, but his whacked out, false ideas jeopardize the whole process and fuel an overly-emotional debate. The even sadder thing for all of us is that maybe the reform opponents are right about some things. But they muddy the water up so badly with false statements, that all of that is lost too. In the end, the everyday folks that are suffering now...will continue to suffer later - only they'll be many more of them as time goes on because costs are soaring and fewer companies and people can afford it anymore. But Grassley will still have his insurance, which in the end, is likely what he's most concerned with.