Health Care Forums

The NYT, 12/23, has a report on a house party in Northern Virginia organized by the Obama transition team to discuss health care. All individual involved are well educated, middle class and with good professional careers.

According to the NYT: 

They also agreed that health care was a right; that insurance should cover “everything,” not just some services; and that coverage should be readily available from the government, as well as from employers.

Some wanted the government to play the role of yet another, obviously benevolent, insurance company that, implicitly, has none of, heavy handedness of the existing insurance companies.

Whether due to the NYT report or to the actual discussion many troubling issues were left untouched. Only one person said that health insurance should be a right. Thus, implying that everyone could get health insurance. No one else talked about the universality of the government plan.

Cost issues were not raised either. Neither the cost of the plan nor the patient contribution per claim were discussed. One person mentioned preventive health measures, but again it was not discussed whether the government insurance will cover preventive measure. No one mentioned how you decide which medical procedures are preventive, whether the government will require such measures to be followed and the measures cost implications.

Drugs were not mentioned at all. Since drugs may be highly expensive in some cases, that is quite an important issue.

No one mentioned the fact that an obstacle to good health care is the lack of personal and data communication between providers. For instance, you have an accident and get to the ER, the ER has no way of getting your personal health records in time for treatment. Will the government health insurance deal with this problem?

More extreme ideas were not on the table: eliminate health insurance companies, provide automatic cradle to grave coverage that essentially freezes out insurance companies, universality seems not to have been in the party at all.

The participants were mainly, inferring from the NYT, early supporters of Obama. Are all future parties going to follow this core concept or are the Obama people going to have parties with people they don't control?

As a first report, it is discouraging. Instead of a serious exchange the party became a complaint party with agreement wall to wall.

We will see.