Kanavas's Revisionist History

by folkbum

Well, it's not just revisionist history; it's also a repeat of a lot of the same lies and scare tactics that we're hearing from the GOP generally, including Wisconsin's Rep. Paul Ryan.

State Sen. Kanavas (R-Brookfield) has a blog, and on that blog he has a post--a post about health care reform efforts past and present. And Kanavas gets almost every detail in his post wrong. He starts this way:

We are all very familiar with the health care debate raging in our nation’s capitol and in town hall meetings across the country. The issue of whether or not the federal government should grab control of our current system and create its own socialized brand of medicine has been making national headlines for months.

If today is not your first day here at my blog, then you already know what's wrong here. There is no effort underway in Washington to "grab control" of the current health care delivery or insurance industry. The ubiquitous HR3200 has no such provisions, nor does anything coming out of the Senate. The White House's principals for reform are nothing like that, either. Current proposals are far from "socialized medicine"; if we rated HR3200 on a scale from 1-10 where 1 is what we have now and 10 is the UK, where they really do have socialized medicine, HR3200 would score a solid 1, still.

But, I wonder how many people remember what happened right here in Wisconsin just two years ago. [. . .] Democrats in the Wisconsin legislature were running around the state holding public hearings touting an Obama-like government-run health care plan. For the most part, no one really knew anything about it. You may vaguely remember they had a plan, but folks are sure to be soft on the details and likely know little of the plan’s potential impact on our economy or the size of state government.

The first sentence of that excerpt from Kanavas contains no factual errors, but the rest is just awful. For one, none of the current proposals for health insurance reform are from President Obama; to suggest that anything is "Obama-like" is kind of weird. (As is calling reform plans written by and introduce in Congress "Obamacare." "Hillarycare" was not a misnomer--her commission wrote the plan sent to Congress--but Obama is the author of nothing.) Further, the plan passed by the state Senate in 2007 was not "government-run health care," as nothing in that plan, called Healthy Wisconsin, was about the state providing the care, running the hospitals and clinics, or employing the doctors and nurses.

Kanavas continues to err when he says that no one knew anything about the plan. Healthy Wisconsin was modeled on something called the Wisconsin Health Plan, which had been circulated for two years prior, scored by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, and studied by the Lewin Group (not to mention that it was also supported by then-State Rep. Curt Gielow, a Republican). Republicans like Kanavas offered a lot of misinformation about the plan then, certainly, to make it seem more confusing than it was, but it was not an unknown.

Healthy Wisconsin, for those of you who don't remember it, was a plan that took the burden of health insurance out of the hands of employers. It was paid for by a tax on businesses and individuals that was pretty significantly less than the average cost at the time. People would have a variety of plans run by private insurance companies to choose from (paying additional premiums for anything more than the standard plan) and the whole thing was managed by the state. If that sounds familiar to you, you might know this as the way the state currently offers insurance to its own employees. (At the time, I found it deliciously ironic that the same people who complained daily about the Cadillac benefits given to government employees were those most ferociously opposed to a plan that gave everyone access to those same benefits.) This is nothing like what is currently being considered in Congress, despite Kanavas's attempts to claim that it is so.

Their plan would have implemented a tax on Wisconsin business to pay for a government-run health care model. Much like the plan being tossed around in Washington, the Senate Democrats would place your health care decisions in the hands of bureaucrats. Luckily for us, Republicans, who controlled the State Assembly at the time, were able to purge the plan from the budget.

Three more sentences from Kanavas, three more falsehoods. First, a lie of omission: As I noted above, the plan was financed not merely by a tax on business, but also a tax on individuals, and premiums charged to individuals opting in to more expensive plans (plus some significant copays and deductibles). Also omitted is what I noted above--the tax was far lower than the average cost of providing health care was. For most businesses, that would have been a cost savings. In addition, there were likely to be property tax savings, as well, as local governments moved onto the cheaper plan. Second, neither Healthy Wisconsin nor the proposals in Congress puts any decision in the hands of bureaucrats in any government agency; Healthy Wisconsin, like the current state benefits plan, offers employees a range of different plans with different levels of care run through traditional insurance companies, not the state equivalent of a death panel. Third, it was not Assembly Republicans who "purged" Healthy Wisconsin from the budget; Senate Democrats traded it away for Republican support for BadgerCare Plus and other health initiatives.

The rest of Kanavas's post consists of variations on these same things: "socialized health plan," "government-run model," "government should be involved in your health care decisions," "the socialist dream," and so on (plus repeated problems using the possessive apostrophe). He does also include the well-debunked notion that a plan like Healthy Wisconsin would draw freaks and freeloaders here for free health care--Christian Schneider's legacy lives on.

So, large or small, state senator or Congressman, the Wisconsin GOP is perfectly willing, it seems, to shell out the lies, distortions, and scare tactics in the name of stopping health policy reform. It's sad, really, that Wisconsin, as the birthplace of the party of Lincoln, should be home to so many who do such a disservice to the memory of Honest Abe.

Best Health Care in the World

By Keith R. Schmitz

This op-ed from the WAPO lays out in clearly, easy to understand language why our peer countries do health care better than we do. No need to regurg here, just check it out.

Those other approaches translate into populations that are healthier, happier and less stressed. Turns out that in Germany and Austria that if someone is stressed they get sent to a spa for the weekend. We get to sit in our cars and flip the bird at other drivers.

It turns out that in fact in these countries people really do have a choice for health care insurance. In our country, many of us are in shot-gun marriages with our heath care insurers. And no, despite the poll cited that 80% of those insured like their insurance company, we really don't LOVE our insurance companies. In fact the US Postal system gets better ratings.

That is why it is so confounding that people take the time to make fools out of themselves at town hall meetings to cheer for something that many of us hate and resent because our options are truly limited -- health care choices, job choices and even marriages.

Makes one wonder that not only why we aren't smarter about how we do health care, but why do we consciously choose to make our lives harder? What do we owe this system when it seems to not feel like it owes anything to us?

Canadian Health Care to Be Covered on WPR

By Keith Schmitz

A few weeks ago James Clancy, President of Canada's 350,000 member National Union of Public and General Employees gave a very fascinating presentation on the origins of Canadian health care at Grassroots Northshore and how this country benefits from this people-centered system.

If you missed it, he will be on Kathleen Dunn's program tomorrow (12/12) at 10:00. In Milwaukee you can dial it in at FM 90.7. For a station near you click here.

Or you can download his talk at GRNS here.

How Canadians View Their Health Insurance

by capper

With the ongoing debate about health insurance, there has been a lot of sniping and smug dismissals of other countries' insurance models, especially Canada's. But instead of listening to the fear mongerers, how about someone who has actually experienced it? The following is a letter to the editor of the Waupaca County Post, dated August 30, 2007 (sorry, small paper with no website), verbatim:

How Canadians view their health insurance

To the Editor:

I find it both sad and frustrating that so many good people buy the disinformation spread about universal health insurance by political and corporate interests, without questioning either the source or the logic. As a Canadian resident for 26 years, during the period when Canada's national health insurance program evolved, I have to respond to "Canadians prefer U.S. health care."

First, reputable scholarly (not political) surveys show repeatedly that the vast majority of Canadians are very happy with their health care. On a personal note, my Canadian son, his family and extended in-law family, my friends, former neighbors and former colleagues (a rather wide circle) all value their health care system and are extremely glad it is not like ours! Here people can lose their insurance when they lose a job, or when they develop a chronic illness. Here millions are without health insurance; here a person without insurance is turned away by physicians and clinics; and here good, hardworking people forego life-saving treatment or are bankrupted by medical costs.

Second and incidentally, when travel agents urge special health insurance policies for U.S. travelers abroad, it is because U.S. insurance policies normally do not cover out-of-country expenses. It has nothing to do with the level of care.

Third, Canadians purchase health insurance supplements to get private rooms and such perks. here, seniors purchase "medigap" policies, and insured workers purchase supplements-because the basic insurance is just that: basic.

Fourth, an e-mail testimonial is neither verifiable nor representative. We all know someone who has had a negative experience with Waupaca's hospital. Does that mean we are wrong to think we get excellent care here? Or that all U.S. hospital treatment is bad? We know better.

Fifth, the writer and politicians opposed to universal health insurance repeatedly refer to "the government" providing health care, or they refer to universal coverage as "socialized medicine." Neither is true and both are scare tactics. Neither in Canada nor in the any proposal for universal coverage here (that I know of) is the government the health care provider or the health care decision maker. Currently, however, U.S. insurance company employees with no medical training at all are frequently making health care decisions. Not so in Canada.

We do have excellent medical providers here, and so does Canada. Like here, Canadians have their own physicians, by their own choice, or they can use clinics or groups. They have the whole gamut of excellent specialists, like here. They have excellent nursing staff, physical therapists, occupational therapists, social workers, home care visiting nurses, emergency room sand urgent care physicians. Canadians have regular check-ups, they see their physicians by appointment and they get preventive care. You would find their care just like ours-except that it's available to everyone, bills get paid and no one goes bankrupt because of it.

It's the insurance that is different, not the medical care. We Americans pay more, but fewer of us get it.

Georgia Calvo
Dayton.