Propaganda And Prejudice Distort The Health Reform Debate

By Merton Bernstein, the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University
Health Affairs Blog
April 22, 2009

Science does not permit ideology to foreclose inquiry; it requires facing facts and following where they and logic lead. Hence many cheered when President Barack Obama announced that science is back, that predisposition will no longer be permitted to trump reality…

… the Obama, Baucus, Grassley, CBO, and other playlists exclude consideration of Medicare-for-all. With rising discomfort with the price tag of recovery programs, those desiring comprehensive health care cannot afford to disregard a program with such enormous savings. If Medicare-for-all gets “on the table” before the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, the CBO must report its vast savings and its greater efficiency and effectiveness compared with more expensive alternatives. Only by censorship — only by treating Medicare-for-all as nonexistent — can lesser alternatives be discussed with a straight face.

And censorship is not compatible with science.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2009/04/22/proganda-and-prejudice-distort-the-health-reform-debate/

And…

Pelosi Pushes For Truth Commission

By Jennifer Skalka
NationalJournal.com
April 22, 2009

Nancy Pelosi, during a Christian Science Monitor event:

“As our members came back from their recess, a great deal of what they heard out there was public options, public options, public options, public options. In our caucus, over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it’s not going to be a single payer. … We had an opportunity for that awhile back, and it was not realized. And that’s not what it’s going to be. So we had to take people from a place that they see universal, affordable, quality health care available best in single payer and say this can be achieved in other ways.”

http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2009/04/pelosi_on_energ.php

Whether you call it Medicare-for-all, or national health insurance, or single payer, Merton Bernstein describes well the irrational, unscientific effort to keep off the table the concept of a truly universal, efficient, publicly administered and publicly financed national health program.

Nancy Pelosi’s comments reveal just how determined the Congressional leadership is in keeping single payer off the table. Presumably her comment that “we had an opportunity for that awhile back” refers to the Clinton effort at reform, even though that was a process that quite explicitly excluded single payer as a reform model. The closest the nation has come to embracing the single payer model is the enactment of Medicare. Even though the program requires updating, it has been more effective and more efficient than any other program. A new and improved Medicare is precisely the reform that the nation needs.

For an administration and a Congress that advocates for using science in policy decisions, it is astounding that they would reject health policy science and leave us in the Dark Ages in health care reform.