Filet Mignon, Pinot Noir and an MRI
By John R. Graham
The Washington Post
December 21, 2006
Your other patrons are a mixed blessing… purchasing the most expensive bottles of wine, ordering filet mignon instead of flank steak and always sticking around for dessert and coffee — they pick up only around one-eighth of their tab. The rest of the check is covered by one of several food insurance companies. But to get paid by the insurers, you must spend endless hours filling out paperwork.
You also waste a lot of time deciphering the confusing reimbursement policies of the insurance companies. Merlot and cabernet sauvignon, for example, are covered without question, but if a patron orders pinot noir without first trying the shiraz, many insurance companies won’t pay the bill unless you can justify the patron’s selection.
You’re angry about the uninsured, because many of them could have afforded to pay for their own meals, particularly if they’d purchased groceries at the supermarket instead of dining out. So, together with other restaurant owners and food insurers, you’re working to convince your lawmakers to pass a bill requiring mandatory food insurance.
Crazy? Of course. But not if you substitute “health care” for “food.”
…the nation would be better served if America’s lawmakers stopping piling more regulations onto a system that’s already absurdly overregulated. Far better to deregulate health insurance and hospitals than to force us into a system that doesn’t serve our needs. Then we could shop for the precise care we need, which would improve quality while lowering costs.
After all, mandatory food insurance might provide everyone with sustenance for a while. But eventually, we’d all be worse off. No one would learn to grocery shop or cook. And the entire nation would eat out for every single meal — breakfast, lunch, dinner — until we all went broke.
Health insurance is no different. The system needs more choice, not more coercion.
Reader comments:
By don / Dec 21, 2006
A bottle of shiraz has absolutely nothing in common with an expensive antibiotic that could successfully treat a child’s meningitis. This silly food analogy displays crass insensitivity over a crisis in health care coverage that is resulting in suffering and death for tens of thousands of Americans. But perhaps the greatest insensitivity is demonstrated by our policymakers who insist on continuing to support a superfluous private insurance industry that covers two-thirds of us, but evades paying for two-thirds of our healthcare costs. If we all had Medicare, none of us would expect it to cover shiraz as we recovered from a heart attack, but we would expect it to prevent financial hardship from becoming an additional burden to our unwelcome rendezvous with disease or injury. Rather than giving private insurers the freedom to expand their abusive practices, we need to dismiss them and establish our own public program that would remove financial barriers to beneficial health care services.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/20/AR2006122001327.html
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
How many times have you heard this ridiculous food insurance argument? Though it makes most of us angry, the opponents of reform keep bringing it up. Let’s review the lessons from yesterday’s message on framing.
Do not let the opponents frame the debate: health insurance is as silly as food insurance!?
Destroy their frame by exposing their lack of credibility: it is clearly a falsehood that gourmet dining can serve as a surrogate for health care.
Establish framing that accurately communicates the principles: the problem to be addressed is financial hardship, suffering and death for those without adequate insurance.
Maintain credibility: use irrefutable facts about the inadequacies of our private insurance programs and the financial and health consequences of our failure to enact an effective, universal insurance program.