How Corporate Media, Sellouts in Congress, Industry Bigs Have Hijacked Health Care Debate (Graphics)

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http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141627/how_corporate_media%2C_sellouts_in_congress_and_industry_bigs_have_hijacked_the_health_care_debate

How Corporate Media, Sellouts in Congress and Industry Bigs Have Hijacked the Health Care Debate

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted July 29, 2009.

If we let these powerful interests get their way, we'll see more outlandish increases in premiums, and millions more people being denied care.

If you can frame the terms of a debate, you've gone a long way towards winning it before you've begun. Tragically, Republicans, the health care industry and business-friendly Blue Dog Democrats have largely been able to do exactly that, with a substantial assist from the corporate-owned media. They’ve successfully focused the health care debate on the short-term costs to the federal government’s bottom line...

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Even worse, a study of cable news reporting by the media watchdog group Media Matters found that when the CBO issued a follow-up to an earlier, more pessimistic projection of the bill passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee, it went all but unreported by the cable news networks. CBO projected it would cost $611 billion, while an earlier estimate -- which was dissected eight ways to Sunday by the same cable networks -- suggested it would run an even trillion.

There are also benefits contained within the proposals that are impossible to score in limited budgetary terms. For example, if the House bill were passed as it stands today, it would all but eliminate health-care related bankruptcies by capping the amount of out-of-pocket expenses with which a family or individual can be burdened. A group of researchers from Harvard studied over 2,300 bankruptcies filed in 2007 and concluded that more than 6 in 10 were due to medical causes. What is it “worth” to our society to ease that kind of pain? It’s not in the purview of the CBO to say.

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In 2007, the U.S. spent an average of $7,290 per person on health in total (both public and private care). The average costs in other wealthy countries -- generally with better outcomes -- was $2,964. Here's a graphic representation of where we're likely to go in terms of costs if we leave things as they stand:



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To illustrate the savings built into public-sector health spending, he goes on to cite an analysis by the Lewin Group of competing approaches to reform that measures the impact on both federal spending and overall health spending. The results are summarized in this graphic:



On the left, is Pete Stark’s, D-Calif., proposal for a single-payer system (one that closely mirrors John Conyers’, D-MICH., HR 676, which has 85 co-sponsors in the House). As you can see, while it extends coverage to everyone -- which obviously costs money -- it is the only approach studied that would also result in a reduction of health care spending overall.

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