Surgery Fundraisers

Last night I went to a benefit for a fellow stand-up comedian who is diabetic and needs emergency eye surgery to keep from going blind. She has no health insurance.

The whole time I couldn't help thinking of that bumper sticker about the Air Force having to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber. I was seething that we all even had to be sitting here to do this. We had to raise money to make sure somebody doesn't go blind?

Such is the moral crisis that is our healthcare system these days.

The universal health care bill that passed the Massachusetts legislature this week is not a perfect bill. I don't like the fact that it has the potential of being punitive toward health care recipients who do not get coverage. It remains to be seen how big the bureaucracy will be for low-income residents to wade through to get the credits necessary for them to purchase insurance. But it's a hell of a lot better than the status quo. And other states are taking notice.

A Republican gubenatorial candidate in Arkansas is practically running on the goal of enacting a similar bill:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson said Thursday that Arkansas should examine new legislation in Massachusetts that expands health-care coverage for that state's uninsured.

Speaking to the West Little Rock chapter of AARP, Hutchinson said he wants Arkansans to have more options for their health care. And the Massachusetts bill that blends the ideas of universal health care with personal responsibility is one example, he said.
"We need to learn from their experience," Hutchinson said. "And we need to look in Arkansas at how we can lower the number of uninsured."

But Zac Wright, spokesman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Beebe, the state attorney general, said Massachusetts and Arkansas have distinctly different problems when it comes to health care. Arkansas has more small businesses that can't afford health insurance for their employees and more residents who don't have access to health insurance.
"What's good for Massachusetts may not be good for Arkansas," Wright said Thursday. "Before Beebe would endorse that kind of tax increase he'd have to exhaust all the proposals to expand access for Arkansans."

The playing field has really shifted. Both sides are arguing over how to implement universal health coverage, not whether or not government should get involved. That is a far cry from the "Hillary-care" debates of the mid-1990s.

Here are another two red states that are intrigued by the Massachusetts plan:

Amid rising health-care costs and growing legions of uninsured, Kansans and Missourians are looking to Massachusetts [...]

“I think it is phenomenal when a state takes an initiative as innovative as this one,” said Marcia Nielsen, assistant vice chancellor for health policy at the University of Kansas Medical Center. “In this case, everybody worked together to hammer out a deal.”

Health officials say 707,000 Missourians are uninsured, constituting 12.6 percent of the population. In Kansas, the figure is 297,000, or 11.1 percent.

So what’s the likelihood of Kansas or Missouri passing a Massachusetts-type law?

Not very high, observers said.

“We’re just nowhere near where Massachusetts is in terms of understanding the issues,” Nielsen said. “Health providers need to understand the concerns that businesses have about health-care costs. Businesses need to understand what the patient’s experience is when dealing with an illness. It’s a complicated process.”

If Massachusetts succeeds, you're going to see the public demanding that their politicians "understand the issues." Even those in the public health sector that criticize the law do so by saying it doesn't go far enough:

Feltman said she had concerns about affordability and the employer mandates of the Massachusetts law.

“I’m concerned that it’s trying to hold together a fragmented, collapsing system, rather than looking at options for totally reforming our health-care delivery system,” Feltman said. “We keep knitting together these pieces that are unfair to patients, unfair to employers and unfair to providers.”

Still, that's a giant leap from where this debate was in the past. And I think I know why. It's because of people like my friend, who had to hold a fund-raiser to get surgery. Luckily she knew enough people that helped her put together a great night which raised enough for her to go forward. But that's not always an option for the 50 million uninsured in this country. It's nearly criminal to continue along on this path, with more uninsured every year, with soaring health-care costs, and with an Administration who's core policy on this issue is "save a lot of money and you can buy health care yourself!" The idea that shopping for health care will decrease costs is ludicrous. Show me the cut-rate "saver" MRI. Show me the person with diabetes who decides "I'm gonna go with only 4 shots of insulin this week until they bring the costs down!"

We should embrace the Massachusetts plan. While not perfect, it's completely changing the stakes of the health-care debate. There is absolutely no downside today for any Democrat to call for universal health care. Thanks to Massachusetts, there will be even less downside tomorrow.