Aug 26, 2009 12:51 am US/Eastern
Health Care Reform: Myths And Misconceptions
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
The sound and fury at health care town hall meetings and other rallies this month is an expression of the deep-seated worry about what change might mean for your health security.
One of the biggest worries is that the much debated "public option," a government backed insurance provider that would be set up to compete with private insurers, would be the first step toward government run health care for everyone.
Dr. Steven Ullmann, a nationally recognized health policy expert at the University of Miami, disputes that notion. He said, "I honestly think we will never go to a single-payer (system) in this country. We will never have the Canadian system. That will not occur in this country."
There's also been the talk you could not possibly miss about "government-run death panels" making end of life decisions for the elderly. Dr. Ullmann said, "Some of these issues out there do not exist. The death panels are not there. The concept of a government takeover is not there."
Such talk surfaced amidst proposals that doctors be reimbursed by insurance companies for the time they already spend with their elderly patients regarding sensitive issues of health and health care choices in their later years. Dr. Robert Schwartz is the chairman of the family medicine department at the UM Miller School of Medicine. He told me, "I'm not worried about the death panel issue. I think that is really malarkey."
There's also concern among the elderly over talk about Medicare cutbacks. Miami Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart says, "What we should not do is raise taxes on small businesses and the American people and cut half a trillion dollars from Medicare."
That statement elicited a big protest from Weston Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She said health care reform proposals do want to strip out hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to private insurers for Medicare-related coverage Democrats don't think they are providing. Wasserman-Schultz said, "We need to take those subsidies because all they do is line the pockets of the insurance industry and put that into health care insurance reform and bring down costs for everybody."
Dr. Ullman, the health care expert who has studied these issues for years, says there are always fights over reimbursement rates for Medicare providers. He noted, however, that he sees nothing in health care reform proposals that would directly affect Medicare recipients.
The debate goes on, and don't expect it to end anytime soon. Still, it is worth the extra effort to separate fact from fiction. The future of health care and our pocketbooks will depend on those informed choices.
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