John Goodman, Think Tank Head and John McCain's Health Care Advisor: "There are no uninsured."
Posted on August 28th, 2008 by Jason Rosenbaum in Profits Before People
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Today, the Dallas Morning News again pointed out how far behind Texas is from the rest of the country when it comes to health care. As I've argued before, this is because of the extensive privatization of health care in Texas which throws people out to fend for themselves in the "free market," resulting in more uninsured than the rest of the nation.
John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, thinks the numbers put out by the Census highlighting Texas' plight are "misleading:"
But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)
"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.
"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."
That's right. John Goodman's solution to the health care crisis in America is to change the definition of "uninsured" so that magically, everyone is insured.
Goodman couldn't be more wrong in his analysis. Using the emergency room for health care is just about the worst thing you can do, both from a cost and health perspective. DrSteveB over at the PNHP blog has a great breakdown of the health arguments that's I'll sum up:
- There are about 22,000 deaths per year due to lack of health insurance and 11 million Americans with chronic physical illnesses are not getting the medical care they need because they don’t have health insurance.
- Hospitals are getting killed financially in part because of the dumping of care into emergency rooms. They are closing ERs all over the country because of this. Meanwhile wait times in the ER are up even for the critically ill.
Add to that the fact that using emergency rooms for basic care is three to four times more expensive than going to your doctor.
All this ads up to a health care policy - championed by John Goodman - that is intent on privatizing the profits and socializing the risk.
By eliminating employer-based health care, taxing the benefits, and making us all fend for ourselves on the "free market," Goodman's plan (and the health insurance industry's, in case you forgot) allows the health insurance industry to snap up wealth, young, and healthy people as customers - people who rarely get sick or who can afford to pay the bills - thus making the insurance industry a ton of money. And the uninsured (who, according to Goodman are actually insured, we just don't know it) can just go to the emergency room, sticking hospitals or the state with the bill.
The insurance industry gets all the profits. And we get all the costs. That is what these kinds of plans are designed to do.
Here's what Richard Kirsch, our National Campaign Director, had to say about John Goodman's plan:
Mr. Goodman's solution for fixing our broken health care system is to rebrand its failings? Wow. That's not only glaring evidence of a man grossly insensitive and misinformed but also frighteningly telling as to what we can expect should someone like Mr. Goodman have a say in developing the future of health care in this country.
What we need the next President and Congress to do is make real health care reform the first order of business in 2009. We not only need to cover the uninsured, but we also need quality, affordable health care we all can count on. We need a public plan so that we are no longer at the mercy of private insurance. And we need government to act as a watchdog - setting and enforcing rules on the unregulated, bureaucratic insurance industry that continues to insist on putting profits before people's health.
Oh, and here's another reason why nobody should be listening to John Goodman's ideas on health care. In July, at the National Center for Policy Analysis's "Freedom Fest Health Care Debate," Goodman laid down this gem:
Here is the variation in life expectancy among ethnic and racial groups in the United States and as you can see, it's all over the map. [...] but doctors just don't control our over eating, over smoking, and shoot outs in the hood.
Don't believe me? It's on tape! Here's the audio:
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There you have it. The racist John Goodman thinks nobody in America is uninsured, and that a perfectly good solution for our health care crisis is for people to simply show up at the emergency room when they get sick enough. Why anybody takes this guy seriously is beyond me.
THEN WHY ARE MORE THAN HALF OF BANKRUPSY CASES BECAUSE OF THIS "healthcare" THAT WE ALL HAVE.
This is STUPID! It is much more expensive to go to an ER than to have regular health care. We do not need stupidity in our next president - haven't we had enough of that for the past eight years?
Is this guy for real?
Since when is it "healthcare's" (physicians, nurses, & such) responsibility to make sure we don't over eat, take the cigarette out of our mouths, and the clincher, what do health providers have to do with a "shoot-out"? Is this guy for real? Is this the person who might help write the policy for healthcare reform if McCain becomes president? If so, then we are in big trouble!
I've seen hospital's in my state of Michigan shut down over the past few years because of the increasing numbers of uninsured that come through its doors. Yes, it true that the local ED can't refuse to care for you, but then when you do care for someone that really doesn’t need to be in the ED, it gets filled up with all the simple things that should be dealt with in a doctor’s office (read: colds, flu, family health visits, etc.—you get the idea) and the more critically ill people either have to wait, get routed to another hospital (with the same problem), or unfortunately they die. That's the truth. I've seen it happen because I've worked in the ED for many years (& that's MANY ED's with the same problem—last 25 years).
How come it’s always someone who doesn’t work in healthcare or has never worked in healthcare deciding what healthcare should be? Just a suggestion; If you get a bunch of Nurses together from across the nation (ANA—just to name one group that has over 2.9 million nurses across the US), we’ll be able to come up with a plan, just like we’ve ALWAYS helped to keep the hospitals (and ED’s) open and running, kept the patients safe, and do all the duties that need to get done on a day to day basis.
Between this idiocy and Sarah Palin's comment about community organizers having no actual responsibilities, anyone in the helping professions should run screaming from this candidacy. They have demonstrated zero comprehension of the significant social issues that face Americans today. The enormous and growing gaps in healthcare (negatively impacted of course by the current president's economic policies)is just one. On top of it there is tremendous disdain shown to the very people who serve the poor, the sick, and the disenfranchised. Goodman's comments smack of "let them eat cake"!
The man sounds like an idiot who wants to perpetuate a broken system and sweep it under the rug. I can't believe that any politician would listen to this garbage. But, I guess there will always be politicians with blinders on and who are looking out for themselves only, not caring about the rest of the nation.
This is the most ridiculous and ludacrist statement I have heard in years!!!!!!!!!! I am a personal caregiver and have to help my clients resolve their insurance issues and they have medicar as well as other medicaid insurance yet I spend 2-6 hours a week on the phone with the pharmacy, insurance providers and medical providers. What scares me more is that there are 100,000s of thousands of people who don't have someone to advocate for them. The health system, if we can call it that, is damaged and ERs are not the way to fix it! This man has obviously never had to wait in an emergency room or even in a doctor's office, for that matter. This man has never had to worry if his insurance will cover the drugs he needs to survive. If he had to survive through his child being ill with no medical insurance and barely making ends meet so you don't qualify for medicaid but still can't afford medical coverage for your family. This is an epidemic is infecting our country and the government turns heads and denies a problem. These politicians need to wake up and actually spend some time in our public hospitals to see what healthcare workers have to go through daily to help those in need. Maybe that would give them some gratitude.
Not only is the ER not a substitute for having insurance, and an extremely expensive alternative for real care, but it is often used as a last resort by people who, if they had insurance might not even have had the problem that takes them there. I know this from almost 10 years of running ERs in, first in a small hospital and then in a very large very busy city hospital.
Even though I have an individual health plan that I pay for out of pocket it doesn't cover pre-existing conditions so when I fainted at work and had to go to the ER (5 hour wait to see a resident). I couldn't afford to be admitted so they made me promise to go see a cardiologist the next day.
I tried for the next 3 weeks to get in to see someone but couldn't once I told them my insurance wouldn't cover it. . I ended up in an urgent care with chest pain and they again insisted that I go to an ER for immediate assessment but after they called my insurance I was told to go and see a cardiologist as soon as possible. .
Two months later I finally saw a cardiologist by not telling them that it wasn't going to be covered by my insurance. I was diagnosed with an infection in my heart and the delay in treatment had partially destoyed a valve. the doctor was not covered by my insurance, nor the labs nor the texts. Total cost for the ER visits? over $8,000.. The labs for the doctor visit? $1200, ultra-sound $1700 and I only make less then 45000 a year. The bills are already sent to collection.. Only in America can a working woman with health insurance have her life destroyed by getting sick.