WE HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE, MR. PRESIDENT !

I’ve got a question for all these folks who say, you know, we’re going to pull the plug on Grandma . . . – you’ve heard all the lies. I’ve got a question for all those folks: What are you going to do? What’s your answer? What’s your solution?
And you know what? They don’t have one.
– President Barack Obama, Labor Day Speech 9/7/09

Since its 2007 Convention, the National Right to Life Committee has been pointing out that there is a way to provide health insurance to all Americans – without raiding Medicare, without limiting what Americans can choose to pay for health care and health insurance, and without government-imposed denial of life-saving medical treatment.

We have been pointing out that it is simply false to say that we need to “bend the cost curve” (for which read, limit spending on life- and health- saving medical treatment); that in fact, on average, Americans can afford the constantly improving health care we have been experiencing, and could afford to continue to improve it in the future [ See http://www.nrlc.org/medethics/AmericaCanAfford.html ].

We have been pointing out that the actual problems are distribution and the source of government financing for subsidies to older people and those unable to afford adequate health insurance, and – based on analysis by able health care economists – have put forth a concrete, affordable financing mechanism that would fix these problems. [See http://www.nrlc.org/MedEthics/SaveNotRation.html and our webinar at http://nrlcomm.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/hcrwebinar/ ]

We’ve put it in legislative language. [See http://www.nrlc.org/MedEthics/FinancingLegDraft809.pdf ]

We’ve even made clear how we could address the problem of adequately funding Medicare and Medicaid into the future. [Again, see http://www.nrlc.org/MedEthics/SaveNotRation.html and our webinar at http://nrlcomm.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/hcrwebinar/ ]

Sadly, although we’ve been assiduously lobbying to call attention to these alternatives, they’ve not been seriously taken up, and, political realities being what they are, they are now unlikely to be incorporated during consideration of health care reform this Fall.

However, amidst talk about “lies,” the real falsehood is to assert that our only alternatives are a form of health care restructuring that will ration care and deny treatment based on age and disability, on the one hand, and doing nothing to cover the uninsured, on the other.