Another view: 'The only sensible choice'
The president’s plan will bring down health care costs for families.
By Kathleen Sebelius

Over the last year, we've had a productive national conversation about how to reform our health insurance system. Many worthwhile ideas have been proposed, and deciding on a final package of reforms has been challenging. Compromise always is. But now that Congress is nearing a vote, the choice for those who want to end insurance company abuses, give Americans better insurance options, and bring down health care costs is very easy: Support a plan that advances all of those goals, or do nothing and watch things get even worse.

If reform fails, we will continue down the same disastrous path we're on now. Families will pay more and more: Within 10 years, health insurance premiums for the average family will double, eating up one-sixth of the average worker's paycheck. And there will be less and less security: The share of companies that provide insurance for their workers will continue to drop, leaving 18 million more Americans without health care coverage in 2020. By then, we'll pay $140 billion a year to provide care for the uninsured.

President Obama's plan will put us on a new course by giving families more control of their health care choices. It will protect Americans from insurance abuses by ending discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and eliminating caps on benefits. It will give self-employed workers and small-business owners more choices by creating a new, consumer-friendly health insurance marketplace where they can choose between high-quality plans. And it will bring down health care costs for families with the broadest package of health care cost-cutting measures ever to come before Congress.


If the president's plan passes, 31 million uninsured Americans will get access to affordable coverage. Employers will see their health costs drop by $3,000 a year over the next decade. Over the same period, the deficit will fall by $100 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And, as more than 40 leading economists wrote in a letter last week, we will have "a serious, multi-faceted initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of American medical care."

For Americans who support these goals — reducing health care costs, increasing choice and competition, preventing insurance abuses, and covering more than 30 million uninsured Americans — the only sensible choice is to support the president's plan, too.

Kathleen Sebelius is secretary of Health and Human Services.

Patriots Answer: There are many on line at:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/03/ ... hoice.html )t here are many on line at:

Your initial gambit blamed the whole mess on health insurance corporate profits. I did my own investigation to measure the size of the problem. I added up the profits of all the major health insurance corporations. They amount to less than $14 Billion per year. But defensive medicine costs are between $60 Billion and $200 Billion per year. And Medicare fraud loses $80 Billion per year.

So why did you start by attacking the smallest costs to the system instead of the largest costs? You lost your credibility, because instead of using accounting and engineering methods to solve the biggest problem, you used rhetoric to attack the politically palatable problem, blaming insurance companies. I hate their tricks too, but they aren't where the big costs are, and you know that going in. So you must have some other agenda.

You have promises, but no solution to control the major costs, only a solution to bankrupt insurance companies so you can later take over their function. Even if you ban insurance companies, you still have to pay someone else to process claims, and you only saved a few billion out of $2.3 Trillion.


Summary:
Medicare fraud: $80 Billion per year
Defensive medicine: $60 Billion to $200 Billion per year.
Insurance profits: $14 Billion per year.

If you want to reduce costs, start with the major costs, not the politically attractive costs.

You can pay for ALL those uninsured with less than half the savings from either malpractice reform or medicare fraud reform.

Get the courage to solve the expensive problems first, and you will regain our trust. What you lose in Trial Lawyers contributions, you will regain from real people.