Turns out Hillary Largely Correct on Health Care "Lie"

Much was made of the story that Hillary, like Gore before her, is a habitual liars unlike the honorable Bush and McCain and Obama. Although a story or two e.g., the Kennedy-Obama father connection has been run to set Obama up for the serial liar or exaggerator charge.

Since the original inaccurate liar story received so much publicity, I thought the more or less retraction deserved its own thread.


Health Care Horror Stories


By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 11, 2008

Not long ago, a young Ohio woman named Trina Bachtel, who was having health problems while pregnant, tried to get help at a local clinic.
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Paul Krugman
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Unfortunately, she had previously sought care at the same clinic while uninsured and had a large unpaid balance. The clinic wouldn’t see her again unless she paid $100 per visit — which she didn’t have.

Eventually, she sought care at a hospital 30 miles away. By then, however, it was too late. Both she and the baby died.

You may think that this was an extreme case, but stories like this are common in America.

Back in 2006, The Wall Street Journal told another such story: that of a young woman named Monique White, who failed to get regular care for lupus because she lacked insurance. Then, one night, “as skin lesions spread over her body and her stomach swelled, she couldn’t sleep.”

The Journal’s report goes on: “Mama, please help me! Please take me to the E.R.,” she howled, according to her mother, Gail Deal. “O.K., let’s go,” Mrs. Deal recalls saying. “No, I can’t,” the daughter replied. “I don’t have insurance.”

She was rushed to the hospital the next day after suffering a seizure — and the hospital spared no expense on her treatment. But it all came too late; she was dead a few months later.

How can such things happen? “I mean, people have access to health care in America,” President Bush once declared. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.” Not quite.

First of all, visits to the emergency room are no substitute for regular care, which can identify and treat health problems before they get acute. And more than 40 percent of uninsured adults have no regular source of care.

Second, uninsured Americans often postpone medical care, even when they know they need it, because of expense.

Finally, while it’s true that hospitals will treat anyone who arrives in an emergency room with an acute problem — and it’s wonderful that they will — it’s also true that hospitals bill patients for emergency-room treatment. And fear of those bills often causes uninsured Americans to hesitate before seeking medical help, even in emergencies, as the Monique White story illustrates.

The end result is that the uninsured receive a lot less care than the insured. And sometimes this lack of care kills them. According to a recent estimate by the Urban Institute, the lack of health insurance leads to 27,000 preventable deaths in America each year.

But are they really preventable? Yes. Stories like those of Trina Bachtel and Monique White are common in America, but don’t happen in any other rich country — because every other advanced nation has some form of universal health insurance. We should, too.

All of which makes the media circus of a few days ago truly shameful.

Some readers may already have recognized the story of Trina Bachtel. While campaigning in Ohio, Hillary Clinton was told this story, and she took to repeating it, without naming the victim, on the campaign trail. She used it as an illustration of what’s wrong with American health care and why we need universal coverage.

Then The Washington Post identified Ms. Bachtel, the hospital where she died claimed that the story was false — and the news media went to town, accusing Mrs. Clinton of making stuff up. Instead of being a story about health care, it became a story about the candidate’s supposed problems with the truth.

In fact, Mrs. Clinton was accurately repeating the story as it was told to her — and it turns out that while some of the details were slightly off, the essentials of her story were correct. After all the fuss, The Washington Post eventually conceded that “Bachtel’s medical tragedy began with circumstances very close to the essence” of Mrs. Clinton’s account.

And even more important, Mrs. Clinton was making a valid point about the state of health care in this country.

In other words, this was a disgraceful episode.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/opinion/11krugman.html?hp

 

Agreed, the health care story is really the important thing.

 

We agree. Let's just get something decent for everyone.

I do think that Medicare for all (some would call it socialized medicine, I suppose) in which everything is private except the deductions out of your paycheck go to Medicare instead of insurance companies will eventually win out due to economic efficiency as the slice taken by the insurance middle men is just not worth it.

 

No I don't think Hillary was correct at all on the sniper, or Chelsea not being 4 blocks closer to 9/11 when it happened. She was not correct on being against the war first (although like Kerry and others it is possible she was just acting politically and she secretly opposed it).

I hate this stuff as mainstream political reporting and just think the same treatment will be done to Obama when the time comes. I doubt Obama never exaggerates a story, so the same treatment can and I expect it will be done to him. Hopefully, if so, it will be done to McCain also. There are lies and exaggerations and then important ones. Bush's lies on the Iraq War.

Maybe I have just not gotten over the whole sliming of the Clintons, the impeachment for bs and the same tactics that turned the boyscout Al Gore into a serial liar and that has clouded my judgment. Possible

I voted for Obama and was an Obama delegate to the senatorial convention.

 

1) I think the problem with rising costs and the inability of Medicare to raise premiums i.e, payroll taxes is I think an imaginary problem and could be leveled I guess at any government program.. All sorts of government programs have to deal with increasing costs. Medicare is better at controlling costs than private insurance. Private insurance co-pays and premiums are way up even as more lose coverage.

As for fraud if you think that per se, private is without it, I refer you to Enron, World Com, the private mortgage insurance debacle etc.
Fraud and dishonesty is an eternal human problem. The very profit motive is the reason why there is fraud some times in corporations and is not just a guarantee that there can be no fraud.


2) You might have to have a transition to Medicare for all. Let Medicare compete with private insurance for everyone as it essentially does for those 65 and over. A good transition would be for all those who are uninsured to be able to purchase, or be given depending on income, Medicare at X$. This should not eliminate jobs in the insurance industry. Those who wanted to drop their private insurance and switch to Medicare could do so..

Except for the very wealthy and those with some sort of heavily subsidized private insurance, Medicare usually wins out in the competition. Lots of those reaching 65 are happy to drop their expensive and frustrating private policies and switch to Medicare.