Hank Brown & Healthcare
I wrote this last week (10/26), decided not to post until now (11/4):
I just got back from a talk given by Hank Brown (former CU President, and former Colorado Senator) on the topic of healthcare reform in the United States. The talk was presented by the Student Association for Pre-Health Professionals (SAPP) at CU. Thirty or so “students” attended. I ended up leaving with steam pouring out of my ears.
Since Mr. Brown seems to be well respected in the CU community, and considering the appointments he has had both at CU and the state government, I expected tonights talk to reveal some downright novel thinking on a tough subject. I couldn’t have been more wrong in my expectations.
To his credit, Mr. Brown did a halfway decent job of summing up the issues with the American healthcare system in just under thirty minutes. That in and of itself is a tough as nails task, and he attempted it. He described the amount of uninsured in the US as somewhere between 10 and 50 million. Then he broke that number into thirds attempting to explain the different demographics of each third. By then you can already imagine I was having problems with his statistics but I was willing to let these slide provided we got to the meat of the topic – how to solve the problems that plague the American healthcare system.
Next he tried to sum up the “bill” that will soon be voted on in Congress. Of course those of you in touch with this healthcare debacle know that there isn’t a single bill yet, there are still 3-4 that are being worked on – but Mr. Brown forgot to mention that. Instead, he focused right in on the so called “public option”. Immediately he equated the public option to a single payer system citing the fact that it would likely run the private insurance out of business. Again, he forgot to mention that under the current writing in the Senate – the public option will only be available to people whose employers don’t offer healthcare. So as of now there really is NOT a direct line to a single payer system as he let the audience believe.
Somewhere down the line he equated a single payer healthcare system to socialism. I almost fell out of my seat. I am no expert, but I’m pretty sure if the US went to a single payer system it wouldn’t mean that capitalism is canceled. Regardless, he went on to talk about the differences between east and west Germany, Hungary and Austria, and Cuba before and after communism (apparently he was equating socialism to communism too). Mr. Brown claimed that someone in England might have to wait months for a surgery they need now; he also stated that on the whole Europeans were less healthy than Americans. Now if this had been the right time and place I would have happily offered to debate him – but it was neither the right time or place. During the one instance when I couldn’t hold back any longer I spoke up and told him he was flat wrong about the majority of health insurance companies being non-profit. He was startled but seemed to know he had no solid ground to stand on.
When I asked him why no one in Congress had the guts to introduce something novel, something new to the US – he avoided an answer. There is plenty of good precedent out there – look at Hawaii with mandated employee offered insurance if you work 20 hours or more. Or look at Maryland who has uniform pricing, or Switzerland that has 100% mandated private insurance with subsidies (think bye bye medicare), or England with their NHS totally government healthcare. All of these systems produce healthier and happier people. But he just sidestepped my question and revisited why he thinks we should be naysayers of the public option. Blah.
My real problem with tonights talk has to do with what wasn’t said. IF Mr. Brown had introduced himself as a career Republican perhaps the students in the audience would have taken tonights talk with a grain of salt. But from the questions that were being asked I’m pretty sure they were looking at Mr. Brown as if he was a non-partisan healthcare expert.
Overall tonight really disappointed me. I am disappointed that pseudo-facts can be used with such ease when in a setting like tonight there are few checks on their validity. And I am disappointed that a person that spreads such misinformation has held a public office and been president of the University of Colorado. If, as I witnessed tonight, the character of our elected officials is comprised primarily of ignorance – then America is in more trouble than I had originally thought.
Filed by ryanroth at October 26th, 2009 under Dijyano, Politik