Michelle Obama Enters the Health Reform Debate: The Best of the Weekend

by Tim Foley

categories: Doctors and Nurses, For Profit Insurance, Obama and Congress

Published September 20, 2009 @ 11:33PM PT

Every weekend, I showcase the three videos or articles that best enhanced my own understanding of the health care reform debate. After all, when you’re talking about a topic that touches each of our lives and intersects policy, politics, medicine, taxes, the legal system, our economy and budgets ranging from a blue-collar family in Pennsylvania to the federal government of the United States -- well, a fellah sometimes need a little help understanding it all!

Although I don’t normally lead off with a political story, this one is well worth it:

1.) Health Reform Watch: “Because She Said So: Michelle Obama Wants Women to Stand Up for Health Care Reform”

Fellow Change.org blogger Jen Nedau posted the First Lady’s speech on the Women’s Rights blog. During the campaign, the president had often referred to Michelle as “the closer” -- the one whose impassioned “from the heart” speeches could close the deal. The White House has determined the only way to escalate the cause of health reform over and above an address to both houses of Congress is to have the First Lady also make the issue her own. It’s not a moment too soon, writes blogger and law professor Pooja Awatramani:

One of the biggest issues Michelle Obama seemed to have with the current system was gender rating; it continues to force women to pay much higher premiums than men in private insurance plans. The actuarial argument, that women’s health care needs require regular preventive care (which in reality, women and men alike should be getting) is significantly undermined by the research which shows the ultimate cost benefits of preventive care–for both women and men. It seems both ironic and counter-productive that this justification is used to punish with higher premiums those who embark upon the proactive health maintenance which so many agree is both the key to ultimate health care cost control and one of the primary goals of health care reform. Hopefully, Obama’s optimism that such gender rating will be removed through the current reform process will prove true.

With so many challenges aligned against women, it is apparent that, as stated by the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, “The status-quo health insurance system is serving women poorly.” Perhaps this is why the Obama administration, in its drive to convince Americans that the issue of health care can no longer be pushed aside, is turning to women. A smart choice, whichever way you look at it, since women as a whole are one of the groups most strongly supporting health care reform.

Read the full analysis on the Health Reform Watch blog.

2.) Washington Post, “You Have No Idea What Health Costs”

Blogger Ezra Klein has an article in this Sunday’s paper spotlighting why it’s so hard to make those of us with employer-based benefits sit up and take notice of escalating costs. Since our employer picks up the lion’s share and the rest is usually deducted from our payroll, it’s difficult for us to realize just how unsustainably premiums are rising each year. If we did, Ezra writes, we’d be more forcefully supporting reform.

The average health-care coverage for the average family now costs $13,375, according to Kaiser. Over the past decade, premiums have increased by 138 percent. And if the trend continues, by 2019 the average family plan will cost $30,083.

Three years of slightly above-average health insurance will cost a solid six figures.

Those are numbers to marvel at. Those are numbers to fear. But they are not the numbers that loom in the minds of most Americans. And therein lies the problem for health-care reform.

Read the full article on WashingtonPost.com

3.) Movin’ Meat, “Feeling Wonkish”

When I'm not quite sure of how proposed policy changes look to someone “in the trenches” of our medical system, I often turn to this blog written by Shadowfax, an Emergency Medicine Doctor who writes eminently readable snap-analyses of health care reform. And for Shadowfax, a lazy weekend at home apparently turned into analyzing the proposed amendments for the Senate Finance Committee from the perspective of an ER doctor.

The other thing that I gained from reading this is a real appreciation of how tricky lawmaking really is. This bill, after modification to some greater or lesser degree in committee, will need to be merged with the HELP committee bill and then (one hopes) with the House bill. That's a real challenge! Sure, there will be the big partisan battles, but all the little line items are the hard parts, I think. When you come to a provision like, say the Stabenow amendments, which have no clear partisan bias and a marginal effect on cost -- and bear in mind that there may be hundreds and hundreds of these in each bill -- how do you decide which are worthy of keeping, and which get tossed? Presumably you can't keep them all, and many are probably in direct conflict. Unless the advocate for a particular bill is at the conference table, it's gotta become a little arbitrary.

Read the full analysis on the Movin’ Meat blog.