I keep running into the Republican talking point that "many Americans are happy with their current health care." Well, that may be. However, how many Americans are happy with their current health insurance company? Take me, for example -- I think I get good health care, like my doctors, and therefore would undoubtedly say that I am happy with my current health care. However, I despise my current private health insurer, both as an individual and as a small businessperson, and curse them every year when that nearly 20% premium increase shows up.
It's time to change the rhetoric, and call this debate what it really is -- health insurance reform, not healthcare reform.
The Republicans keep conflating people being happy with their health care (which apparently they are) with being happy with their health insurance (which I don't think many people are). This is rhetorical high-jacking of the debate. It is no wonder that so many average people are scared witless of the administration's proposals and the public option. They wrongly believe that the government is going to get between them and their family doctor.
A public option doesn't have anything to do with your health care. It has everything to do with who pays for that same health care.
Reframe the debate as a debate over health insurance, and you take every ounce of faux-righteous indignation out of the Republicans. Can you even imagine the Republican talking points -- "don't let the government get between you and your insurance company." Yeah, that's going to incite people to nearly riot at townhalls.
I don't think that I am alone, and indeed believe that I am in a solid majority of citizens, that believe that all insurance companies, of every stripe (health, car, home, life, property/casualty) are odious enterprises. All insurance companies have as their base motive profit -- and not just reasonable, that's a good motivation to productivity, innovation, etc. kind of profit, but obscene, you can only make that kind of money by utilizing practices that border perilously upon illegal kind of profit. I haven't met an insurance company yet that I thought was truly interested in my health, welfare, or general best interest (and certainly not to the detriment of the insurance company's bottom line).
Some of the Democrats strongest talking points in this debate are those that detail the abusive claims practices of health insurance companies. Horror stories like the ones that various diarists here have been relating are legion. Even Republicans on the Hill get squirmy when real people come before them and talk about how the insurance that they paid a lot of money to have suddenly disappeared when it was needed.
Also, at base, it is the health insurance companies and their claims paying practices that come between Americans and their healthcare. Insurance companies define "medical necessity" not as what your own doctor deems as medically necessary for your overall health, but rather what the insurance company itself defines as "medically necessary," which is just short-hand for "what the insurance company is begrudgingly willing to pay for." Toss in automatically denying meritorius claims, figuring out ways to drop you if you get truly sick, slow-paying doctors who step out of line by prescribing too many expensive procedures or medications, and it should be apparent to even the most dim-bulbed Republican who it is that is taking away their healthcare.
Call this debate what it really is -- health insurance reform -- and this becomes a lot easier sell for the administration.