Dose of Reality: Discount Health Cards

Neil Davis' May Dose of Reality offering features an analysis of discount health care cards (a bad deal). Davis' attention to this middleman scam in the health care business was drawn by a full-page ad in the Ruralite, GVEA's member magazine. The ad, Davis decided, is deceptive and close to fraudulent. The skinny on discount cards boils down to this:

If you look into the matter you will find that the best approach is to forget the discount cards altogether. A discount card is not likely to get you a discount greater than 10 percent, and if you are not insured you can probably do better by paying cash right away every time you go to the doctor or hospital.

Dose of Reality: ACHIA's a bad deal unless you're desperate

In the March 2010 Dose of Reality, Davis takes on ACHIA and the sudden spate of cheery ads and announcements publicizing Alaska's Comprehensive Health Insurance Association:

These ads stress the idea that every Alaskan already has the ability to buy health insurance. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that the ads are a propaganda ploy trying to promote the idea that we don’t really need health care reform just because it promises that everyone will be able to get insurance despite pre-existing conditions? Also, we might ask, why are so few Alaskans enrolled in the ACHIA program?

Davis tackled the ACHIA program in an earlier article, too, in February 2009, describing how the program works.

Harry and Louise Return

Today, August 24, 2008, marks the return of the old Harry and Louise ads credited with defeating the Clinton universal health care plan of fifteen years ago. They are being put on the air on the eve of the presidential conventions for the same purpose as the last time: to try to convince Americans that single-payer universal health care is not in their best interest.

The persons portraying the fictional couple Harry and Louise are the same as before, now obviously fifteen years older, but the message is a little different this time. Aware that health care reform might be coming soon, the ads’ sponsors are trying to use the ads to warp that reform in a direction that favors the health insurance industry and its allies, but which is to the detriment of the users of health care, namely the American public.

The sponsors of the new Harry and Louise ads are promoting not only less regulation of the health insurance industry, they want the government to subsidize it by paying the premiums for the high-risk persons that the industry would otherwise either not insure or charge unbearable rates. They are trying desperately to maintain their throttlehold on health care financing. As one ad sponsor, the National Federation of Independent Business, states, “To the greatest extent possible, Americans should receive their health insurance and healthcare through the private sector. Care must be taken to minimize the extent to which government safety nets crowd out private insurance and care.”

Overall, the primary purpose of the new Harry and Louise ads we are going to see a lot of from now on is to maintain the profitability of the private health insurance industry. A proven propaganda ploy; it will be interesting to see how well it works this time.

Also jumping on the bandwagon is the American Medical Association with its own Louise ad (not the same Louise as in the other ads, but obviously borrowing on the Harry and Louise concept) touting the association’s reform proposal. This is not a health care reform proposal at all; rather it deals only with health insurance, and it basically also calls for less regulation of the insurance industry plus government subsidies to the industry to help pay the premiums for high-risk persons. Not the powerhouse it once was, the AMA’s membership has declined, and it now represents less than one-third of all U.S. physicians. Increasingly, physicians are going against AMA and are coming out in favor of establishing a single-payer universal health care system.

Health Care for Alaskans: An "Informational" Publication

An insert with the above title (minus the weasel quotes) in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner's Sunday edition appears, at first glance, to be a special medical issues insert created by News-Miner staff. Article bylines read "Staff Report", with the exception of an article on the last page entitled "Certificate of Need hinders health care innovation," which is written by Michael Morrisey and Michael Ciamarra.* It is on the bottom of this last page, and this page alone, that a small notice reads, "Paid for by the Alliance for Healthcare in Alaska, 1275 Sadler Way, Fairbanks, AK 99701," thus revealing that the 8-page newsy-looking insert is in fact a paid advertisement. The staff "reports" are in fact opinion pieces, and are riddled with false and misleading statements.

Articles in this advertisement include:

• "Nation faces crisis due to physician shortage," which falsely claims that physician shortages "will only be exacerbated with universal health care"; and that "It is well documented that many Canadians wait an inordinate amount of time for their much-needed medical and surgical care," and "end up coming to the United States for their treatment".

• "Alaska's healthcare system locked in textbook 'monopoly'," laughably states, "It is important to understand that the health care system in America is second to none." This is flatly false, unless one is extolling its virtues as a money-making machine for insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

• "Competition necessary for industry to flourish," is a summarization of a presentation by Mark J. Botti of the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice in February 2007, "Competition in Healthcare and Certificates of Need." It extolls the virtues of competition in health care and argues against the need for Certificates of Need laws.

• "Breaking down 'Certificate of Need'" (subtitled "Program designed to aid patients in health care community now contains flaws, causes more harm than good"), provides a timeline graph of the number of states with CON laws and takes the form of arguments and rebuttals on the CON issue.

• "Certificate of Need hinders health care innovation,", which describes problems in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina's CON laws.

Quite clearly, the sponsors of this multipage advertorial want Alaska's Certificate of Need law overturned, as requested by Governor Palin (although this action was NOT recommended by the Alaska Health Care Strategies Planning Council she created to advise her). Unfortunately, the Alliance for Healthcare in Alaska appears willing to promulgate nonsense in order to do it.


*Ciamarra is vice president of the Alabama Policy Institute, a right-wing conservative think tank, described by the U of Alabama College Republicans as "the largest and most influential Conservative think tank in the state of Alabama."