By Mark Martinez

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has come back with the new numbers. They look good. A deficit reduction of at least $130 billion over the first 10 years, and a $1 trillion dollar deficit reduction over the following 10 years. And we get health care coverage for 32 million more Americans.

Who would oppose this? Oh yeah …

The Republicans don’t want to have anything to do with health care reform presented by President Barack Obama, and are already trying to confuse the issue (again). Why is this happening?  I think I know why. And it has nothing to do with looking out for what’s good for America. It has everything to do with confusing the issue, scaring Americans, and trying to get everyone to forget what happened the last time Republicans were in charge.

Before I get into the politics behind the Republican party’s opposition, let’s take a quick look at the policy implications of passing health care legislation into law now.

A nation with health care reform

Courtesy of The Rachel Maddow Show and the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, here’s what’s going to happen in simple, non-technical terms. In the first six months after the bill is signed into law:

Those denied coverage for pre-existing conditions will have access to high-risk pools. This will happen within 90 days of legislation being signed into law.

• It will be illegal for insurance companies to deny children coverage because of a pre-existing condition. This happens within 180 days of the bill being signed into law.
• Children will also be able to stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26.
• There will no longer be lifetime limits on coverage.
• Insurance companies will no longer be able to terminate (what the industry calls “rescission”) your insurance once you file a claim.

By Jan. 1, 2011:

• If you’re a Medicare beneficiary you qualify for free annual wellness visits.
• Insurance companies will be required to spend between 80 to 85 percent of what they take in on medical care (currently they spend about 69 percent).
• If insurance companies don’t spend 80 to 85 percent of what they take in, they will have to refund money to the insurance holder(s).
• Insurance company rate hikes will have to be announced, reviewed and justified. This means no more arbitrary, and guaranteed, super profits at the expense of medical care.

By Jan. 1, 2014:

• A complete ban on denying coverage for anyone (not just children) with pre-existing conditions.
• Insurance exchanges for those who don’t have insurance will kick in. In these exchanges, regulators will be able to eject insurance companies for bad behavior, while consumers will be able to publicly rate them.
• No more limits on how much coverage you can receive in a year.

I’m sure most you who watch Fox News, or listen to Rush Limbaugh, don’t know much about any of these changes. And why should you? Of all the developments that have swirled around the health care debate, perhaps the most frustrating is watching as distortions, myths, and lies have been created, with no other purpose than to muddy the health care waters. And it continues today.

From assertions about a “government takeover,” to claims that we don’t like government in our business because it will destroy the best health care system in the world, the list of health care disasters on the horizon for Republicans is long, and misleading.

This has done much to derail rational discussion on a serious policy issue. The following helps to illustrate this point …

What happened to our health care debate

Back in November I had a nice health care exchange on someone else’s Facebook site (at least it started out as a health care discussion). I was responding to an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, which was posted on the site. I wrote that it was an intellectually dishonest piece, and made my case. Along the way several people responded.

The tone of the exchange does a nice job of capturing what has happened to our national health care debate. Here’s a condensed version of the exchange:

Me: What an intellectually dishonest piece. It repeats Republican talking points, says absolutely nothing about fixing unethical private insurance practices, and ignores that more than 44,000 die each year from not having insurance.

Respondent: You’re “intellectually dishonest” because you don’t tell us where you get your information. These people would’ve died anyways even if they had insurance. And besides, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) says this is the crown jewel of socialism, so I believe her.

Me: The study was done in association with Harvard University, and controlled for ailment types, age, etc. This means they asked questions like, “Were the 44,000 who died excluded from life saving care because they had no insurance?” … Also, using Rep. Bachmann as your reference for socialism is like using prostitute connoisseur, and Louisiana Senator, David Vitter to define family values. Neither one understands what they’re talking about.

Respondent: How many people die does not really matter. Numbers are used only to count things. The real issue is giving up our freedom. Jesus liked freedom. Illegals threaten our freedom. Jesus hates illegals.

Me (trying to muster all the ethnic gravitas I have): Hmmm … wasn’t Jesus a non-English speaking traveler, who crossed many borders without a passport? Seriously, WWJD … Who Would Jesus Deny?

(New) Respondent: Mark … you belong to that low life, scum sucking, bottom dwelling, dingy smelling group of nefarious would be communist Marxist … consider yourself vetted and cast out of membership with any real American patriot.

And on it went.

Blinded by ideology, very few people are listening to each other, so they believe what they want to believe. And since numbers can be manipulated and “are used only to count things,” others simply don’t care about the facts.

For my money, many of the claims made by the right would be amusing were it not for how they have become myth-sustaining gruel for the conspiracy-driven, Waco-Birther-Black Helicopter crowd.

Still, to help us understand the roller coaster ride we’ve been treated to over the past year – and in the spirit of fairness – let’s take a look at some of the claims in turn.

President Obama is proposing a government takeover of the health care sector.

Short answer? This assertion is simply false. If you have Blue Cross today and health care legislation is signed into law you will have Blue Cross in six months … and in one year … and in two years.. If you have Kaiser, guess what? Same thing. And on it goes.

But, OK, let’s play along with this government takeover nonsense  and take a look at the government-run programs. How evil and diabolical are these “government-socialist-run” programs?

Currently the federal government covers the elderly, our military personnel, and our military veterans through Medicare, military hospitals, and the Veteran’s Administration. This accounts for almost half of all health care costs in America. Interestingly, not only does the VA provide the best care anywhere, but conservative columnist Bill Kristol acknowledged that the federal government can – and does – provide a “first class” health care system (for the military).

Then we have this “government transfer” nugget to consider.

If you have private health care through corporate America, you may be surprised to learn that the American taxpayer subsidizes it. In 2008 alone “private” health plans received $246.1 billion from Uncle Sam to provide you health care insurance.

Combined with what America spends on Medicare, military hospitals, and the VA, the federal government effectively covers 60 percent of all health care costs in America.

Put another way, we already pay for a national health care plan. We just don’t get the benefits.

Americans don’t like government-run health care

As you will see below, Americans aren’t too happy with the overall health care system. This much is true. It’s a mess. Issues tied to quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives help insure that our health care system has become a cruel joke for millions of Americans.

But Americans do seem to like their health care programs (e.g. Medicare) and their government-subsidized insurance plans.

Indeed, to the extent that Americans like their health care, economist Paul Krugman makes it clear that customer satisfaction is due to primarily three factors:

1) it’s government supported (Medicare, military hospitals, and the VA),

2) it’s government subsidized ($246.1 billion in 2008), and

3) it’s government protected.

More specifically, Americans who have Medicare support their government-provided health care programs as much, or more, than their contemporaries who get it from the “private” sector (much of which, again, is subsidized by taxpayers if you work for corporate America).

Indeed, satisfaction with government-run health care is one of the reasons why we saw so many signs at Tea Party rallies that read, “Keep Government Away From My Medicare.” (Ignore the irony, for now.)

In the case of “government protected,” it needs to be made clear that those who work for corporate America are not only subsidized by taxpayer dollars but that government regulations forbid private employer plans from discriminating against employees with previous health conditions. So, if you like your “private” corporate plan, you can thank the government (and the taxpayer).

At the end of the day, government programs, private sector subsidies, and government regulations go a long way in explaining why many individuals are happy with their health care plans.

But you wouldn’t know it if you listened to the man who tells Republicans what to think and say, political consultant Mr. Frank Luntz.

Frank Luntz: “Americans are deathly afraid that a government takeover will lower their quality of care.”

Because Republicans have fed America a steady diet of “everything the government touches is bad,” conservative message monger Frank Luntz has been encouraging his Republican friends on the Hill to manipulate genuine concerns about a system in decline. So, in spite of the fact that most Americans enjoy their individual health care plans and programs (as noted above), the real issue here is that Frank Luntz – and Republicans – want to use these concerns as a throwaway talking point for political gain.

But there are real issues at stake that need to be addressed now.

First, I acknowledge that America has some of the world’s finest physicians, and many Americans are happy with their individual physician. But, in spite of what President Obama said at his health care summit, America does not have the best health care system in the world. In a study that compared the U.S. health care system with five industrial nations the U.S. ranked dead last, or next-to-last, in five key health system areas: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives.

This probably explains why a comparative OECD report noted that when it came to “satisfaction” levels for national health care systems only 82 percent of U.S. respondents said either “fundamental changes [were] needed” or that the U.S. needed to “completely rebuild system.” The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an international organization that supports a sustainable world economy.

With America’s overall health care system lagging behind other nations, and 82 percent of Americans wanting “fundamental” changes or a “complete” overhaul of the system, one must ask: Just what is Frank Luntz smoking?

Concluding Remarks

Of all the scare-mongering done by critics of the health care proposal currently in front of us, the one issue that has been ignored is what happens if we do absolutely nothing. Here are the cost projections.

That’s right. If we do nothing, and decide to wait another 10 or 15 years to take a look at health care in America, we are looking at health care claiming more and more of our nation’s financial resources, until it consumes it all (specific costs and comparisons can be found here).

There’s much more to discuss about the state of health care in America. For example, we could spend more time on the 44,000 who will die each year because they lack health insurance. (Where’s the right to life crowd on this issue?)

We could also discuss in greater detail what it means that 2 to 7 percent of those with medical insurance, and a medical doctor’s recommendation, will have their claims denied. We could also discuss how these denials contribute to more than half of the bankruptcies in America.

At the end of the day, it’s sufficient to say that our national health care debate has been hijacked by a group of people more concerned with winning political power than they are with governing. To achieve their ends they have deliberately put America on a roller coaster ride of distortions, myths, and lies. They have no other purpose than to muddy the health care waters so their team wins.

Not only has it worked – as my Facebook exchange above makes clear – but it’s effectiveness is evident by the fact that the misinformation tactics continue today.

Instead of treating what these people say as if they have serious policy points, we should be looking at them as if they were in a WWE cage match, or on “The Jerry Springer Show.” Seriously, at what point do we start laughing at these people?

The real sad part is that this never should have happened. Think about this. Once pollsters explained what the public option really is (think public universities), attitudes about health care reform changed significantly. Indeed, when it was explained that the public option would be similar to making Medicare accessible (not mandatory) for everyone in America, support for health care reform jumped as high as 72 percent.

Look, there’s much in the health care bill that I don’t like. Some of its provisions are really hard to swallow. But when you consider the only real motive for the Republicans to do what they’ve done during this health care debate is to derail President Obama so they can win Congress back, there really is no reason to pay any more attention to what they have to say.

We now have a bill that reduces the budget, insures 95 percent of all eligible citizens, and pays for itself. This is a far cry from the unfunded trillion dollar tax cuts and wars we got from the Reagan and Bush II administrations.

We need to get off this roller coaster and get to the next ride. We need health care reform now.

Mark Martinez is a professor of political science at California State University, Bakersfield. He is the author of “The Myth of the Free Market,” host and producer of “The Mark Martinez Show: Talk Radio for Liberals and Real Conservatives” (on hiatus from ESPN 1230 AM), and he blogs at markmartinezshow.blogspot.com.