False Claims in Healthcare

This was an e-mail to Carol:

Congratulations for your taking personal responsibility for paying your bills. Most Marxists believe that government would have this responsibility or see to it that there are no bills.


With respect to your attachment, this is the opinion of People for the American Way, in the same way that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck give their opinions. You have to be careful of opinions, and you can do that by inspecting relative data and the background of those giving the opinions.

Most people do not lie intentionally. They tend to distort the facts in order to support a previously held position.

There is a nice article by Scott Harrington, in the Monday, September 14, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal on page A15. Harrington cites that in a speech Pres. Obama referred to an Illinois man who "lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy, because his insurer found he hadn't reported gallstones that that he didn't even know about". The implication here is that the Illinois man lost his life because he didn't have health insurance. However, his sister later reported that the patient received a prescribed stem cell transplant within the desired 3 to 4 week window of opportunity from one of the most renowned doctors in the world on the specific routine, and that the procedure was extremely successful, and that it extended the patient's life nearly 3 1/2 years.

In the President's second example, he cited a Texas woman about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne, and that by the time she had her insurance reinstated her breast cancer more than doubled in size. The implication here is that the insurance company canceled coverage for required medical treatment, because of an unrelated condition. The woman later testified that the dermatologist had described her skin condition as precancerous. She also failed to disclose an earlier problem with an irregular heartbeat and had underreported her weight on the application. Irregular heartbeat and obesity are serious impediments to successful treatment. She could have taken the personal responsibility of reducing her weight, with the likelihood that her heartbeat would become more regular. Instead, she chose to be deceptive in her application.