A recent Peggy Flanagan stump speech turned to health care costs.
“My friend Tom is an ER doctor who worries he is going to kick someone into bankruptcy every time he treats someone in the ER..He’s like… ‘someone just paid $30,000 when I treated their nosebleed.’ right? That’s too much.”
In addition to the tissue in the poor patient’s nostrils, there is a lot to unpack in this one clip by Minnesota’s DFL candidate for U.S. Senate.
Right off the bat, you should know that in her recent successful primary victory against Congresswoman Angie Craig, Flanagan chose the Democratic Socialists of America’s “Medicare for All” plank, while Craig adopted a more moderate “fix what’s broke” approach. The Minnesota Star Tribune highlighted that as the defining difference between the two, noting “Flanagan’s stated goal is replacing the current system.” The Minnesota Democrats who overwhelmingly supported Flanagan likely knew this. But what would Peggycare really mean?
Peggycare would outlaw all private insurance. Period. If you like your plan, tough. If you like your doctor, too bad. If the Indian Health Service works well for you? Sorry. No Medicaid either. No cash pay. No Cadillac plan your union traded pay increases to keep. No Mayo Clinic.
There is no “public option” in Peggycare to opt out of the top-down, Soviet-style program. That seems drastic, and those pushing it (like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan) are not trying to hide that fact. They are running on it.
But let’s look at why the Minnesota lieutenant governor thinks we need Peggycare in the first place. Remember our friend Dr. Tom told her he’s having insomnia because he may have bankrupted some poor fellow (let’s call him Carl) because Tom sent Carl a $30,000 bill to stop a nosebleed.
Her first question should have been, “Holy crap, Dr. Tom, why did it cost $30,000 for an ER visit for a nosebleed?” Carl probably should have done what his grandma would have told him to do and shoved tissue up his nose and sat in a recliner for twenty minutes until it stopped. But he went to the ER, and if Dr. Tom followed the advice of the National Academy of Otolaryngology, he would have shoved tissue up Carl’s nose, had him sit in a recliner, and sent him home with a bill for $1,473.29—or $1,048.22 with no tissue stuck up his nose. That works more than 95% of the time, and the other five percent need to be admitted to the hospital.
I do not believe the lieutenant governor made up this story. She heard it from Dr. Tom or someone else. But Peggy did not think of questioning the $30,000 bill. She either lacks common sense or the curiosity to do so, but that’s what a good senator does. “How do you know that?” is the absolute best question a legislator should learn how to ask, because every bit of information that reaches them is tilted and meant for them to act on behalf of someone or something, and much of that information is just plain false.
You cannot scrap a $4 trillion portion of the economy upon which we all rely on for health care, based on a story you overheard at Starbies.
We have the greatest health care in the world, but the way we pay for it is crazy and unfair. The truth is that Dr. Tom has no flipping idea what he is billing anyone for anything in the ER. He writes notes and codes procedures and those codes are translated into different prices for different patients. Dr. Tom may not know that the cost paid by his Medicare patients only covers about 82% of the cost of care, while a patient paying cash may pay 140% of cost and someone on job-provided health insurance may pay somewhere in between.
Rather than instituting socialized medicine with no way out, let’s try to make billing more transparent and get rid of the fraud that is bankrupting hospitals and families.