Quigley does justice to health care debate

Last Friday, Arthur Alpert, a regular columnist at the New Mexico Independent, took a break from scrutinizing the Journal's habit of embedding their editorial slant into news coverage to give a well deserved kudos to the Journal's health business reporter, Winthrop Quigley.

Referring to Qugley's recent series of articles on health care, Alpert says:

The Journal’s health business reporter, Quigley always shines in analyses, but recently he’s raised his game.

Quigley continued to add some much needed perspective to the health care debate in his piece published Monday entitled, For sake of argument, stick to the facts. He notes that if a reasonable dialogue about health care in this country is to maintained, facts must be at the forefront:

If the nation is to have any hope of a reasonable debate about health policy, people on both ends of the political spectrum would do well to renounce some cherished myths about health care not only in the United States but in the rest of the world.

Facts do indeed get lost in the mix especially when the mainstream media often seems more intent on sowing confusion and division than properly educating the public about the reality of proposed legislation and the state of our current system.

One of the more insidious claims of the right, and a mantra in the AM radio vortex, is that a single-payer or public option is akin to socialized medicine. The keyword of course being "socialized", the ever-present boogeyman the right creates in cyclical necessity to whip their minions into a fearful, fighting panic. Mouthpieces on the right know that fear mongering is an effective and ironic use of reverse psychology whereas a large segment of middle-to-low-income Americans will come to believe that for-profit interests in health care are somehow aligned with their overall benefit. The results can be comedic but for many Americans the reality is more often tragic.

Quigley was particularly refreshing when he stated:

National government involvement in health care finance and delivery is no more proof of socialism than is government construction of freeways...

The United States government runs a large national health system, an example of which is at Gibson and San Mateo SE in Albuquerque. It's called the VA hospital.

Quigley aims for balance of facts on both sides and notes:

Insurance companies cause their share of hurt, but it's not because of their earnings. Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealth make between 3 and 4 percent profit margins. Locally, insurers make about 2 percent. That just isn't that much. Microsoft's profit margin is 25 percent. Coca Cola's is 20 percent. Procter & Gamble's is 17 percent.

The problem with comparing health insurer profit margins with Coca Cola's is that no one dies if they can't afford a coke. There's an underlying moral conundrum that for-profit health care advocates would like us to forget about while touting an idealized, non-existent "free-market." Health insurance company's profits rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007 while wages stayed level or declined. Stephen Hemsley, UnitedHealth Group's CEO, is poised to make $819,000 a day in 2009. Insurer profits may look modest when compared to some of the most successful businesses in the history of our planet, yet we must remember that those profits are inherently at odds with doling out payment for quality care.

That being said, Quigley's recent coverage of health care brings some rational thought to the table without the emotion and by doing so does a service to the community. Thanks to Arthur Alpert's scrutinizing eye for giving credit where credit is due and thanks to the talented duo at the ABQ Journal Watch who constantly aim to keep New Mexico's largest daily honest.