Unreasoned Discourse

I have now come across three “liberal blogs” which gleefully reference the same AP article claiming that health insurance companies are finding ways around the new “health care reform” laws to “discriminate against the sick” or to “discriminate against those with chronic health conditions.” I am not going to quote at length from the article, but it consists of nothing other than vague accusations and statements which sound like accusations but actually are not.

It refers, for instance, to “the narrow networks of hospitals and doctors that insurers are using to keep premiums down,” which is untrue & nonsensical.

The actuality of networks is that insurance companies set payment levels for the plans to keep costs down, just as Medicare does. Medical providers are then invited to participate in the plans and decide for themselves whether or not they want to do so. Many decline because the payment levels are not high enough to suit them. "Narrow networks" are the result of choices by medical providers, not by insurance companies. If your doctor is not in the network it is because he wants to be paid more than that network is paying. Some doctors also refuse to accept Medicare.

At one point the article goes off its “attack the insurance industry” track, attacking the law itself to claim that, “The law also takes away some of the motivation insurers have for chasing healthy patients.” Of course one of the major and most controversial aspects of the law is that healthy people have to sign up whether they want to or not and, a minor point, the term "healthy patients" makes no sense. By the definition of “patient,” a healthy person is not a patient.

One of my favorite little pieces of nonsensicality is where a state insurance commissioner is quoted as saying that, “the federal government should establish a basic level of protection that states can build on,” which the ACA actually does. Remember the flap about plans being cancelled because they did not meet the minimum standards set by the ACA? This is an insurance commissioner criticizing the federal government for not doing something which it is doing in the new legislation that is the topic of his current discussion.

Liberals like to say that those who attack the “health care reform” law have to resort to false and incoherent arguments in order to do so, but here is a case where an attack dog is using the same tactics to attack the insurance industry. Have we completely lost our ability to engage in reasoned and reasonable debate?