More Dumb Things Politicians and Political Appointees Say About Health Policy

As we previously discussed, the fierce debate about whether to revise, or "repeal and replace Obamacare", more formally, the Affordable Care Act, continues in the US.  The legislators in the US House of Representatives, and then the US Senate who have written "repeal and replace" bills have done so without any obvious input from health care professionals, health care policy experts, or patients, much less legislators from the opposition party, and so far have impeded any consideration of these bills by legislative committees.  Nonetheless, many of the politicians involved in the debates, and other politicians who have addressed relevant issues, seem to feel free to comment on health care policy issues with reckless abandon.

We have recently found some more remarkable examples, discussed in chronologic order. 


Senator Ron Johnson (R - Wisconsin): Someone with a Pre-Existing Condition is Like "Somebody Who Crashes Their Car"

As reported by RawStory on June 25, 2017,

The Wisconsin Republican pointed to Obamacare rules that forbid insurance companies from charging more for people with preexisting conditions.

'We know why those premiums doubled,' he opined. 'We’ve done something with our health care system that you would never think about doing, for example, with auto insurance, where you would require auto insurance companies to sell a policy to somebody after they crash their car.'

The last phrase suggests Senator Johnson might be talking about people who deliberately crash their cars, or at best people who were at fault in a car crash.  Setting aside the consideration that sometimes fault in a car crash is hard to assign, he seems to be implying that all people with pre-existing conditions are at fault for for their conditions.  Yet, accidents thay may cause permananent injury are accidental.  Diseases are caused by many factors, or by factors unknown to modern science.  It is very hard to think of a disease whose occurrence is purely caused by choices made by the patient who is afflicted with it.  So it appears that Senator Johnson's argument rests on a logical fallacy: false analogy, in this case between car accidents and pre-existing conditions.

Middletown, OH, Councilman Dan Picard: Town Emergency Medical Technicians Should Deny Naloxone Treatment to Narcotic Addicts Who Have Overdosed Two or More Times Previously

As reported by the Huffington  Post on June 26, 2017,

'I want to send a message to the world that you don’t want to come to Middletown to overdose because someone might not come with Narcan and save your life,' Picard told Ohio’s Journal-News. 'We need to put a fear about overdosing in Middletown.'

Also,

But Picard seems to believe that EMS crews are working a bit too hard to stem the tide of overdoses, and is upset that taxpayers are footing the bill to revive people, many of whom are transients and not residents of Middletown, he says.

Picard also proposed that instead of immediately arresting or jailing overdose victims, they should receive a court summons and be required to work off the cost of treatment by completing community service. But there’s a catch.

'If the dispatcher determines that the person who’s overdosed is someone who’s been part of the program for two previous overdoses and has not completed the community service and has not cooperated in the program, then we wouldn’t dispatch,' said Picard.

Narcotic overdoses left untreated are often fatal. The article also quoted

Martins Ferry Police Chief John McFarland said some people have begun taking these casualties as a foregone conclusion.

'You hear from the public, ‘Why don’t you let them die?’' McFarland told the Dispatch. 'We’re not God; we don’t decide who lives or dies. … We have the ability to save them, so we do.'

That is the point. Emergency medical services have a duty to attempt to treat people with acute conditions that can be immediately fatal, otherwise they would be "playing God."  At best, Mr Picard seems unaware of the mission of emergency health services. 

Note that a Washington Post story on Mr Picard's new policy idea, published June 28, 2017, which quoted this argument the Councilman made in favor of his proposal,

a decision to not save repeat overdosers would be one of many that communities make about how much care they'll provide to dying people.

'If you have a toothache and you call Middletown, we’re not coming,' he said. 'For your heart attack, we’re not going to do the stint or your bypass. Decisions have been made about what services we’re going to provide. We need to make a decision about overdoses.'

Of course, this is another, and whopping example of a false analogy. Revascularization procedures for myocardial infarctions (coronary artery stents or coronary artery bypass grafting) cannot be done by emergency medical technicians and must be done in a hospital given current technology. So decisions about when to deploy these treatments are not made by EMTs, or City Councilmen for that matter.

By the way, the Huffington Post article noted that Mr Picard was not the first one to come up with the policy of withholding Naloxone to save money.  Maine Governor Paul LePage (R) apparently floated something similar in 2016. As reportedy by the Huffington Post in April, 2016:

LePage explained Wednesday that he blocked a bill to increase access to a life-saving overdose medication because the people it could save are just going to die later anyway.

'Naloxone does not truly save lives; it merely extends them until the next overdose,' LePage wrote.

It was not the first time LePage had shared such a belief, but attaching it to his veto elevated it to a statement of official policy.

The state legislature later over-rode his veto. Note that Governor LePage apparently based his article on a faulty perception of the prognosis of patients who overdose.

'Creating a situation where an addict has a heroin needle in one hand and a shot of naloxone in the other produces a sense of normalcy and security around heroin use that serves only to perpetuate the cycle of addiction,' he wrote.

While a staggering number of people have died as the result of the heroin and opioid epidemic, many have also recovered, and many more are waging battles with addiction they will eventually win. LePage’s assertion that everyone who overdoses once and lives will surely overdose again, rather than seek treatment and recover, is divorced from reality.

Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway: Instead of Getting Medicaid, Able-Bodied People Should Find Jobs "Then They'll Have Employer-Sponsored Benefits Like You and Me"

As reported by Fortune on June 26, 2017,

In an interview on ABC's This Week on Sunday, Conway, counselor to President Trump, said that Obamacare expanded Medicaid to those who did not truly need it, because they were able to work. She was defending the Senate's proposed health care bill, which would make big cuts to Medicaid, by lowering the income limit for those who qualify, among other measures.

'Obamacare took Medicaid, which was designed to help the poor, the needy, the sick, disabled, also children and pregnant women, it took it and went way above the poverty line and opened it up to many able-bodied Americans,' she said. Those 'should probably find other — at least see if there are other options for them.'

She continued:

'If they are able-bodied and they want to work, then they'll have employer-sponsored benefits like you and I do.'

This was just a straight-forward, but important factual error.  Per Fortune,

Many Americans who are covered by Medicaid are already working, often in lower-paying jobs that may not have health insurance benefits, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, cited by CNBC.

Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin): If Insurance Prices Go Up, "It's Not Like People are Getting Pushed Off the Plan, It's That People Will Choose Not to Buy Something That They Don't Like or Want"

As reported by RawStory on June 27, 2017,

During an interview that aired on Tuesday, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade asked Ryan to respond to a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that said there would be 22 million more people without health insurance by 2026 if the Senate’s version of the health care bill is signed into law.

'What they are basically saying at the Congressional Budget Office, if you’re not going to force people to buy Obamacare, if you’re not going to force people to buy something they don’t want, then they won’t buy it,' the Speaker opined. 'So, it’s not that people are getting pushed off a plan, it’s that people will choose not to buy something that they don’t like or want.'

'And that’s the difference here,' he added. 'By repealing the individual and employer mandate, which mandates people buy this health insurance that they can’t afford, that they don’t like — if you don’t mandate that they’re going to do this then that many people won’t do it.'

Please note that the mandate to which he refers is a relatively small tax under "Obamacare" paid by people who do not have health insurance. Further note that under the proposed Senate bill, many poorer people would lose substantial subsidies of their health insurance. So Mr Ryan seems to be using linguistic sleight of hand.  He accepts the term "mandate" as literally true, allowing him to claim that the negative financial incentive which the "mandate" imposes while the negative financial incentive caused by losses of subsidies and increases in insurance prices is not.  A rose is not a rose when it's called something else? This is the logical fallacy of ambiguity, using double meanings or ambiguity of meaning in language to disguise the truth. 

Summary

Whether to maintain our current - admittedly Rube Goldberg-esque - system of financing health care, or to radically change it is a serious question.  The answer will affect the wellbeing, health, and even lifespan of many people.  The question should not be taken lightly.

So what to make of so many politicans and political appointees making pronouncements on whether to keep, or "repeal and replace Obamacare" that are based on major factual errors and logical fallacies?  The last time I took this on, I speculated whether health care policy has sunk into a swamp of postmodernism generated by years of exposure to the post-modernist stance of many in academia.  That may have been fanciful.

On the other hand, another speculation is that this is the result of "managerialism."  We have discussed the doctrine promoted in business schools that people trained in management should lead every type of human organization and endeavor.  Management by people from the disciplines most relevant to the mission and nature of particular organizations should be eschewed.  So managers, not physicians or other health care professionals, should lead health care organizations.  Following that theme, managers, or those like them, rather than health care professionals and health policy experts should lead health policy. 

However, managers who run health care organizations, or make policy, have an unfortunate tendency to be ill-informed (as well as unsympathetic if not hostile to health care professionals' value and the health care mission, and subject to perverse incentives that often put short-term revenue ahead of the health of patients and the population.)  And in the latest health care reform debate, some of the politicians and political appointees who are the de facto managers of health policy have disdained the advice of health care professionals and health policy experts.  

The causes of this trend are certainly open to debate.  However, I believe we should all be really worried about continued health care policy making by people who are driven by factual errors and non-evidence rather than evidence, and logical fallacies rather than sound reasoning.  We need health policy leadership that is well-informed, understands the health care mission, avoids self-interest and conflicts of interest, and is accountable, ethical and honest.   (Of course, we have often said we need leadership of health care organizations with these characteristics.)  Right now, we are not coming close.  Woe is us.