I had the pleasure yesterday of listening to Dr. Richard L. O’Brien make a presentation on the current health care proposals before Congress. Dr. O’Brien is with the Creighton University Medical Center’s Center for Health Policy and Ethics.

His presentation first focused on why health care reform is an issue. The reasons include skyrocketing costs in comparison to GDP and income and the fact we have worse outcomes than other countries despite the fact we spend more per capita on our care.

He summarized what was in the current House Bill, the Senate Bill and in the compromise proposal from the White House. He then showed a summary slide with the key provisions favored in the bill, such as mandates.

Dr. O’Brien next showed a summary slide comparing what was in the current bills with a Senate Republican proposal from 1993. Six of the Senators from 1993 are still in the Senate. Guess what—an exact match, including mandatory health care coverage.

Dr. O’Brien was asked if he thought a "let’s take reform a step at a time" approach would work. Basically, the Doctor’s answer was no. If you take only one step without a counter balancing step, then the effort would fail.

Dr. O’Brien also recommended a web site to compare the three proposals side by side put up by the Kaiser Foundation. It’s not light reading, but it is thorough. Here’s a link.

http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/housesenatebill_final.pdf

I hope to have Dr. O’Brien on Car Concerns this week or next. I’ll post on my Blog if we’re able to schedule him.

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We’ve been discussing how psychological prejudices voters don’t even know they have influence their voting choices and cause them to vote against their own self interest.

As part of this, you’ve been shown how people have been persuaded to vote for candidates based on what the candidates say are their values, but then reveal themselves to have different values by what they do.

This is a probable cause of the Tea Party movement and even a cause of frustration among other dissatisfied voters. Given their distrust of one party and their feeling of betrayal by the other party, what is a voter to do? No true third party option exists. It’s not like buying cars. If you don’t like Ford or Chrysler, then you can turn to GM (or Toyota, or Honda or whatever.) The point is you have better options as a consumer than you do as a voter. You have better options because the consumer marketplace has not been restricted like the political by rules on ballot access and procedures.

By the way, there are a lot more examples of how the "Niagara Falls" psychological prejudice is used to influence voters. Here are a few being used currently.

Health care insurance reform is government takeover of health care

ACORN enables illegitimate candidates to win elections

Government workers are not worthy of the pay they receive and/or are overpaid.

We can do without government and programs like Medicare and Social Security.

I won’t go into detail now about how these are forms of psychological prejudice. I may come back to them later. I will say, however, that if you can’t recognize  . . .

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