(WXYZ) - Mike Novak is one of the top marching band drill writers and color guard instructors in Michigan.
And he’s also what the whole health care fuss is all about.
Mike works long hours with the top-rated Walled Lake Central Marching Band. He gets great satisfaction from the job but, as a contract employee, he does not get health care benefits.
Stephen Clark: In essence this whole debate is really about you. You don’t have insurance.
Mike Novak: None. Not even an option.
Stephen Clark: So what do you do?
Mike Novak: Take vitamins and try not to get sick. If I break a finger, it’s thousands.
Breaking a finger or worse is a constant possibility in this whirling storm of flying steel.
Stephen Clark: You have in the past looked into health care just to buy it yourself?
Mike Novak: Yeah, I have. It is out of my price range.
Stephen Clark: Give me an example? Do you remember what it was?
Mike Novak: I want to say upwards of $200 a month or somewhere around there.
Stephen Clark: That’s just something that’s not in the budget?
Mike Novak: I can’t afford it.
Stephen Clark to Marcia Boehm: Do you have health care?
Marcia Boehm: No I don’t
Stephen Clark: Why’s that?
Marcia Boehm: Because I can’t afford it.
Even if Marcia Boehm could afford it on her part-time pay as a college professor, she would have a hard time getting it.
Marcia is suffering from a broken hip, because of a genetic bone problem. Expensive surgery is out of the question, so she is mostly treating herself.
Stephen Clark: So you’ve almost become your own doctor just to afford yourself?
Marcia Boehm: Absolutely.
Both Marcia and Mike have so far avoided doing the one thing that has driven medical costs through the roof in America and sparked this whole health care debate.
Stephen Clark to Dr. Smitherman: So uninsured people are using the emergency room as their primary care physician?
Dr. Herbert Smitherman: Exactly, at 10 to 20 times the cost of if they were to go to a primary care physician. And the importance is for the people who are insured. Understand, that your premiums that you’re paying, you’re actually paying $1,200 to $2,000 of your premiums for care of the uninsured right now.
Dr. Herbert Smitherman, the Assistant Dean of Medicine at Wayne State, wrote the book on taking care of the uninsured – literally. He says the only way to control costs is to get everyone insured.
Dr. Herbert Smitherman: You can’t do it with premiums going up 4 to 8 percent higher than earnings. That’s unsustainable. So we’ve got to have a way to make premiums affordable, and I believe personally the only thing that’s on the table right now with the health care debate is really the public option.
The public option is one of the most controversial parts of the health care debate.
Government-run insurance would be low in cost and designed to drive down the cost of private insurance through competition. At least that’s the theory.
Michigan’s Blue Cross Blue Shield sees exactly the opposite happening.
Andy Hetzel, VP Corporate Communications BCBS of Michigan: A government health insurance company has certain advantages that a private health insurance company doesn’t have. And we believe that those advantages have the potential to overwhelm the system of private insurance that most Americans enjoy today.
In other words, millions could conceivably abandon private insurance in favor of the public option, driving costs for those left behind even higher.
Blue Cross Blue Shield’s position is we shouldn’t direct all our attention to changing insurance. We also need to lower actual health care costs.
Andy Hetzel: You need a way to help bend the cost trend down a little bit. If you just reduced health care costs by about 1.7 percent, you would save about $3.5 trillion in the system over ten years.
There was a lot of hype and hoopla when the president gave congress its marching orders to deliver affordable health care to every American.
But so far the only piece of legislation to come out of Washington does very little to accomplish that goal. The original version of the Senate’s Baucus bill contains no public option.
It would get people like Mike Novak insured mainly through taxpayer subsidies and the threat of penalties if he doesn’t get insured.
And the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that in ten years under that plan 25 million non-elderly residents – people like Mike – would still be uninsured.
However, the public option may be back in the bill. During a Monday press conference, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the health care bill would include a public option. The bill would also contain a clause that would allow state's to "opt out" out the government run health care plan.
Reid's move has shaken up the health care debate, with many lawmakers applauding the decision. However, Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, the only Republican to vote in support of health care reform, has said she will not vote for a bill with a public option attached.
