Joe Lieberman argues in the November 1 Hartford Courant that the country cannot afford a public health care option right now because the national debt is â??out of control.â? He's tight when he says the debt is out of control. He's wrong when he says health care has contributed â??significantlyâ? to it and that a public option would only make things worse. Is he being disingenuous or dishonest?

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Connecticut â??independent Democratâ? Senator Joe Lieberman wrote an editorial in the November 1^st Hartford Courant, â??Joe's Stand: Public Option A Risk We Can't Afford.â? Lieberman's views cannot go unchallenged.

Senator Lieberman says he â??share(s) the president's commitment to pass legislation that lowers health care costs, provides greater access to coverage and puts new regulations on insurance companies to protect consumers.â? He supports Obama's pledge to â??not support legislation that adds one dime to the already-staggering (national) debt now or in the future.â?

But, Lieberman observes, â??Our fiscal house is deteriorating dangerouslyâ? and, â??our health care problem is inexorably linked to our broader economic problems and, in particular, our out-of-control national debt.â? He writes, â??Health care has contributed significantly to this crisis.â?

Au contraire, Senator Lieberman.

Are you saying health care is primarily responsible for the doubling of the national debt over the past eight years?

Did the Bush tax cuts and tax rebates have nothing to do with it?

Did seven years of waging two un-funded, debt-financed wars have nothing to do with it?

Did eight years of record-deficit spending have nothing to do with it?

Did nine years of lax or no regulation of financial markets not bring the economy to its knees and require trillions of dollars of government bailouts?

Did that economic crisis not create the need for nearly a trillion dollars of stimulus money?

Did the lack of Congressional discipline that decoupled government expenditures from the revenues needed to offset them have nothing to do with it?

Medicare is in the hole, to be sure. But does Congress's failure to raise enough revenue to cover expenses have nothing to do with it? Does the added cost of Medicare Part D have nothing to do with it?

How disingenuous can you be, Senator?

And which of those policies did you threaten to filibuster, Senator Lieberman â?? to filibuster before they were even debated? The tax cuts? The rebates? The war spending? The deficit spending? The economic deregulation? The shortfall in revenues needed to sustain Social Security and Medicare?

The answer is none of them. All of them passed with either your active support or your acquiescence.

And now you propose to address a decade or more of what can only be called Congressional misfeasance by telling American citizens who are sick and uninsured that they must be the ones to pay for decades of your fiscal irresponsibility.

How dishonest can you possibly be?

You list your priorities for health care reform. You want to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse in the system. Who among us doesn't?

But Senator, you have been in the Congress for over twenty years. If there is fraud, waste, and abuse in the system, why haven't you done something about it before now? If you know where it is, why haven't you gone after it already?

You want to pay health care providers for â??how successfully they treat patients.â? That's a fine idea if you overlook the fact that the best doctors are likely also to get the sickest patients, the ones most likely to die whether they receive world-class care or not. Would you pay those doctors if their patients die? If not, why on earth do you think they would continue in their professions?

You are against unnecessary tests, uncoordinated care, unnecessary hospital readmissions, and preventable hospital infections. So are we all. The difference between us is that we have not been in a position to do something about it for the last twenty years. You have been. What have you done?

You say you want insurance industry reforms that will prohibit denial of coverage for preexisting conditions and loss of coverage when sick, and eliminate lifetime coverage limits. You want to extend coverage to millions of people who can't afford it. Again, so do we all. What have you done to be part of the solution to those problems?

You want all these things, yet you oppose â??a government-run health insurance company â?? the so-called public option.â? Why? Because, you write, â??Medicare teaches us about the fiscal implications of creating a government health insurance program.â?

No, Medicare does not teach us that. It teaches us what happens when Congress refuses to increase revenues even as it watches expenses increase at an alarming and unsustainable rate. Or when it refuses to get control of costs so that existing revenues will cover them.

Let's be honest, Senator: you â?? all of you â?? have refused to act responsibly to keep these programs adequately funded because you are afraid to jeopardize your reelection chances. No one wants to run on a record of having supported anything that can be construed by an opponent as a tax increase. So you just don't do that â?? you let deficits accumulate instead.

You write that â??(a) new public option will likely increase premiums for the 170 million Americans who already have private insurance." C'mon, Senator: when was the last time you saw competition increase and prices go up? My first thought if I saw that happening would be of collusion and price-fixing. You're a former attorney general: what would you think?

You say the CBO warns that public option premiums might not cover expenses in a given year and the public would be at risk for the difference. True enough. But why doesn't that happen in the private sector? It's because private insurers set their prices to cover their costs, extract a risk premium, add to their reserves, and make a profit. Or they lay off some of the risk to the reinsurance markets. A government health insurance program could do the same things if you let it.

You're right on several points, Senator: we have a horrendous economic problem on our hands. Our health care costs are out of control. And Medicare is about eight years from insolvency.

Those are real problems. But they are problems that the Congress â?? including you â?? either caused or allowed. And now you must solve them. Just don't force the neediest, the sickest,and least fortunate among us to foot the bill for you.

Authors Website: www.opednews.com

Authors Bio:
Rick Wise is an industrial psychologist and retired management consultant. For 15 years, he was managing director of ValueNet International, Inc.

Before starting ValueNet, Rick was director, corporate training and, later, director, corporate strategy for Travelers Corp., an international insurance and financial services firm. He lost six friends in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Rick was a Vietnam-era Navy Hospital Corpsman.

Rick holds PhD and M.Ed. degrees from Penn State. His BS is from West Chester University. He completed post-doctoral work at Rensselaer, Northwestern, Colorado, and Harvard. A native of Pennsylvania, Rick now lives in New England.