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Standing Against Single Payer
My Ron Pollack Problem — and Yours
Karen Ignagni is not the problem.
As president of America's Health Insurance Plans, Karen Ignagni represents the health insurance industry.
The same health insurance industry that would be wiped out by a single payer national health insurance system.
We know where Karen Ignagni stands.
She stands with the health insurance industry.
Against the will of the American people.
If she stood with the will of the American people, she would effectively be asking her member insurance companies to commit suicide.
Not going to happen.
Ron Pollack is executive director of Families USA.
Ron Pollack identifies himself as a consumer advocate.
Or more precisely as an advocate for health care consumers.
The majority of the American people stand with single payer.
And against the health insurance industry.
And against the pharmaceutical industry.
But Ron Pollack stands against single payer.
Against the will of the American people.
With the health insurance industry.
And with the pharmaceutical industry.
Think we're kidding?
Well, on Thursday at 3 p.m., Ron Pollack will join Karen Ignagni in a live web chat to discuss "health reform."
The live web chat is sponsored by The Campaign for an American Solution.
The Campaign for an American Solution is a fake grassroots group created by the health insurance industry.
The idea is that we can't have single payer because it's not American.
Or as Senator Max Baucus put it when asked about single payer last month - "We have come up with a uniquely American solution which is a combination of public and private, because we are America."
Yes we are, Max.
But there is a uniquely American solution and it's called single payer.
Check out Jonathan Cohn's New Republic interview with Michael Chen of Taiwan's single payer system. Chen told Cohn that when Taiwan was in our predicament years ago, they searched the world for a better health care system. They came to the United States and studied Medicare. And they then went back to Taiwan and modeled their single payer system on Medicare.
Anyway, on Thursday at 3 p.m.,this so called consumer advocate, Ron Pollack, will be standing with Karen Ignagni, advocating against single payer.
Last week, Ron Pollack joined with Billy Tauzin, the head of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, and unveiled "a campaign to promote three key policies designed to help achieve high-quality, affordable health coverage for all Americans."
None of which will do anything to fundamentally alter the private health insurance industry and drug industry's death grip on America's health consumers.
So, no Karen Ignagni is not the problem.
Billy Tauzin is not the problem.
The Republican Party is not the problem.
We know where they stand.
They stand with big corporations.
Against the American people.
The problem is Ron Pollack.
The problem is Max Baucus.
The problem is the Democratic Party.
The problem lies with people who say they stand with the people.
But end up standing with Billy Tauzin.
And Karen Ignagni.
And big pharma.
And the private health insurance industry.
The problem is that the so called opposition is no opposition at all.
Yesterday, I attended a conference on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform - another "collegial group."
Dirksen 106 was packed with over 200 staffers and lobbyists.
The topic: Public Plan Option: Fair Competition or a Recipe for Crowd Out?
There were four people on the panel.
Two argued against giving consumers a choice between public plan and private plan - Karen Ignagni and Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation.
Two argued for giving consumers a choice for a public plan - John Holahan of the Urban Institute and Karen Davis of the Commonwealth Fund.
In opening remarks, John Holahan was downright defensive.
Holahan said a public plan was not part of a "a secret plot to destroy the insurance industry and bring about a single payer system."
There were no advocates for single payer at the table.
Of the 75 or so health policy experts listed in the packet, I couldn't find one advocate for single payer.
So, when question time arrived, I got to a microphone:
"John Holahan said that he's not part of a secret plot to destroy the insurance industry," I said. "But there is actually a public plot to destroy the private insurance industry. It's called HR 676. It's single payer. And it has 76 members of the House who support it. The Lewin Group did a side by side analysis of all of the plans, and they found that single payer saves the most money. The single payer idea is that the private health insurance industry deserves to be destroyed. In Canada and the UK it's unlawful to sell private health insurance for basic health needs. That's the idea behind single payer. Other than the fact that it would be the death penalty to Karen Ignagni's companies, why not do it?"
Out of deference to Karen Ignagni, the panelists pretty much ignored the question.
It was as if the question hadn't been asked.
That's the problem with collegiality.
The industry is facing the death penalty.
It's either them.
Or us.
No amount of collegiality can mask that stark reality.
- Posted in
113 Comments so far
Show All"It was as if the question hadn't been asked."
You mean kind of how the left treats discussion of parecon?
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
How would health care be provided in a parecon?
For that matter, would the even be a public sector, or free public services of any sort in a parecon? Would everyone have to predict what illness or injuries they would get when they prepare their annual consumption requests?
This is dealt with in the literature on parecon, most notably Michael Albert's 2003 Verso Press book, "Parecon: Life After Capitalism."
The answer though is this: Right wingers are quite correct when they say there is no such thing as "free" anything. Everything society consumes has a cost. Regarding public goods such as health care or education, parecon doesn't prejudge what should happen. However, it seems logical to think that health care or education (and perhaps other things) will be "free" in the sense that everyone contributes a small slice of their consumption rights toward these things, so that anyone who needs them can avail themselves of the service.
That is, each of us have a claim on the share of the social product by virtue of our efforts in helping to create said product. For purposes of discussion, let's keep to health care for the moment. Assuming that we all agree everyone who needs health care should have "free" access to it, then we all agree a small part of our consumption bundle should be allocated to health care.
Those who are fortunate enough to not get sick "lose" the value of their contribution. Those who get sick are fortunate enough to not have to worry about their health needs being met (at least from a material standpoint).
A parecon would handle all "free" consumption in this way. Particular parecons could implement whatever free consumption they wanted. A given parecon could have free health care, free education, free parks -- whatever. But everyone in the economy would understand that the more "free" consumption that existed in the parecon, the less individual consumption everyone would have. But again, as a theory, parecon itself does not prejudge; it's up to the actors in a given parecon to decide for themselves what and how much "free" consumption they wish to have.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
What is a parecon?
Rainborowe
Participatory economics. See, for instance, (1) http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5750, (2) http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/7678, and (3) Michael Albert's 2003 Verso Press book "Parecon: Life After Capitalism," the full text of which can be found at http://www.zmag.org/zparecon/pareconlac.htm
You might also watch http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/3114
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
Thank you.
Rainborowe
Millions of people are facing bankruptcy or death from lack of insurance coverage, and you want to supplant a discussion of single payer with a discussion of parecon? Please get your head out of the clouds and please get in touch with the real suffering and problems of real flesh-and-blood human beings. For them, implementing single payer is an URGENT, IMMEDIATE, NECESSITY. You act as though the crisis of our civilization is a graduate-seminar discussion rather than a matter of human survival.
Parecon will come--but only if it arises from a consciousness that puts the real needs of real humans first and doesn't counterpose utopian schemes to the urgent suffering of the moment. If enough people act to address the latter, it will set the stage for the former. You're putting the cart before the horse.
"Millions of people are facing bankruptcy or death from lack of insurance coverage, and you want to supplant a discussion of single payer with a discussion of parecon?"
Why is it an either-or? Both can't be discussed simultaneously?
"Please get your head out of the clouds and please get in touch with the real suffering and problems of real flesh-and-blood human beings."
Yes, you're right. Capitalism causes no suffering, therefore discussing alternatives to capitalism is pointless.
"For them, implementing single payer is an URGENT, IMMEDIATE, NECESSITY."
Again, why either-or? Actually, I don't think any movement will be strong enough to win single payer unless it is a brazenly anti-capitalist, pro-pareconish movement. Only a revolutionary movement can frighten elites enough to cause them to give in on health care.
"You act as though the crisis of our civilization is a graduate-seminar discussion rather than a matter of human survival."
Yes, you're right. That's exactly what I'm doing. Can't get anything past you. Though actually, as serious a problem as health care is, I would probably suggest global warming as the 'crisis of our civilization.'
"Parecon will come--but only if it arises from a consciousness that puts the real needs of real humans first and doesn't counterpose utopian schemes to the urgent suffering of the moment."
I won't say 'either-or' for the third time, since that would be gauche. I also won't sarcastically suggest again that capitalism causes no suffering, since that would be too easy. I finally won't say that single payer will never be won with an anti-capitalist, pro-pareconish movement, even though it's true.
Parecon has serious implications for present movements. A movement not organized along pareconish lines will necessarily be coordinatorist. A coordinatorist movement will never attract enough working-class support to scare elites enough to force them to give in on health care, hence it can never win single payer.
Therefore, your 'utopian' claim vis-a-vis parecon is not accurate. A discussion of parecon is actually vital to winning single payer, or serious action on global warming, or ending U.S. imperialism, among other left efforts.
"If enough people act to address the latter, it will set the stage for the former."
But enough people won't act to win single payer if the movement trying to win it is a coordinatorist movement. That's the point.
"You're putting the cart before the horse."
No, I'm suggesting that the only way to build a trajectory of change sufficiently threatening to elite interests to force them to give in on health care is to organize along pareconish lines.
If you're seriously going to win single payer, and not some watered-down variant, you're going to need at least tens of millions of people, if not more. Those people can't all be doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, accountants, tenured professors, CEOs, and the like. You're going to need some plumbers, pipefitters, coal miners, cashiers, assembly-line workers, secretaries, truck drivers, janitors, and temps as well.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
Can you give us an example of an actual participatory democracy?
We do have examples of single-payer healthcare models.
q
I have no idea what "participatory democracy" is. But participatory economics is a well-defined, technical term referring to a specific economic model -- one that currently exists only in theory (small pareconish organizations do exist in practice, though not an entire parecon).
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
Sorry. I meant an example of a participatory economy (although it seems that the two would go hand-in-hand).
So why try to sidetrack a discussion of a very real and practical need with an examination of a theory, which, from what I've read so far, is pretty vague on details with regard to health care? What you've described thus far is not so different from features of the present corporate model.
q
"Sorry. I meant an example of a participatory economy (although it seems that the two would go hand-in-hand)."
Sure. Economic relations and polity relations DO go hand in hand, and they also include community relations and kinship relations. But "participatory democracy," though a popular term among some lefties, is basically meaningless. Participatory polity (or parpolity), however, is not meaningless. It's a skeletal political vision, but one can go investigate it.
Participatory economics (parecon) is an extremely detailed economic vision.
"So why try to sidetrack a discussion of a very real and practical need with an examination of a theory, which, from what I've read so far, is pretty vague on details with regard to health care?"
I addressed this question in the post you replied to. The reason I bring up parecon in a discussion of health care is a question of strategy. I don't think any non-pareconish movement can win single payer, hence a non-pareconish movement is a losing strategy if single payer is the true goal.
"What you've described thus far is not so different from features of the present corporate model."
I haven't really described anything so far except parecon and "free" consumption in a parecon. And I have alluded to the fact that parecon is basically blacklisted on the U.S. left. But that's about it.
The fact that we have a coorinatorist U.S. left, and the fact that parecon is essentially verboten on the left, are really two sides of the same coin. The coordinator class is loathe to even see its class privileges, much less give them up (a la whites vis-a-vis blacks and men vis-a-vis women decades ago, and even still to a large extent).
Parecon challenges coordinator-class privileges by eliminating a division of labor elevating coordinators above workers -- not eliminating coordinatorist tasks, but rather the monopolization of those tasks by a small segment of the population.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
Eric, you are so right on all accounts. The participatory model is probably outside of most people's knowledge base. And definitely, it's not a model that would be popular with a patriarchal, capitalist society. Witness Freire.
Thank you for mentioning this. I had never heard of "paracon," however, I totally understand the participatory model and the empowerment process that it engenders. And yes, it takes time. And yes, it can be accomplished along side other agendas. The important thing is that it's accomplished -- and belongs to the people, not to the elite.
Sorry, Dude, but yes you did describe the economics of healthcare in a participatory economy in an earlier post (timestamped April 29th, 2009 12:51 pm).
"That is, each of us have a claim on the share of the social product by virtue of our efforts in helping to create said product. For purposes of discussion, let's keep to health care for the moment. Assuming that we all agree everyone who needs health care should have "free" access to it, then we all agree a small part of our consumption bundle should be allocated to health care.
"Those who are fortunate enough to not get sick "lose" the value of their contribution. Those who get sick are fortunate enough to not have to worry about their health needs being met (at least from a material standpoint)."
Basically, what you are describing is simply the "socialization" of healthcare costs using some alternative terminology. The corporate model does the same by collecting premiums, albeit with a heavy layer of overhead. Single-payer does it through taxes or some similar universal mechanism. Simply changing the vocabulary doesn't really alter the details.
q
YOU are the one who counterposed the attaintment of parecon to the more limited objective of winning single payer. And with your verbose expositions of parecon in the middle of a single payer thread, you are diverting attention from an urgent practical political priority of the moment--you are making a mess of this thread.
I'm sure even Michael Albert would consider your tactic here--derailing a discussion of single payer into a long digression into parecon--to be a huge tactical blunder. Please stop and let this thread return to what people can do NOW to achieve single payer, which is an attainable goal in the near term.
Parecon is a long-term goal and is a giant red herring for this thread
If you really cared about the suffering of sick and poor people, you would redirect your energies tactically for the short term. What you are doing hurts suffering people by derailing discussion and action that can help them NOW, not in a hazy, distant future.
Single payer can be achieved without parecon. Don't confuse them, please.
"YOU are the one who counterposed the attaintment of parecon to the more limited objective of winning single payer."
I am a vile human being.
"And with your verbose expositions of parecon in the middle of a single payer thread, you are diverting attention from an urgent practical political priority of the moment--you are making a mess of this thread."
I sacrifice puppies in my basement on an altar to Satan.
"I'm sure even Michael Albert would consider your tactic here--derailing a discussion of single payer into a long digression into parecon--to be a huge tactical blunder."
I'm the kind of person who goes through the 10-item lane with 12 items.
"Please stop and let this thread return to what people can do NOW to achieve single payer, which is an attainable goal in the near term."
Yes, sir.
"Parecon is a long-term goal and is a giant red herring for this thread"
Isn't fish high in mercury?
"If you really cared about the suffering of sick and poor people, you would redirect your energies tactically for the short term."
Instead of writing about parecon, what I +really+ meant to say is that we should start filling boxcars with people and herding them into ovens.
"What you are doing hurts suffering people by derailing discussion and action that can help them NOW, not in a hazy, distant future."
There are now three more starving children in Africa because of me.
"Single payer can be achieved without parecon. Don't confuse them, please."
I'm sorry. I'll go blow my brains out now.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
Eric, I like your sense of humor! Your mea culpas had me laughing.
Kathy
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Oh, that's great--give encouragement to a callous asshole who has derailed an entire thread on single payer with his bizarre ideological obsessions and his desperate need to salvage his threadbare public image. It's this kind of crap that poisons these comments sections--instead of useful information about single payer activism, we get the semi-psychotic ramblings of cranks.
Thanks for your contribution.
In the meantime, can you name one concrete action that you've taken on behalf of single payer? Can you name one single payer activist group that you've hooked up with or done anything about? Or do you just come out here to flirt with deranged losers like Mr. Parecon?
Get serious, please--let us know what you've done or plan to do to achieve single payer.
BFK has tried to raise awareness for it and bringing young people to this site is in itself a huge contribution. I'll admit I too had issues with her but she does agree with us on the issues. I'm starting to understand why people feel powerless to the point of expecting virtually next to nothing and settling for the least in life. As to EB, I think he was just being sarcastic but he does point out our nation's ignorance. I think we've got a longer ways to go starting with Main Street and lining up our ducks.
EB is a crank. Just because Amy Goodman doesn't talk about parecon all day like a windup doll she's worthless?
This guy is off his nut, and the girl who encouraged him is an enabler of this guy.
I can smell these loony sectarian types a mile away.
You have good political instincts and are a fighter. This guy is a religious-sectarian sad sack who doesn't understand the dynamics of real-world struggle for real human needs.
Maybe someone can turn him in the right direction--but right now he's just riding his one little hobby horse, and he doesn't understand how that undermines, rather than advances, the struggle for real radical change.
For example, single payer would place 14 percent of the U.S. economy in the public sector--this would be a HUGE step forward. And what is this nut's reaction? "You're not talking about Parecon!" Total miscreant--a redeemable miscreant, perhaps, but at this point still a miscreant.
You employ sophomoric reductio ad absurdam instead of legtimately confronting the points I raised. In fact, you are an inept maximalist in politics. Here's a potentially productive thread about achieving single payer, and you derail it with your abstract irrelevancies about parecon. How much bandwidth and space on this comment page to you plan to take up with your bizarre self-obsession? You really think you're some kind of communalist? You're a petty narcissist, who thinks that he's discovered the cure for centuries of human ills just because you came upon this concept of parecon. And yes, if everyone got diverted into such abstractions rather than focusing on attainable objectives like single payer, it would hurt real human beings. But in your self-referential haze, abstractions are more important to you than real human beings.
Go to the zmag Web site founded by Michael Albert. There are many DIFFERENT issues covered--international, domestic, women's, environment, climate, health care, etc., etc. Not EVERY section of the Web site is devoted to parecon--it's not all parecon all the time. Yet here's a thread on single payer, and you're nattering on forever about parecon like a broken windup doll.
You're a snide, simpering jerk who doesn't have a clue about political organizing. You care only about salvaging your ego now that you've been shown to be clueless. So keep at it--keep ignoring the topic of this thread, keep deriding the idea of focusing on single payer--with each succeeding post that refers to parecon, your ego, your infantile sarcasm, you show that you are mainly concerned about yourself and your petty obsessions--ideological, egoic--rather than helping real people in the real world.
I know Michael Albert would be embarrassed to have you as a disciple. You're a complete jerk.
Think about this--if the entire society were made up of callous, snide jerks like you, do you think that would look like parecon? Hardly--it would look like all the evils of the current world to the tenth power.
As Gandhi once said, "You must be the change you want to see in the world." In your case, that means roughly, "Stop being an asshole."
Boy--are you ever a raging ignoramus? Do you realize that a host of critical pro-people structural reforms of captialism, here and in Europe, have been achieved without ushering in a utopian society? Try universal suffrage, women's suffrage, abotition of child labor, union organizing rights, social security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage, EPA, etc., etc.--ALL WITHOUT PARECON! Imagine that!
And in Europe, those reforms have gone even farther: full national health care, paid maternity leave, month's paid vacation, living wage, first-rate mass tranist, etc., etc.--all well short of parecon, and still under capitalism! Would you argue that these reforms, which have benefited the lives of hundreds of millions of people, are meaningless? You really need to get out a bit more.
You also natter ignorantly about the need to get "tens of millions" of people to support single payer--in fact, they already do! According to the most recent Gallup poll, 60 percent of the American people support single-payer Medicare for all, as do 59 percent of American physicians. You're just too ignorant and out of touch to know these things--you need to find some reading material other than Michael Albert--maybe go out for a walk and read a newspaper, talk to some real people in the real world.
As for "watered-down" versions of single-payer: do you have any clue? There are many rival bills out there--can you even name one? Do you know the basic details of the Stark bill? Of the Conyers bill? Your ponderous commentary shows an almost TOTAL ignorance of what's going on in this debate--there is no "watered-down" single payer--it's either single payer or it's not.
What a sophomoric ignoramus you are. A complete fool. LOL!
"Try universal suffrage, women's suffrage, abotition of child labor, union organizing rights, social security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage, EPA, etc., etc.--ALL WITHOUT PARECON! Imagine that!"
I was actually going to ignore pretty much everything you wrote, but this point actually bears addressing.
If you've read Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States," you realize that progressive gains like the ones you mention -- real gains, to be sure -- only arose because of the existence of an underlying revolutionary movement threatening elite interests.
So you are technically correct when you say those gains were won without parecon. That's accurate. However, though you are literally correct, you are incorrect in spirit. Had it not been for the specter of revolution haunting elites, none of those social democratic gains you mention would have been won.
We have to do the same thing today. And the revolutionary movement we have to build to threaten elites with must this time be built around parecon.
Finally, I'll just add that my original post in this thread -- the one at the very top -- wasn't actually intended to introduce pareconish content into the discussion. It was intended to juxtapose Mokhiber's comment about his single-payer question being ignored by politicos with how the left routinely ignores questions raised by pareconish theory.
For all the worship of Amy Goodman that goes on on the left, she has never had a discussion of parecon on her show (she had Albert on to discuss his memoir "Remembering Tomorrow," but that is not the same). As we speak, "The Nation" is doing everything it can to squelch pareconish ideas from being expressed in an ongoing discussion they are sponsoring of "socialism" (whatever that is). The left let The NewStandard die because TNS was a pareconish outfit.
I could go on and on. Parecon is (essentially) blacklisted by the establishment left, just like Chomsky is (essentially) blacklisted by the NYT ... or single payer is blacklisted by the Democratic party. The phenomenon is always the same: Criticism from the right is always welcome, in any venue, and will always be responded to collegially. Criticism from the left is always a virus to be feared, loathed, and extirpated.
And, right now, it's just about impossible to do any criticizing from a position farther left than parecon -- hence its left blacklisting. And hence why I'm such an asshole in pushing it, because sacred cows make the best hamburger.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
There are a host of topics ignored by the mass media--in fact, Amy Goodman deals with them nearly every day on her show. But Amy Goodman, who does nothing but educate a vast public about pressing issues of oppression and injustice all over the globe, is inadequate in your maximalist fantasy world--because she doesn't dwell on exactly one person's version of utopia. Shame on Amy Goodman!
To find out why you're such a dolt, you should read Lenin's book "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder." Lenin, who was a real revolutionary, and led the working class to power for the first time in world history, toppled the Tsarist regime in Russia with the slogan, "land, bread, and peace." Not "Socialism now" or "Smash imperialism" or "Create utopia now"--but "land, bread, and peace": specific issues that addressed the real needs of real masses of people who could not obtain land, bread, and peace under the existing regime; those demands were revolutionary in their time because only a socialist revolution could meet them.
You mention Zinn's book, but the lessons of that book are lost on you. Do you hear Zinn running around in his books and lectures calling for "Parecon now" in lieu of talking about specific issues? No, you do not--because he understands the subtleties of radical policies in a way that a one-note drone like you do not. The radical movements Zinn chronicles always worked in united fronts to press SPECIFIC DEMANDS--abolish slavery, give women the right to vote, end the war in Vietnam, etc., etc. The maximalist sectarian groups who shouted "Socialism now!" are lost to history--they are like Moonies, rotely reciting a religious catechism rather than concretely addressing the real needs of real people. THAT'S what sets a revolutionary dynamic in motion time after time--getting masses of people in motion against the status quo around concrete, pressing issues, not preaching an abstract utopia like some religious nut.
As I pointed out, even Michael Albert recognizes the need to address specific issues in their own right, as the organization and layout of the Z Web site demonstrates.
At this point, until you actually study the specifics of real-world revolutionary strategy and tactics, you'll remain a one-note religious/utopian zombie, a scripted wind-up doll, a laughable irrelevancy as the world sweeps past you in real struggle while you stand on the sidelines muttering "Parecon, parecon, parecon." You're an embarrassment to Michael Albert and a blight on this thread.
I hope that in the future you learn to think rather than just singing the same one-note tune the day long. That makes you boring and irrelevant--and, to be honest, a bad joke, a carcicature of what you fantasize yourself to be. You think you're a great revolutionary, but actually you have a dogmatic, religious temperament that is 100-percent at odds with radical political activity.
What you say is true but it only touches on a tiny part of the whole.
The entire system under which we have organized ourselves is just as disfunctional or more so.
You can not make tiny adjustments here and there and expect any kind of real solution.
Mother nature to humanity - "Your Money Or Your Life"
We need to restructure civilization before it is restructured for us, and not in a good way.
Although Obama's plan to criminalize the uninsured has neocon written all over it, killing private medical insurance in one fell swoop is a non starter.
Phone, write, or email your US Congressional Rep. and your two US Senators and tell them to expand eligibility for medicare by reducing the age limit 5 to 10 years per year until medicare eventually covers all Americans. This gives the private insurers time to adjust over a 6 to 10 year period, after which they will still have customers willing to pay for insurnace beyond the basic coverage provided by medicare.
That's a good idea.
Why do you assert that Medicare for All is a "nonstarter"? This defeatism merely echoes the propaganda of the centrist corporate types that run Washington. According to the latest Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans favor it, and 59 percent of American physicians favor it, according to a survey by the Annals of Internal Medicine. If people like you would start campaigning for single payer--demonstrating, calling your representatives, etc.--instead of making excuses for the status quo, it could happen--just as abolition of slavery, voting rights for women, union organizing rights, etc., etc., happened--from organized pressure from below.
This discussion is not just an idle academic exercise in pondering the virtues of this or that plan--it is an economic/health emergency for this country. First of all, irrational HMO system of this country is the most wasteful in the industrialized world: the U.S. spends TWICE per capita on health care what Japan, Canada, and Europe spend, with inferior life expectancy to boot. An economy teetering on the abyss can ill-afford such profligacy just to keep a small clutch of HMO executives and stockholders riding in Lexuses.
Moreover, as millions of Americans lose their jobs in this imploding economy, most also lose their employer-tied health insurance. Some 50 million Americans already lack any medical coverage at all--18,000 of them die each year in America's pay-or-die system. Many of those that are covered face destitution or bankruptcy because of extortionate premiums and deductibles and selective coverage of the private plans. Every state experiment in public'private hybrid plans (the phony "universal" plan being peddled by Obama and HCAN) has failed to achieve increased coverage or reduced costs--the whole business is a sham, a flimsy Rube Goldberg construct designed to keep the HMO execs and stockholders in their designer suits, summer homes, and Lexuses--along with the Congressional and White House recipients of their campaign largesse.
For those facing death or penury because of this country's irrational health system, the issue is one of the gravest urgency. Those who are content to settle for half measures probably already have adequate insurance themselves. Perhaps they do not understand how serious the situation is, or perhaps in such people there is a void where a conscience should be.
Actually, HR 676 has built into it a 15-year conversion period of private health insurance to Medicare for all, with Treasury bonds being sold to compensate private health insurance companies for their gradual elimination and private health insurance workers being retrained to be the first employees hired in the new public health care system. So HR 676 will NOT kill private medical insurance "in one fell swoop".
Millions of people are facing bankruptcy or death from lack of insurance coverage, and you refuse to act until someone comes up with a plan to fix every human ill all at once? Please get your head out of the clouds and please get in touch with the real suffering and problems of real flesh-and-blood human beings. For them, implementing single payer is an URGENT, IMMEDIATE, NECESSITY. You act as though the crisis of our civilization is a graduate-seminar discussion rather than a matter of human survival.
Total transformation will come--but only if it arises from a consciousness that puts the real needs of real humans first and put abstract utopian schemes ahead of the need to address the real suffering of real people. Single player would be a radical step forward for this society--it would put 14 percent of the GDP in the public sector and guarantee health care as a human right to all for the first time in this country. If enough people act to realize this goal, it will be a giant step toward a larger social transformation. You're putting the cart before the horse.
Millions of people are facing bankruptcy or death from lack of insurance coverage, and you only provide a generic response to other posts? Please get your head out of the clouds and please get in touch with the real suffering and problems of real flesh-and-blood human beings. For them, implementing single payer is an URGENT, IMMEDIATE, NECESSITY. You act as though the crisis of our civilization is a graduate-seminar discussion rather than a matter of human survival.
Total transformation will come--but only if it arises from a consciousness that puts the real needs of real humans first and put abstract utopian schemes ahead of the need to address the real suffering of real people. Single player would be a radical step forward for this society--it would put 14 percent of the GDP in the public sector and guarantee health care as a human right to all for the first time in this country. If enough people act to realize this goal, it will be a giant step toward a larger social transformation. You're putting the cart before the horse.
While Arlen Specter switching parties is one story, the bigger story is Barack Obama switching parties. He stands tall with Republicans on every major issue except global warming. For some reason, the piece above forgets to mention the elephant in the room.
But I hear that Obama is now willing to reach across the isle and help some of the people who got him elected.
Good one.
q
I'm glad I'm not a Democrat if Arlen Specter is joining them. I'd hate for this guy to have my back going up the trail.
Agreed. His switch is the biggest non-story of the week.
q
Sioux Rose
FENNER: That's pretty much how I see it. Maybe every politician should fill out a list of 100 policy positions/priorities and let a COMPUTER determine where they stand on the linear scale moving from red to blue. If too many end up in red, maybe that would trip the computer and create enough of a buzz with the citizenry as to appoint those that actualy represent something equivalent to an opposition party.
Of course this Pollyanna dream can only work if media was forced to allot free air time to viable candidates. Then we could dispense with the prostitution angle, which is what it is after all when lobbyists pay the candidate for future tricks.
Okay people, you wanted a movement to coalesce around? Here it is:
If, as seems increasingly likely, we are told by Saint Obama that we must purchase health insurance from a for-profit corporation, simply refuse.
Don't offer any personal information. Don't fill out the form. Don't write the check. Don't carry the card.
There will have to be penalties built into the legislation to compel compliance. Be prepared to accept them, but know that if enough people call strike in this way, the system might well grind to the halt some of us have been hoping for.
Otherwise this rebirth of feudalism will prevail.
We agree.
It's not a secret plot to destroy the health insurance industry.
IT's a well publicized, very public plot to destroy the health insurance industry.
We want the health insurance industry DEAD. It's a parasite that has only one job and that is to prevent people from getting health care until they get their extortion money.
If the kill people in the process that doesn't bother them. Dead patients do not make further claims. People forced out of the system and denied health care only make their extortionate prices seem justified. Nothing instructs like people who died in agony due to lack of health insurance.
Never mind having health insurance is not any guarantee that you will get health care.
I want the Health Insurance industry CEO's to commit suicide. That would make me very happy. Go for it boys.
Thanks Russell.
Keep it up.
Keep reminding us that that American people want single payer.
Keep reminding us that the private insurance industry wants to stop single payer.
Keep reminding us that for profit basic health insurance is fundamentally immoral.
"The single payer idea is that the private health insurance industry deserves to be destroyed."
This is exactly why "Single Payer" is DOA.
Over one million people are employed by Health Insurance companies and they don't consider what they do for a living to be criminal. While most of US would love to see the insurance companies out of the picture, it's a stretch to want to see them punished. The concept that this entire sector of the economy "deserves to be destroyed" is incendiary and will line up opposition faster than Bush created recruits for bomb vests.
Remember also, that these companies are not going to go quietly. They will sue. US. For Billions in lost potential earnings. Under the Takings Clause, among others. And they most likely will win those court cases. At huge cost to US.
And there will be a million newly unemployed whitecollar people added to the already miserable job market (with attendent credit implosion, bankruptcies, foreclosures....).
The way to avoid this scenario is Public Option that grows into a crowd-out. Beat them at their own game, by efficiently serving the market they are milking. Expand MediCare every year until everyone is eligible. We will have to raise taxes across the board, including a per-head tax on employers, to pay for it (approximately $1500/year for individuals and $500/year from employers, less than 1/4 of current cost for Insurance).
When everyone is covered and everyone is paying for it in taxes, the For-Profits will move out of the business because their customer base will move out from under them.
That achieves the same end result, Single Payer, not-for-profit health care, without enduring a very punishing war over it. Words like "deserve to be destroyed" are exactly the inflamatory rhetoric, what Lakoff calls Bad Framing, that scuttles the Single Payer/HR676 debate.
If "having advocates for Single Payer at the table" means that this is how the issue is raised then it's no wonder that they are excluded and/or ignored.
But in America, everyone whines about paying taxes- and you can't explain to the average American that what they'll pay in taxes for health care will be much less than what the are paying, or would pay, for private health insurance. The rightwing media have been successful at convincing their readers, viewers, and listeners that taxes are a bad thing, that we know better how to spend our money than the government does.
That's one of the hard truths that is neatly avoided in hr676.
"listeners that taxes are a bad thing, that we know better how to spend our money than the government does."
They are wrong about the former but quite right about the latter.
And you point out the truth of the argument for singl;e payer, we would pay less taxes and spend less of our own money under single payer.........is that not a win/win?
Sioux Rose
NMLIB: C'mon... the $ is there! Look what gets poured into the military, wars of choice & empire-building, weapons development. And next look to all the trillions pouring down the bankers' chimneys like some fiduciary Santa Claus determined this was the ticket to prosperity for the nation. The point? It's all about THE priorities, and this land of the free likes its prisons, wars, and corporate trespassers, but it could care less about its actual constituents. Disgusting does not begin to define it...
But the health insurance companies won't be destroyed by single payer. There will still be people rich enough to want healthcare with all the trimmings like the ability to choose where and when to have treatments, to have treatments in clinics offering cordon bleu meals, high staff-to-patient ratios, private suites and so on. Then there's the vanity stuff like hair transplants, boob jobs, face lifts, nose bobs and so on. Insurance companies in Europe do very well under single-payer because companies use that kind of extra insurance to reward staff they want to get or keep.
Rainborowe
That creates a two tiered healthcare system, doesn't it? Justifying disparity in conditions between Innercity hospitals and Suburban ones (for instance)? I'm not sure that Boutique Healthcare is such a great idea. Regardless, the rhetoric from the Single Payer crowd IS that the Insurance Companies must be destroyed, that they deserve to be punished, that's the fatal flaw in their argument.
I don't see it as two tiered. We assume that all necessary healthcare is taken care of under single-payer. The other stuff is either vanity stuff or vanity surroundings, or both. For example, a teenaged girl, as a friend of mine was, had breasts so huge that they put a serious stain on her back and shoulders. The reduction, under single-payer, would come under the basic national health system as a medical necessity. The woman wanting to enhance her endowment from 44EEE to 46GGG would have to go the boutique route.
We already have a two-tiered system with Medicare and Medicaid on one hand and private healthcare on the other. The difference is that the people assigned to each tier are there according to their ability to pay, not to their need.
And, as a matter of fact, we already have a 3 tiered system as a recent development in the US is super-class luxury care in really special clinics and hospitals and even, gulp!, house-calls.
Rainborowe
If we had single payer the insurance companies wouldn't be involved in regular healthcare. They'd only be able to cover people who wanted the extras. The UK has single-payer (socialized medicine, actually) and private insurance for the vanity stuff. There is no means for the insurance companies to "game" anything.
Rainborowe