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TechnoratiHow Corporate PR Works to Kill Healthcare Reform
Health insurers have become expert at using P.R. to get what they want. I got out before the latest round
It is easy to think of efforts to influence lawmakers as the exclusive domain of K Street lobbyists. Much has been said and written about the millions of dollars the special interests are spending on lobbying activities and the hundreds of lobbyists who are at work as we speak trying to shape healthcare reform legislation. Very little by comparison has been written about the millions of dollars that special interests are spending on P.R. activities to accomplish the same goal and that are vital to successful lobbying efforts.
One of the reasons I left my job at CIGNA, where I headed corporate communications and was part of the Legal & Public Affairs division, was because I did not want to be involved in yet another P.R. and lobbying campaign to kill or gut reform. I finally came to question the ethics of what I had done and been a part of for nearly two decades to influence decision making and bill writing on Capitol Hill.
When I testified before the Senate Commerce Committee in late June, I told the senators how the industry has conducted duplicitous and well-financed P.R. and lobbying campaigns every time Congress has tried to reform our healthcare system, and how its current behind-the-scenes efforts may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans. I noted that, just as they did 15 years ago when the insurance industry led the effort to kill the Clinton reform plan, it is using shills and front groups to spread lies and disinformation to scare Americans away from the very reform that would benefit them most. The industry, despite its public assurances to be good-faith partners with the president and Congress, has been at work for years laying the groundwork for devious and often sinister campaigns to manipulate public opinion.
The industry goes to great lengths to keep its involvement in these campaigns hidden from public view. I know from having served on numerous trade group committees and industry-funded front groups, however, that industry leaders are always full partners in developing strategies to derail any reform that might interfere with insurers' ability to increase profits. My involvement in these groups goes back to the early '90s when insurers joined with other special interests to finance the activities of the Healthcare Leadership Council, which led a coordinated effort to scare Americans and members of Congress away from the Clinton plan.
A few years after that victory, the insurers formed a front group called the Health Benefits Coalition to kill efforts to pass a Patients Bill of Rights. While it was billed as a broad-based business coalition that was led by the National Federation of Independent Business and included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Health Benefits Coalition in reality got the lion's share of its funding and guidance from the big insurance companies and their trade associations.
Like most front groups, the Health Benefits Coalition was set up and run out of one of Washington's biggest P.R. firms. The P.R. firm provided all the staff work for the Coalition while an executive with the NFIB, which has long been a close ally of the insurance industry, served as a frontman.
One of the key strategies of the Health Benefits Coalition as it was gearing up for battle in late 1998 was to stir up support among conservative talk radio and other media. Among the tactics the P.R. firm implemented for the Coalition was to form alliances with important conservative groups, such as the Christian Coalition and the Family Research Council, to get them to send letters to Congress or appear at HBC press conferences. The Health Benefits Coalition also launched an advertising campaign in conservative media outlets. The message was that President Clinton owed a debt to the liberal base of the "Democrat" Party and would try to pay back that debt by advancing the type of big government agenda on healthcare that he failed to get in 1994. The tactics worked. Industry allies in Congress made sure the Patients' Bill of Rights would not become law.
The insurance industry has funded several other front groups since then whenever the industry was under attack. It formed the Coalition for Affordable Quality Healthcare to try to improve the image of managed care in response to a constant stream of negative stories that appeared in the media in the late ‘90s and the first years of this decade. It funded another group with a different name about the same time when lawyers began filing class-action lawsuits on behalf of doctors and patients. Like the Health Benefits Coalition, this one, called America's Health Insurers, was created by and run out of a powerful Washington-based P.R. firm.
The insurance industry called on that same firm again in 2007 to help blunt the impact of Michael Moore's movie "Sicko." The P.R. firm created and staffed a front group called Health Care America specifically to discredit Moore and to demonize the healthcare systems featured in the movie. The media contact for Health Care America was a vice president at the firm who had served previously in P.R. roles at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and in the Bush administration.
The P.R. firm also activated conservative allies and enlisted the support of conservative talk show hosts, writers and editorial page editors to warn against a "government takeover" of the U.S. care system. That is a term the industry uses often to scare people away from any additional involvement of the government in healthcare. Health Care America also placed ads in newspapers. One such ad, which appeared in Capitol Hill newspapers, carried this message, "In America, you wait in line to see a movie. In government-run health care systems, you wait to see a doctor."
The P.R. firm's work on behalf of the industry included feeding talking points to conservatives in the media and in Congress and placing columns and Op-Eds written for the industry's friends in conservative and free-market think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage, CATO, the Manhattan Institute and the Galen Institute.
With this history, you can rest assured that the insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious P.R. practices it has used for many years, to kill reform this year, or even better, to shape it so that it benefits insurance companies and their Wall Street investors far more than average Americans.
The creation and funding of front groups and the use of shills on Capitol Hill and in the media are not the only tactics P.R. people use to support and enhance lobbying efforts. Other activities include, of course, the implementation of grass-roots and grass-tops campaigns. But a much more subtle tactic is to provide supposedly accurate and objective information to "educate" members of Congress and their staffs.
Business Week recently described how health insurers, United Health Group in particular, have been hard at work behind the scenes providing a treasure trove of data to key senators. If lawmakers believe the information and date the insurers are feeding them is comprehensive and objective, they are mistaken. Corporate representatives, especially the P.R. people who work with the media and who write talking points, are masters at the selective use of data and disclosing only the information their employers want to be disclosed.
What does this all mean for our country and our democracy?
During my 20 years in corporate communications and public affairs, I participated in the steady growth and influence of largely invisible persuasion -- and at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and investigative journalism seems to be vanishing. The number of P.R. people long ago surpassed the number of working journalists in this country. And that ratio of P.R. people to reporters will continue to grow. The clear winners as this shift occurs are big, rich corporations and other special interests. The losers are average Americans, most of whom are completely unaware how their thoughts and actions are being manipulated to achieve corporate goals on Capitol Hill.
38 Comments so far
Show AllBrainstorming for Healthcare:
We need a theme song, easy to remember on point lyrics, catch tune, keep the protestors energized and make our point clearly.
Teach-ins at local gathering places, outside of Congressional Reps. local offices, outside insurance company offices -- medical professionals and people who have been denied coverage speeches, seminar style and lectures.
Sick-ins -- again in public areas, outside Reps and Ins. Co. offices
medical pros set up mini-clinics where people w/o insurance can get consultations
Street Theater
Impromptu rallies with really impressive artistically rendered signs, singing our theme song(s), shouting slogans, open mike
Letter/postcard flooding campaigns to elected reps, government healthcare officials, insurance lobbyists, President Obama, news media, most especially groups organized to oppose healthcare reform
Also call-in campaigns to those people
Bumper stickers, lawn signs, t-shirts
more brainstorming
Here's a suggestion someone else gave on another forum:
"We need a "slogan" to turn the tide toward a demand for health care that actually works. I suggest, that criticism of the single-payer option as "socialized medicine" should be answered by saying, "Not socialized medicine, but how about civilized medicine?"
This leaves open a discussion of what "civilized medicine" might accomplish to the end that any sane person can see that what has been in place is broken and that urgent action is needed to fix it, that a simple "more of the same" approach is not rational and will not work. Then we can start talking about what would be the civilized way to provide health care."
http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/
http://www.madashelldoctors.com/
With or without the now-shriveled public option, all the main Democatic bills are WORSE than no reform. They neither control costs nor significantly expand coverage, but now FORCE people to buy the overpriced, gap-ridden products of the HMOs. Just another cynical corporate bailout tricked out as "reform."
The prhase "public option" has become an MSM buzzword vaguely meaning "something like Medicare." But the pub-op proposals on the table are nothing like Medicare. In fact, they have been cynically neutered to present no threat to the HMOs or to offer any path to single payer.
The corporate elite plays for keeps--they are always at least a dozen strategic steps ahead of the opposition. They feign apoplexy over the public option even though they have covertly worked to reduce it to a harmless nullity.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
Please see the following:
1. "Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold"
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%9Cpublic-option%E2%80%9D-was-sold/
.2. "Does the Congressional Progressive Caucus Care About Its Progressive Principles?"
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/28/does-the-congressional-progressive-caucus-care-about-its-public-option...
3. Reply to Critics
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/08/08/reply-to-critics-of-%E2%80%9Cbait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%98public-o...
When one works inside something that really does suck and actually screws everyone, he or she will at some point want out and then try to expose the corruption from within. My wife hopes that I'll be like WP someday.
The thing that baffles me is why the average Joe and Jane particularly of the conservative/right variety are justifiably mad at Wall Street (something that until recently they used to worship) and not these insurance companies that are preying and hounding sick people when they are at their weakest while trying to fend off death? Why on earth do these people think that the kind immoral things insurance companies are doing would be in their interest simply because it is some form of capitalism or so called free market?
janam, you wrote:
"Why on earth do these people think..." Stop right there. I don't believe that thinking has anything to do with it.
I'd suggest these people could quickly focus their hatred at the insurance companies but only if told to do so by the demagogues in whom they have placed their faith. No thought required.
Look up Eric Hoffer in Wikipedia -he did some very interesting work on this dynamic. He postulated that fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity and showed how this connects to political movements.
I wonder if anyone here has connected the description this former insurance industry PR flack brings, with the job descriptions found on websites that are clearinghouses for freelance writers to serve as blog posters.
The money that the insurance companies and the Wall Street finance industry is putting into stalling progressive reform in these areas is staggering, unimagineable.
The main point of salting various discussions with paid bloggers would not be PR in the classic sense that most people would recognize. The point is to sew enough discord that the old "divide and conquer" trick gets enough voters demobilized in the next election that the Democratic majority in Congress is reduced, if not eliminated. The outcome is not going to be affirmative policy, but paralysis. No action on anything. More fighting. More discord. More finger pointing. It would seem child's play.
Anyone notice how Couric, Gibson, Williams, and yes, Lehrer have avoided coverage of Potter ... even as they suggest that Dick Armey's Freedom Works hirelings represent valid concerns about "European socialism" in a public option?
Also notice the advertising on the news. They are mostly drug ads, which make a nice gift to the media that won't mention anything in reform that would hurt pharma's profits.
Gene Therapy, Bill Moyers hasn't. But he's not a dues paying member of the corporate propaganda machine.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Wendell Potter here gives us a vivid insider's look at the implementation of the programs used on issue after issue by rich and powerful corporations and their allies to mislead much of the US population. It was laid out years ago by Edward Bernays, with Ivy Lee, the founders of modern public relations, more accurately termed the dark arts of professional lying. Bernays always thought that the best PR people are indeed the invisible hands and unseen and unknown shapers of the mass public mind. Indeed Bernays spoke and wrote of the "necessary manipulation of the mass public mind". In the present age of global corporate media operations concentrated into the hands of a very few, their reach is truly staggering to see. And with corporate advertising and PR combined, they literally spend tens of billions annually for this vast propaganda operation and consider it a simple cost of doing business to keep the population confused, mislead, and controllable.
The right wing media echo chamber in print, TV, talk radio innundates much of the nation on a daily and hourly basis and no gross and outright lie is beyond them, knowing full well that the technique of the Big Lie repeated convinces many of its veracity. The frightening part, as well, is learning how many other people in our own networks are immersed in this stuff---fellow workers, family network, home neighbors, church members, interest groups of all kinds.
The left simply has no real media system to match the repressive right, as George Lakoff recently emphasized, though certain these websites and community radio are essential spots of sanity. But the capture of the supposedly public owned radio and TV channels by corporate forces and religious fundamentalists and right wing ranters has made the challenge a considerable one. Meanwhile the professional liars and spinners work day and night.
Why did it take this guy 20 years to get a conscience, I lasted 1 week at a Big Pharma PR firm consulting job before quitting in disgust. He seems just as clueless now because his story ignores the govt's own history of "duplicitous and well-financed" PR (with money seized from citizens through taxes and created out of thin air by the Fed). From Tonkin Bay to the USS Maine to maybe even Pearl Harbor the govt has a long history from both Dems and Repubs of using lies and PR tricks that are even lower than the corporate PR, and the govt uses them to get support for mass murder and dropping bombs on innocent civilians. It took this fool twenty years to wake up to the lies of his corporate boss, how long until he wakes up to the dangers of a too powerful govt?
Why it took him 20 years to figure it out is because of how segregated people are by wealth/class. He probably had a somewhat privileged childhood, worked in the insurance industry surrounded by rich SOBs, then went home to some gated community.
He really only became aware of how bad things were when he somewhat accidently ended up at a clinic for the poor where doctors volunteer their time for free to treat them. You can google his name to see the whole story.
Also you have to realize that 15 to 20 years ago private insurance was not so much the racket it is today. Back then you paid a more reasonable premium and got at least decent coverage. So 15 - 20 years ago he probably felt, and to SOME extent rightly so, that he was working in a legitimate industry.
I feel I have to give the guy credit. He could have quietly retired and enjoyed a life of leisure but instead he is fighting for what is right. To some extent we all know he is for the most part pissing into the wind, but at least he is trying, and I think deserves some credit for that.
NC-Tom, thank you. I not only have to give Wendell Potter credit, I honor him. It's true, when you grow up sheltered, privileged, and insulated, you grow up clueless. I remember what Christ was purported to say, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do". As soon as he did, he did the honorable thing. He gave up his corporate jet lifestyle and is fighting for us. What more can you ask of anyone? He has become one of my heroes.
I agree that Tremaine's great comment should be on CD. Excellent work. Sometimes the comments are far superior to the posts. Such as that silly "Obama vs the Lobbyists". That "vs" was the icing on the cake.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
My thoughts as well. Sometimes I believe we have established here at commondreams a real think tank where truth is constantly being defended even as we attack hypocricy and hype.
Common Dreams --- The think tank where truth trumps dogma.
We give the liars nightmares with uncommon screams.
"Sometimes the comments are far superior to the posts."
I completely agree.
Jeevee
WE TOO.
I agree with your reading. I would also add that during the eighties or nineties all industries, including the "helping" industries like insurance, accounting and psychology, began an era in which extreme selfishness and cleverness increasingly became the explicit model for executives and management. All pretense of being "good for the nation" was dropped. Instead, slogans like "appearance is everything" gained popularity. Anyone who tried to talk about ethics, sustainability or telling the truth was ignored, marginalized or laughed out of the boardroom.
It took a while for this slickster morality to permeate through the corporate scene. The type of sincere and naive conservative who believed in honesty and merit became obsolete, and was replaced by neo-cons and yuppies. Most of the time the old guard did not learn the lessons as Wendell Potter eventually did, but just left in stunned surprise. I saw some old white men ruined in my time, but not the ones who should have been.
Joe
Absolutely. I remember the revulsion I felt when that book, "Winning by Intimidation" came out. And those stupid clothing signals like the "power tie". What poor substitutes for integrity and common decency. No wonder things are so bad.
I’ll give you (another) economics lesson:
The University I went to for economics had a typical, conservative economics program mostly featuring laissez faire ideology. Although such a doctrine turns out to be no where near as progressive as what is needed, it was (at least back then) not completely bereft of all progressive ideas. In other words, there were a few progressive components to what was overall a not very progressive doctrine.
There was one particular progressive component that was drilled into all the students' brains, since it kept coming up within and among various courses, over and over and over again. This topic set the record for most mentions during the economics degree program.
The topic was that regressive taxation is a very, very bad idea.
I think the professors thought of their coverage of this topic as a necessary speed check for their overall free market doctrine. They didn’t want their students getting carried away with conservatism and creating a monster of a tax policy that would cut down on economic growth.
But as Thom Hartmann among others have long since realized, a monster of a tax policy has indeed developed in the US, despite the best intentions of my conservative professors. Sure enough, the already regressive tax system put into effect in the last 30 years has already heavily damaged the economy.
It appears that the rule is simple: you either avoid regressive taxation or you have a low growth, bad economy; it’s your choice.
The opposite of regressive taxation, which is of course progressive taxation, used to be at least partially accepted by much of the US right wing. But due to the extreme right taking over for the right in general (or for the traditional right, if you prefer) that was thrown out the window, and several historical tax laws have already brought regressive taxation to the US since the extreme right wing era in the US began in 1980.
Everyone knows that over the past 30 years, there have been several laws massively reducing the taxes on the rich. What you probably don’t know is that it is about to get worse.
We are now scheduled to get a new huge tax hike on the poor, cleverly but cynically disguised as "the health care mandate". Since "subsidies" for low income people to buy private health insurance are most definitely going to be inadequate for at least the near poor, the “requirement” to buy private health insurance, or pay (you guessed it) a tax fine, will be nothing more and nothing less than a hugely and grindingly regressive tax targeted mostly but not exclusively on the near poor.
Ok, so why exactly did even the conservative economics program at University warn against regressive taxation? Is it really that bad?
Well, first of all, as you might suspect, the fact that regressive taxation is inherently unfair was NOT the primary reason why it was taught that regressive taxation needs to be avoided. But unfairness was usually mentioned, interestingly enough.
The biggest reason you never ever do regressive taxation, which was so painstakingly repeated and explained in detail that my brain more or less shut down from boredom each time this was explained, was that regressive taxation causes low income people to rationally decide not to work, or to hide income if they do work.
If you have no income at all, then presumably you don't owe even a regressive tax. Indeed, under the disastrous laws scheduled to be passed right now, those with extremely low incomes, near zero, may get waivers and/or almost automatic enrollment into Medicaid. Specifically, in 2013 (when this may go into effect) a single person with less than roughly $15,000 in income, and a family of three (one child) with less than roughly $20,000 in income, will apparently be left, in effect, untaxed (not "required" to buy private insurance).
Whereas, if your income is between about $15,000 and $30,000 for a single, and if it is between about $20,000 and $40,000 for a family of three, and so on and so forth, you will have a new "health insurance tax" of whatever your health insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and exclusions add up to, anything from $4,000 per year to $50,000 per year, depending on dozens of variables. (The maximum may possibly be quasi regulated, but don't look for anything with a guarantee and without a loophole.)
Incidentally, the total unpredictability of the actual total tax on individuals from year to year is another factor making the new law nothing short of madness.
Now think about this logically for a moment. If you have the choice between working your rear end off for a low but non-poverty income, and being subject to the new $4,000-$50,000 per year tax less any (inadequate) subsidies and regulations, or not working at all (or appearing to not work at all at least) and having Medicaid free of charge, which are you going to really want?
As long as you are surviving while not working, doing the food stamps and so forth, you will tend to prefer the life of leisure and Medicaid over the life of working your rear end off but running out of money to pay the taxes and the health insurance all the time.
Incentives to start or continue a small business will be trashed as well. Incentives to hide income will be greatly increased.
You get it? The government should never, ever, ever, make it better to not work than to work. But this is exactly what the current US government is proposing to do: to make it much better for millions of people to have a near zero income (not counting direct assistance) than a low income.
So I can guarantee you that the health insurance reform will be worse than however bad you think it will be. Among many other faults, this law will be an unprecedented and willful violation of BOTH long accepted progressive and long accepted conservative economic doctrine.
Prior CD stuff: http://www.unity-progress.blogspot.com
'tremaine'
One question.
Were you wearing a 'gas mask' while you shoveled all of that "male bovine excrement", or was there plenty of wind passing over you and your 'wheel barrow'?
And was that a 'left handed shovel or a right handed one'?
You write as if you have 'read' the Law you are mentioning but you offer no valid 'citations'.
What sounds here is that you have no valid answer to the problem which in reality has been created by those 'economics graduates' from all of those 'universities'---either in Europe or the Americas. The reason for this obviously is that you are a 'participant' in the Plutocratic Oligarchy that has been in place in the USA since 1776---and needs individuals 'just like you' to maintain the control.
Otherwise you would have disclosed that you had been 'trained and educated in the 'PO'----and it 'maintenance'. Or, you would have disavowed the 'PO' as a failure to all but a few: at the 'top'.
Your intelligent and very creative style is commendable; but it would be put to a much more creative resolution if you could admit the truth, and face the reality and work to solve the problem that your manner of thinking has created.
The Insurance industry is in control of the entire process, the politicians the Doctors, and the Drug Manufacturers because they 'know the Golden Rule'
"He who has the gold can make the rules"
If the people of the USA ever wish to have a Democracy they MUST first abolish the Plutocratic Oligarchy, and its supporters, like you seem to be.
Good Luck there, you will need it.
Very good post, tremaine.
Very good description of what is in store. As usual the low and middle income worker will take the brunt. If they object, then they will be accused of being backwards and against health care reform. Meanwhile state budgets will lead to cuts in welfare and Medicaid or Medical, leaving people truly without any safety net.
Will we open prisons for people who violate the health care mandate?
Joe
Paul Volker recently stated that in the "New Economy" the US economy will have to accept much higher rates of Unemployment as normal.
That is where 4 percent unemployemnt was once considered "No unemployment" that number might well jump to 6 or even 8 percent.
What this means from the standpoint of the American Worker is even lower wages and a lower standard of living. Corporations like it when Unemployment high because pressure on wages to increase drops.
Mr Volker seems to think this a good thing.
One can clearly see that this "New Economy" is BY design. It started some 30 plus years ago with the policies you mentioned and continues to this day. One wonders just exactly how this new mandate will affect those collecting unemployment checks. It seems to me it will lead to an economy wherein a worker cycles on and off Unemployment in a perpetual cycle of near poverty wages.
I recall, at one point during the Clinton Administrations, Greedspan complaining that unemployment was too low. High unemployment is a key component of the Heartless Economy. Pitting ethnic groups and lower socioeconomic classes against one another is also a key component. The subsidies to King Corn, coupled with NAFTA rules, led to the dumping of cheap overproduced corn onto the Mexican market. The inability of Mexican corn farmers to compete drove masses of them off of their farms. This provided cheap labor for new transnational factories (jobs that had been outsourced from the US), and significantly increased the flow of Mexicans willing to risk their lives in search of a job to support their families. The immigration increased the supply of labor while outsourcing decreased the supply of jobs. Presto! Higher unemployment!
President Duhbullya, in a moment of honesty, declared he saw nothing wrong with outsourcing jobs.
And he would be right, if we allow it to continue as the Obama administration is.
250,000 T-Baggers in Washington (and they represent a vast number of folks) tells me the Right and Center are no happier with these synchophants than we are. I'm amazed to consider that both the left and right could very well come together to correct a basic mistake.
We don't have to agree with anything but the result we want. Job's would be #1 as every thing else flows from them.
Corporations in cahoots with many of our Unions have been driving wages down for years. If we don't do something and soon...I fear your last sentence will be the future.
Great post. I think it is good enough to be an article on CD and not just a post.
I also think it is interesting that at one time progressives and conservatives could agree on at least one thing, regressive taxes, although for different reasons. Now they can't seem to agree on the color of the night sky.
I'm just wondering out loud here. How long can the insurance companies continue to screw the American public and get away with it. 10 years, 20 years, 50 years? They continually increase premiums, while raising deductibles and co-pays. This will lead to more and more people that will be unable afford private insurance.
Are there actuaries that have already figured out the magic premium that they can charge over time which will maximize profits by weighing premiums against the number of customers they will lose by raising those premiums?
Or have they already begun to pass that point and this reform is meant to force more customers into the system so they can prop up this Ponzi scheme for another decade or two?
"How long can the insurance companies continue to screw the American public and get away with it?"
Ask the auto insurance companies.
This reform is to put the Golden Goose on life support. The industry has wrung the last egg out of her, and now needs a bigger government guarantee/corporate welfare - or bailout - to keep themselves in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.
Our national insurance bill also includes paying for all these public relations firms and lobbyists. Yet "reform" doesn't offer even the most minor expense to the insurers, such as removing the tax subsidy for all the drug advertising they do. For example, check out all the drug ads on the 6 o'clock news.
The last one is correct: "they already have begun to pass that point and this reform is meant to force more customers into the system so they can prop up this Ponzi scheme for another decade or two."
It's going to be a new bubble. Anyone with half a brain can see that like the other bubbles, this one won't last very long either. Eventually, assuming this insanity passes at all, it will unravel due to:
--More and more millions opting for the penalty, thus defeating the purpose and defeating whatever small benefits the new law would provide if almost everyone bought the insurance.
--More and more millions refusing to pay even the penalty, thus creating an unprecedented general tax compliance crisis.
--Horror stories of people who become homeless, sick, and/or dead despite having health insurance. (Can someone without a home address actually get a health insurance claim paid to them?? And for that matter, can they get a health insurance referral for health care if it is known they are homeless?)
--Medicaid will be overwhelmed to one extent or another
--Although there is confusion and uncertainty on the subject, it appears that Medicare also will be damaged by the new law. At the very least, it seems logical that Medicare would be damaged to one extent or another.
--Certain health insurance care networks will be overwhelmed, particularly those that attract those who have been going without health for years. Specifically, for those who choose the lowest cost plans that attract the most new enrollees, providers may not be available when needed. So for example, you need a doctor, but all the doctors in your plan are tied up for weeks, so you don't get to see one when you needed one.
And so on and so forth... Obviously, the common denominator for everything that will go wrong is that the prices (costs) are too high. That the prices are already too high, and that this root problem will only get worse, is obvious.
Simply put, the US economy can no longer afford to pay insurance executives, hospital executives, and many doctors millions of dollars each a year. The US economy is poorer than it used to be, and is not working the way it used to anymore. But with laws like this one, the rich people are trying to hold on to the past anyway they can.
Prior comments and CD favorites: http://www.unity-progress.blogspot.com
Sioux Rose
TREMAINE: Since you seem quite savvy on this subject, suppose an individual made about $15,000 a year but had some savings and owned their own home. Would they be forced into this extortion? Would there be a lien placed on their home? I remember this issue coming up with care for the aged, how many were forced to sell their homes and use up their savings before they qualified for public assistance. Or is it a straight "what you earn" based on income taxes type of designation? I agree with you that it's total extortion, in any truly representative form of governance this stunt would qualify as illegal, and it will undoubtedly involve so many shortfalls on the collection end as to warrant greater costs than anticipated. Let's see them instead go after the money that big business keeps offshore, raise taxes on the well-to-do, and by all means employ that transaction tax on Wall St quick trades. And while we're at it, close down 70% of offshore military bases, end the wars, end the welfare to the giant corporations! Enough already squeezing every drop of fiduciary blood from the lower and middle classes!
"close down 70% of offshore military bases"
I agree with most of what you say but 30% still might feel like a lot left. I am surprised you aren't aiming for a higher percentage to be closed.
You don't understand. There has to be some military bases needed close to the homeland for defense. I think that is what SR includes in that 30% remaining. When talking about getting rid of military bases, one has to be careful in determining which ones and which types specifically. The ones that are designed to be misused for imperialistic purposes more than basic defense on the homeland need to go. Unfortunately, thanks to big business and the politicians siding with them, the DoD ends up getting more funding to protect the bad bases and less for the good basic defense ones thereby allowing them to languish. From there, the imperialistic ones get all the credit for protecting America despite evidence to the contrary. Homeland security and defense were privatized for good the day DHS was built.
I have now concluded that President Obama should have waited with his health care reform proposals until the economy had become safer for the middle class and the jobless number had dropped below 6%.
Now here is a post that makes sense. You should replace Rahm.
Unfortunately President Obama had no Health Care proposals, he allowed fools in Congress to frame them. Going forward the worst thing for the President is he has already lost the trust of a large number of the American people.
Anybody who thinks health care reform should wait until the unemployment rate falls to 6% must also be immortal. US Government/Federal Reserve actions and policies of the past 30 years will assure that few of us will live long enough to see 6% unemployment (although the government will probabaly continue to cook the books to reduce the reported unemployment rate below the actual unemployment rate).
The fact that 14,000 Americans have lost their insurance each day this year increased urgency. Extending Medicare to all Americans would not have required 1,000 + pages of weasel clauses that enhance corporate profits at the expense of what remains of the US working class.
6% could be a bit unrealistic, but the real point is that this was the wrong time with the wrong proposals.
As you rightfully point out...Medicare or in effect a Single Payer system would be simple to implement with a few years to work out the inherent flaws.
They blew it.
Henry8
"They blew it" ..... by design.