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TechnoratiWhy the Current Bills Don't Solve Our Health Care Crisis
Now we know why they've stopped calling this health care reform, and started calling it insurance reform. The current bills advancing in Congress look more like rearranging the deck chairs on the insurance Titanic than actually ending our long health care nightmare.
Some laudable elements are in various versions of the bills, especially expanding Medicaid, cutting the private insurance-padding waste of Medicare Advantage, and limiting the ability of the insurance giants to ban and dump people who have been or who ever will be sick.
But, overall, the leading bills and the President's proposal are, like the dog that didn't bark, more notable for what is missing.
Here are 13 problems with the current health care bills (partial list):
1. No cost controls on insurance companies. The coming sharp increases in premiums, deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, etc. will quickly outpace any projected protections from caps on out-of-pocket costs.
2. Insurance companies will continue to be able to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.
3. No restrictions on insurance denials of care that insurers don't want to pay for. In case you missed it, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee uncovered data on the California Department of Managed Care website recently that found six of the biggest California insurers rejected, on annual average, more than one-fifth of all claims every year since 2002.
4. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas, where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.
5. A massive government bailout for the insurance industry through the combination of the individual mandate requiring everyone not covered to buy insurance, public subsidies which go for buying insurance, no regulation on what insurers can charge, and no restrictions on their ability to decide what claims to pay.
6. No controls on drug prices. The White House deal with Big Pharma, which won bipartisan approval in the Senate Finance Committee, opposes the use of government leverage to negotiate real cost controls on inflated drug prices.
7. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to care still determined by ability to pay.
8. Tax on comprehensive insurance plans. That will encourage employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote proliferation of bare-bones, high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care and medical bankruptcies.
9. Not universal. Some people will remain uncovered, including those exempted, and undocumented workers, denying them treatment, exposing everyone to communicable diseases and inflating health care costs.
10. No definition of covered benefits.
11. No protection for our public safety net. Public hospitals and clinics will continue to be under-funded and a dumping ground for those the private system doesn't want. Public monies going to hospitals serving low-income communities will be shifted to subsidies for private insurance.
12. Long delay in implementation. Many reforms don't go into effect until 2013.
13. Nothing changes in basic structure of the system; health care remains a privilege, not a right.
We may be slow learners, but the rest of the industrial world has figured it out: Universal, single-payer or national health care systems. That's the reason why all those other countries cover everyone, have better patient outcomes, cause no one to declare bankruptcy or lose their homes because of medical bills, and spend less than half per capita on health care than we do.
We could do it too, by reducing the starting age for Medicare from 65 to 0. There's still time to act.
Call on your Congress member
to support the vote coming up on the House floor on the Anthony Weiner
amendment to protect, expand and improve Medicare for All. Senators
have the same opportunity in a vote on Senate bill 703, being offered
as a floor amendment by Senator Bernie Sanders.
Democrats must also ensure that whatever bill passes includes a
provision enabling states to set up their own single-payer systems.
These votes are the true litmus tests of the Democrats' commitment to
guaranteeing health care for all, and finally solving our health care
crisis.
53 Comments so far
Show AllEffective reform will require addressing the shortfalls of the third leading cause of death in the country (conventional medicine). And that is going to be much more difficult than reforming how we pay for care, why are we restricting the discussion to financial matters?
Who wants their proposed 'forced insurance plan' anyway? What they propose is no reform at all. Better to let it die, and the system crash and burn of its own accord, then perhaps from the ashes we can obtain REAL reform.
Why do Americans need congress?
They are nothing more than worthless, corporate shills.
Why should our tax dollars pay their salaries?
Think of all the money we taxpayers can keep in our own pockets by not having to subsidize these useless, obstructionist members of congress.
Why should congress enjoy the best socialized health care OUR MONEY can buy?
And why should congress be allowed to double deal, by receiving massive amounts of money from lobbyists in exchange for favorable legislation, while betraying the best interests of the American people?
Congress consistently votes against the best interests of the American People in favor of the best interests of their corporate masters.
At least 90% of congress are nothing more than corrupt spokesmodels for their corporate sponsors.
Why shouldn't corporations be mandated to pay for congressional salaries, health care, travel, security and all other expenses since the corporate interest, not the American Peoples' interests, are being represented by congress?
I'd like to remind the author of this article that a state plan for health care is a bad idea. Each state having good or bad health plans would result in a population shift of those individuals who need a better plan. The big wealthy states are now bankrupted.
It would also lack the ability of citizens to cross state lines taking their plans with them. It would not have the money for accountability or monitoring. I see huge fraud in a state deal for health care.
Our government is forcing us to pay tribute to the Big Insurance Corporations. As for actually getting health care - that's only for filthy rich white men - we just get to labor in pain and suffering until we die in poverty to pay the tribute. It's time to secede.
There are filthy men (and some corporate women) of all colors. Don't blame one. Whites are a majority in this country...20% at most for blacks, etc. It stands to reason who gets the power. Did Colin Powell and Condi Rice bring us better leadership or Gonzales? Have you learned your lesson?
The elite win every time. The Congress and President lack backbone and ethics. Who pays for their pensions, health care, and salary? Corporations? Nope. Yet they fail to represent our interests. Don't elect them again regardless of which party they belong. They are swamp rats when you think of the lost homes, savings, health of all Americans.
The developed nations of the world which we compete with for jobs, trade, etc. are ahead of us with cheaper and better health care yet they won't give us the public option. It's not a new wheel they have to develop. Good plans are already out there.
The plan to give more profit to insurance royals and cover the uninsured, cheap labor. Change? Not for the good.
It's one thing the dog doesn't bark, but the Dems' ought at least to train it to not leave things on the carpet.
Seriously, this bill is also remarkable for what it does: herd up the people who cannot afford insurance and bleed them to buff the insurance companies for their next adventures in Washington.
I have had the nagging suspicion that the utterly dishonest shenanigans in the Senate Finance Committee were nothing but a show, the purpose of which was to create the appearance of hard-working legislators hammering out proposals to solve problems.
No.
The game is now clear. Health care reform was going to be crushed or rendered meaningless one way or another, all along. Baucus and the Dems are just playing a role in this factory of illusions. Nobody anywhere in this picture could be stupid enough to believe the talking points and fabricated context of this debate. But in our shining bubble on a hill, what you believe has less to do with the merits of the argument and much more to do with who is making it, especially if they are lining your pockets.
There can be no "inside" strategy, because nothing going on "inside" is related to any salient, empirical facts or to our lives and our needs. It's all posing and preening, sound and fury, as they say, signifying nothing. Behind all this, imperial prerogatives and crony pay-offs are enthusiastically perpetuated. The thing is most of my mainstream Dem friends think there really is a valid political process going here, rather than a game of 3 card monte - now you see the public option, now you don't.
There's nobody up there but Kurtz...
AND a smoke screen or "dog and pony show" to cover the financial crisis, robbery of our treasury and Common Wealth, and illegal wars. It covers their trashing the laws and our Constitution.
They had no intension of giving us what we have asked for in at least the last two Presidential elections (get rid of insurance companies and illegal wars). We need our troops home since they did not attack us. We are bankrupted from the wars and bases all over the world to protect corporate interests and profit. Their campaign speeches big fat lies.
Our mandates ignored in the party elite back rooms too. Super (unelected) Delegates decide who wins and whose goals are met.
HOWARD Kurtz?
The horror!... The horror!...
· Yr Obd't Servant
It's official.
The proposed healthcare bills were sacrificed by Congress on the alter to Corporate greed.
Walk in peace.
Shame on those Fascists.
What Drives The Health Care System In America
"Insurance company greed."
"What's greed got to do with health care?"
"Nothing."
"The cost?"
"Forty-five thousand lives annually*."
"Why does the public tolerate this?"
"Good question."
*Harvard Univ. report published online, Sept. 17, 2009
We need to all dress in black and declare a day of mourning for all those who have died or will die due to lack of access to healthcare. Then we march to D.C.
We should also assemble a huge quilt with a square for each person who has died and lay that quilt on the steps of the capitol building. Like the AIDS quilt.
How do you have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness when your very life is in the hands of extortionists and the goons in government who enable them to continue their mass murder of Americans. It's a little hard to pursue happiness if you are suffering from illness or dead.
They all must go, every last corrupt corporate whore in office. (Granted that would just about empty out the halls but...)
America has lost her soul. What are we without compassion?
My heart is breaking a million times over. Our brothers and sisters, parents, friends, partners, children, and neighbors are dying for company and shareholder profits.
Well Obama and Company I guess this is your checkmate against the American people.
Good idea.
I'm glad you don't call the forms of greed exercised by the health insurance industry capitalism. Even the most ardent capitalist would have a difficult time justifying huge profits for their value-negative intermediary handling of public funds and (non-)payouts under any valid theory of capitalism. It's more like inversely perverted socialism.
A well known Chinese economist called China's modern capitalism "crony capitalism". It's not "Communist". The same applies here in America which is a so called "Democracy".
Crony Czars. Crony CEOs. Crony agency heads. Crony war mongers. Crony liars and thieves...triators to their country.
We have a ruling oligarchy not a democracy.
WARNING !!! Medicare for all is not the answer. Medicare as it is NOW structured has too many loopholes. It is a 'gotcha system'. Bet you didn't know that it often does not cover injuries from accidents.
The Only answer is SINGLE PAYER - universal and comprehensive, covering all - including dental, vision, and long term care.
SINGLE PAYER would give EVERY person the same medical care as the congress and president get, and it would save money. Google my name and 'YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE'.
This is sectarian ultimatism. Medicare now covers, on average, 80 percent of medical expenses with no premiums or deductibles and complete freedom of choice of doctors--automatically, for anyone 65 or over. It IS a single-payer system.
The slogan "Medicare for all" does not necessarily mean "give that exact setup to everyone"--although that would be a huge step forward for 90 percent of the population. It means, roughly, "a tax-financed, universal health-care system--no more private insurers."
That we can all agree constitute historical progress for this country.
Stop with the cavils and start organizing.
Yes, "Medicare for All" is shorthand. The actual bill HR 676 is an "expanded, improved Medicare for All."
Medicare, when it started out, was great. It was Nixon who started to sabotage Medicare and others followed after him. The day single payer is miraculously enacted, we the people will have to keep a sharp eye on making sure that Congress doesn't fudge it like they did Medicare. Getting our cornfed electorate to do that is like trying to herd cats.
This is all making me really sick. Really!
Which I suppose is the desired effect---to make the totality of the Totalitarianism so blatantly obvious that it just drains your Will to Live, let alone fight.
-30-
Dear fellow outraged citizens, the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill will smoothly sail through Congress today, squandering $128.2 billion of our tax dollars for next year's continuing occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, a billionaire's club scheme to secure oil contracts by killing and maiming impoverished goat herders of whom Americans know nothing about, and of no benefit at all for the majority of Americans. the least-crappy version of health band-aid being scuffled over with unsurpassed rage, tightly knotted panties and spittle by the same legislative clowns is being cut down to $90 billion/yr. this, my fellow sheep, is how our Shining City Upon A Hill proudly claims it's role in global leadership.
http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/missiledefense/articles/092409_c111_fy10_sac_hr3326/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/28/health.care/
Micheal, Why don't you join the Mad As Hell Doctors at Lafayette Square tomorrow. Back an ambulance up to the Main Gate of the Whitehouse, get out your bullhorn and demand that Obama come out and listen to the Doctors. Then you can take your bullhorn up to the steps of Congress. Great Comedy because we all know who owns the White House and Congress and who they are really accountable to. In 2010 don't vote for any of these scoundrels. Throw the incumbents out.
Excellent idea! Michael Moore, who supported Obama and the Democrats, is not going to be shuffled into a corner with the rest of the herd.
And please, don't forget to take the bullhorn!
I will NOT vote for anyone who is not fighting for single payer nor will I vote for anyone who votes to fund these immoral, brutal wars.
Any society that can afford to provide health care for all but doesn't, doesn't deserve the name civilized.
In the US, health care should be a RIGHT. Period. Access to care and the provision of care shouldn't depend on your ability to pay. To have it given free to the nation's wealthiest and most privileged -- its CEOs and their congressional lackeys -- while ordinary Americans pay an arm and a leg (if they can get care at all), is obscene.
For all its wealth (or perhaps because of it), the US has become a barbaric nation.
They certainly don't deserve to serve in our government. They are a shame to those past patriots who walked in the winter snow to battle in bare feet. They can't stand on the shoulders of the great founders that is for sure.
when were we NOT a barbaric nation? indeed, we've had some good, exemplary, memorable moments of standing up to our ruling classes' hypocrisy and greed, but America's gnarly rap sheet of domestic and foreign assailing and encroachment dates back to her incipience.
Good point dfairley: " Any society that cannot afford to provide health care for all but doesn't, doesn,t deserve the name civilized." Cuba is called a Communist, uncivilized country, but my Nephew told me when he got back from Cuba, there were a lot of things he thought were wrong with Cuba, but their health care system was not one of them as he said they actually have free health care for all and according to him one of the best health care systems in the world.
Folks, the way I see it, what is needed is a new single payer rights movement modeled on the civil rights movement of the 1960's. We need massive protests and sit ins that make the tea party's look like an ice cream social. It may not happen overnight, but if enough people participate, it will just be a matter of time until it happens. The corrupt insurance companies must be brought to their knees; otherwise, nothing will change and we will have more change that we cannot believe in!
Don't look for Obama for leadership here.
Obama is a Bush league President.
Altogether clear.
But wait! What is it I see in the distance? Oh look, little bones! If we're good boys and girls, we may receive our tiny bone. Thank the Lord and God bless America!
Does our government have any legitimacy when it no longer represents the informed consent of the governed? There is now a long list of legislation enacted that can only be seen as the effect of the corrupting influence of selling congressional votes.
Polls show favorable opinion of congress at a 22-year low of 37% and the dems' advantage is already spent. This is a 13 point decline since April. Favorable opinion of the media's credibility is also at an all-time low.
Way back when Ross Perot founded the Reform Party in 1992, 2 out of 3 voters wanted a new party, a choice equally desired by democrats and republicans. The independent movement sopped up a little dissatisfaction, but nothing changed.
October of 2008, USA Today-Gallup found Americans 3 to 1 thought too much money was being spent on campaigns. In 1996, Gallup found 65% of respondents favored "full public financing." They've asked the question since 1974 with support never (or possibly once in 1982) dropping below 50% in favor of full public funding of elections.
In the current example showing that money has more influence over congress than the people they represent, single payer has consistently had majority support among constituents despite the censorship in the media - the media with its credibility at an all-time low.
In 1945 when single payer was first proposed, 75% of Americans favored it. In 2003, PEW found 72% favored and in 2005 65% favored single payer. By January of 2009, a CBS-NYT poll still showed 59% favoring. A survey in 2008 among doctors showed doctors favored single payer by the same amount. The most recent PEW poll I found showed 71% saying healthcare needed "fundamental changes" or needed to be "completely rebuilt."
Once again, congress shows the American people that money, not representation, decides policy. It is time for voters to demand that the current congress address the practice of selling legislation. Congress could change this today. Let's make the public debate about our representatives representing us. They should be voting their consciences, not their re-election corporate funding.
Thank you for reminding us that we are in the MAJORITY! All this attention on "death panels" and such is a manipulated distraction to focus our attention away from what the majority favors- Single Payer for all! Then Obama can go on tv and say to Americans - with a straight face - don't worry, government won't be involved in your health care. But the majority WANTS the government to be involved - as the payer!
"Obama is a crooked man who walks the crooked miles, he finds his crooked dollars between the crooked aisles, he helps the crooked villains to have their crooked war, he gives the richest among us by taking from the poor. The smooth tongued Obama, does talk with crooked tongue, he throws the hapless under the bus, and America comes undone."
Do you see a pattern developing?
Wall Street and the bankers have ruined the economy and wiped out the savings of most Americans? Better give them a few billion more...
Health Insurance companies making obscene profits by cherry picking clients, denying claims, and 1/5th of all Americans uninsured? Better give teh Health Care Industry a few billion more...
Loosing the pointless "war" in Afganistan while the Military Industrial Complex rakes in the dough? Better send more troops and expensive equipment over there to get blown up...
The previous Administration are obvious war criminals, and are now hounding your every step and trying to stir up insurrection? Better cave on everything they want.
OBAMA - THE AUDACITY OF BEING BUSH III
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Very good analysis of the situations (lies) which are destroying America. Profit above all else for the oligarchy. The battle between rich and poor rages on.
Yes...Iran is just another story as was Iraq and Afghanistan. The "boogeyman" is over there. Don't win but spend more money. Little they care about our citizens dying on foreign soil for profits and their world order. The elite are insane.
The Obama Regime is just trying to equalize corporate welfare among different industries. After giving bankers trillions, insurance execs. want to make sure they get at least as much corporate welfare as the banks. Drug companies are merging so they can be too big to fail and get jumbo corporate welfare like the banks that are too big to fail get.
Democrats must also ensure that whatever bill passes includes a provision enabling single states to secede.
No! then Texas might want to form a new republic with your state! might as well just flush yourself down the toilet. better to have a provision to extirpate DC from the Union
ANY LEGISLATION AT ALL other than a taxpayer funded SINGLE PAYER UNIVERSAL system is an accommodation of the health ins industry.
Some of the "missing" items can still be included in the final bill, and in fact are in some versions. Call your congress critters today.
All of the important items above, like standard of care and tough regulation of premuims and fees, and an end to a profit driven system that denies care ordered by a doctor - the minimum needed to even approach the privatized Dutch or Swiss systems - have NO chance of being included in any bill.
The insurance and hospital industries are far too powerful. They need to be replaced with a nationalized system. Considering that passage of these bills could spell the end of the possibility of a truly just healthcare system in my lifetime, I will oppose all of them.
Call both Congresspersons and Senators. The powers that be are counting on public outcry to fold and colapse.
The battle here is two-fold. As long as there is governing system, even if only in name, be on record as having registered your point of view.
Here's my congressman's numbers:Contact Rep. Henry Waxman
WASHINGTON, D.C. OFFICE
2204 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Telephone (202) 225-3976 Fax (202) 225-4099
LOS ANGELES OFFICE
8436 West Third Street, Ste 600 Los Angeles, CA 90048 Telephone 1 (310) 652-3095 Telephone 2 (818) 878-7400 Telephone 3 (323) 651-1040 Fax (323) 655-0502
If you need a zip code, use 91364-4435
We've written and called REPEATEDLY and all his local chief-of-staff says is "He understands our position." BUT, he was one of the committee chairs who wrote HR3200 which is a major give-away to the for-profit private insurance companies that are directly responsible for destroying health care in the U.S.
Background: LAST CONGRESS, he was on-board with HR676, the Conyers single payer bill. As soon as he was vaulted into the committee chair position, he retracted that sponsorship and started to parrot the party line about how single payer wasn't going to happen and proceeded to negotiate and give away the store (of taxpayer money). Of course, he has NOT HAD a PRIMARY CHALLENGE in years and even NO REPUBLICAN recently. He rakes in MILLIONS in contributions each year for these non-elections and much of it from the industries that will now benefit from their so-called contributions. Go to opensecrets.org for the full tally of these.
Calling your Congressman to do anything is next to meaningless, especially on health care. If they're not already on board with Weiner's bill, or HR676, or some other single-payer plan, no amount of begging or cajoling makes a damn bit of difference. That's because WE DON'T HAVE A DEMOCRACY. The oligarchs and plutocrats tell Congress what to do, period. And they do it. They certainly don't listen to us or Michael Moore, though they may find him entertaining and even occasionally agree with him. They may even have a "socialist" moment now and then, but it passes and the realpolitik of corporatocracy asserts its greedy head and the puppets in Washington do what they're paid to do: represent the interest of the superrich. The rest of us can sing and dance and protest till the cows come home and leave again for greener pastures. Our Congressmen won't notice either way.
Yea, virtually all Republican congressmen and most Democratic congressmen have adopted the same algorithm for getting reelected and staying in power -- Only give lip service to the needs and desires of constituents, serve the corporatocracy well in order to maximize campaign contributions and positive corporate media coverage, and then use the campaign contributions to make spurious and false claims about opponents during the political campaigns (claims that a friendly corporate media will rarely debunk). It works like a charm. Whatever little democracy was once achieved in the US is long gone.
Yes, good point. That's pretty much how things work today.
But it wasn't always this way, was it?
It has always been this way, just not as blatant. Ralph Nader made the comment that back in the 60s and 70s you could get to your members of congress, you could bend his/her ear and maybe get some desired legislation passed. He says it's no longer the case. There's an impenetrable wall - unless you have bundles of money.
We need to throw their next elections. Obama and my Dem party reps are REP-rehensible! The little difference between Rs and Ds is a matter of cosmetics, nothing more.
There may be some value in contacting Congressional Democrats and threatening to work for their Republican opponent's campaign when they are running for re-election in 2010. Unless they are delusional, they realize Republicans will have significant leverage in the 2010 elections pointing out the obvious flaws in health care reform enumerated in this article.
It will not be difficult for Republicans to convince a lot of swing voters that no health care reform would have been better than what the Democrats are currently proposing. The Republicans will, of course, spin the story to mask the corporate welfare aspects of the bill.
Not a good idea, voting for an R. The two-party will see that as an excuse to ratchet up the brutality. Better to write in: "single payer" or "no wars" or "no fascism" or the name of someone you like who didn't have the money to run. You want there to be a message.
I'd say that the authors have laid out a strong framework for discussion of the weaknesses of the various "insurance reform" proposals being "considered" (translated: being used to generate mountains of contributions from entrenched interests).
At the end of the day, the problem is twofold: money and stupidity. Too much money is in the wrong hands and it can always be spent to misdirect the less intelligent.
q
I have already stocked up on Maalox to be taken when my Congreesman and Senators tell me once again that "Any bill is better than no bill", just like they did when they supported the 2003 Medicare Drug Extortion Bill and the TARP bank bailouts.
Their "compromises" have been disasters to our country. Strange how every election ends up being 50 50? Back room party elite make sure of it.