The Incredible Shrinking Health Care Reform

[nightrain]

Truthout Original

The Incredible Shrinking Health Care Reform
Wednesday 05 August 2009
Norman Solomon

<<snip>>

Notions of universal health care are fading in the power centers of politics - while more and more attention focuses on the care and feeding of the insurance industry.

Consider a new message that just went out from Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee, which inherited the Obama campaign's 13-million email list. The short letter includes the same phrase seven times: "health insurance reform."

The difference between the promise of health care for everyone and the new mantra of health insurance reform is akin to what Mark Twain once described as "the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

The "health insurance reform" now being spun as "a glide path towards universal coverage" is apt to reinforce the huge power of the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries in the United States.

President Obama says that he wants "things like preventing insurers from dropping people because of pre-existing conditions." Those are not fighting words for the present-day insurance industry. Behind the scenes, massive deals are taking shape.

The president of America's Health Insurance Plans, Karen Ignagni, "noted that the industry had endorsed many of the administration's proposed changes, including ending the practice of refusing coverage for pre-existing conditions," The New York Times reported on August 3. A couple of days later, in a profile of Ignagni, the newspaper added, "Rather than being cut out of the conversation, her strategy has been to push for changes her members can live with, in hopes of fending off too much government interference."

This year, no more significant news article on health care politics has appeared than the August 4 story in The Los Angeles Times under the headline "Obama Gives Powerful Drug Lobby a Seat at Healthcare Table."

<<snip>>

Meanwhile, with a "mandate" herd of cash cows on the national horizon, the health insurance industry is licking its chops. The corporate glee is ill disguised as the Obama administration pushes for legal mandates to require that Americans buy health insurance - no matter how dismal the quality of the coverage or how unaffordable the "affordable" premiums turn out to be for real people in the real world.

The mandates would involve "diverting additional billions to private insurers by requiring middle-class Americans to purchase defective policies from these firms - policies with so many gaps and loopholes that they currently leave millions of our insured patients vulnerable to financial ruin," says a letter signed by more than 3,500 doctors and released last week by Physicians for a National Health Program.

Days ago, a New York Times headline proclaimed an emerging "consensus" and "common ground" on Capitol Hill. In passing, the article mentioned that lawmakers "agree on the need to provide federal subsidies to help make insurance affordable for people with modest incomes. For poor people, Medicaid eligibility would be expanded."

It's a scenario that amounts to expansion of health care ghettos nationwide. Medicaid's reimbursement rates for medical providers are so paltry that "Medicaid patient" is often a synonym for someone who can't find a doctor willing to help.

<<snip>>

http://www.truthout.org/080509H


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Is this the health care reform we want? I don't think so. We can do so much better, HR 676, for example-- Medicare for All. How much easier it would be....

[closeupready]

1. Anyone else disappointed that Obama has done a 180 on 'mandating the purchase of health insurance'?

Remember that this is PRECISELY what Hillary got behind during the campaign, and Obama criticized her mercilessly (and rightfully) for it. Now his administration is backing that very same thing. :(

His rejection of that proposed mandate was one of the reasons I decided to back him instead of her.

[HillbillyBob]

2. Oh I am a bit more that merely disappointed.

He does have a mandate from the people.
I am actually pretty angry about it for other folks who are struggling, mandating that we all have to buy insurance is bullsh.. mandated profits for the insurance industry while they still deny us coverage.

I am now on Medicare, Medicaid, and ADAP (fill in drug coverage by the state for hiv patients, but in part federally funded). The state of NC announced they would be cutting that back, I have not found out by how much yet. I wonder how I will afford 3,000+$ meds cost, thanks W for medicare fartD or medicare could negotiate those prices down. My SSD is 850 a month.

It happened to me when I was denied payment for a hospital stay and wiped my savings out, I lost my home and car that I only had 4 payments to go on the car.

My partner has taken a 60% pay cut since ( * ) stolen election and I have landed on disability prior to that we went from a house hold income of almost 88g (living in SoFla ain't cheap to less than 40g. He also helps his retired mother meet her bills too.
His BCBS costs him almost 240$ per paycheck every 2 weeks, but the coverage amounts to a 10% discount.
When he had to have surgery we had to decide between food, light bill, or pay the hospital.
The hospital did eventually get paid even if it was 50$ and 100$at a time.

We realize we are better off than a lot of people, if it had been major surgery plus a hospital stay after....

We could not afford rent in town any more so we found an abandoned house and bought it cheap.

We are trying to fix it up. Making it efficient on the cheap, we immediately changed all the lights for CFLs (bought for the rental) as they die off I get LEDs. We save up and replaced the washer for front loader and an energy start dishwasher, cans of expanding foam to put in cracks and around where pipes and ducts come through the floors. We have cut the power need in half, we are not using the ac this summer its broken, it cut our fuel oil bill in half last winter.
Insulated curtain liners, one window a paycheck. It got down to 1.9 degrees one night last winter, between the decorative fire place and a kero heater we managed to keep it 60 in here that night. Heat pumps do not work below 25 degrees and the electric coils cost too much to run.
The idea is to get the power use down to where we can think about putting in some solar panels. This will be our retirement home..we are not young.

We like it out here in Green Acres and the roof does not leak. We can grow veggies in the yard, not much this year as I just had to have bypass surgery 2 months ago when it was time to plant.

[closeupready]

6. I wish the two of you much health and happiness.

:) :hi:

And yes, I guess I'm as angry as you are. :mad:

[MichiganVote]

3. Yep, its a deal breaker for me. Some of us are getting squeezed by too many. Not much left.

[slipslidingaway]

4. knr #4 nt

[nightrain]

5. yes, while we bemoan the transfer of our money to the insurance extortionists,

Congress is still not getting to the root of the problems in how we finance and deliver health care. And maybe that's their goal... call it "reform", but avoid actually doing it.


From the end of the Solomon article--

'A public plan option "would do little to mitigate the damage of a reform that perpetuates private insurers' dominant role," according to the letter from 3,500 physicians. "Even a robust public option would forego 90 percent of the bureaucratic savings achievable under single payer. And a kinder, gentler public option would quickly fail in a health care marketplace where competition involves a race to the bottom, not the top, where insurers compete by NOT paying for care."

While the health care policy outcomes are looking grim, the supposed political imperatives are fueling the desires of Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill to produce a victory that President Obama can tout as health care reform. Consider this quote from "a prominent Democrat" in the August 10 edition of Time magazine: "Something called health-reform legislation will pass. The political consequences of not passing anything would be too great."

The likely result is a glide path to disaster.'


Yeah, "something called health-reform will pass". Why should we accept that's the best we can do? pnhp, calif nurses, and progressive democrats for america are all ramping up activities this month. I urge single payer activists to participate.