It's Time for a Real Debate on National Health Insurance - by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

[slipslidingaway]

Single-payer was marginalized and taken off the table during the Clinton health reform debate. We are repeating the same mistakes in 2009 by ignoring the polls which say that the majority prefer a government run, national health insurance, system similar to Medicare.


It's Time for a Real Debate on National Health Insurance

May 12,1993

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Norman_Solomon/Violence_TV_TTMLG.html

"...Instead, they gathered in front of the New York Times building, and their demand was simple: "Stop rationing health care news!" The protesters are angry over the fact that the newspaper's reporting routinely downplays a popular proposal-endorsed by 12 of New York City's 14 members of Congress-to overhaul the American health system: a singlepayer system of publicly-financed health care.

Poll after poll has shown that most Americans favor tax-financed national health insurance. But at the New York Times and other national media, proponents are kept at the periphery of the health care debate. They include 58 members of Congress who, on March 3 <1993>, introduced a bill-"The American Health Security Act"-to establish a Canadian-style, single-payer system.

...Critics dismiss managed competition as a bureaucratic hoax that should be renamed the "Insurance Industry Preservation Act." They warn that the freedom to choose one's own doctor would be eroded. They say it's absurd to leave "reform" to the Jackson Hole group of special interests who profit from the inefficient status quo.

...Managed competition was the subject of a lengthy MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour discussion on May 5 <1993>. The panel was made up of three government officials-a congressman, a governor and a state health commissioner-who said the Clinton approach would lower costs, and a fourth panelist, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, who argued it would increase costs and bureaucracy. (Woolhandler founded Physicians for a National Health Program, representing thousands of doctors who support a single-payer system.)

Near the end of the discussion, anchor Robert MacNeil offered Woolhandler the last word "since you're in the minority"-to which she responded: "Robert, I'm not in a minority. Polls are showing two-thirds of the American people support government-funded national health insurance."

...Because it won't "provide Americans with the care they need," the doctor replied.

But she could have offered another response: If much of the public supports national health insurance, and it's not debated seriously in Washington or the national media because of the power of special interests like the insurance lobby, what does that say about the health of our democracy?"



Extra! July/August 1993

Healthcare Reform: Not Journalistically Viable?

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1519

"In an October 1992 editorial, the New York Times proclaimed that "the debate over healthcare reform is over. Managed competition has won." This outcome, the Times announced (10/10/92), was "delicious" and "wondrous."

...The media slant in favor of managed competition seen before the 1992 election (see Extra!, 1-2/93) continues. While the phrase "managed competition" appeared in 62 New York Times news stories in the six months following the 1992 election, "single-payer" appeared in only five news stories during that period--never in more than a single-sentence mention.


...The justification media managers give for the imbalance of attention is that while managed competition is supported by the Clinton administration, a single-payer system is not "politically viable." What this means is that news judgements are based on elite preferences, not on popular opinion: The New York Times' own polling since 1990 has consistently found majorities--ranging from 54 percent to 66 percent--in favor of tax-financed national health insurance..."


Americans Support Single payer. Why Doesn't Celinda Lake?

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/december/americans_support_si.php

"Data derived from polls have long found strong support for “Medicare for All” or single payer national health insurance. For example, a recent AP/Yahoo poll found that 65 percent of Americans agree that the U.S. should “adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayer”. But so do other kinds of data, including data from citizen juries, focus groups, and even a national series of government-sponsored town hall meetings that were carefully designed to solicit support for anything but single payer.

In 2006, a Congressional Task Force created by the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act hosted 29 town hall meetings across the U.S. to ask Americans what type of health care reform they favored. The results of the “Citizen’s Health Care Working Group” were overwhelmingly in favor of single payer health insurance despite considerable bias against single payer health insurance in the way the meetings were structured. In fact, 25 of 29 of the meetings (86 percent) reported that a national health program was their most favored option (see press release and chart, “Congressional Task Force Disregards Public’s Call for National Health Insurance and chart,”).

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2006/october/citizens_health_ca.php
http://pnhp.org/PDF_files/Last_Page_from_appendix_b.pdf

Similar strong support for Medicare for All was found the last time health reform was on the top of the nation’s agenda, during the Clinton administration. In 1993, a citizen jury sat for 8 hours a day for five days in Washington, DC before making their choice among the then-leading options for health reform: managed competition (supported by Clinton), medical savings accounts, and single payer. Single payer received 17 out of 24 votes (70 percent). There were 5 votes for Clinton’s plan, and none for medical savings accounts. Focus groups conducted that year by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake reported the same strong support for single payer. “After conducting extensive focus groups on health care, pollster Celinda Lake discovered that the more people are told about the Canadian system, “the higher the support goes.” In contrast, according to Lake, working Americans found the managed competition idea “laughable.” (“It’s Time for a Real Debate on National Health Insurance”)....

So, how come Democratic pollster Celinda Lake now claims Americans won’t support single payer, and instead favor a plan that is a variant of managed competition? Because her latest research was brazenly biased. Kip Sullivan explains how and why..."

[slipslidingaway]

1. Thanks for the recs, the second article on HC at the first link is also

worth a read as it is exactly what is happening today...16 years later.

:(

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Norman_Solomon/Violence_TV_TTMLG.html

"Media Myth Pits Clinton Against Insurance Industry
November 24, 1993

"Buoyed by NAFTA's victory, the White House will now concentrate on its other major policy initiative-health care reform. We can expect mainstream news outlets to paint a picture of Bill and Hillary Clinton in mortal battle against the big bad insurance industry.

It's a vivid picture, but it distorts reality. As in the NAFTA battle, big corporations are in the president's corner.

...A full-blown media myth was born, with most reports omitting basic facts:

...* Operating through the Jackson Hole study group, the insurance giants helped draw up the managed competition blueprint, later adopted by the Clinton administration. Contrary to the Democratic Party ads, the Clinton plan was designed for-and by-big insurance interests. In a 1992 article in Health Economics magazine, Jackson Hole leaders bluntly argued that managed competition is the only way to avert a government takeover of "health care financing" and the "elimination of a multiple-payer private insurance industry."

What the Jackson Hole group feared was a Canadian-style system in which the government (the "single-payer") controls costs while paying all hospital and doctor bills. Single-payer rids health care of private insurance companies-along with costly bureaucracy, profiteering and wasteful advertising.

Despite the fact that a single-payer proposal has been endorsed by 95 members of Congress-plus groups like Consumers Union and Public Citizen-most major media have pushed it to the margins. A recent computer search found only one mention of the single-payer proposal on ABC's World News Tonight in all of 1993.

When media do mention a Canadian-style system, it's often dismissed as 'politically unrealistic." Yet according to General Accounting Office and Congressional Budget Office studies, only single-payer has a realistic chance of extending universal coverage without raising costs-the goal politicians claim to be seeking..."

[slipslidingaway]

2. How do you win a fight if you silence the harshest critics of those who hold power....

Please do not tell me that you are fighting the entrenched interests when you invite them to the discussions and private meetings and exclude those who have been fighting the For Profit companies for decades.

Imagine if P. Obama had called upon Dr. Maria Angell to speak at the WH summit instead of Karen Ignagni, members of Congress might be pleading for a public option.

Dr. Marcia Angell not invited to attend and therefore not called upon to speak, Conyers asked that two single-payer advocates be invited to attend....Dr. Quentin Young and Dr. Marcia Angell - his request was denied.


Watch the first few minutes of this testimony from Dr. Angell who was not allowed to attend the WH summit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQNphM6xUsE

"The reason our health system is in such trouble is that it is set up to generate profits, not to provide care..."

[slipslidingaway]

3. evening kick n/t

[slipslidingaway]

4. kick before this is archived n/t

[Overseas]

5. Kick ! eom

[slipslidingaway]

6. Thanks, Conyers made a statement yesterday on the floor about the 90's...

here we are again.

:(

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6522383&mesg_id=6522383

"...Now, on the other hand, the universal single-payer health care bill is not just a few people that have come up with something to involve themselves in the discussion with health care reform. As a matter of fact, the single-payer concept is one of the oldest serious major notions that has been around. That is to say, for those of us who were here when the President was Bill Clinton and he assigned his wife the task of taking on the reform of health care, we were summoned, we who were supporting single-payer, were summoned to the White House collectively.

I remember very well that Jerry Nadler of New York was there, a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee. And what happened was that we were urged to step back from our initiative which had been going on for years before the Clintons assumed their responsibilities on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and after some brief discussion, we agreed that that was the appropriate thing to do. We did it. We did step back.

That concept is now undergoing a very short shrift in this whole discussion, namely because this whole discussion was initiated on the premise that universal single-payer health care was too new, too startling and too complex. It would take too long to institute. And so we are going to start off by not including it in the mix.

...What I am saying is that those Members who support universal single-payer health care have already made a major concession in the discussion, major concession. And it just seems to me that this could have been addressed in a different way, and it wasn't. That's water over the dam. But still, 86 Members, and there are more who are not cosponsors of the bill, were never cut into the major premises of how we go about it..."

[LWolf]

7. k&r nt

[Orwellian_Ghost]

8. Bump

[slipslidingaway]

9. Thanks LWolf and Orwellian_Ghost! n/t