Why Health Care Now?
Just over one hundred days ago, Congress and President Obama approved an unprecedented investment of nearly 800 billion dollars in the U.S. economy. The spending is beginning to reach targeted projects and programs and to bolster job creation. It is now time to address another drag on job creation in America.
As an American who has lived part of his life on public assistance and among the ranks of the uninsured, I am worried about what failing to fix our broken health care system says about our nation's moral character. But as the CEO of Kelly Services, I am increasingly concerned about what failing to fix our health care system means for our nation's economy and its ability to compete globally.
Even in a good year, Kelly's U.S. health care costs are more than its domestic profits. Kelly operates in 39 countries. The United States is the only country where this statistic is true. Further, the cost of health care in the U.S. is rising dramatically faster than our ability to raise prices or adjust wages.
Every year companies make strategic decisions about where to invest and grow jobs. The cost of health care plays a large role in these choices. Increasingly, it makes less sense to grow jobs in America because of the cost of U.S. health care. Hundreds of my colleagues are reaching the same conclusion. How can we get our economy moving again if our nation's corporations are forced to invest in job growth elsewhere?
Health care's impact on job growth extends further. Kelly Services represents the free agent workforce -- self-employed professionals, temporary employees, and independent contractors. Many people have chosen this employment route because it is the only way that they can balance work life with personal responsibilities like elder and child care. Others value independence and dream of starting their own business, creating something new, and becoming an American entrepreneur.
These individuals represent nearly 30 percent of the U.S. workforce and are frequently uninsured because they lack access to affordable employer-provided coverage. No one should be forced to make the choice between health insurance and starting a new business. No one should have to stay in a job where they are unhappy and unproductive because they are afraid of being able to secure health insurance on their own.
The percentage of Americans voluntarily engaging in entrepreneurial start ups is falling. At the same time, many other countries are catching up or exceeding the U.S. Our economy cannot thrive if thousands of people are electing not to start a new business because of health care.
Health care is the issue that jeopardizes worker productivity and creativity, key sources of the U.S. economy's global competitiveness. Today, too many employment decisions are motivated by health care access rather than where our citizens can make innovative and productive contributions to society.
Business leaders must take a proactive role in the health care reform debate. In this spirit, I am a member of Better Health Care Together, a coalition of business, labor, and public policy groups who believe that health care reform is among the most pressing moral and economic imperatives facing our nation. Through groups like Better Health Care Together, we must share what we know about the role our health care system plays in corporate decision-making so that policymakers can make informed decisions.
Our nation's economy faces many immediate threats. It also faces many long-term challenges that must also be addressed before we can truly rebound from these economic crises. If you are worried about job growth and competitiveness, you should be working to fix our health care system. Health care reform is a challenge that must be met.
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Sorry Carl, but there is no chance that we will get meaningful healthcare reform from this President or the Democratic party. Until a few million of us are willing to converge on DC in our rightious furry and let these corporate whores hear our voices resounding through the halls of congress and echoing into the oval office of the White House we will never get anything done on our behalf.
Wise up and rise up. This is our country. Take to the streets and take it back!
I am totally aghast at this statement, when time after time again you vote for the same people in congress and senate. Some of them have been there 60 plus years. Look in the mirror and ask yourself why we don't have healthcare.
The "public-option" plan being pushed by this writer and a phalanx of other corporate liberals (HCAN, AFL-CIO, Obama/Baucus/Pelosi/Stark) is among the most insidious frauds being perpetrated by the Beltway Democrats. Here's why:
The advantage of single-payer is in risk pooling--everyone is in the same pool: well, sick, young, old, sick, and poor, thus averaging out the risks and costs of guaranteeing coverage to everyone. In the "public-option plan," everyone is NOT in the same risk pool, as they would be in single payer. In a "pub-op" plan, the oldest, sickest, and poorest would end up in the public plan--the youngest and healthiest cohort would aggressively marketed by the private HMOs, because that's where the profits are. Hence the whole advantage of single-payer risk pooling would be lost: the whole point is to combine EVERYONE's resources (through taxation rather than private premiums) so that the healthy 80 percent subsidize the unhealthy 20 percent and thus achieve overall cost efficiencies not obtainable if these two groups are in separate pools. Moreover, the "pub-op" public plan will have to charge premiums and impose deductibles, just like the private plans. It would be just more of the same, notwithstanding the "public" branding.
This is the Democrats' sham reform: game the system so that the public sector founders, thus discrediting the idea of publicly funded health care for another generation.
I'm not sure that I agree with this. I am an ardent single-payer supporter, but I believe that creating a public option and "letting those who like their private insurance keep it" is the quickest way to single payer.
How many people do you know who LIKE their private insurance?
I'm healthy and I'd buy into the public plan. I know many others like me. We need a public option IMMEDIATELY, and then an PR campaign to educate americans that the public option is their best bargain. Soon, the insurance companies will go the way of typewriter repairmen.
Here's the point you fail to grasp: in the proposed hybrid plans, the public option would be no different from the private plans. It would have to charge premiums, impose deductibles, etc. Moreover, since it would be saddled with the sickest, oldest, and poorest cohort, its costs would be unmanageable. In the interests of achieving a "level playing field" for the private HMOs, the public plan option would be just another HMO, albeit under government sponsorship. All the advantages of single payer: risk pooling (everyone in the same pool, no one out) and the attendant cost efficiencies would be lost. The idea of public health coverage would be DISCREDITED by this Rube Goldberg contrivance.
The ONLY reason this plan is being floated is as a sop to the public while enforcing essentially the status quo. It's a Trojan Horse for the HMOs--lipstick on a pig, whatever--choose your cliche. What it is NOT is meaningful reform. It's main purpose is to give a veneer of reform to the status quo. This public option will be so dysfunctional and costly, it will NOT be an opening toward single payer--it will provide ammunition to those who want to torpedo single payer.
If you don't fight uncompromisingly for single payer, you are going to be stuck with this monstrosity of a health-care system for another generation. The hybrid plan will be a major step in one direction: toward third-world economic decrepitude and desperation for this country.
van..you are so far off on this one...I believe CARL (author of post)..should, based on what he's accomplished..what he KNOWS, be leading the way for a viable health care system...you van are so worried about paying to innoculate a child in poverty...how do you sleep at night. I recently completed aggressive cancer treatment (chemo and radiation)...I will be in debt (and I HAVE PPO Insurance..I always paid for the "best coverage".even when healthy)...but my out of pocket..which would take a Rhodes Scholar to understand have crushed me...yet, a girlfriend in another state, also went through treatment..and was out of pocked about $2,000.00...(that I could handle...on payments)... AND...jeezuz this one's scarey..if I get laid off (always a possibility)..I am, duh....completely uninsurable...so.."if" cancer is not cured...I'm "dead lady walking"... try to get on with life with that hanging over you..I'm only 54..so have many "earning" years left..."if" I live... and I was so very healthy...until cancer..that I was definitely a "profit" center for my health insurer... now I'm on the other side...and it does not feel good..to live in this fear...in the U S. of A...of being among the uninsured....so walk a mile (hell, walk a block) in my shoes..THEN comment...
Van is not too far off. I don't trust our government to impose enough rules and regulations to prevent private insurance from gaming the system. All the corporate bosses supported the system we have and they still will make sure the private sector is able to make huge profits. So they would unload the elderly, the disabled, the pre-existing problems and would push their own healthy customers on the public system as soon as they would start costing money. GM could have supported Hillary, they did not, and now the UAW and taxpayers will have to pick up the tap or workers will lose benefits they worked for many yeas ago, actually deferred wages.
We could insure all hourly wage earners and salaried employees earning $110.000 annually or less and let all the others stick to their insurance without getting into the public system when the going gets tough. And the public system should not be allowed to lower service just to keep the privates competitive while making huge profits.
So I do have the same fear Van has, the private sector with the help of senators like Nelson would co-opt the national health care system. They would make offers of doing better in future and when the danger has passed they will be back to the same old tricks. We now can see deceptive advertising just as they did before. I can't believe they have changed, I don't trust them.
Halsey--you completely misunderstood my post. The hybrid "pub-op" plan does not go nearly far enough to establish true public funding of the health care system--it will fail to control costs and will not attain universal coverage.
Only single-payer Medicare for all can cover everyone while reducing costs overall. This is the system in place in Canada and Europe, where EVERYONE is covered--no one ever sees a medical bill (or rarely, at least), and their life-expectancy and infant-mortality rates are better than those in the United States.
Please read carefully before you attack.
Sounds good, vanmungo !!
All I can say is that, instead of inventing the wheel, the U.S should study and adapt what has been proven to work in other countries, after decades of trial and error.
Why is it that no politician mentions this, lets study what has been proven to work ??? all politicians are inventing these innovative, complicated schemes about healthcare, all b.s.
Instead, as you have well pointed out, both the DEMS and the GOP want to mantain the existing status quo, but with another name.
Ben678--
Actually, there are some politicians who are pushing for single payer, but they are in the wilderness right now, and they need a massive public outcry and uprising to get their bills passed. The two main single-payer bills are
HR676 (submitted by John Conyers)
and
S703 (submitted by Bernie Sanders)
If you want to find out the latest news in single-payer activism, check out these Web sites:
www.pnhp.org
www.singlepayeraction.org
http://guaranteedhealthcare4all.org/
www.1payer.net
OK, since they wouldn't allow my last comment, how about this.
Carl. Would you be so kind as too post your sales pitch to new companies seeking your services?
I find it hard to understand your point, seeing that the very product you provide to clients is cost savings via "no health insurance" "low wages" "no unemployment costs" "no long term benefits" "no organized labor to fight".
Temporary labor should be a small market in a successful economy, not the goal. I find it disturbing that you tout healthcare, while pitching cheap labor to accounts.
The largest Auto producing region in North America is Ontario, Canada. Why ? National Health care.
The main street media seems to be brain dead on this fact. Japan, Korea, Europe, all have National Health care.
Yes, absolutely right. Not only National Health care, but also National Retirement.
In the US, everything is subordinated to the preservation of capitalist orthodoxy in its purest form.
It is like North Korea or Cuba, where everything is subordinated to the preservation of communist orthodoxy in its purest form.
In the U.S. and North Korea, it does not seem to matter how much everyone suffers, or how inefficient or bankrupt certain parts of the economy are, as long as political orthodoxy is mantained.
2012 : New Political Parties !!!!!
Very shrewd assessment. You do get the feeling that much of the political elite of this country--both parties--would rather go down in a blaze of neoliberal glory than take meaningful action to save the country. This "pub-op" hybrid health-care plan is the perfect example: at all costs, one must keep the corrupt, dysfunctional HMOs in business, even though every other industrial country makes it illegal to profit from human illness . . . and for good reason. Those countries have half our per capita health-care costs and better outcomes. Yet Washington--again, both parties--treats single payer as though it does not exist, even though the majority of the American people and physicians favor it.
Mr. Camden,
Thank you for putting the situation in economic terms. We are the only country where health care for workers is dependent on employers. It is not fair to the workers, and it is not fair to the employers. It's a form of ... bondage. Are you and your group for Single Payer health care? I was not able to open the business site you referenced.
Thank you, Carl, for this truly important, refreshing, hope-giving article and for your support of Better Health Care Together. I think the U.S.'s moral problem is truly related to the health care problem, and my hope is that if that connection becomes increasingly clear as the result of their pending economic bankruptcy, then the "haves" will moderate their exaltation of greed, self-interest, fear, resentment, and luxury. It's probably going to be a long stuggle, of many years, but if it becomes inescapably clear that empathy and sharing are required for them to survive, they may moderate at least a little bit!
Nice post and very accurate. I tried to start my own business right before the economy tanked. I was lucky enough to find a job afterwards as a contractor with no insurance. After a few months I now have insurance, but everything is a pre-existing condition, and nothing is covered so its worthless, yet expensive. The US for profit health insurance system is a scam and needs to go away.
I'm glad to hear that the business world is finally becoming concerned with health care issues in the US. What I'm wondering, is why it took so long. Given that health care costs are such a detrimental expense to doing business, why hasn't business taken steps to try to control this expense previously?
Had GM not toed the GOP line the last time, it wouldn't be bankrupt now. Maybe our "capitalists" will wake up and finally allow this to happen. It will save them money!
We have to be smart about this and we have Obama there, so that is good...The reality is that the US healthcare system is the 5th largest ECONOMY in the world and it is a CF mess....The only way thru the woods is Single Payer because of Adverse Risk Selection,,,,even if the insurance companies accept that there is no more adverse risk selection, they willl target their marketing to the young neigheborhoods or the rich neighborhoods.... or area codes or whatever.....It is a mess...and we need to do more preventive work here and as long as the Love Canals are buried over multiple subsystems we will never get the details for that......
The good news is President Obama is indeed smart. The BAD news is he's a practitioner of that damnable practice of "the politics of the possible" formerly championed by Clinton. That means, unless it looks like it's easy President Obama probably won't try to get it done. He seems to be "leading" by seeing which way the herd is headed and jumping in front of it. The only exceptions seems to be when it comes to protecting wealth and high ranking asses.
hate to say it, but this is so true. he and hilary both said, 'don't let anybody tell you differently, one payer government health insurance is the only solution', in the past. now the senate has completely taken it off the table. what a disappointment . it might be deal breaker for voters.
NOT going to a national public single payer plan that provides universal coverage is national suicide and we've known that for 30 years.
And we don't have the votes to pass it.
This does not look good folks.
Your comment is not helpful, jmpurser. YES WE CAN!
Mandating single payer coverage to amerikkkans right now is POLITICAL suicide. Create a public option and watch the millions flee their gouging insurance companies.
You are misinformed. Poll after poll shows that 60 percent of Americans want single-payer Medicare for all. A survey this year in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that 59 percent of U.S. physicians favor single payer.
The only obstacle to single payer is the tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to BOTH parties from the HMOs and Big Pharma. The fate of health-care reform is in the hands of Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Here is a record of his career bribes--er, campaign donations--from the folks who want to see single payer DOA:
"Why aren't single payer advocates allowed to testify before Baucus' committee? Follow the money. Here's why Baucus is not doing the people's business:
"According to OpenSecrets.org, over his career he has taken donations from:
* The Insurance Industry: $1,170,313
* Health Professionals: $1,016,276
* Pharmaceuticals/Health Products Industry: $734,605
* Hospitals/Nursing Homes: $541,891
* Health Services/HMOs: $439,700
Baucus has shown his bias and should be removed from leading the health care reform effort by the Democratic Party leadership.
That is a grand total of $3,902,785. Can we trust Baucus to put aside the profits of the industries that have kept him in the Senate?" (Courtesy of Kevin Zeese)
You are simply parroting rationalizations given by corporate Democrats for burying single payer. They are representing their corporate donors, NOT to the people who elected them--and you are acting as their echo chamber. Shame on you.
I have voted for Obama, but now I see that he has no plans, regarding healthcare, other than a timid windowdressing. I read somewhere that the personal stock portfolio of Mr. Obama himself includes stocks of health insurance companies. No wonder.
I am not voting for Obama again. DEMS = GOP = servants of Big Money Interest Groups.
2012 : new political parties !!!!!! this is the only way we are going to get the healthcare we deserve, as human beings, and need, to be competitive.
Good post Mr. Camden, and best wishes with your iniciatives.
No. The GOP is functionally evil. The democrats are useless. That's hardly a ringing endorsement but it's a fallacy to try to equate them.
I 100% agree on the need for new parties though.
How could not have realized that during the election?
He took out TV ads opposing "socialized medicine"
Basically saying that even if the congress passed it, he would veto it
Thats a L.I.E..
He did say from the beginning that he did not support single payer insurance.
The New York Times recently did a story on segregated prom nights in small town Georgia, complete with pictures. Who even new such segregated events still existed? The article included a picture of whites all dressed up and a similar picture of black students. Apart from the skin color of the students, the weight differences stood out. The white students were of average build, while most of the black students appeared to be overweight, some significantly so. It is not a good omen for future health care costs in the US. Any Federal role in making sure health care is available to all residents at a reasonable cost should include new or higher Federal taxes on products that contribute to unhealthy outcomes; for example, alcoholic drinks, soft drinks and junk food. States with low tobacco taxes should be strongly encouraged to raise them. If you think the top 5% of income earners are going to pay for everyone's health care and take care of the national debt, you are deluding yourself.
your comment has a racist tone. consider the source -- the school photograph from a racist school. there are plenty overweight white people, so don't fool yourself.
I am one of those independent contractors, Carl. I'm a legal transcriptionist and, no, I cannot afford insurance. Your group does sound like it has the creds to be heard and I hope you will be. Lord knows Obama is not listening to the working people. I have signed petition after peitition. I hope at some point I can be at a rally. Today, May 30, 2009, the National Action Day organized by Healthcare Now for single-payer rallies all over the country. I'll betcha this doesn't make a blip on the news.
There are a lot of good reasons to reform healthcare. Feeling sympathetic for you as a "working person" because you're an indie legal transcriptionist isn't one of them.
that was about being able to afford outrageous expensive health care. health care should be a right, not a privilege . people are dying and being refused treatments in this supposedly great country. it's disgusting. insurance companies are the problem and our president has decided to help them get richer, not solve the problem.
Wow! I sure hope YOU aren't going to be in on the debate on health care reform!
Carl and his fellow corporate Democrats come to bury single payer, not to praise it. Read carefully. Don't fall for the pub-op compromise. It's a sham designed to keep the HMOs alive and to discredit single payer by setting up an workable "public sector" that will be saddled with the oldest, sickest, and poorest.
ONLY single payer is real reform, and you're going to have to force Obama, Baucus, and Pelosi to support it. They'll fight it tooth and nail because they're all owned by the HMOs and Big Pharma.
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