Mandatory Health Insurance Is Not Progress But Political Payoff

Yesterday I watched Arnold Schwarzenegger, the CEO of Safeway, high-rolling California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (under fire for living large on his campaign contributors' credit card) and the man who split the union movement in two, SEIU's Andy Stern, celebrate in Sacramento what it means to be progressive in America.

Apparently it's about forcing everyone to buy health insurance at any price the insurers want to charge with whatever little benefits the companies want to provide. Then you can claim you are requiring insurers to sell to everyone. Hmmm. We have to buy. But insurers must sell. Progressive values?

Mandatory purchases of private health insurance was the centerpiece of legislation that made it out of Nunez's half of the legislature and led the glowing Los Angeles Times story today. It still would have to go to the state senate and the ballot to pay for taxpayer subsidies for the poor and to require employers to pay up for coverage too. A family of two making $54,000 would have to find a way to pay for a health insurance policy averaging $12,000 per year currently. If the ballot measure passed, employers would only have to pay about half of what they currently cover in benefits (6.5 percent of payroll vs. today's average of 13 percent employers contribute) causing individuals to pay more or face state fines.

This sop to the insurance industry is masquerading as progressive reform in the presidential debate as much as Sacramento. Never mind about the hard work of controlling costs and reigning in the spending by insurers, drug companies, doctors, hospitals, and host of health care middlemen. Just make the public buy insurance, regardless of its costs or benefits,and it will all be okay.

The goal of universal health care had been to stop waste and profiteering, then redistribute the savings to the public in the form of guaranteed health care. But these new "post-partisan" plans have been stripped of all effective cost containment. They simply force businesses, individuals and taxpayers to pick up the tab. Apparently, if you can't beat the medical-insurance complex, join it.

Mandatory health insurance is not progress. It's not moving forward for economic equity, social justice, or even material gain in the form of affordable, dependable insurance coverage. None of these proposals regulate or cap premiums. Insurers will not charges less simply because more people are required to buy. And increasingly insurers are canceling coverage based on the fine print in policies. That abuse is not what Sacramento or Democratic presidential candidates propose tackling. Sacramento politicians even refused to say how much in benefits insurers would have to sell.

There is a larger question at work for progressives. Does progress mean getting something done, anything done, to justify your existence? Or does it mean doing the right thing? Or at least not the wrong thing.

The answer in California for politicians, who face strict term limits, is they needed cash from the medical insurance complex to extend their stay in office. That's the story that didn't make the front page of the Los Angeles Times today.

Labor unions, hospitals and doctors, health insurers and the drug industry have contributed $3.8 million to California Proposition 93, the measure to extend legislative term limits on the February ballot, as they sought and received special benefits in Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez's health care legislation, AB 1x. Groups with a stake in the health care debate gave 56 percent of the $5.9 million contributed to Prop 93 to date. SEIU is the top donor, with $1.1 million in. And in the final bill the union received wage increases for its home health care workers and $25 million per year for their "workforce development."

The Speaker has turned the legislature's most pressing work into an ATM for the Prop 93 effort. That's the only reason the legislature could take a vote to force a family of two making $54,000 per year to pay whatever health insurers want to charge. The potential is for even bigger contributions to keep politicians in office longer. Watch how Kaiser, Health Net, Blue Shield, PacifiCare and other insurers in support of the Nunez bill now ante up for Prop 93. Progress or pay off? History will judge.

Comments

[Choicelady]

This article is entirely accurate. As one who was part of the effort to push through some kind of plan (we prefer single payer by a long shot) we were open to incremental reform. This is NOT it! ABX1 1 is total capitulation to preserving the insurance industry, and even people who have long been consumer advocates have yielded. It's shameful. NO one is 'giving' insurance to people in California - they are forcing all of us to buy something with vastly more limited options and much higher costs. Someone recently asked: why do we have socialism for the corporations and free-market competition for the rest of us? Those of us with the fewest resources will have the largest bite, and no amount of assurances that 'we will fix it in the future' are the least believable. We did that with energy deregulation and workers comp. It is the future. It is not fixed. The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization has recently released a survey showing that almost 52% of the uninsured in MA cannot take up the mandatory insurance because they cannot afford it. To see their survey to to:
http://www.gbio.org/healthcare2.html
It is disgusting that people who ought to know better are claiming ABX1 1 is a victory for the uninsured. No such thing - and dangerous to us all.

[cobblepot]

Figures suggest that americans spend almost half of their health-care dollars for alternative care (non-AMA, etc.). Would these proposals cover alternative care-givers? Not so much, i'd wager. I haven't been to a doctor for 22 years. I don't want to buy their stinkin' insurance.

[ramal]

Simply another band-aid on a long festering and now gangrenous wound that is healthcare in America. We have entire generations that have been brainwashed about the horrors of "socialized medicine." It is the proverbial boogey-man that has become the mantric slogan for the right and the health insurance industry. I am afraid that the American Sheeple will never wake up.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I'll die in my car...

[researcher]

manatory health insurance will bankrupt this country. whoops we are already bankrupt.

we need to make health care part of the state or government like fire protection and police protection and roads.

will not work as long as privatized.

the evil of capitalism. profits from the sick and needy and 47 million without health care.

ron paul wants charity to pick up the tab not governement. that should work since we americans are a individualistic society.

where on earth are ron pauls ideas working. please where.

[Ides]

This is one issue where Hillary Clinton is absolutely wrong. She announces that she's the only one who will provide healthcare, then she turns around and hands a bill to people on minimum wage. In veiled words and double-speak, she disguises handouts to the insurance companies as handouts to the needy.

[AMolinaro]

Forcing Americans to buy coverage from the same private corporations that have miserably failed to provide adequate healthcare is patently absurd. The for-profit system is a failure, plain and simple. And the politicians have shown in more ways than one just how out of touch they are. Not only are they not providing people with the healthcare they're demanding, they completely fail to understand the costs of healthcare to individuals. Some states have proposed fines of a few hundred, even a few thousand dollars for people who refuse to buy coverage from the industry. However it would still be cheaper for most to pay the fines than to buy the coverage, which politicians might know if they didn't have government-provided health insurance.

Socialized healthcare systems generally have about 5-10% in administrative costs, meaning costs not directly related to your medical care. In the US system, that number is closer to 40%. The number one factor in keeping our costs so high? Profit.

[slc20]

Great Article!!!

Now send a copy to Paul Krugman.

[Mr.Fitz]

Auto insurance is also "universal". What is needed is not insurance, but care. I'm not sure where the tide turned in favor of the insurance industry on this issue. Before, there was the idea of universal health insurance, i.e. socialized medicine. That somehow turned into universal insurance coverage, meaning, that it is mandatory in the same way that auto insurance is mandatory. What's so difficult to understand that the capital that is tied up in the insurance industry could be in the medical care industry instead, serving the interests of the people?

[unfoxworthy]

Dr Rick is "Right on". I'll not elaborate on my past posts which relay the same message!

Mormon...you are sadly misguided. It's preventative care that will curb much of the catastrophes you claim to want to "cover" with my money.

Insurance companies have run their course and overstayed their welcome. Single payer with progressive oversight...bring it.
Profits made on the backs of the sick and the old are insane.

[GuiltyByStander]

As a Canadian I'm a strong supporter of socialized medical insurance, and I agree completely with Court's comment that forcing everyone to buy flawed, over-priced insurance is unjust.

The US Medical insurance system is broken in two ways: it fails to put downward pressure on service pricing, and it rewards private capital immensely for a zero-risk investment and the provision of inferior service.

[TimeForChange]

I’ve had enough of the US corporate profiteering healthcare system. A few years ago I had a minor heart attack. I thought I had insurance. While in the hospital, looking at hospital bills of possibly $150,000, I found out that Aetna had changed the terms of my policy several months before and they would only pay $5000. I was never notified by Aetna of the policy change. Found out that they didn’t even HAVE to notify me by mail of the change. Found out that this was “legal” in 34 states at the time - now it’s more. You only think you have health insurance. Try using it! To add insult to injury, the 1st night in the hospital they almost killed me by giving me too much nitro, causing my blood pressure to drop too low. They didn’t even have a blood pressure monitor on me, the guy with the heart attack. If my wife hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be writing this. My lawyer said my wife would have had a case if I had died, but since I lived there wasn’t much I could do. I could write a book not only about the incompetent medical service I received but also about the incompetent billing department at the hospital and at Aetna. It took my wife almost a year to sort through the mess and deal with all of the multiple billing, billing errors, etc. Now I can’t get insurance because of my pre-existing condition.

Hillary Clinton is nothing more than an overpaid corporate lobbyist. She forces me to provide and pay for health care for illegals. That's where her priorities lie. Now she wants to force me to pay for expensive health care for myself while she sends our jobs overseas to be done by low wage workers (and in some cases slaves) while bringing in "guest workers" to run down the wages of the jobs still here. Anyone that thinks Hillary is fit to be president should read her manual on commodities trading.....

Canada looks pretty good from where I’m at.

[drricklippin]

Thanks very much for the education on the California political dynamics.

Still - until election reform comes- which should be the number one goal for progressives, what happenned yesterday in California is a start in the right direction for meaningful US health care reform.

When election reform comes, and only then, will a genuine progressive agenda have a chance to become manifest.

I am optimistic because we have truly hit bottom.

Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

[cynara]

Lest the public forget, a single payer plan "medicare for all" system already passed both houses of the California Legistlature - SB 840.
http://www.onecarenow.org/sb840.htm

Unfortunatly Gov. Schwarzeneggar vetoed it. We are one vetoe away from having health coverage for all WITHOUT insurance middlemen profiting off the sick.

Instead Gov. Schwarzeneggar has proposed the opposite, guaranteed profits for already rich insurance providers, forced on the general public.

[Mormondude]

If the state of California wants to offer a government plan, let them do it. But don't force every Californian to join it.

The idea behind socialized medicine is that you punish the healthy to pay for the unhealthy.

Of course, if they were to do such a thing, the state insurance would cost significantly more money than the private insurance would. The private insurers can pick and choose which patients to insure and which to deny insurance. The state would have to take all the sickest patients denied private insurance. This sounds horrible, but what's the big problem? Let the healthy people pay less for private insurance. Let them benefit from staying healthy. And then after everyone that can be insured by a private plan has coverage, put the rest on a state plan to distribute some of the burden.

In practice, the same thing could be accomplished by having the state provide catastrophic coverage for EVERYONE. Thus, if you have a chronic condition that's going to cost $100k per year to treat, you get state benefits. If you're relatively healthy, you buy your own insurance. And an enormous disincentive would be removed from private insurance companies from covering people with chronic conditions, and they could afford to cover them.

There are good ways to reform the current health insurance system without killing it. It seems like many so-called progressives prefer NOT to reform the system because they want it to die and be replaced by a single payer system.