Blacking Out Single-Payer--And Killing The Auto Industry

When the history of our current economic crisis is written, there will need to be a full chapter devoted to the willful ignorance or stupidity of the traditional media. Right before our eyes stands the solution to a huge chunk of our fiscal nightmare and a lifeline for the auto industry: single-payer health care. And, yet, there is a virtual traditional media blackout on single-payer, witness another example in yesterday's New York Times.

In The Week In Review, reporter Kevin Sack stumbles through an entirely conventional wisdom article, with this brilliant observation:

Mr. Obama seems to recognize that the recession, with its devastating job losses, affords him the potential to accelerate public opinion. To broaden support for his plan -- whatever it ends up being -- he insisted last week that systematic improvements in health care would be essential to any lasting economic recovery.

Sacks goes on to chronicle some of the desperation faced by millions of uninsured and under-insured people. And, then, he arrives at the framing of the solutions:

There is a rough consensus, certainly among the Democrats who control both houses, around many key components of the Obama plan -- to expand government subsidization of insurance for the poor, to stimulate competition through a new government plan, to require insurers to accept those with pre-existing medical problems and to invest in computerization, prevention and payment incentives for better care.

And...

Less certain, of course, is how to pay for it. During the campaign, Mr. Obama said he would get about half of the necessary total, estimated at more than $100 billion a year, by raising taxes on those making more than $250,000. The rest was to come from savings generated by various efficiencies (their value is a matter of considerable dispute).

Mr. Obama reaffirmed on Thursday that his proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts might be deferred because of the recession. "We're probably going to have to, then, find additional dollars to pay for some investments in the short term," he said, adding that he wants his health plan to pay for itself over a decade.

Some of those dollars may be found by packaging health care initiatives as stimulus measures, a recessionary opportunity presented by the public's acceptance of deficit spending to spur the economy. What, after all, is $100 billion for health coverage if the government can print $700 billion to bail out the banks?

What is startling--though, perhaps, it should not be by now--is that Sack cannot write the phrase "single-payer" in the entire article, even though it is the only health care plan that would SAVE money and relieve the auto industry--and the rest of the business world--of billions of dollars in health care costs.

Even The Financial Times is starting to get it, though indirectly. In an article today on the auto industry, it acknowledges that wages are pretty much the same between U.S. auto workers and non-union Japanese companies. The big difference is health care, particularly for retirees:

GM and Toyota workers earn similar wages of about $29 an hour.

The big difference is in fringe benefits, such as healthcare insurance and pensions.

The overall labour-cost figures also include retiree benefits. Thousands of GM, Ford and Chrysler workers were on pensions with generous healthcare benefits - foreign carmakers have a fraction of the number of retirees.

I wrote as far back as 2005 that single-payer was the solution to the cost issues of the auto industry. But, The New York Times, along with the rest of the traditional media, repeatedly refuses to include single-payer as a legitimate option.

By doing so, the Times and the rest of the traditional media are killing industries, jobs and, yes, people. Shame on them.

Comments

[Michele Swenson - Huffpost Blogger]

I missed this when first posted. We have yet to have a serious debate about single payer health care in this country that is not corrupted by corporate propaganda. Corporations wield the money and the megaphone to distort the issue. They promote marketplace solutions perpetuating profit-centered, instead of quality-centered, health care.

The media blackout of single-payer pieces in Colorado was near complete during the convening of the Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform over 2007. The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News almost exclusively printed pieces by "free-market" advocates. The Rocky's business editor told me that he did not want to confuse readers with information about single payer health care - the only one of five state proposals evaluated that demonstrated savings to the state ($1.4 billion in the year) and comprehensive coverage for all.

The upshot is that we have still not had the discussion in our state about Single Payer. Many, indeed, do not know what single-payer insurance is, or what it is that the Health Care Reform Commission did. The media, the corporations, and many on the national scene continue to preempt honest debate about the single-payer model.

[HealthCareForAllactivist]

Montana Maven, I respectfully suggest and request that you refer to the other countries as having implemented non-profit financing of health care.

Non-profit single-payer national health insurance is the best version of non-profit financing of health care. Between the 1880's and 1980's other countries implemented non-profit financing of health care. They've had little or no bureaucracy and high cost-efficiency now for decades, as seen by the dates. In the meantime, the U.S. has lost businesses, lost jobs, lost lives and lost our health, as seen in part by the pain and suffering leading up to those lost lives.

Best regards,

Bob Haiducek

Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate,

who advocates getting reminders
http://www.ninenineohnine.org/pages/Get_Monthly_Reminders
to follow the schedule
http://www.ninenineohnine.org/pages/Schedule

so that we will influence our U.S. Representatives by our numbers
http://www.ninenineohnine.org/pages/Number_of_Participants
and pass the desired law
http://www.ninenineohnine.org/pages/HR676
and get the benefits
http://www.ninenineohnine.org/pages/Single-Payer_Education

[MontanaMaven]

Keep on it, Jonathan. We can't let up on the basics. Other countries like Germany and Japan have forms of single payer i.e. the bills are paid from one place aka bureau. Employers still put some money in. Employees do too. It's in their taxes and their co-pays. They average about $2500 per year as opposed to our average around $7000. Also, If the bills are all paid by one entity here, that entity (bureaucracy) can negotiate good deals because it represents 200 Billion people. Costs come down. Duh. And as opposed to the bureaucrats at an insurance company, the bureaucrats in charge of a government program do not get bonuses for denying coverage.

Now in normal times we could pay for this with more taxes on everybody. But these are not normal times. James Galbraith (as brilliant as his father) suggests that we have a payroll tax holiday for the majority of us who do not make money in dividends but by working and getting a paycheck. Both employees and employers would get back 8.3 % immediately to help pay mortgages and for the employers to help pay wages, new jobs or investing back into the business. The government would have to pay for health insurance until we are back on our feet. So they should stop giving away money in bushels to the banks and just give us our health care. That would relieve a whole lot of anxiety.

Just keep 'splaining it, Jonathan.

[RoloTomassi]

Jonathan:

When it comes to me, you're preaching to the choir; I agree with you 100%. The misinformed and GOP sycophants never miss an opportunity to attempt the baffling of the clueless with BS, and the MSM is, at a higher level of operation, just another pawn of American Corporatism. For these reasons I'm not in the least surprised that single-payer is officially assigned to the dust bins, as US insurance and big pharma companies work hard through the US Corporatist network [of which the MSM is a major component] to define single-payer as a horror that cannot be named.

I don't know...the future of a US UHC system looks dim to me, as the powers that be will undoubtedly take a huge hit if such a system were to ever be implemented--sacrifice for the greater good isn't a coporate attribute. In this age of Supreme Corporatism where most major players seem to be able to make a compelling case to congress that they are "too big to fail," the majority of the corporate pack turning on insurers and big pharma--even for their own bottom line--doesn't seem a possibility.

I suspect that the hollowing-out of American industry has a lot to do with this; free market fundamentalism doesn't seem to be concerned about traditional company benefit structures, as privatization and outsourcing plans contain the goals of passing along healthcare and longterm employee benefit questions to contractors to deal with.