As the scorecard in Iowa is tallied, add insurance companies to the loser camp along with the disgraceful, rhetorical sham that forcing individuals to buy insurance is universal healthcare.
Individual mandate, the policy wonk lingo for requiring the uninsured to purchase private insurance premiums, was the key talking point of Sen. Hillary Clinton's attack on Sen. Barack Obama in Iowa.
In speech after speech Clinton lambasted Obama for "leaving out" millions because his health plan does not include individual mandate. In the final days leading up to the caucuses, Iowans were barraged with robo calls reinforcing that theme.
While many Iowans, like other Americans yearn for genuine, comprehensive healthcare reform, it's safe to conclude the tactic did not work. Volunteers on the ground report that healthcare was increasingly the main issue for many Iowans, and numerous voters echoed Obama's response, as noted in one of his ads opposing the proposal to "force those who can not afford health insurance to buy it, punishing those who don't fall in line."
Simply put, the mandate doesn't solve the problem; it just pads the pockets of insurance corporations who are not exactly scrapping for cash. Indentured servitude to the insurance pirates is hardly a humane or sound healthcare policy.
Clinton made individual mandate a national referendum in Iowa with a stance parroted by several national columnists and supposed healthcare experts who have also embraced it as the deceptive synonym for universal care. And Iowans responded.
It's not confined to Clinton, of course. Individual mandate is also the centerpiece of Sen. John Edwards' health plan, Mitt Romney's law in Massachusetts, and the bill proposed for California by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez. Thus the significance of the Iowa vote.
To be clear, Sen. Obama's health plan shares much in common with Clinton and Edwards in an ongoing reliance on private insurers, and a failure to crack down on insurance denials of care or price gouging.
But Obama deserves credit for not jumping on a bandwagon that plunged off a cliff in Iowa and whose wheels are already coming off in Massachusetts.
In Massachusetts the deadline in that state for buying insurance was December 31. According to national census figures only 44 percent of the state's uninsured had purchased the mandated policies. And most of those who have enrolled - 79 percent - get full or public subsidies; in other words, the state is using public money to enrich the insurance industry.
But Massachusetts officials are apparently also ignoring the evidence. Their response was to quadruple the tax penalties for those who fail to buy insurance, even while acknowledging that premiums may go up as much as 14 percent next year.
In his election night speech, Edwards described the poignant case of Nataline Sarkisyan, the 17-year old California teenager who died in late December after her insurer, CIGNA, denied a liver transplant until it was too late, even though the transplant had been recommended by her doctors. CIGNA, which like all insurers terms payments for care a "medical loss ratio," only changed its stance after public humiliation prompted by protests largely organized by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.
Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez this week told the story of 10-year-old Preston afflicted with cystic fibrosis whose insurer Blue Cross has just raised his bills for vital medication he needs to keep breathing from $30 a month to $784.
These are the corporations we want to reward by giving them tens of millions of new customers marched into their offices under threat of tax penalties, or as proposed in California, garnishing their wages?
It's long past time to wrench control of our health out of the hands of CIGNA and Blue Cross and return it to where it belongs, to the medical professionals at the bedside in consultation with patients and their families.
There's only one way to accomplish that, with a fundamental overhaul that gets insurance companies out of the way. The day of the Iowa vote, columnist Robert Novak, of all people, reported in the Washington Post that "one longtime Democratic consultant, not involved in any campaign this time, suggested that Clinton propose a genuine universal health-care scheme" which Novak conceded was "a simplified, though far-reaching, health-care plan" - having "everybody covered by Medicare."
Clinton and her advisers rejected that advice. In the wake of Iowa, she might want to re-consider. There is such a proposal now in Congress, HR 676. All the leading candidates should endorse it. In the meantime, let's heed the call of Iowa, discard the notion of forced mandates, and tear off the yoke of the insurance industry once and for all.
http://www.midatlanticlabor.com/appiesnet/wordpress/?p=143
Change Is About Policies Not Speeches or Symbolism
http://www.midatlanticlabor.com/appiesnet/wordpress/?p=143
These Democratic Voices columns I wrote give my general take on this subject. I firmly believe that all Democratic Presidential candidates should get behind H.R. 676.
I think Edwards is the most likely major Democratic candidate to make that leap. I strongly urge all Democrats to pressure all the candidates.
Sincerely,
Stephen Crockett
co-host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com
Editor of Mid-Atlantic Labor.com
http://www.midatlanticlabor.com
mediscare. NO federal funding for HMO's in any
way, shape, form, or fashion whatsoever. Then,
once the 'ether' has been shut off, then they'll
find out whether the hospitals are really
going concerns and can operate independently,
or what, exactly. Get all federal monies out
of the healthcare system, and see what happens.
Maybe there'll be less offshore 'insurance' providers, as a result. WHAT a racket...
But, they are all bandaids on a gaping wound in the American social-economic fabric. Nothing short of the universal medicare model plan, paid for by a fair share across the board taxing mechanism, will work. Welfare for the health care insurance industry on the mandated coverage model is not the answer.
A tipping point of those that ‘have’ VS those that ‘have not’; and those that ‘had’ but lost it in a catastrophic health care emergency, and now ‘have not’ (their homes and any remaining assets numbering over 50 million citizens) shall revolt. The only question is when, and how. Will it be a Ghandi nationwide sit-in - strike - protest style movement; or a nothing left to loose, violent smash-the-establishment movement? Perhaps after one more series of failed health care reform promises during an election cycle, and another do nothing gridlock session of executive and legislative branches, the when part will be answered.
Poor little Obama only gets 95+% as much as Clinton, although that is still more than all of the Republican candidates combined. That's a lot of CHANGE.
Between them they reveived 67% of the vote. So did the insurance and drug companies lose? One guess.
Will those two support HR 676? Absolutely not. Edwards is open to going to single-payer eventually. He needs to be prevailed upon to go for it now.
Only Kucinich supports this. Why waste your vote on anyone else if you want a solution?
Can't be fair while our laws are so unfair. Can not please Dobson without fleecing my house. Can not please my house without angering McClurkin. This is going to have to be America instead of Churchistan if we have any hope of making a plan that can function for all under the law. Think about it.
Clinton wants to keep the insurance companies and increase their incomes. Obama wants the same but just a little less for the companies. Romney's plan does the same as Clinton's.
Edwards wants the same as the others initially but sees a single-payer system as a goal somewhere down the line.
Kucinich supporters say he supports a single-payer plan. He does BUT he wants to wait for 15 years. Why? During those 15 years the insurance companies get increased incomes.
In essence, every plan by every candidate provides more income for the insurance companies, either permanently or for the foreseeable future.
If healthcare is an important issue to you, you need a candidate. Clinton and Obama are bought and paid for. Kucinich will not be a factor. That leaves Edwards. We must do everything possible to get him to support a Medicare for all plan that will be implemented within 2 years.
Every plan that keeps the insurance companies involved has two drawbacks:
They cost us an unnecessary extra 20 cents of every dollar spent on healthcare.
They allow the insurance companies to decide who gets care and how much. They are insurance specialists, not medical specialists. Treatment should be primarily a joint decision between a physician and an informed patient.