Hillary Learned the Wrong Lesson from 1994 Health Care Fiasco
The pundits might have it right on this one. Hillary Clinton did learn a lesson from her 1994 fiasco on healthcare reform. Unfortunately for most of us who don't have an Inc. after our name or a private jet to cart us around, it was the wrong lesson.
In the days leading up to the announcement of her latest, much anticipated health plan, Sen. Clinton threw around the word "consensus" a lot. In this case, the consensus she was seeking was with the same industry that so savaged her prior experience with healthcare.
This time, she apparently wants to soften them up in advance with a proposal that will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional profits for the insurance giants. It's probably not a coincidence that she is also the top recipient of healthcare sector contributions to her presidential campaign.
Looking past the bells and whistles -- which do at least include some good sound bites on retiree health and giving regular Americans the same health plan options as members of Congress -- the Clinton plan seems to rest on three shaky legs:
1. Forcing all Americans, who do not have current coverage and do not qualify for public assistance, to buy and maintain insurance;
2. Mandating large employers to either provide health benefits or contribute to the cost of coverage
3. Tax credits for just about everyone
If the central elements here sound familiar, they should. The plan is a smorgasbord of the worst elements of what we've seen and heard from some other presidential candidates and the plans floating around several state Capitols.
Ironically, given the overheated reaction from Republican candidates, Clinton's plan most closely resembles the approach of two Republicans -- the Mitt Romney-crafted law in Massachusetts and the proposal by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That's hardly a badge of honor. The Massachusetts model is working best for those with public subsidies, and Schwarzenegger's plan is now buried in the minutia of a special legislative session while public support for it has been plummeting in the polls.
The biggest failing of this plan, like the Romney and Schwarzenegger schemes before it and like most of the other Democratic candidates' proposals, is the abject failure to challenge healthcare industry price gouging and runaway costs.
Insurance premiums have climbed 87 percent the past decade, and though they have slowed a bit in the past year, the increase is still double the average increase in wages. That does not include, of course, the rising cost of deductibles, co-pays, prescription drug prices, hospital charges, and, the latest fad, annual doctor fees, like what many people are charged for the privilege of having a credit card or checking account.
This is only the biggest healthcare story of the year. One recent example. Consumer Reports last month reported that more than half of the "underinsured" postponed needed medical care due to cost and a third had to dig deep into their savings to pay for medical expenses. Another third of those over 50 said decisions about their retirement were adversely affected by healthcare costs, one quarter had outstanding medical debt, 38% postponed home or car maintenance repairs due to medical bills, and only 37% said they were prepared to financially handle unexpected major medical costs in the next year.
Throwing more Americans under the wheels of the insurance industry will not solve this problem any more than criminalizing the uninsured is humane or sound health policy.
Clinton's solution is a combination of tax credits, unspecified encouragement to drug companies to "offer fair prices," and promoting "consumer price consciousness in choosing health plans."
But tax credits mostly benefit higher income Americans. And families grappling with skyrocketing prices, and no controls on costs, will likely choose the cheapest, high deductible plans that provide the worst coverage. The sad outcome may be seen in a report earlier this year by the American Academy of Pediatrics that families with high deductible health plans are far more likely to put off needed care, including immunizations and recommended treatment, due to the cost.
Sen. Clinton might have drawn an entirely different idea from her prior unpleasant history with the healthcare industry. She might have decided to cut them out of the business of profiting off pain, suffering and medical debt, and proposed a very different solution, such as expanding Medicare, Medicaid, or the State Children's Health Program to cover everyone.
Accommodating the insurance behemoths, and effectively offering them massive public subsidies -- using the considerable power of government to force everyone to become paying customers of the private insurers -- is not the kind of leadership on healthcare we need.
Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and a national vice president of the AFL-CIO
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Why is everyone, not only Hillary Clinton, obsessed with plans that are complicated and inefficient? Why can't we have a reasonable plan? For one such see
randomabsu
It will be impossible to rein in costs without taking the health insurance companies out of the equation. In my view, they have profited off the backs of people long enough. Insurance is the only privately owned business that is backed by the government. The government cronies of the insurance industry are constantly forcing people to buy the insurance industry's products. When you effectively have a monopoly you can name your price and people are forced to purchase it, no matter what the cost is or whether you can afford it or not.
Hillary's health plan is a joke to the average working Joe. Tax credits mean next to nothing to the poor and middle classes. When the insurance bill comes due each month average people have to decide whether to buy groceries, pay the utility bills, buy a new winter coat for their children or throw hundreds of dollars into the insurance companies' coffers.
The only plan that makes any sense, does not pander to the monied interests, and provides equitable coverage for everyone is Kucinich's plan. By taking the for profit industry out of the equation we have gotten rid of the main culprit of affordability and equitable distribution.
Perhaps a possible answer for all the people who are already covered,and still allowing people a choice would be to make the new governemnt funded program voluntary.
Hillary didn't have my vote before, but this just cinches it for me, personally. She has tried to play to the middle too much, and in doing so has effectively alienated the base of the Democratic Party.
If we want real health care reform, vote for Kucinich.
This is not a healthcare plan.
Instead it is a plan to force everyone to buy healthcare insurance from the people who are funding Cliton's white house ambitions.
Clinton says that she has been fighting the healthcare special interests for 15 years (while taking all of the healthcare lobby money that she can get her sticky hands on).
Well sorry, but fighting for 15 years and LOSING for 15 years is not very impressive and is certainly no justification for a term in the white house. Getting your ass kicked for 15 years is nothing to write home about.
Getting something done, on the other hand, would be noteworthy, but Clinton has not.
Perhaps if she had done something (anything!) to lower the cost of healthcare for working people (like making the cost of drugs in the US as low as they are in Canada) she might have some credibility. However as far as I am able to determine she has accomplished absolutely NOTHING!
I am tired of the lies and bullshit from this candidate and I thank Rose Ann for the expose.
Automobile insurance is mandatory in California. (I dont know about other states.) A motor vehicle cannot be registered in California without proof of insurance. As soon as that went into law, you can guess what happened. Auto insurance rates skyrocketed. You can see it coming with Hillary's "plan".
My personal situation: I pay $550. PER MONTH for a health insurance premium. That's $6,600 annually. I have no co-pay for medical care or for prescriptive medications. My coverage doesn't kick in until I've met the $3,000 annual deductible ~ IF I use the "preferred provider" list. If I elect to choose my own doctors, the deductible DOUBLES.
Our current national leaders and those that are aspiring to lead this country HAVE NO CLUE whatsoever as to what is going on in mainstream America. The rich get richer, and what's left of the middle class pays taxes to support the poor. What a country.
I knew the jig was up as soon as she assured everyone she was not trying to take jobs from the insurance industry. Whose jobs, we might wonder. The ridiculously overpaid CEOs? The high school grads who decide if we REALLY need treatment and how much?
DeMorro is correct: Hillary learned the wrong lesson from her defeat (she wasn't listening much in those days, either). What she learned is if you tick off powerful corporate interests, they will attack you mercilessly, distort your intentions, and contribute to your opponents, so her focus is still on what she can claim to have done, not to look at peoples' real needs. Few of us need health insurance, but all of us need health care. As far as I can see, no one in the insurance industry is capable of delivering that; in fact, it's in their best interests to deny it. And I don't have much faith that we are going to get what we need.
Trust me when I say we don't need to worry about the insurance industry. It is well-positioned to diversify any direction it may choose, unlike the millions of Americans from whom it has pulled the rug and ripped the safety net out from under. It is the financial, physical and moral health of our nation and our people that we need to be worrying about more instead. We need to keep in perspective the damage that this single industry is doing to everyone but itself. Is it asking too much of them to figure out ways to make money (lots is fine) that do no kill, disable, bankrupt and terrorize Americans?
Since so many people seem skeptical about HR 676. How about putting the self employed and small business with less than 25 employees and whoever else makes up the 50 million people without insurance on HR 676 first. I think this group would be very happy to be the test cases just to finally get some coverage.
Then we could evaluate from there.
Excellent suggestion, as every healthcare horror story I know (and I know lots) comes from someone who either owns or is employed by a small business. We are begging for relief from this monster and most people (including Hillary) are ignoring our pleas. Doesn't it make sense from healthcare consumers' viewpoint that "the larger the group you can join, the better the protection and the lower the cost"? The logic would follow that if we were all in the largest protective pool possible (namely one), we would all have the best protection, at the best prices, with the most transparency. "Success" from the profit-driven health insurers' side depends upon keeping us divided & conquered in myriads of smaller groups, which also prevents us from utilizing efficiencies of scale, and from knowing who is paying how much for what. Which of these two groups do you think will benefit most from Hillary's plan, healthcare consumers or profit-driven health insurance corporations?
Yes this looks like another handout to the insurance companies. I am interested in Dennis Kucincih. This could be a deal breaker for me around Billary.
On the other hand, Dennis is going to run into the same problem. This country is too much run by large corporations. There needs to be some big changes in the constitution.
I wasn't expecting much from Hillary on health care since she got so much from this industry. But her plan is even worse than I expected.
There are some things I like about Hillary but I knew that she could not be objective on health care. I just think the Clinton's are too entrenched in Washington politics. Our country needs a clean break from that.
You are right about Hillary's being bought and paid for by the insurance industry. What a travesty! All of the candidates except Kucinch
want to keep the insurance industry involved in health care costs. WHY? What do they contribute. The answer is they contribute to Hillary,Obama, Edwards and all the others. Since the establishment is afraid of Kucinich taking away their easy money they make sure their lackies, the corporate media, ignore Kucinch or ridicule him. AARP is having a symposium on health care and they refused to invite Kucinich! The only one who will solve our health care mess. Imagine what it would do for our businesses if they could compete with all the other countries in the world where the workers have health care as a right and not a privilege as here.
With all due respect, the author of this post is an advocate of a single payer system run by the government, who believes that any solution short of that is a sell out to insurance companies. Unfortunately, all the single payer advocates forget to tell us how the single payer system will provide the care we both need and want. As I have said before, how do we know the single payer system will not be like getting our health care from the DMV?
We need to find a way of giving good health care to everybody, not a way of giving bad care to everyone in order to make everyone suffer equally. Let's not forget the public hospital in South LA where they mopped around the dead patient stretched out on the waiting room floor.
Is that the level of care we can expect under a single payer system?
Before we say that any single payer system is better than what we have now, each of us should do some serious thinking about what we are going to miss about our current system. I would like to see rich and poor get good health care services, but I need a little more convincing about the value of adopting a single payer model that exists in other countries. The people who tout these foreign models usually admit that their theory is that something is better than nothing and at least everyone in other countries gets something resembling health care and is not left to die in the gutter. These emotional arguments are compelling, but as Americans we have been trained to want to the best and do not usually settle for the something is better than nothing theory is the other aspects of our lives.
What system was in place when the lady died on the hospital floor and they mopped around her? Did that happen in the system we have NOW, or did that happen under a "Single Payer, United Protection" model?
Rose Ann DeMoro says: Sen. Clinton might have drawn an entirely different idea from her prior unpleasant history with the healthcare industry. She might have decided to cut them out of the business of profiting off pain, suffering and medical debt, and proposed a very different solution, such as expanding Medicare, Medicaid, or the State Children's Health Program to cover everyone.
Dennis Kucinich has co-authored HR 676, legislaion which would establish Medicare for All - a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care system that leaves no American behind.
Why doesn't DeMoro mention HR 676? Why doesn't she mention Kucinich? Are they political cowards or not really interested in real change, only in playing rhetorical politics.
I agree that we need a universal, single-payer healthcare system, such as Medicare, but the sad and sorry truth is too many people in the general public and people whose pockets are lined by insurance and other such companies, scream bloody murder about it being socialized medicine where everyone has a long wait and you are forced to go to a doctor chosen by "the government". Total bullshit, but that is the long and short of it. There are enough of the Stupids out there to beat down such a drastic and needed change. Hillary has her faults, but she should get some credit for trying to come up with a plan that can jumpstart the process of bringing in universal healthcare. It is not going to happen overnight, we have to understand that. I'll be waiting for more specifics from her on just how she plans to make insurance companies offer competetive and affordable premiums. I also applaud the requirement that no one can be denied for any condition by any insurance provider. Now, this will only be beneficial if the companies are mandated to not charge an ungodly and unfair amount. Will that be the case? Too soon to know at this point. People not able to utilize the tax-credits for their coverage, I believe can receive a gov't subsidy to offset the costs of obtaining coverage. Will it be enough? Dunno. There are bound to be people who even with subsidies and tax credits who will not be able to afford coverage. That is the most concerning to me. What is her plan to help them? Medicare type plan with income restrictions? Waiting for an answer on that one. (If that's alread been answered, excuse my ignorance, I have not been able to read everything she has put out yet.) It's not perfect, but I think with time and the general public's understanding of the benefits universal healthcare will provide, the tide will turn to allow it to happen.
"Insurers would be prohibited from charging LARGE premium differences based on age, gender, or occupation (for example, a standard set of MODIFIED community-rating protections)" are words taken directly from Hillary's detail-lacking proposal facade. Will the devil define the details currently known as "large" and "modified"? I smell smoke and mirrors. And how can we embrace Hillary's electronic records as long as so many of us live in a country where our personal medical history can and will (apparently continue to) be used to discriminate against us? Why make it ever-so-much-easier for the rats who are rat-tioning our care solely because of what is written on our "private" records? Can we all plead the 5th Amendment? Newt Gingerich and Colin Powell are currently poised to make incredible personal fortunes off of electronic medical records when the government contracts come through. (Could be partly why Newt decided Hillary isn't so bad after all.) And the only "choice" any of us wants or needs as far as coverage is concerned is to be covered if we need it. That's the one choice never offered in the myriad. More choices (than that one) are simply "devil's dilemnas" that just lead to migraine headaches and a huge waste of our collective time (that could and should be spent far more productively). The only way we will have the choices we actually WANT, namely totally free choice of providers, will only happen when we are united into one protective pool under one set of fair, consistent, and non-discriminatory rules.
I understand the blogger wrote she doesn't need healthcare. I believe that 100%. Since she doesn't need it, that must mean no one else should need it either. Or is it, since she has hers, she could care less who else needs healthcare. By the way I have top notch healthcare, but I still would like to see others to be also that fortunate.
Who you gonna call, if you want not for profit health care?
How could Rose Ann DeMoro write an article on Hillary Clinton's proposed health care plan, complain that Hillary learned the wrong lesson when she is proposing a plan that lines the pockets of the profiteering health "care" industry, and state Hillary's "plan is a smorgasbord of the worst elements of what we've seen and heard from some other presidential candidates", all without mentioning the name of the one candidate who is proposing exactly the plan that DeMoro wishes?
DeMoro says Hillary "might have decided to cut them (the health care Incs,) out of the business of profiting off pain, suffering and medical debt, and proposed a very different solution, such as expanding Medicare, Medicaid, or the State Children's Health Program to cover everyone." Well, DeMoro, too, "might have decided" to mention that Dennis Kucinich is the only presidential candidate whose health care plan does exactly that!
One has to wonder why Kucinich, the only truly pro-labor candidate (e.g., for repeal of Taft-Hartly) who is also for a single payer not-for-profit health care plan, is totally absent from the health care discussion by DeMoro who is a nurse and national vice president of the AFL-CIO. Perhaps if the AFL-CIO would support Kucinich and his health care plan, then DeMoro would not be wondering what his name is or act like there is no candidate offering the plan she wants.
http://won
Gregory Wonderwheel
Santa Rosa, CA
"The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision."He
Thanks for your leadership, Rose Ann; and, for adhering to the truth in labelling laws. Hillary's plan is poison!
RN4MERCY can I please use that quote? My daughter is in nursing school right now and she's doing great. God Bless you and all like you.
It's a great time to be a nurse and as members of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, we have returned to our roots of public health advocacy and political activism, inspired and encouraged by leaders like Rose Ann DeMoro. She calls the question so eloquently on behalf of the working class. In a participatory democracy it's incumbent upon all of us to create the winds of change. I'm so disappointed in Hillary; she's caught up in the prevailing "trade" winds of "cash 'n carry" health care.
For your daughter, and all our sons and daughters, (my daughter just graduated from nursing school), here's a quote from the founder of public health nursing, Lillian Wald: "Without claiming the gift of prophecy,one can foresee that our sins, political and social, must recoil upon the heads of our descendants. We commit ourselves to any wrong or degradation or injury when we do not protest against it."
For profit health care is wrong; so is taking money from insurers and giving them a pass while nurses like me have to pull the sheets up over their their victims. It doesn't have to be this way. Basic medically necessary health care is a civil right in every other industrialized nation in the world. Hillary should lead, follow, or get out of the way of Kucinich and Nader.
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