Why is Health Care for America Now Giving Up on Real Reform?

The big splash of news and internet coverage for the new Health Care for America Now coalition of labor, progressive and liberal groups is a reminder of the critical importance of health care reform. And a reminder that partial solutions, such as those proposed by the coalition, will only perpetuate, not end the health care crisis.

The groups behind the new coalition are working in concert with the Obama campaign and Democratic leaders in Congress to build "consensus" around a plan that would presumably be introduced in the first days of the next administration, and pushed through to a quick vote before opponents can mount a "Harry and Louse"-style counter attack.

But, in search of a supposedly politically viable plan, the advocates of this approach have surrendered in advance on the only overhaul that will actually cure the disease, a single-payer, expanded and improved Medicare for all reform.

Their good intentions will leave the same failed system in place, and will not even blunt the political opposition from those on the right and corporate interests who will continue to challenge anything that looks like even modest reform.

They create a false hope of systemic change that won't be, squandering the opportunity to achieve the fundamental reform so desperately needed with so many lives in the balance.

They've also missed one of the most important lessons of the failure of the Clinton plan of 1993-94 which collapsed in part due to the absence of a broad, grassroots, activist movement needed to counter the insurance industry. Only single payer engenders such a movement, the very reason the single payer bill now in Congress, HR 676, has more co-sponsors than any other reform bill with tens of thousands around the country already working to enact it.

Health Care for America Now has identified the main culprit and obstacle to genuine reform. As their inaugural ad proclaims, "Will health insurance companies ever put your health ahead of their profits? We can't trust insurance companies to fix the health care mess."

There's just one problem -- the coalition's proposal does nothing to end the actual practice of insurance companies putting their profits ahead of your health. Nor does it fix the two central components of the health care morass -- insurance company denials of care and the financial squeeze facing American families due to ever skyrocketing health care costs which is exacerbated by the escalating credit crisis.

Consider the four health care questions posed by families in the first 30-second ad: "Will they pay for his inhaler? Is my surgery covered? Can I choose my child's doctor? Will they cover the chemo?"

All are the direct result of care denials and price gouging by the insurers -- and none would be solved by the HCFAN "statement of common purpose."

How does the HCFAN coalition propose to crack down on the insurance pirates? With a "watchdog role" on the plans "to assure that risk is fairly spread" and that "insurers do not turn people away, raise rates or drop coverage based on a person's health history or wrongly delay or deny care."

You can watch someone rob your bank, but unless you stop them, the vaults are still going to be stripped bare. If you're looking for the hammer or any enforcement mechanism in the HCFAN proposal, don't bother, it's not there.

The insurers don't care if we know they are thieves, they will continue to deny and delay care because it's in their DNA. It's how they are set up to operate, it's how they make money for their shareholders, it's how they generate plush pay packages for their executives, and it's how they compete with the other insurance giants.

Nor does the HCFAN proposal contain any effective cost controls on the insurers. Their commitment to basing pricing on "ability to pay" is a recipe for merely getting the healthcare you can afford, not what you need. It also fails to assure real choice of providers beyond the limited network established by all private insurance plans.

The bone the coalition sponsors throw to single payer advocates is the false promise of a public plan side by side with private insurance. The public plan, they contend, will be so much more attractive that the private plans will just wither away. Don't count on it.

The insurance companies will always be able to lower their prices with cut rate plans with lower standards that they can aggressively market through massive advertising, tele-marketing, even door to door salesmen (as some do now) with a marketing campaign that the public plans will not have the funding to be able to match.

The private plans can then continue to cherry pick the younger and healthier patients while the sicker and older patients are dumped in the public plan, wrecking the whole idea of a risk pool and driving up the costs for the public plan to operate. The competition won't starve the private plans and cause them to wither away, they'll starve the public plan.

There's only one way to stop the insurance industry abuses -- it's to actually stop them. The rest of the world has figured this one out -- see the study in Britain earlier this year that found that the U.S. ranks last in preventable deaths among 19 industrialized nations even though we spend twice as much on health care as anyone else. Isn't it time we figured it out here as well?

Comments

[RN4MERCY]

Have Schwarzenegger and Nunez from California taken over MoveOn and HCAN? Sounds to me like they've taken their ABX1-1 placebo reform medicine show on the road. We don't need more insurance company Snake Oil. We need a genuine, single-payer national health plan. What a shame that the US ranks dead last among 19 industrialized nations in preventable deaths...the only country in the study that did not have a single-payer system.
Nurses have a duty to act to change circumstances that are against the interests of patients. It's unethical for us to support placebos that are not safe and effective toward restoring people to their optimum level of health. That's why we support HR 676, real reform: universal, guaranteed health care, based on the single payer model.

[tbone99]

They're giving up on healthcare reform because they've got a Dem nominee that has no intention of going to bat for anything riskier than spicy mustard on his hot dog.

[suescannon]

I've been an RN for 12 years. Nurses know that private insurance companies ARE the problem with our health care system. They leach billions of dollars out of the system that could have been used for actual care of actual patients. When you do have a policy with them, as soon as you make a claim they look every which way to Sunday to try not to pay it. They are so wasteful and inefficient they should make the eyes bug out and hair stand up on any fiscally responsible person.
We MUST get the private insurers out of the system.
I understand why some want to keep them in the system: they make billions of dollars---correct that: they STEAL billions of dollars from the rest of us.
Why oh why would any of us want that?
Yes to Single Payer Guaranteed Health Care. NO to anything that keeps the private insurers in the mix.

[ProudLiberalDan]

Dennis Kucinich proudly supported single-payer health care. Obama proposed the weakest health care proposal of all the Democrats running.

I really wish there were a way to get him and the Congressional Democrats to support the already existing single-payer health care bill in Congress.

[tompoe]

Rose, we have figured it out, and it was summarily rejected. No single payer system for us. We must continue to make our payments to corporations, rather than the government. If we stop the payments at the door of the government, and eliminate the corporations, there will be no pockets to line, no competition for government dollars, no healthcare raping and pillaging. We need raping and pillaging of America. It's the American way!

For those who say we'll end up with huge taxes to the government, want huge payments to corporations to continue, even if those huge payments to corporations are out of control. They refuse to answer our questions as to what happens if we stop the huge payments to corporations, and use that money to pay taxes to the government. They refuse, because they'll be forced to admit we then get better bang for our buck, more healthcare for less out-of-pocket costs to Americans. That is not the American way!

[personalpolitical]

Here is my blog on HCAN's proposal, it is much too long to post here:

http://www.thepersonalispolitical.com/2008/07/health-care-for-america-now-abandons.html

Essentially they miss the point, they abandon even discussing the real solution (single payer), and try to make give our dead health care system a Frankenstein makeover. It is still dead, even if they succeed it making it stumble around eating people for another few years. These groups should know better, they are committed to moving us forward, but this time they don't push the envelope, they sell out and help the Republicans frame REAL REFORM out of the debate. It is very disappointing...

[GoletaZeke]

As long as 'health care' relies on a delivery system provided by profit-based 'insurance' organizations the patients' interests and needs will always be a secondary concern. The electorate has clearly spoken on the subject of 'privatizing' Social Security and Medicare. Why should the nations health care be subject to massive administrative charges and non-professional supervision?

[ChicoDavidRN]

There are lots of good people involved in this, who have sadly bought into the mantra that single payer/medicare for all is "not politically feasible" The sad irony is that if all those same people would take a forthright single payer position and become advocates instead of degeatists it would instantly become politically feasible. there is nothing wrong with getting to single payer by steps - but they have to be steps in the right direction, not putting more people, more money, more power into the hands of the insurance industry

[JohnFromCensornati]

They're giving up because the Dims have defeated them.
Much like Iraq or telecom immunity, there's no good reason to believe that the Rats actually want to do anything about this mess.
They just want to use it as a campaign issue for the next thousand years.

[ButterflyWeed]

Gee, I was blaming the R's for their scooping up the majority of special interest contributions from Insurers and Big Pharma.

[mmogu77]

The Health Care for America Now coaltion is actually dividing the progressive movement for universal healthcare into competing coalitions, which could lead to them cancelling each other's efforts out. Even its name is deceptively similar to "Healthcare-Now" which is the name of the coalition of hundreds of labor unions, community groups, churches and cities which has been fighting for years for the only plan that will actually bring universal healthcare to all Americans--a universal single payer system as embodied in John Conyer's bill, HR 676, which has been endorsed by 90 members of Congress. See:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/why-not-single-payer-part_b_111718.html