Health Care Reform in Critical Condition
Long ago, I heard Joseph Califano, President Carter's secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (later to become Health and Human Services), tell an audience that real health care reform in this country could not become a reality until we accomplished the goal of enacting campaign finance reform at the national level.
A report issued last week by Consumer Watchdog, a California-based organization, reminded me of Califano's remarks. The report found that over the past four years the health care industry and drug companies have showered the top-ten recipients in Congress with $5.5 million in campaign contributions. Taken together, the health care sector has contributed just-under a whopping $1 billion in the past two years alone.
From my point of view, and from the point of view of most liberals familiar with the subject, real health care reform must include a "public" option - that is, one that competes with private insurance. A public option would mean that consumers and employers would have the choice of keeping their private insurance or moving into a public plan. During the presidential campaign, President Obama's health care blueprint included a public option.
Regrettably, it's becoming more problematic with each day that goes by that we will get that kind of choice in the final bill. The real problem is the Senate. Given the sizeable majority of Democrats in the House, it is likely that a public option will be included in the House version of the legislation. But the existence of the filibuster in the Senate is a serious roadblock to reform.
Not only will Senate Republican oppose public health insurance en masse, but several key moderate Democrats are likely to resist as well. First and foremost is Senator Max Baucus. With the illness of Ted Kennedy, Baucus will play a key role in crafting the legislation as chair of the Senate Finance Committee. The Senator from Montana raked in $413,000 over the past four years from drug companies and health insurance carriers.
Other key moderate Senate Democrats of concern are Mark Warner of Virginia, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska -- all of whom received significant amounts of campaign cash from these two special interests. Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is also on their favorites list.
We are about to find out whether Mr. Califano got it right. If the past is any indication, he is. And though it's been said countless times before, it bears repeating: the United States stands alone among western democracies in its repeated failure to solve the pressing crisis in health care.
Can real reform be accomplished given this pessimistic assessment? Of course. Even some of those who opposed "Hillary care" in 1994 have changed their tune. This is especially true of large and small employers alike who are tired of paying the escalating cost of their workers' healthcare. But the real key is the public, which will have to wake up from its long slumber and demand it.
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A very important piece of health care reform should be a mandate for all with sufficient income to purchase health insurance. We need to have everyone in the system in order to control the costs. Health care costs will not be affordable in a health care system where mainly the chronically ill people are the ones signing up.
Do we need INSURANCE reform? YES! Across the board we need insurance reform... not just health but also auto, home and life insurance reform.
Do we need to get a handle on what hospitals charge? Most assuredly. Charging someone $14 for a disposable insulin syringe is ridiculous when you can go to Walmart and get a box of 100 of them for the same amount. Charging someone $30 for an ACE bandage is ridiculous when you can to to the Dollar Store and buy 30 of the SAME ACE bandages instead of just buying one. The list goes on and on of things that patients are over-charged for and stopping the over-charges IS necessary.
Do we need HONESTY in the discussion? YES! To date there has been darn little HONESTY in this discussion related to health INSURANCE reform. It is DIShonest to call this discussion a discussion about health CARE reform because what is being discussed is NOT patient care but rather patient COST and Insurance reform.
WHY is it nearly impossible for this discussion to be an HONEST discussion?
I wish someone would explain to me why insurance companies have to be invoved in the heath care process. It seems to me that as long as there is a middleman profiting off my health, healthcare will remain a mess. If I have learned anything these past few months, it has been that there is almost no limit to the greed of the people who have the most. The public option looks like more of the same to me. I pay, the health care professionals work, and the insurance company profits while determining how much the doctors can make, what procedures they can perform on me. wWill I still have to fight tooth and nail for coverage I have paid for? I suspect I will if my healthcare needs cut into an insurance comany's bottom line.
I am open to hearing why keeping insurance makes sense. Please someone explain to me why taking care of our population should be a for-profit venture.
I agree that the special interests are going to have their say in healthcare reform, but the public plan option is not the only--or even the main--issue at stake. What's really at stake is whether we're going to superimpose some method of expanding coverage on top of a broken system that continues to waste our money at a fantastic rate. Unless Congress takes on the healthcare industry--and I mean the whole industry, including hospitals and physicians--the chances of real healthcare reform are nil. More people will be covered for a period of time, but soaring costs will eventually destroy that achievement.
This is, perhaps, the biggest economic issue of the decade.
What? What does health care have to do with the economy?
As Mr. Ulrich notes in this article, and as I have written on my own blog, the current two-payer system requires business to subsidize the cost of health care. Despite all the hue and cry about 'corporate taxes', establishing a national health care system (particularly a single payer system, or a non-profit private system modeled on France or Germany) would do far more good for American business than any corporate tax cuts. The savings would be huge. This would cut more costs than any lay-offs or out-sourcing possibly could.
Really think about that, when you think about health care reform.
Really think about what you are calling this. Health CARE is the CARE of the PATIENT.
Health INSURANCE is what is being discussed and it gets more disgusting EVERY day because it becomes more and more apparent that CARE of the PATIENT is the LAST thing that most of the proponents of a single payer system are interested in.
A little HONESTY in the discussion would go a LONG way towards changing minds.
I actually read a guy's post here the other day on another article, claiming that Wall Street execs were as bad if not worse than Bin Laden.
Which only proved to me what I've been thinking for awhile now, people really DO care more about their pocket book than their life
Sir, you should follow your own policy of honesty.
Health INSURANCE is currently the only 'health care' most Americans can get under the existing system and that is prohibitively expensive for a significant number of Americans. Currently that cost is the biggest bar to quality health care for the majority of people not receiving it, coupled with the policies of insurance companies whose commercial interests are served by maximum inflow and minimum outflow, or more explicitly: the for-profit health insurance business is best served by selling lots of INSURANCE and providing the bare minimum of CARE.
The whole point of single payer is to change that system, and frankly our system needs /substantive/ change.
I will not deny that the current trend of the discussion is skewed in favor of the insurance companies, but that same trend is skewed away from single payer. President Obama has excluded single payer from the discussion. I don't approve of that trend, I believe the insurance companies are the problem.
That is the point of both this post and my comment.
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