America For Purchase

I am a total supporter of President Barack Obama.  I support his plans to end the Iraq war, close Guantanamo Bay, stopping torture, increasing fuel economy, fair pay for women, and health care expansion for America’s children, initiating a housing plan to avoid foreclosures, his economic recovery act and eliminating subsidies for oil companies along with a host of other policies favoring people over corporate greed.

In 2003 and 2009 Barack Obama supported a single payer health care option allowing Americans the option to participate in a government health care plan like Medicare.  With Democrats in control of the White House, the Senate and the House one would think the single payer plan would be a viable alternative in addressing the ever increasing health care and health insurance plan costs in this country.  Nothing could be further from the truth.Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), the single most powerful opposition to single payer in the American government is leading the Finance Committee’s efforts in addressing new health care options but is excluding the single payer option, even though this option would be less costly than private plans. 

The politics by Baucus is clear when he states and untruth:

“We’ve got to reform our system fairly quickly, and to be candid with you, very few members of the House and Senate advocate single-pay. The vast, vast majority do not,” Baucus said in an interview Friday. “It tells me that if I go down that road, it’s not going to be successful – it’s not going to pass the Congress.”

The Great Falls Tribune points out Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) has introduced a universal health care measure in the House, House Resolution 676, entitled “The United States National Health Care Act.” The bill has 75 sponsors in the House and is endorsed by more than 500 unions in 49 states, including the Montana AFL-CIO and the state teacher’s union, MEA-MFT.

“There are 50 million people without insurance in this country. That’s equivalent to 24 state populations. If we had 24 states where nobody had insurance they would be out in the streets raising all kinds of hell,” said Phil Campbell, spokesman for the group Montanans for Single-Payer and the former political director of the Montana Education Association before it merged with the Montana Federation of teachers. “We’re just frustrated with Baucus because all the players are at the table, all the insurance companies and other folks, except advocates for single-payer. We think it’s the solution to the problem. It’s a system that will pay for itself rather than figure out how we’re going to pay for the system.”

With polls showing approximately 60% of Americans support of single-payer health insurance, and Congress and President Obama are excluding the majority of Americans from this critical health care debate.

“If you have a policy debate on the merits, that’s going to serve the ultimate purpose, which is to come up with the best health care reform plan possible,” said Michael Lighty, director of public policy for the California Nurses Association, one of the groups that staged a protest at Tuesday’s hearing. “If you let political feasibility truncate the policy debate then you haven’t done service to the debate.”

The cost of health care continues to rise at an exorbitant rate.  According to the National Coalition on Health Care, in 2008 total national health expenditures rose 6.9 percent from the previous year, or twice the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, health care spending topped $2.4 trillion in 2007, or $7,900 per person. Currently, total health care spending represents about 17 percent of the gross domestic product.

Why is the health of Americans so political?  It’s all about the money!  Marcia Angell, a prominent critic of America’s health care system and the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine states “What I would have said is that the underlying problem with our health care system, the thing that makes it such a mess, is that it is based on seeking profits and not on providing health care,” Angell said. “It entrusts the financing of health care in the private sector to hundreds of investor-owned insurance companies who maximize profits by avoiding covering high-risk patients, and stinting on the services of people that they do cover.”

Republicans aggressively state the single-payer plan is “socialized medicine,” that it puts the government in a position of choosing which doctors patients see and imposes a massive bureaucracy on the health care system. This is not true! 

Distinctly different from socialized medicine (where the government owns and operates health care facilities) a “single payer system” is simply a financing mechanism. The government collects and allocates money for health care but has little to no involvement in the actual delivery of services. Care is provided privately at hospitals and clinics but paid for publicly.

Do Republicans actually think the private sector health care plan of today is efficient?  How bogus! 

According to Angell, private health insurers take 10 to 20 percent of premiums patients pay just to cover administrative overhead costs. She said some smaller insurance companies take up to 30 to 40 percent of premiums. On the other hand “Medicare pays only 3 percent in overhead. Right there you see a much more efficient system. 

A new study shows that single payer health care would be a major stimulus for the U.S. economy and would provide:  

2.6 Million New Jobs,
$317 Billion in Business Revenue,
$100 Billion in Wages, and
$44 Billion New Tax Revenues

The single payer option is the only fair system that will allow average hardworking, taxpaying Americans to get health care. When you charge someone for a policy, there are people getting pieces of the pie before the final care giver. Single payer will knock out the middle man which is the insurance company’s. Those people who are employed by the insurer will be providing service to those who choose to pay for their own insurance (still allowed) and providing insurance for other things if they diversify that way. They just won’t be sticking it to 47 million uninsured people who can’t afford to pay the huge prices they extort nor the copays. They won’t be able to deny people on the basis of pre existing and they won’t be able to deny people medical care with the purpose of increasing their bottom line.

The real reason why insurance companies don’t want health care reform to include a so-called public option/single payer is they know the free market health care system simply cannot compete with a government-run plan.

The insurance lobby is already trying to scare people off the idea of a public option, warning that the government will leave all of us to die slowly and painfully as we try to wade through its bloated bureaucracy. But the truth is that on a level playing field, the government would probably drive private insurers out of business, because it can deliver health care more effectively and efficiently than any profit-driven corporation.

We already have a government-run health plan on which to base comparisons, Medicare. For years, studies have shown a high level of satisfaction among Medicare beneficiaries. Last week, a new study released by the Commonwealth Fund revealed how Medicare measures up against private plans. It was bad news for the insurance industry.

“Elderly Medicare beneficiaries are more satisfied with their health care, and experience fewer problems accessing and paying for care, than Americans with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI), according to a study by Commonwealth Fund researchers….The gap between consumers’ ratings of Medicare and ESI has widened since a similar survey in 2001….”

I think Max Baucus and President Obama should be ashamed of catering to health care lobbyists, health care insurance companies while ignoring the cost effective single player plan.

Tags health care reform HR 676 max baucus single payer

Filed under: American Injustice