"Divided We Fail" is divided and failing
The Influence Game: Labor and business, joined in health care cause, now at odds on specifics
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
Chicago Tribune
February 16, 2009
Labor unions and business groups have teamed up in a multimillion-dollar national lobbying campaign to pressure President Barack Obama and Congress for big changes in the nation’s health care system. But as they get down to the specifics, their strange-bedfellows alliance is quietly at odds.
After spending two years and more than $20 million to promote the idea, collaborators in the Divided We Fail coalition — a project of the seniors lobby AARP, the service workers’ union, and groups representing small business and the Fortune 500 — are indeed divided over key elements of how to fix health care.
Its members agree that something should be done to revamp health care in the United States, and there’s consensus on a vague set of general principles that include making coverage more accessible, affordable and efficient. But they differ over important details, including what roles the government and private businesses should play.
The emerging rifts highlight how difficult it will be for Obama and the Democratic-run Congress to deliver what they say they are committed to: a health care overhaul that would guarantee everyone affordable coverage.
They also illustrate the limits of one of lobbyists’ favorite tactics: banding together with partners to try to build support for a top priority. Such alliances are born and die all the time in Washington, often falling victim to internal disputes over policy.
The coalition is led by a handful of Washington’s most influential lobbyists — Bill Novelli of AARP, John J. Castellani of the Business Roundtable and Dan Danner of the National Federation of Independent Business — as well as Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union, among the most politically active groups in organized labor.
They acknowledge, however, that keeping the coalition together is getting more difficult as Obama and Congress prepare to delve into specifics.
For instance, labor unions and liberal groups are pressing for a universal health coverage system in which the government provides insurance that competes with private plans. SEIU wants to give everyone health benefits similar to those enjoyed by federal employees. It backs Obama’s “pay or play” idea of forcing employers to either offer health insurance to their workers or pay a fee so they can get it elsewhere.
The Business Roundtable and National Federation of Independent Business, on the other hand, want a system based mostly on private health insurance and are against new requirements for employers. The Business Roundtable’s members include health-insurance giants CIGNA, Aetna and Humana, all of which would have to compete with the government if labor got its way.
There’s also a fight brewing between private insurers and consumer groups over how to ensure that everyone is covered. Insurers say they’ll agree to accept any patient regardless of pre-existing health conditions — but only if everyone is required to buy coverage. Consumer groups say that would turn the government into a collection agency for private insurance companies.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-health-care-strange-bedfellows,0,6877237.story
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
“Divided We Fail” presented itself as a broad coalition of diverse interests that could come together and agree on health care reform. But it isn’t a broad coalition. It is a coalition that primarily represents business interests - big business through the Business Roundtable, and small business through the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).
Also supporting this effort is AARP, which is probably best characterized as a broker for UnitedHealth insurance products - also a business interest with its own concerns about the future of health care financing in the United States.
The other supporter is Service Employees Union (SEIU), a union that broke off from AFL-CIO partly in a dispute over health care benefits. AFL-CIO wants to be sure that the crucial contribution of employer funds for health care continues at least until a well-financed, universal program can be enacted. Our current system of financing health care would collapse without employer contributions. For SEIU, requiring employers to fund comprehensive benefits was a more difficult issue. Service employees are compensated at lower rates than are those in the manufacturing industries, and their more meager benefit programs reflect this. SEIU would prefer to negotiate for higher wages without the necessity of forgoing wage increases in exchange for health benefits. Although a labor union, SEIU’s position is quite convenient for businesses in the service industries.
This coalition was pro-business, but, in the end, they agreed on only one principle - private health plans should be the dominant player in any reform proposal. Even there, their concepts of the specific role of private insurers are quite different.
Business Roundtable members want to maintain control of their health benefit programs, but they also want relief from the costs. They want public subsidies of their fairly comprehensive programs (even though they are already shifting more costs to their employees), but they don’t want any government-managed insurance programs that compete with the private plans.
NFIB wants a market of very cheap, publicly-subsidized under-insurance products, if they are expected to offer coverage at all. They want relief from the regulatory oversight that would make insurance work. But they too are adamantly opposed to any effective government insurance program that might put their own efforts to shame because of the paltry benefits that they would offer. And they definitely do not want to be mandated to provide coverage for all of their employees.
AARP wants to move aggressively into the non-Medicare market with their brokered UnitedHealth plans. They know that they could never compete with a well designed Medicare-like program that would be available to everyone. They are careful in their public statements, mindful of prior credibility issues stemming from prior public positions such as their support of Medicare privatization. But even now, AARP’s Bill Novelli says that “it’s an inside-outside game.” Outside refers to their public marketing through “Divided We Fail,” whereas inside refers to their private lobbying of Congress. What do you suppose goes on behind those closed doors?
SEIU truly does have the welfare of its members at the forefront. Their president, Andy Stern, can and should be faulted for failing to support single payer based on the “lack of political feasibility” argument. Nevertheless, he does support a regulated market of comprehensive private plans, along with a Medicare-like public option that some believe would improve the private sector products through the forces of competition.
So, even though this pro-business coalition agrees on the common denominator of private insurance plans, they cannot agree on an adequate benefit package, on eliminating under-insurance, on individual mandates, on employer-mandates, on cracking down on wasteful middlemen brokers, on equitable tax policies to finance reform, nor on fundamental health policy issues such as community rating and guaranteed issue.
It looks like the pro-business “Divided We Fail” coalition has divided and failed.
To succeed, a coalition must put patients first, and place all others in a secondary position. Although no coalition could possible ever have all interests on board, a patient-oriented coalition should eventually be successful simply because patients are what our health care system is all about.
“Health Care for America NOW!” was such an effort, but they made a mistake. They decided to go for broader support, bringing more varied interests into their coalition, although most are from the progressive community. To do this, they decided that they must agree that single payer is not politically feasible. Consequently, they decided to support a regulated private market with a public insurance option, trading away many of the beneficial features of a single payer system, though with hopes that it could eventually evolve into single payer. SEIU has joined this coalition, whereas AARP, Business Roundtable, and NFIB have not, reflecting the fact that HCAN and SEIU are truly patient oriented. But the outside opposition to a public option and to an adequately regulated and mandated private insurance market is so great that this coalition is already failing.
“Healthcare-NOW!” is an organization that has been around longer, but differs in that they support health care reform that is designed exclusively to benefit patients - without compromise! All other interests benefit when patients fare well (except the private insurers). “Healthcare-NOW!” provides unwavering support for the principles and policies of the single payer model of a national health program. Although “Healthcare-NOW!” still has a long path to travel, “fail” is not a word in their vocabulary.
Healthcare-NOW Position Regarding Health Care for America Now:
http://www.healthcare-now.org/about/regarding-hcan/