PNHP

The Facts About the Health Insurance Industry

The Facts About the Health Insurance Industry

by Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD, MPH
DailyKos
Sun Jun 07, 2009

Most people are unaware how similar the major health insurers are to our failed Wall Street firms.They are corporate cash cows and have virtually no fiduciary responsibility and few activities for protecting or improving health or the health care system.They will devote their vast resources to prevent any meaningful health reform. They have controlled Congress and the mainstream media. The only cure is vigorous popular support for a single payer, Medicare for All reform.

This is a discussion about the huge and looming crisis in our nation’s health care system and the need for a radical paradigm changing reform. Because the issues discussed below necessarily involve a politically difficult restructuring of a large and well establish sector of our economy, the breadth and details of this reform have so far has been largely excluded from public policy discussions and debate. AHIP — American Health Insurance Plans — representing the private, for profit, health insurance companies and their partners had their annual national convention in San Diego, California this week. They are the association of all the major health insurers in the United States and their lobbying clout is unsurpassed. Major public political leaders of both parties, men like Jeb Bush, Dr. Howard Dean, and Tom Daschle attended.

As a practicing family physician who has been seeing patients since Medicare was started I can tell you what really ails our national health system. Making the correct diagnosis is important. Yet those in Washington — both in the White House and in Congress – both Republicans and Democrats — and the national media – are eagerly avoiding the right diagnosis and thus preventing public discussion about the necessary cures. As you all know if we don’t make the right diagnosis the disease will not be cured and the patient will not get better. Today the biggest barrier to improving our health care system in the United States is the private health insurance companies. They are the disease we suffer from. The best, and perhaps the only, public policy cure that will work is a single payer, Medicare for All, health care financing program. Yet due to financial power of the health insurance industry, their great financial lobbying clout, embarrassingly our elected officials are doing everything they can to avoid the current golden opportunity to create a single payer system.

I want to make only three main points:

1. The individual insurance companies are out for profit and must work to maximize their value on the stock market and not our friends. They treat patients like widgets or cost centers. This is not a culture of trust, caring, compassion, and fiduciary responsibility. If you were dumb enough to hope that Countrywide Mortgage would preserve your home and Lehman Brothers would preserve your retirement fund, then you will be stupid enough to expect Anthem Blue Cross and the other insurance companies to be there to protect your health. Yet it seems all Washington continues under this delusion.

2. The employer based private health insurance industry has been created by us, is hugely subsidized by public policy and public money and is expensive, inefficient, costly , and a structural barrier to a healthy America. It needs to be eliminated.

3. The only cure for our problem is a single payer, national, universal, health financing program like Medicare for All. This is not socialized medicine, but an efficient way to pool risk and share the unexpected costs of illness. Fifty percent of our population has virtually no medical expenses while five percent consume 25 percent of all personal medical care costs. This why we need the insurance principle: unexpected medical expenses are relatively rare and can be huge and should be spread across the whole population. Financial costs related to illness cause over 50 percent of personal bankruptcies in the United States. Over 46 million Americans are rationed out of the medical system (and during this economic catastrophe this number is growing by 10,000 people per day) 46 million people are subject to excess morbidity and mortality because they cannot afford financing and the insurance industry cannot profit from them. Health insurance is important and necessary. We need an efficient, national, publicaly sponsored, universal health financing system. This is the only treatment that will be a cure.

First, let me dwell on the track record of an individual insurance company, specifically United Health Plans. United Health Group is America’s largest health insurance company. According to their 2008 annual report United has 75,000 employees, insure 29.1 million Americans directly and cover up to 78 million people, contract with 650,000 doctors and 5200 hospitals. Their insurance programs include: a government subsidized Medicare Advantage program called Secure Horizons, a Medicare Part D prescription program called Prescription Solutions, and they have an exclusive arrangement with AARP to offer a Medicare supplement. The company has a subsidiary, Ingenix (remember this name) which provides “actuarial data, claims management services, and health intelligence” in 56 countries and in the USA to 6000 hospitals, 240,000 MDs, 1500 health plans, and 250 government agencies.
In 2008 United Health had total revenues of approximately $81.2 billion ($75.9 billion from health insurance and $1.6 billion from Ingenix) and their 2008 net revenue was $5.2 billion from health insurance. (This profit was in essence moneys diverted from health insurance premiums paid by government, individuals and employees to obtain medical care even after the company’s huge administrative costs are deducted.) They had an additional $229 million profit from Ingenix. According to SEC filings during our current economic and health care crisis their 2009 first quarter total revenue went up 8% to $22 billion and their net profit was $984 million. According to the company’s own report they have a medical loss ratio of about 80 per cent – that is, of collected premiums they spend only about 80 % on actual medical care, that is we loose 20 per cent of the money we pay them to their overhead and profit.

Some recent corporate history with you will demonstrate how far their corporate culture is from taking care of the sick and disabled. In 2006 The Wall Street Journal reported that company executives were back dating their stock options. Because of the ensuing scandal in October 15, 2006 company President and CEO William McGuire, who usually made between $60 and $120 million a year was forced to resign but he took with him the largest golden parachute ever paid, a compensation package estimated to be $1.1 billon. He was subsequently forced to pay back to the SEC $468 million in refunds and $7 million in penalties.In 2008 the net realized profit of the United HealthCare Group fell 36 per cent from 2007 — from $4.65 billion in 2007 to $2.98 billion in 2008 due to legal costs. In 2008, an investigation by New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo found that Ingenix and its parent UnitedHealth Group defrauded consumers and providers by manipulating its database used to quantify reasonable and customary medical care provider rates to make them remarkably lower than the actual cost of typical medical expense. This provided health insurance companies over the past 15 years the means to inappropriately lower payment of provider claims, thereby increasing the insurance companies’ profits and often leaving patients to pay the difference. The company paid a $50 million fine and set another $50 million aside to revamp its data system as an external organization under non-profit public supervision. In 2008 United Health paid another $895 million in legal and settlement costs in two other class action law suits, the major one brought by CALPERS retirement fund over the stock option deception. In addition, on January 15, 2009, UnitedHealth Group announced a $350 million settlement of three class action lawsuits filed in Federal court by the American Medical Association and others for not paying claims for out of network medical services to their patients. Anyone can easily see that the management of this company has no sense of public fiduciary responsibility and has focused major resources on making profit and manipulating the financing of health care. It is a real stretch to imagine that the same board of directors and top officials, so caught up in these huge illegal money grabs would really be interested in paying attention to my patients’, and your family’s, and our neighbors’ sickness and pain or in any remediation of our health care system’s problems.

In addition it is important to mention AARP — the AARP that supported the poorly designed Medicare Part D which became very profitable to insurance companies due to its mandated subsidies. The American Association of Retired People have an exclusive contract with this same United Health care to sell their health insurance policies. Do you know that AARP’s annual budget is over $1 billion a year and over $700 million of that comes from fees for selling insurance products. Some of these products are total rip offs as was recently revealed by our conservative Republican Senator from Iowa, Chuck Grassley who sent AARP a searing letter dated November 3, 2008. It embarrassed AARP and forced them to withdraw from the market several scandalous products (Essential Health Insurance Plan and Essential Plus Health Insurance Plan) developed by the United Health Group and sold by AARP to 44,000 people. You will note that AARP is always invited to the public policy table and the hearings to contribute to major political discussions about health care reform. This is totally inappropriate. AARP is part of the problem and not part of the solution. It is nothing but an insurance broker disguised as an advocacy group — and they will never take on the health insurance industry. AARP will represent the insurance industry rather than the public welfare in discussions about health reform.

Now examine the health insurance system as a whole: It should be obvious that the only functional purpose of the insurance company is to collect money (premiums) from one set of folks (people/patients) and pool it and then pay it to another set of folks (medical providers). Other than acting as a bank, there is NO value added. All the rest is expensive smoke and mirrors: marketing, false consumer choices, medical rating, care management — all of which they do poorly and very expensively. In fact, all these expensive activities are designed to either maximize profit or to be a window dressing rationale for their profit. Furthermore, the health insurance industry itself and its egregious expenses and profits are virtually wholly a creation of tax payer subsidy and 70 years of one sided industry supportive legislation. Federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, the Veteran’s Administration, Crippled Children’s Services, SCHIP, and the Ryan White Act take huge numbers of potentially expensive or chronically ill Americans out of the pool of privately insured people, allowing these private firms to cherry pick the most affordable enrollees.

Few people remember that the first private health insurance companies like the original Blue Cross and Blue Shield were not for profit entities with some charitable purpose. In 1944 FDR’s attorney general charged the South-Eastern Underwriters Association, an insurance company, with anti-trust price fixing. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where the insurers made the audacious defense that they could not be regulated under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution because they were not a business, not “commerce.” The insurance company lost, but within a year their lobbyists took their revenge. In 1945 the McCarran-Ferguson Act declared that “No Act of Congress shall be construed to invalidate, impair, or supersede any law enacted by any State for regulating the business of insurance…” This why we are stuck with the relatively fragmented and impotent state attorney generals and 50 state agencies to regulate the massive corporate businesses represented by AHIP. (It takes a creative and powerful attorney general like Andrew Cuomo of New York to have an impact.) Since then and along the way the insurance lobby has had its way with state legislatures. First, the health insurance companies were allowed to give up community (a geographic standard) rating for medical rating (an individual disease history standard) — so they could increasingly exclude potentially expensive patients and secondly, not for profit health insurance companies were allowed to become for-profit so their companies and enrollees could be cheaply acquired by the expanding for-profit corporate giants like United Health care. In this process, over the last 65 years, the health insurance companies have long given up any semblance of being service organizations. They became the disease in our health care system. Now we have to deal with massive powerfully oligopolistic insurance companies. In February, 2009 the US GAO surveyed the small group health insurance market. They found “The five largest carriers in the small group market, when combined, (had)…three-quarters or more of the market in 34 of the 39 states…and they (had)…90 percent or more in 23 of these states.”

Each health provider has to deal with potentially 1500 different insurance companies, each with their own care rules and payment querks. In my office I regularly deal with about 40 payers. A study published just last month in HEALTH AFFAIRS, demonstrated that “billing and insurance-related functions” cost each FTE physician at least $85,276 a year (or about 10% of gross revenue) in time and staff. In the last 30 years the number of health system administrators has grown by 3000% while the number of physicians has grown 300%. In the past 9 years workers’ pay has grown 29% while the cost of health insurance net of administration has grown 75% and the net cost of health insurance administration has risen 106%. This year per capita health expenditures in the United States will approach $8000 a year or about 17 % of our GNP. A study by an international management consulting firm demonstrated that on an internationally adjusted comparative basis annual health care spending for each person in the United States is over $2000 a year more than would be econometrically appropriate given our nation’s wealth. This added expense is almost wholly due to the costs of the private, for profit health insurance system and adds no value. The bottom line is that the private, for profit health insurance companies divert on the order of $350 billion of insurance premium money from medical services. This is a sum which approaches the size of the peacetime Pentagon budget. Single payer reform will reallocate these moneys to care for the uninsured.

In order to understand why single payer reform has not been given a fair hearing in Washington I want to detail the power of AHIP. In 2008 alone they gave $36,695,680 to Congressional candidates – $17,493,170 to democrats and $19,128,523 to republicans. Senator Baucus, chairing the health reform hearings at the Senate Finance Committee, has raised $11.4 million from 2005 through now. Of this about $500,000 came from insurance companies, $500,000 from pharmaceutical companies, and $500,0000 from health professionals. This is why two weeks ago my concerned colleagues from the California Nurses Association and Physicians for A National Health Program had to disrupt the order of his hearings to point out he was ignoring the single payer reform option.

It is important to understand why a “public health insurance plan” created to “stand beside” existing private health insurance plans does not provide a cure. This proposal is based in part on the experience in Massachusetts. The current Massachusetts universal coverage health reform plan is being looked upon as a model for the nation. It has had some success, yet it cannot and must not be used as a model for national reform with a “stand along public health plan” option. The Massachusetts model relies on government subsidy directed through the private health insurance carriers. There are three important observations here:

1. A 2007 study sponsored by AHIP reviewed prior experience with this type of reform model in 8 states in the 1990s (Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts (in 1996), New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washington). They found that “in general…, individual health insurance markets deteriorated….Often, insurance companies chose to stop selling individual insurance in the market….Enrollment in individual insurance also tended to decrease, and premium rates tended to increase, sometimes dramatically…(And) we did not observe any significant decreases in the level of uninsured persons following the enactment of these market reforms.” The result was that all these reform programs failed and went out of existence.

2. Even with state government subsidy and leverage on premium charges many residents are excused from the “universal” program because they cannot afford the premiums. Many others are faced with unacceptably high and unaffordable copayments, deductibles, and benefit limits built into the approved insurance plans.

3. The program is totally dependent on the private insurance companies and there is no cost and minimal quality control mechanisms built in. The state of Massachusetts is thus currently facing a huge and perhaps intolerable budgetary deficit.

Finally, the cure is conceptually simple, but admittedly politically difficult. If the disease is an expensive and dysfunctional private, for profit health insurance system, the only possible cure is a single payer, Medicare for All reform. This option must not only be on the table, but must be passed into law. Our elected representatives must be supported to have the courage to objectively evaluate its benefits, and then given the backbone to pass it. This option already exists in the detailed legislative form contained in HR 676 by Congressman Conyers and already endorsed by 70 Congressmen and women. It contains five simple to understand solution components:

1. AUTOMATIC ENROLLMENT — Everyone receives a card assuring payment for all needed care by any willing licensed provider. This would eliminate the need for expensive marketing and sales campaigns and the broker system. Universal coverage will also shrink the need for workman’s compensation insurance as well as medical malpractice insurance.

2. FREE CHOICE OF DOCTOR AND HOSPITAL

3. DOCTORS AND HOSPITALS REMAIN INDEPENDENT and negotiate fees and budgets with public agencies. This is not socialized medicine.

4. A PUBLIC AGENCY PROCESSES AND PAYS ALL BILLS. This should massively cut the administrative overhead drain generated both by insurance companies, by employer HR departments, and by medical providers from the order of 40 % of costs to 10% of costs allowing an estimated savings of $50 billion in the first year and up to $250 billion annually which can be used to cover the currently uninsured without the need to add new taxpayer subsidy. Money is provided by this law to retrain displaced insurance company workers.

5. The system would be FINANCED BY PROGRESSIVE TAXES. This would lift the burden of health insurance costs from America’s businesses making them more internationally competitive; widely expand the risk poll, thus lowering the cost for every individual participant, and eliminate the need for expensive HR systems.

The information, discussion, and perspective presented here has been virtually absent from White House, Congressional, and media discussions of the need to reform the health care system. This seems to be largely because of the political and financial clout of AHIP. It is important to know that single payer reform, Medicare for All, is the only proposal in the public arena with broad, enthusiastic support from the men and women on the street who must understand these facts to be motivated to get involved.

Hold out for single payer

By Nick Skala

The following remarks were presented to the Congressional Progressive Caucus on June 4.

Today the Congressional Progressive Caucus faces a choice. That choice is whether Members should maintain their unflinching support for single-payer, or to accede to intense political pressure to support the plan currently being developed in Congress under the direction of President Obama: a mandate for Americans to purchase an insurance plan from a massive new regulatory “exchange,” with one plan potentially being a “public option.”

The difference between these choices could not be more stark: single-payer has at its core the elimination of U.S.-style private insurance, using huge administrative savings and inherent cost control mechanisms to provide comprehensive, sustainable universal coverage.

The “public option” preserves all of the systemic defects inherent in reliance on a patchwork of private insurance companies to finance health care, a system which has been a miserable failure both in providing health coverage and controlling costs.

Elimination of U.S.-style private insurance has been a prerequisite to the achievement of universal health care in every other industrialized country in the world. In contrast, public program expansions coupled with mandates have failed everywhere they’ve been tried, both domestically and internationally.

Many progressives accept that the “public option” is inferior to a single-payer system, yet support it because of its perceived political expedience. It is my aim today to convince you that the “public option” program currently being developed is not only bad health policy, but bad health politics.

On two separate occasions last month, physicians and nurses were dragged from the Senate Finance Committee in handcuffs for demanding that single-payer be considered in our nation’s health reform debate. These were American doctors and nurses, people who care for patients, people who want to practice medicine, not protest and disrupt Congress.

But these professionals risked their careers and their freedom. They did this not because they thought that the “public option” was “good” and single-payer “better.” They did it because they are firmly convinced, by well-established health policy science, that the so-called “public option” has no hope of remedying the systemic defects that cause their patients to suffer and die, sometimes before their very eyes.

Millions of dollars have been spent by political advocacy groups to commission polls and statistics “proving” that their health reform is “politically feasible.” Yet political winds do not make good health policy. Careful examination of science and experience do. And it is in the science and experience that we see that single-payer offers the only way to truly comprehensive, universal and sustainable health care, and that “public option” schemes offer only more of the same: tens of millions of uninsured, rapidly deteriorating coverage, an epidemic of medical bankruptcy, and skyrocketing costs that will eventually cripple the system.

First, because the “public option” is built around the retention of private insurance companies, it is unable – in contrast to single-payer – to recapture the $400 billion in administrative waste that private insurers currently generate in their drive to fight claims, issue denials and screen out the sick. A single-payer system would redirect these huge savings back into the system, requiring no net increase in health spending.

In contrast, the “public option” will require huge new sources of revenue, currently estimated at around $1 trillion over the next decade. Rather than cutting this bloat, the public option adds yet another layer of useless and complicated bureaucracy in the form of an “exchange,” which serves no useful function other than to police and broker private insurance companies.

Second, because the “public option” fails to contain the cost control mechanism inherent in single-payer, such as global budgeting, bulk purchasing and planned capital expenditures, any gains in coverage will quickly be erased as costs skyrocket and government is forced to choose between raising revenue and cutting benefits.

Third, because of this inability to control costs or realize administrative savings, the coverage and benefits that can be offered will be of the same type currently offered by private carriers, which cause millions of insured Americans to go without needed care due to costs and have led to an epidemic of medical bankruptcies.

Supporters of incremental reform once again promise us universal coverage without structural reform, but we’ve heard this promise dozens of times before.

Virtually all of the reforms being floated by President Obama and other centrist Democrats have been tried, and have failed repeatedly. Plans that combined mandates to purchase coverage with Medicaid expansions fell apart in Massachusetts (1988), Oregon (1992), and Washington state (1993); the latest iteration (Massachusetts, 2006) is already stumbling, with uninsurance again rising and costs soaring. Tennessee’s experiment with a massive Medicaid expansion and a public plan option worked – for one year, until rising costs sank it.

The Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (the model for a health insurance exchange) leaves hundreds of thousands of federal workers uninsured, and has proven unable to contain costs.

Negative results in a recent series of randomized trials explodes the hope that chronic disease management will cut costs. And the CBO has thrown a wet blanket on the notion that electronic medical records save money.

As Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program, have remarked, a public plan option does not lead toward single-payer, but toward the segregation of patients, with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in the public plan. A quarter-century of experience with public/private competition in the Medicare program demonstrates that the private plans will not allow a level playing field. Despite strict regulation, private insurers have successfully cherry-picked healthier seniors, and have exploited regional health spending differences to their advantage. They have progressively undermined the public plan – which started as a single-payer system for seniors and have now become a funding mechanism for HMOs – and a place to dump the unprofitably ill.

Progressive supporters of the “public option” readily concede that single-payer is a superior system. Indeed, their response to evidence that their plan won’t work is to commission more charts and graphs emphasizing its political feasibility.

The “public option” is truly the embodiment of health policy designed by sound bytes, cobbled together from snippets of information gathered from focus groups and public opinion polls, and centered around well-polling buzzwords such as “choice” and “shared responsibility.”

Such a plan may be enough to excite the political classes in Washington, who care more about what they think can pass the Congress than what will actually deliver universal, comprehensive health care for all. But doctors and nurses, the people who actually work in the health system, see right through it. They are going to jail because they know that this plan won’t work for their patients.

Nobody is going to jail for the “public option,” because the American people cannot be inspired by band-aids and half-measures it is impossible to believe in.

These doctors and nurses are the manifestation of a social movement, millions strong, that is waiting to be mobilized by the leadership of the Members in this room. Polls consistently show that two-thirds of the American people want single-payer. At a recent hearing in Montana convened by Sen. Max Baucus, only 10 people of three hundred said they were happy with the insurance they have. Sixty percent of physicians support single-payer, as do the U.S. Conference of Mayors and 39 state labor federations and hundreds of local unions across the country.

We’re told that holding out for single-payer is politically unwise, but to compromise and accept a bad plan at precisely the time when popular support and grassroots energy are on the side of true reform is the real political miscalculation.

The history of great social achievement is rife with instances in which the forces of institutionalized power told social movements – as they now tell this one – that what they wanted was too much, or too fast, or too soon. I think, of course, of the abolition of human slavery, the enfranchisement of women, the Civil Rights Movement, Social Security, the minimum wage, an end to child labor. In each of these instances, social movements held fast to their principles and soon discovered that they had been told was “politically unfeasible” one moment was political reality the next.

We currently have a better chance to pass single-payer than Lyndon Johnson had when he passed Medicare. Unlike the public option, single-payer – because it holds the potential to finally realize universal, equitable health care – can be a vehicle to inspire the American people for progressive change.

The voices of doctors and nurses can achieve extraordinary resonance when they speak selflessly in their patients’ interest. But your leadership is crucial to inspire the American people. It is my hope that you’ll see fit to provide it.

Click here for a printable version of the handout below.

The “Public Option” Fails as Health Politics:

  Single-Payer “Public Option”
Number Insured Universal Coverage Millions remain uninsured or underinsured
Coverage Coverage for all medically necessary services. Insurers continue to strip-down policies and increase patients’ co-payments and deductibles.
Cost Redirect $350 billion in administrative waste to care; no net increase in health spending. Increase health spending more than $1 trillion over 10 years.
Savings $350 billion in administrative waste. Further systemic savings achieved through negotiated fee schedule with physicians, global budgeting of hospitals, bulk purchasing of pharmaceuticals, rational planning of capital expenditures, etc. Add further layers of administrative bloat to our health system through the introduction of a regulator / broker “exchange.”
Sustainability Large scale cost controls (global budgeting, capital planning, etc.) ensure that benefits are sustainable over the long term. Uncontrolled costs ensure that any gains in coverage are quickly erased as government is forced to hike spending or slash benefits.

But Getting “Something” is Better than Getting “Nothing,” Isn’t It?

Not if that “something” makes it more difficult to reach a real solution and ensures temporary relief will be followed by prolonged suffering. The “public option” may allow some people to buy inadequate insurance products for a short time. But such a system will quickly be crushed by the weight of rising health care costs, as Medicaid, SCHIP and dozens of state initiatives have been.

In addition, expending political capital on reforms that we know will fail makes the public cynical and gives ammunition to those who say that the government cannot create effective programs. Hence, any attempt at real reform is delayed, usually by decades. The minor temporal relief that reformers might get by acquiescing to insurance industry demands is simply not worth the continued suffering of the American people.

But Such a System to Could be a “Step” Towards Universal Coverage, Right?

No. Enacting phony “universal coverage” has not brought any state closer to a single-payer system. Since the early 1990s, Minnesota, Oregon, Maine, Florida, Utah, Washington, California, Vermont and Massachusetts have been among the states that have attempted to “patch-up” their fundamentally fl awed systems while retaining a place for insurance companies. All have failed. Upon passage, incremental reforms in each of these states were hailed by politicians and the media as a “step toward universal coverage.” Yet despite all the claims of pragmatism, incremental reformers have been unable to shepherd through meaningful change in nearly four decades of trying. And while reformers in these states continue to wait for the next “step,” residents continue to suffer.

The definition of insanity is to repeat an action expecting a different result. This is exactly what we have done in continuing to advocate incremental reforms as “steps” toward single-payer. What Americans need is not more proposals for patchwork reforms. We need leaders willing to stand up for the only solution that will work.

Nick Skala is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org).

Protesters want Baucus to consider single-payer system

By JOHN S. ADAMS
Great Falls Tribune
June 6, 2009

HELENA–Undeterred by Sen. Max Baucus’ steadfast refusal to inject single-payer into the congressional debate on health care reform, more than 100 proponents of a “Medicare-for-all” form of nationalized health insurance rallied for their cause on Friday.

Protesters in Helena, Great Falls, Missoula, Bozeman and Butte gathered at Baucus’ local field offices and demanded that Montana’s senior senator, and chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, put single-payer back on the table.

Eric Feaver, president of the state’s largest labor union, MEA-MFT, addressed the crowd at the amphitheater at the Great Northern Town Center and said he doesn’t want to “trash” Baucus, but that Baucus is on the wrong path by ignoring single-payer.

“I think he has a very difficult job and he has 100 senators to work with that are not of one mind,” Feaver said. “But I am here to remind Sen. Baucus that MEA-MFT does have 18,000 members who live and work everywhere in this state and they all vote. And they have supported single-payer for many years.”

Though Baucus has been frigid to the idea of single-payer, he has said he’d consider supporting a public option in which the federal government would create an insurance plan that would compete with private insurance plans. However, Baucus also has floated the idea of taxing employer-provided health care benefits, a proposal MEA-MFT adamantly opposes, Feaver said.

“The working men and women of this state support health care reform, and they want the most comprehensive health care reform possible,” Feaver said.

Kim Abbott, lead organizer for the Montana Human Rights Network’s Right to Healthcare program, said affordable health care is not a privilege, but a human right.

“There is nothing more infuriating, or frustrating or sickening than knowing the answer but not having the political will to do the right thing,” Abbott said. “We all know the answer. What’s the answer?”

“Single payer!” the crowd responded.

Dr. Carol Paris, a Maryland psychiatrist who was twice arrested last month for protesting single-payer’s exclusion from two Senate Finance Committee hearings, also appeared at Friday’s rally.

Paris, who was introduced as a “hero” of the single-payer movement for her acts of civil disobedience, said single-payer advocates need to “keep the heat on Sen. Baucus.”

“The next 60 days truly are critical,” Paris said. “We need to keep the momentum going here and in Washington.”

Paris said single-payer advocates have three demands of Baucus.

* That he and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., hold Senate hearings on the merits of single-payer health care.

* That Baucus order the Congressional Budget Office to study the costs of implementing the Senate and House versions of single payer bills that have already been introduced.

* That Baucus arrange a meeting between President Barack Obama and single-payer experts.

After the rally protesters walked to Baucus’ office around the corner. A Baucus staffer handed protesters a sheet of paper with Baucus’ position on single payer.

“For more than a year Sen. Baucus has been laying the ground work to enact comprehensive, meaningful health care reform,” the letter said in part.

It went on to say that Baucus and single-payer advocates “share the same goal.”

“Both Senator Baucus and single payer advocates believe that every Montanan should have quality, affordable health care,” the letter stated.

The two sides remain far from agreement on how to achieve that goal.

Kaiser Health Tracking Poll

Kaiser Health Tracking Poll

Kaiser Family Foundation
April 2-8, 2009
7. Now I’m going to read you some different ways to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance. As I read each one, please tell me whether you would favor it or oppose it. Here’s the (first/next) one — (INSERT AND RANDOMIZE- ALWAYS ASK ITEMS d AND h LAST). Do you favor or oppose this? (Is that strongly favor/oppose or somewhat favor/oppose?)
Items b-d based on half sample (n=616)
Items e-h based on half sample (n=587)
a. Requiring employers to offer health insurance to their workers or pay money into a government fund that will pay to cover those without insurance
71% favor
25% oppose
b. Offering tax credits to help people buy private health insurance
67% favor
29% oppose
c. Expanding Medicare to cover people between the ages of 55 and 64 who do not have health
insurance
79% favor
18% oppose
d. Creating a government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans
67% favor
29% oppose
e. Expanding state government programs for low-income people, such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program
77% favor
20% oppose
f. Requiring all Americans to have health insurance, either from their employer or from another source, with financial help for those who can’t afford it
72% favor
25% oppose
g. Having a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan
49% favor
47% oppose
h. Creating a public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans
67% favor
29% oppose
http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/upload/7892.pdf

Two-thirds to three-fourths of Americans support each of the reform options listed, except one. Americans are fairly evenly divided on “Having a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan.”
This is not a fluke. When the same survey was conducted in December, 2008 (minus the questions on public health insurance options), the results were very similar.
We could speculate as to why this poll seems to indicate less support for a single payer national health program than do other polls. Factors such as phrasing, context, demographics of the population polled, and so forth could explain the variation in the responses. If so, that would suggest that single payer support is quite malleable. That would mean that the threshold of a mandate for single payer reform has not yet been reached.
My opinion, which some may dispute, is that healthy Americans, who have good jobs and what they perceive to be adequate, employer-financed health care coverage, are not yet ready to trade that insurance in for an unknown government program which they assume they would have to pay for themselves, either through a premium or through higher taxes.
Pretending that the majority of Americans would risk their current health security for a more egalitarian system for everyone will not move the process for reform forward. Only when people understand that a single payer system would benefit them individually would they be willing to support reform that incidentally benefits everyone else as well.
We still have work to do.

Kaiser Health Tracking Poll

Kaiser Health Tracking Poll

Kaiser Family Foundation
April 2-8, 2009

7. Now I’m going to read you some different ways to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance. As I read each one, please tell me whether you would favor it or oppose it. Here’s the (first/next) one — (INSERT AND RANDOMIZE- ALWAYS ASK ITEMS d AND h LAST). Do you favor or oppose this? (Is that strongly favor/oppose or somewhat favor/oppose?)

Items b-d based on half sample (n=616)
Items e-h based on half sample (n=587)

a. Requiring employers to offer health insurance to their workers or pay money into a government fund that will pay to cover those without insurance
71% favor
25% oppose

b. Offering tax credits to help people buy private health insurance
67% favor
29% oppose

c. Expanding Medicare to cover people between the ages of 55 and 64 who do not have health
insurance
79% favor
18% oppose

d. Creating a government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans
67% favor
29% oppose

e. Expanding state government programs for low-income people, such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program
77% favor
20% oppose

f. Requiring all Americans to have health insurance, either from their employer or from another source, with financial help for those who can’t afford it
72% favor
25% oppose

g. Having a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan
49% favor
47% oppose

h. Creating a public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans
67% favor
29% oppose

http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/upload/7892.pdf

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Two-thirds to three-fourths of Americans support each of the reform options listed, except one. Americans are fairly evenly divided on “Having a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan.”

This is not a fluke. When the same survey was conducted in December, 2008 (minus the questions on public health insurance options), the results were very similar.

We could speculate as to why this poll seems to indicate less support for a single payer national health program than do other polls. Factors such as phrasing, context, demographics of the population polled, and so forth could explain the variation in the responses. If so, that would suggest that single payer support is quite malleable. That would mean that the threshold of a mandate for single payer reform has not yet been reached.

My opinion, which some may dispute, is that healthy Americans, who have good jobs and what they perceive to be adequate, employer-financed health care coverage, are not yet ready to trade that insurance in for an unknown government program which they assume they would have to pay for themselves, either through a premium or through higher taxes.

Pretending that the majority of Americans would risk their current health security for a more egalitarian system for everyone will not move the process for reform forward. Only when people understand that a single payer system would benefit them individually would they be willing to support reform that incidentally benefits everyone else as well.

We still have work to do.

Concerns about conflict of interests apply to Grassley, too

By JESS FIEDOROWICZ
Des Moines Register
June 7, 2009

Over the last several years, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley has aggressively campaigned against conflict of interests in academic medicine. He has criticized academics at dozens of institutions across the country, including but not limited to Harvard and Stanford universities. His primary targets are government-funded researchers who had undisclosed or inadequately disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry. The concern as detailed by Grassley in a letter to the chancellor of the University of Texas system is that “funding from pharmaceutical companies can influence scientific studies, continuing medical education, and the prescribing patterns of doctors.” Beyond disclosure of this conflict, Grassley demands an explanation of how “the interest has been managed, reduced, or eliminated.”

The disclosure and management of conflict of interests is indeed an important concern for those with an ethical and fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of others. Physicians have a responsibility to act in the best interests of their patients. Elected officials have a responsibility to act in the best interests of those they represent. We should be pleased Grassley has brought up this very timely, relevant issue.

The Senate Finance Committee, on which Grassley serves as the ranking member, has recently taken up the issue of health-care reform. While potential conflicts of interest for committee members have not been formally disclosed as part of the process, the data is publicly available. According to MAPLight.org, Grassley received $376,893 and $243,722 in campaign contributions from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, respectively, from 2003-2008. During this time, Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) received $592,185 and $524,813, from the same respective industries. There does not appear to be any plan to reduce or eliminate these apparent conflicts of interests. Yet, any conflict may interfere with the ethical and fiduciary responsibility of our representatives, and the behavior of committee members suggests conflicting interests.

In several polls, the majority of Americans and physicians support national health insurance. A single-payer, national health-insurance system could save over $350 billion annually by reducing unnecessary overhead and bureaucracy and is the most affordable option to provide universal coverage. Advocates for single-payer, national health insurance, however, were denied a seat at the table in Senate Finance Committee hearings led by Baucus, who instead included industry “stakeholders.” Grassley has gone even further, opposing any public plan, arguing “that the government is an unfair competitor” to private insurers. The position of the private insurance industry appears to be well represented. Populist proposals such as single payer have been ignored in the setting of strong industry opposition.

Money and power have tremendous influence in Washington. Grassley’s crusade against conflict of interests in academic medicine may provide insight into how we can combat similar undue influence in Washington to protect our democracy. Our representatives need to not only disclose conflicts, but also take measures to reduce risk. This minimally requires open inclusion and serious consideration of proposals with proven effectiveness or popular support, such as single-payer, national health insurance. It further requires re-identification of the American public as the real “stakeholders.”

JESS FIEDOROWICZ is an academic psychiatrist. Contact: mkejess@yahoo.com

Doctor critical of Baucus promotes single-payer plan

By MIKE DENNISON
Billings Gazette
Saturday, June 06, 2009

HELENA – Maryland psychiatrist Carol Paris is calling herself one of the “Baucus 13” these days – in other words, one of the 13 doctors, nurses and activists arrested last month while protesting before a Washington, D.C., health reform hearing chaired by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

On Friday, Paris was in Montana, doing what got her arrested: urging Baucus, Congress and the president to consider a single-payer system of national health insurance that covers all citizens equally.

“The next 60 days are critical,” she told a rally of 150 single-payer supporters in Helena. “We need to keep the heat on Sen. Baucus (and Congress and the president).”

Single-payer advocates held rallies in six Montana cities on Friday.
Paris, 56, is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, whose 16,000 members are pushing for a national, publicly funded insurance plan that would replace private health insurance. The group paid for her trip to Montana.

In an interview Friday with the Gazette State Bureau, Paris said she used to believe that the private health insurance market could be reformed to improve health care, and she spent several years lobbying the Maryland Legislature.

“After a few years, I came to the conclusion that it was just a phenomenal waste of time,” she said. “At that point, I just said, there has to be a better place for me to put my time and energy.”

That was just six months ago, when she joined PNHP, to push for a single-payer system.

But Paris and other Maryland-area members found themselves basically ignored by Congress. They planned to protest – and get arrested – at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on health reform, chaired by Baucus.

Paris and her colleagues showed up the morning of May 5, spread themselves among the gallery and, one by one, interrupted Baucus as he started the meeting.

“I interrupt this so-called public hearing to bring you the following unpaid political announcement: Put single-payer on the table,” Paris said before she was arrested. “My name is Dr. Carol Paris, and I approved this message.”

Capitol police arrested the protesters, who have been charged with disrupting Congress.

Baucus, a key senator in drafting health reform legislation, said last week that he’ll ask that the charges be dropped. He’s said repeatedly that a single-payer system won’t be considered as a reform and is backing changes that maintain private health insurance.

Baucus spokesman Ty Matsdorf said Friday that the senator and single-payer advocates have the same goal of providing “quality, affordable health care to every American,” and that Baucus is confident that Congress will pass meaningful reform to “make this goal a reality.”

Paris, however, said her experience in private practice has convinced her that true reform can happen only if private health insurance is replaced with national, public insurance for all.

No longer would physicians’ staff have to spend hours dealing with multiple insurers on billing, no longer would patients have to do the same, and no longer would patients have to worry about which doctor is “in network,” she said. “You can go to any doctor you want,” Paris said. “It’s the private insurance industry where you can’t go to any place you want.”

Paris’s arrest was covered prominently by her local newspaper but received little or no attention from national news outlets.

She said she’s not surprised: “The mainstream, national media have blacked us out as much as Congress has. … I would say they’re following the lead of the president and Congress and simply not giving us a voice.”

Yet Paris said the reaction from her patients, as well as many fellow physicians, has been overwhelmingly positive.

She said she hears “over and over and over again” how people are frustrated by the current system, particularly dealing with their insurer, and that as soon as they understand how single-payer would work, they usually support it.

“I think that the only thing that keeps this from happening is the lack of political will by the president and our Congress,” Paris said.

Debunking Canadian health care myths

By Rhonda Hackett
The Denver Post, June 7, 2009

As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.

Often I’ll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner’s nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one’s merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.

Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.

Yet, the debate rages on. Indeed, it has reached a fever pitch since President Barack Obama took office, with Americans either dreading or hoping for the dawn of a single-payer health care system. Opponents of such a system cite Canada as the best example of what not to do, while proponents laud that very same Canadian system as the answer to all of America’s health care problems. Frankly, both sides often get things wrong when trotting out Canada to further their respective arguments.

As America comes to grips with the reality that changes are desperately needed within its health care infrastructure, it might prove useful to first debunk some myths about the Canadian system.

Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.

In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada’s taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.

Myth: Canada’s health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn’t when everybody is covered.

Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.

Ten percent of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada’s. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.

What the American taxpayer may not realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.

Myth: Canada’s government decides who gets health care and when they get it.

While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.

There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don’t get one no matter what your doctor thinks — unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.

Myth: There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.

There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists’ care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.

Myth: Canadians are paying out of pocket to come to the U.S. for medical care.

Most patients who come from Canada to the U.S. for health care are those whose costs are covered by the Canadian governments. If a Canadian goes outside of the country to get services that are deemed medically necessary, not experimental, and are not available at home for whatever reason (e.g., shortage or absence of high tech medical equipment; a longer wait for service than is medically prudent; or lack of physician expertise), the provincial government where you live fully funds your care. Those patients who do come to the U.S. for care and pay out of pocket are those who perceive their care to be more urgent than it likely is.

Myth: Canada is a socialized health care system in which the government runs hospitals and where doctors work for the government.

Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not “socialized medicine” but “social insurance” systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only. More than 90 percent of physicians in Canada are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Claims are submitted to a single provincial health care plan for reimbursement, whereas in the U.S., claims are submitted to a multitude of insurance providers. Moreover, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities rather than being part of or run by the government.

Myth: There aren’t enough doctors in Canada.

From a purely statistical standpoint, there are enough physicians in Canada to meet the health care needs of its people. But most doctors practice in large urban areas, leaving rural areas with bona fide shortages. This situation is no different than that being experienced in the U.S. Simply training and employing more doctors is not likely to have any significant impact on this specific problem. Whatever issues there are with having an adequate number of doctors in any one geographical area, they have nothing to do with the single-payer system.

And these are just some of the myths about the Canadian health care system. While emulating the Canadian system will likely not fix U.S. health care, it probably isn’t the big bad “socialist” bogeyman it has been made out to be.

It is not a perfect system, but it has its merits. For people like my 55-year-old Aunt Betty, who has been waiting for 14 months for knee-replacement surgery due to a long history of arthritis, it is the superior system. Her $35,000-plus surgery is finally scheduled for next month. She has been in pain, and her quality of life has been compromised. However, there is a li
ght at the end of the tunnel. Aunt Betty — who lives on a fixed income and could never afford private health insurance, much less the cost of the surgery and requisite follow-up care — will soon sport a new, high-tech knee. Waiting 14 months for the procedure is easy when the alternative is living in pain for the rest of your life.

Rhonda Hackett of Castle Rock is a clinical psychologist.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12523427

President Obama on the individual mandate

Letter from President Barack Obama to Senator Edward Kennedy and Senator Max Baucus

The White House
June 2, 2009
Excerpt
The meeting that we held today was very productive and I want to commend you for your leadership — and the hard work your Committees are doing on health care reform, one of the most urgent and important challenges confronting us as a Nation.
I understand the Committees are moving towards a principle of shared responsibility — making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and asking that employers share in the cost. I share the goal of ending lapses and gaps in coverage that make us less healthy and drive up everyone’s costs, and I am open to your ideas on shared responsibility. But I believe if we are going to make people responsible for owning health insurance, we must make health care affordable. If we do end up with a system where people are responsible for their own insurance, we need to provide a hardship waiver to exempt Americans who cannot afford it. In addition, while I believe that employers have a responsibility to support health insurance for their employees, small businesses face a number of special challenges in affording health benefits and should be exempted.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/The-President-Spells-Out-His-Vision-on-Health-Care-Reform/

Numerous media reports are proclaiming that President Obama is now open to an individual mandate – a requirement that each uninsured individual purchase a basic health plan. But what did he really say?
He said that if we make people responsible for their own insurance (individual mandate), then we must grant a hardship waiver to exempt people who cannot afford it. But the primary reason that people have not purchased insurance in the individual market is that the plans are not affordable. Most of these individuals will be eligible for the hardship waiver and will remain uninsured.
What else did he say? He said that small businesses should be exempted from the responsibility of supporting health insurance for their employees since they face special challenges in affording health benefits. But for 80 percent of the uninsured, the head of the household is employed, predominantly by small businesses.
So President Obama has endorsed an individual mandate that would expand coverage to everyone – except those who cannot afford to pay for the coverage, and those whose jobs are in small businesses that cannot afford to provide employee health benefits. That is, we’ll cover everyone except most of those who are currently uninsured, nor those who will lose their health benefits as the rate of employer-sponsored coverage continues to decline, especially with a pessimistic job outlook.
The president’s letter is more than a personal communication to a couple of senators. It is a consensus statement, meant for public consumption, on the agreement between the administration and Congress on the most basic fundamentals of the reform legislation to be completed, as the president stated, in the “make-or-break window” before the August recess. Reading the full letter makes you realize how low the expectations are for the final reform product.
Sen. Baucus has expressed remorse for not giving single payer advocates an audience, but he has also stated that it is too late in the process to do so now. However, on June 10, the House Committee on Education and Labor will hold a hearing, “Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option.”
Although single payer legislation has already been introduced in both the House and the Senate, the logistics of lining up the political ducks before the August recess is nigh close to an impossibility. Nevertheless, do not let up on your efforts. In the next couple of months, while health reform is on the front burner, the flames must be stoked with our loud and clear message that we need reform that actually will accomplish the goal of affordable health care for all.
Though we may miss this one, the “make-or-break window” does not close with the August recess. The 2010 election process is already beginning. Individuals and organizations should begin immediately to use strategies and tactics to be certain that candidates understand that they will not be elected unless they support a single payer national health program. That should be the make-or-break litmus test for the 2010 elections.

President Obama on the individual mandate

Letter from President Barack Obama to Senator Edward Kennedy and Senator Max Baucus

The White House
June 2, 2009

Excerpt

The meeting that we held today was very productive and I want to commend you for your leadership — and the hard work your Committees are doing on health care reform, one of the most urgent and important challenges confronting us as a Nation.

I understand the Committees are moving towards a principle of shared responsibility — making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and asking that employers share in the cost. I share the goal of ending lapses and gaps in coverage that make us less healthy and drive up everyone’s costs, and I am open to your ideas on shared responsibility. But I believe if we are going to make people responsible for owning health insurance, we must make health care affordable. If we do end up with a system where people are responsible for their own insurance, we need to provide a hardship waiver to exempt Americans who cannot afford it. In addition, while I believe that employers have a responsibility to support health insurance for their employees, small businesses face a number of special challenges in affording health benefits and should be exempted.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/The-President-Spells-Out-His-Vision-on-Health-Care-Reform/

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Numerous media reports are proclaiming that President Obama is now open to an individual mandate – a requirement that each uninsured individual purchase a basic health plan. But what did he really say?

He said that if we make people responsible for their own insurance (individual mandate), then we must grant a hardship waiver to exempt people who cannot afford it. But the primary reason that people have not purchased insurance in the individual market is that the plans are not affordable. Most of these individuals will be eligible for the hardship waiver and will remain uninsured.

What else did he say? He said that small businesses should be exempted from the responsibility of supporting health insurance for their employees since they face special challenges in affording health benefits. But for 80 percent of the uninsured, the head of the household is employed, predominantly by small businesses.

So President Obama has endorsed an individual mandate that would expand coverage to everyone – except those who cannot afford to pay for the coverage, and those whose jobs are in small businesses that cannot afford to provide employee health benefits. That is, we’ll cover everyone except most of those who are currently uninsured, nor those who will lose their health benefits as the rate of employer-sponsored coverage continues to decline, especially with a pessimistic job outlook.

The president’s letter is more than a personal communication to a couple of senators. It is a consensus statement, meant for public consumption, on the agreement between the administration and Congress on the most basic fundamentals of the reform legislation to be completed, as the president stated, in the “make-or-break window” before the August recess. Reading the full letter makes you realize how low the expectations are for the final reform product.

Sen. Baucus has expressed remorse for not giving single payer advocates an audience, but he has also stated that it is too late in the process to do so now. However, on June 10, the House Committee on Education and Labor will hold a hearing, “Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option.”

Although single payer legislation has already been introduced in both the House and the Senate, the logistics of lining up the political ducks before the August recess is nigh close to an impossibility. Nevertheless, do not let up on your efforts. In the next couple of months, while health reform is on the front burner, the flames must be stoked with our loud and clear message that we need reform that actually will accomplish the goal of affordable health care for all.

Though we may miss this one, the “make-or-break window” does not close with the August recess. The 2010 election process is already beginning. Individuals and organizations should begin immediately to use strategies and tactics to be certain that candidates understand that they will not be elected unless they support a single payer national health program. That should be the make-or-break litmus test for the 2010 elections.

Medical Bills Cause Most Bankruptcies

By Tara Parker-Pope
New York Times blog
June 4, 2009

Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness, a new study shows.

The study data, published online Thursday in The American Journal of Medicine, likely understate the full scope of the problem because the data were collected before the current economic crisis. In 2007, medical problems contributed to 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies. Between 2001 and 2007, the proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by about 50 percent.

“The U.S. health care financing system is broken, and not only for the poor and uninsured,” the study authors wrote. “Middle-class families frequently collapse under the strain of a health care system that treats physical wounds, but often inflicts fiscal ones.”

The data on medical bankruptcy, compiled by researchers at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University, is based on a survey of 2,314 randomly selected bankruptcy filers during early 2007.

Among families who were bankrupted by illness, those with private insurance reported average medical bills of $17,749 compared to those who were uninsured, who faced an average of $26,971 in medical costs. Those who had health insurance but lost it in the course of their illness reported average medical bills of $22,568.

Hospital costs accounted for about half the expenses (48 percent), followed by prescription drugs (18.6 percent), doctor’s bills (15.1 percent) and insurance premiums (4.1 percent). Medical equipment and nursing home care rounded out the list.

The health problems that left patients with the highest out-of-pocket expenses were ranked as follows:

Neurologic (i.e., multiple sclerosis): $34,167
Diabetes: $26,971
Injuries: 25,096
Stroke: $23,380
Mental illnesses: $23,178
Heart disease: $21,955

Regressive and Unaffordable

By Marcia Angell
NYTimes
June 5, 2009

There would be no need for an individual mandate in a single-payer system, since everyone would be covered automatically and it would be paid for through their income and payroll taxes. So asking me, a supporter of a single-payer health system, about mandates is a little like asking someone whether he’s stopped beating his wife.

Only a single-payer system would stop the private insurance industry from holding us hostage.

But even within our current system, I’m troubled by the notion of an individual mandate. I live in Massachusetts, where we have one. It requires people to buy private insurance at whatever price the companies choose to charge. As might be expected, this is a windfall for the insurance industry. Premiums are rising much faster than income, benefit packages are getting skimpier, and deductibles and co-payments are going up.

Many people can’t afford the premiums for the best plans, and so have to choose bare-bones, low-premium plans with high deductibles and co-payments. They are then left with insurance that they might not be able to afford to use, but have to purchase anyway.

A mandate is also extremely regressive. In Massachusetts, mandated insurance and co-payments can amount to nearly a third of income. Income taxes apportion the costs of public services more fairly, and I see no reason not to adopt that approach in paying for health care. To be sure, President Obama has said he would exempt people from the mandate who couldn’t afford to purchase their own health insurance. But aren’t these precisely the people most in need of it? Massachusetts has exempted 62,000 people from the mandate for that reason.

I would hope the President and Congress would come up with something less regressive and truly universal, and stop holding the rest of us hostage to the private insurance industry.

Marcia Angell is a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/should-health-insurance-be-mandatory/