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The Health Care Monster Returns: Even Republicans acknowledge its ravages, but what’s the best way to slay the beast?

The Health Care Monster Returns: Even Republicans acknowledge its ravages, but what’s the best way to slay the beast?

by David Moberg
In These Times
03/7/07

Like the creature from the Black Lagoon, the health insurance monster has returned, creeping back onto the public stage. After President Clinton’s jury-rigged pen to contain the monster collapsed in 1994, it never really went away. Political leaders tried to ignore the beast or deal piecemeal with its ravages, but it pushed more unsuspecting civilians into the uninsured pit, devoured more family budgets, squeezed even giant corporations’ ability to compete globally, and raised fear and insecurity among the populace.

Now its depredations have become too loathsome to ignore for even cautious politicians and business executives — who still are inclined to see the monster as one of their own. After a rebuff in the fall elections, when voters ranked health care as one of their top concerns, President Bush offered a plan that almost certainly would not deliver his promise of “quality, affordable health care for all Americans.”

Recently, chief executives like Lee Scott of Wal-Mart — under attack for its skimpy health insurance coverage of employees — and Steve Burd of Safeway — which endured a long strike by southern California grocery workers to cut their health insurance — joined progressive leaders like Service Employees Industrial Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern, head of the nation’s largest health workers union, to call for major changes in the health care system. Under fire from both other labor unions and many citizen health care groups for joining with strange bedfellows on behalf of very broad principles, Stern argues that “the most essential change is to get everyone in a system where they have health care,” then work to improve it.

Although the war in Iraq is likely to dominate the already energetic Democratic presidential primary race, health care is emerging as the leading domestic issue in both parties. Shortly after announcing his candidacy, John Edwards laid out a comprehensive health care plan. Barack Obama said that the nation should provide universal insurance coverage by the end of the next president’s term, though so far he has mostly advocated for minor and politically easy reforms, like computerizing health records. Republican candidate Mitt Romney signed a flawed plan for universal health care when he was governor of Massachusetts, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, after vetoing statewide single-payer legislation passed last year, has his own health insurance plan.

There’s reason for hope when leaders across the political spectrum recognize the problem. But there’s no guarantee that such agreement will lead to a good solution. For more than a decade, conventional wisdom has dictated that only incremental steps should be taken. Now more politicians are willing to consider bolder steps — but the right is still determined to push its agenda. And many progressive reformers are cautious about pursuing their ideals, as they continue to nurse scars from the fight business interests waged against the Clinton plan.

“Overwhelmingly, people are trying to find incremental responses instead of a national response,” says Marilyn Clement, national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW, a coalition advocating a public insurance program as the single payer of health care bills. “They are still putting forward the same proposals as last summer, such as ‘The first step is to get national health care for children.’ Well, that’s good, but we won the election. It’s time to escalate our hopes.”

The first crucial step is to define the problem. For many people, it’s the rising number of Americans without health insurance, now nearly 47 million. But equally problematic is the decline in quality and scope of coverage for those who have insurance. And much of the public ranks the cost of health care as their top medical and economic concern. Focusing primarily on insuring everyone won’t necessarily solve those problems. Indeed, the skyrocketing cost of health care is the main reason that the ranks of the uninsured continue to grow. Faced with rising insurance premiums, businesses have been trying to cut costs by evading responsibility for providing health insurance, leading Stern to declare that “the employer-based health care system is dead.”

But the more fundamental problem is our reliance on private, for-profit corporations to provide health insurance — the real monster in this saga. They’re the main reason for rising costs (making health insurance in the United States about twice as expensive as in most industrial countries), for the growing number of uninsured, and for the inferior health results for the average American. In 2004, the United States spent $6,100 per capita on health care, compared to $2,250 per capita on average by the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which have national health insurance programs. Because public expenditures cover 60 percent of American health care costs, U.S. taxpayers are paying more than the cost of national health insurance, but not receiving it.

“How much can a new system depend on private insurance companies to provide affordable, good health care for everyone?” asks Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, a Washington, D.C.-based progressive advocacy group. “That should be the debate.”

Now the country is faced with two radically different proposals for reform. The first, pushed by conservatives and embraced by Bush in his new plans, would make individuals more responsible for buying their own health insurance. While giving them tax breaks to help pay the premiums, it would push them in the direction of lower-cost, less comprehensive plans (partly by taxing employer-provided insurance as income). As part of this strategy, conservatives have also undermined Medicare, first, by subsidizing private insurance companies to provide Medicare insurance and, second, by establishing a prescription program only available through private insurers.

The Bush strategy would be a boon for wealthy and healthy individuals, as well as employers and insurance companies, but it would ultimately leave most Americans paying more for less health security. The harsh edges of the plan could be softened — by regulating the insurance companies’ attempts to charge more or deny coverage to people seeking insurance, or by offering tax credits or direct subsidies to the poor instead of tax deductions. But these changes still embody what economist Jared Bernstein, of the progressive think tank the Economic Policy Institute, calls YOYO (“You’re On Your Own”) economics.

The diametrically opposite alternative is to recognize that “we’re in this together” (WITT, in Bernstein’s schema) and move towards social insurance, or a plan like Medicare. In this case, the federal government — through a public agency — would provide comprehensive insurance. It would be financed directly by progressive taxes on individuals and business, unlike the current system, which provides $200 billion a year in economically regressive and largely unrecognized tax deductions to subsidize employer-based health insurance. The public insurance agency would then bargain with health care providers, drug companies and others to control prices and improve quality of care.

The Bush YOYO strategy assumes that when health care consumers — otherwise known as patients — confront costs of medical care, they’ll consume less, and overall medical costs will go down. But Americans already spend more out-of-pocket on health care and use doctors and hospitals less than citizens of almost every other industrialized country. Yet, while the overall health cost in the United States is much higher, the outcomes — by virtually every measure of health — are worse. U.S. health care costs more mainly because of private insurance: Overhead at insurance companies runs close to 20 percent of total revenues, compared to less than 4 percent for Medicare. When the extra administrative costs imposed on providers are counted, the overall overhead that private insurance imposes on the system eats up about one-third of what Americans spend on health care. Eliminating those costs, as proposed by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and supported by Ohio Rep. and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, could finance most of a Medicare expansion to cover all Americans much more comprehensively than the program does now.

MOST PROGRESSIVE REFORMERS acknowledge that Medicare for everyone would best slay the health crisis monster, but many strategists worry that trying to eliminate the private insurers will provoke a withering counterattack. Consequently, many current proposals try, as Hillary Clinton did in 1993, to preserve a more regulated role for the insurance companies and at the same time expand public programs, on the model of Medicare, to provide a competitive alternative to private insurers.

Edwards’ plan would require employers to cover employees or help pay for their insurance (what’s widely known as “pay or play”). Everyone would have to buy insurance, taking advantage of tax credits, expanded programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or new regional “health markets” that would provide a choice of competitive private plans and a public plan. Along the same lines, but with a simpler design and more robust public component, Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker proposes that everyone not in Medicare be covered either by insurance at work or a public insurance pool, including both regulated private plans and a Medicare-like plan.

Both these proposals move in the direction of Medicare for all, but strike a compromise with the existing system, losing the potential for better efficiency and more equity in the bargain. Why not push for universal Medicare (aka, a “single payer” plan)? Proponents of compromises say Medicare for all is a political non-starter. Americans, they argue, are suspicious of government, like choices and often like the private insurance they already have. And besides, they say, the insurance industry — along with most business interests and political conservatives — would launch a scorched earth campaign against such a proposal.

“There are a lot of dedicated, smart people who have made the judgment that taking some steps toward a comprehensive system with a public health care plan is better than waiting for the perfect system,” says Hickey, whose organization supports Hacker’s proposal. The labor movement, which was divided over support of a single-payer system in the ’90s, seems even more cautious now. “The political will isn’t there now, but it could get there for single-payer,” says AFL-CIO health care lobbyist JoAnn Volk. A close union ally adds, “Most of the labor movement has already accommodated to the reality that we’re not going to get a pure single-payer system. They have made the judgment that it’s just not within the range of possibility.”

SEIU’s Stern — who has argued that the United States needs an “American” plan, and not a foreign model like Canada’s single-payer system — says, “First we should create [a health care system] in which everyone is covered, then we can figure out how to rationalize it. It will cost more money than if we did it the other way [i.e, pursing the best alternative], but I think we have more chance of getting it done. The perfect cannot be the enemy of the good.”

ALTHOUGH A SMALL but rebounding movement for some form of Medicare-for-all exists, some progressive groups that would be its natural partisans are reluctant to commit themselves to a specific plan. William McNary, president of USAction, a national group of statewide citizen organizations, notes that many of their allies are splintering over proposals. “Things are fracturing,” he says, “it would be best for us to line up behind principles,” and not a plan. Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America, a liberal movement within the Democratic Party, thinks the United States is ripe for universal health care, but worries about both infighting over the best plan and the specter of corporate attacks. He wonders, “Can we figure out a way to talk about this so as not to get bogged down, sway, with “Harry and Louise” commercials [that the insurance industry used against President Clinton’s plan]?”

But there’s no guarantee that insurance companies won’t launch a war against these compromises, especially any that curtail insurance industry profits. And corporations that support universal health insurance will almost certainly oppose any plan that doesn’t seriously reduce their financial responsibility, which would threaten to shift costs to individuals. “Everyone says they’re for universal health care,” says Don Bechler, chair of the California Universal Health Care Organizing Project. “But the fundamental question is, ‘Who pays?’ Is [universal health care going to be] a sliding scale health care plan where everyone is entitled to first class health care, or a flat tax to sell junk insurance?”

When Clinton tried to finesse such political opposition by making insurance companies central to his plan, he suffered merciless attacks. No plan worth having will win without a massive grassroots organizing and education campaign. And Medicare for all is the one most likely to do so, while simultaneously strengthening progressives politically.

The American people are at least open to the argument. In a 2003 Washington Post poll, one of the few to pose alternatives fairly, 62 percent of respondents said they would prefer a universal health insurance program like Medicare, run by the government, to the current health insurance program. And support for the Medicare program remained nearly as high even if it limited the choice of doctors or led to waiting lists for non-emergency procedures.

Eventually, Medicare-for-all advocates might have to settle for a compromise. But the opportunity for major change in the health care system doesn’t come around very often. Since any change will require a massive effort, why not fight for the best?

Humana shifts risk to competitor

Feds probe Humana over Rx drug patients

By Jeffrey Young
The Hill
March 8, 2007

Federal officials are investigating whether one health-insurance company that sells prescription-drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries inappropriately diverted its most expensive customers to a competitor.

Sierra Health Services, which offers Medicare Part D prescription-drug plans under the brand name SierraRx, alleges that Humana Inc. telephoned its highest-cost customers and recommended they purchase coverage from Sierra instead.

Sierra President and Chief Executive Anthony Marlon delivered the bad news: “As we looked at the first month’s results, it became apparent that the pharmacy costs on this product were much higher than we and our independent actuaries had projected.”

Sierra will discontinue the money-losing plan next year, Marlon assured the analysts.

According to Marlon, “We believed our level of adverse selection was in part due to certain high-utilizing members being referred to us by another PDP provider. We did not agree to these referrals.”

Humana counters that it merely passed along information to its customers about a competing product that might better suit their needs, and said federal regulators approved its actions.

Humana redesigned its Complete product (Part D drug benefit) for 2007 by eliminating brand-name doughnut hole coverage and raising the premium to about $80.

All Part D plans are required to send letters by Oct. 31 to beneficiaries explaining any changes in their drug coverage for the coming year, which Humana did.

Humana went one step further. In December 2006, Humana customer-service representatives contacted an undisclosed number of Complete customers by telephone.

During the call, Humana employees again explained that the brand-name doughnut hole coverage was being cut out. They also told beneficiaries that other insurance companies were offering that benefit in 2007, including Sierra Health Services.

“Our goal was to make sure these people continued to have access to prescription coverage,” Humana’s director of media and public relations, Dick Brown, said. Humana also asserts that CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) approved the script the company used for these calls.

Brown would not explain, however, whether the company contacted each of the more than 400,000 Complete customers with the same information or if Humana targeted the calls to a subset of these beneficiaries such as those with the highest drug costs, as Sierra implied.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/feds-probe-humana-over-rx-drug-patients-2007-03-07.html

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Getting rid of high-cost patients is a very wise business move for an investor-owned insurer. But what about the interests of the patients?

In the business world, premium increases due to adverse selection are known as the death spiral, which results in withdrawal of those insurance products from the market. Humana escaped from its death spiral by forcing a new death spiral on a competitor. As a result, comprehensive Part D coverage will no longer be available for those with very high drug costs. The business model works for the investors, but not for the patients.

A drug program in the traditional Medicare program would never have been designed to deprive those with the greatest needs of their drug benefits. To the contrary, it would have been designed to be certain that patients would have affordable access to the drugs that they need.

The complicity of our public stewards is consistent with the current administration’s goal to shift public insurance to the private sector. Maybe we need new public stewards. After all, patients deserve more than to be pawns for passive investors.

Uninsured are focus of forum

Some 860,000 Hoosiers lack health coverage.

By Jennifer L. Boen
Fort Wayne News-Sentinel
Thu, Mar. 08, 2007

The stories told by the uninsured and underinsured reverberate in the mind of emergency room doctor Robert Stone, who works in Bloomington: People delay care because they don’t have health insurance or skip or stop taking medications because they can’t afford them. A less serious medical problem becomes catastrophic because of the delays or lack of medication.

Nationally, 46.6 million people are uninsured, according to 2005 U.S. census data; 860,000 of those are Hoosiers. Many health-care providers, consumers and their families are calling for a change and will address the problem at a public forum on Monday titled “Citizen’s Hearing on Healthcare for All.”

Stone, who co-founded Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, is keynote speaker at the event. The organization is promoting the health-care reform agenda laid out by Physicians for a National Health Program. The groups seek universal, comprehensive coverage for everyone through a single-payer health insurance system that is publicly financed but privately delivered. Rather than employer-based health insurance, all people would participate in a plan that would give access to all — similar to the way Medicare works for people 65 and older.

“This is not socialized medicine,” with doctors and hospitals government-owned, Stone said.

A Medicare-like system for all would require raising taxes, but those taxes would take the price of premiums, which continue to escalate for employers and employees, he said.

A 2003 study by Harvard Medical School and the Canadian Institute for Health Information found 31 percent of U.S. health-care dollars are spent on administration and overhead, compared to 17 percent in Canada.

“Medicare runs about 3 percent overhead,” compared to insurance companies’ 20 percent to 30 percent overhead, Stone said.

Park Center President/CEO Paul Wilson calls U.S. health care a “non-system.” “The confusion and fragmentation is so expensive and so wasteful. It’s a real tragedy we spend so much money on health care, and we leave so many people out.

“We see huge numbers of people who don’t have any insurance or don’t have mental-health coverage,” Wilson said about the community mental health center. “What we’ve developed in this country is all kinds of stopgap measures. People in their most vulnerable time running across town to the (township) trustee’s office, or to a church for help.”

The ASK clinic is one of several free clinics in Allen County.

“The numbers here just keep going up,” said ASK director Eve Bratton. “It used to be the generational poor we saw. Then it became people laid off from their jobs. Now we’re seeing people still in college and people among the middle class. We’re seeing sicker people. It’s not uncommon for me to see blood pressures of 260/120 (normal pressure is 120/80), because people can’t take their medicine, and they delay care.

“The health-care system is absolutely collapsing, and people are falling through the safety net,” Bratton said.

Dr. Matthew Farber is an ophthalmologist and surgeon with Allen County Retinal Surgeons. “In talking with physicians, some say things such as, Ć¢ā‚¬ĖœI don’t know if people are going to be happy waiting for care as in Canada,’ which has a single-payer system.

But the reality, Farber says, is even though U.S. health-care spending was nearly $2 trillion in 2004 and is expected to reach $4 trillion by 2015, “In the end, it’s not as if people live longer here,” compared to Canada.

Americans want new medicines and life-saving technologies, yet also want to preserve the free-market system and competition. For example, three medicines are used to treat glaucoma, Farber said. All are costly, and the companies who make them “don’t compete by trying to get a bigger (sales) share by lowering the price. Sure we want the pharmaceutical industry to come up with new therapies, but in the end, there can be only so much spent on pharmaceuticals.”

For too long, the health-care system has not promoted or reimbursed doctors for preventive medicine. Now a growing epidemic of diabetes, chronic lung disease, high blood pressure and other conditions, along with the largest segment of the population entering their senior years, is overwhelming the system.

“There aren’t any easy answers,” Farber said, “but the current system isn’t working. We have to get Congress to be willing to stand up and try and improve things.”

The economic ramifications of health-care costs are far-reaching, Stone said. Big industries wanting to compete internationally find themselves at a disadvantage because of American health insurance costs. People running small businesses cannot afford to pay premiums. Wilson says he has found 7,200 health insurance plans exist in the United States. “It’s bizarre, craziness. I suppose we could have a more wasteful system — but I don’t know how.”

Book Review: Solving the Health Care Problem

Solving the Health Care Problem:
How Other Nations Succeeded and Why the United States Has Not
By Pamela Behan
171 pp. Albany, State University of New York Press, 2006.
$60. ISBN 978-0-7914-6837-1.

Reviewed by Danielle Ofri, M.D., Ph.D.
New York University School of Medicine
For the New England Journal of Medicine

Status quo is a powerful determinant of both belief and behavior. Many of the things we do and the things we believe in transpire because they are what we have always done or believed. This is why incumbents win elections, why we always choose the same flavor of yogurt, why we take the same route to work, why we prescribe the same antihypertensive medications. For most Americans, our health care system is the way it is simply because this is the way it has been. The logic of changing doctors when you change insurance, changing insurance when you change jobs, and paying out of pocket when you do not have a job makes some sort of sense because this is simply the way things are.

A visitor from Mars, or Europe perhaps, would find this status quo shocking, much the way American tourists abroad are sometimes shocked to find that they are not supposed to dispose of toilet paper in some toilets. In this regard, Pamela Behan has something of an outsider’s view of America. The title of her book, Solving the Health Care Problem, assumes that the lack of national health insurance is the biggest problem in U.S. health care, which is what you learn once you read the book. This is surely what most Europeans would call the biggest problem in U.S. health care. But I’m sure that many Americans, even thoughtful ones, might think that other issues — the cost of prescription drugs, inequitable funding for research, Food and Drug Administration oversight — are the biggest problems. Even the book’s subtitle — How Other Nations Succeeded and Why the United States Has Not — assumes that the adoption of national health insurance is the definition of success in solving the biggest health care problem. I happen to agree with Behan that national health insurance is what the United States needs, but the title of her book and her approach make assumptions that might put off some of the intellectuals and policymakers who play an influential role in the future of American health care.

The book lays out a very specific methodology to answer the question that the subtitle poses. It chooses Canada and Australia as countries that are relatively similar to the United States, and it traces the paths these societies traveled to achieve national health insurance. Then it sketches the (unsuccessful) path that the United States has traveled. Approaching the problem as if it were a case-control study, the author attempts to compare these three experiences and calculate the differences, with the goal of explicating what the United States would need to do to obtain that holy grail.

Readers from the medical community are well aware of the limitations of caseĆ¢ā‚¬ā€œcontrol studies involving groups of human beings — even large, well-selected groups. But to compare three societies, with incalculable historical, political, and social differences that could conceivably outweigh their similarities, in the expectation of a clear finding is a tall order indeed. Aside from speculation, however, there are not many other research options out there, so Behan offers what is probably the most careful analysis that can be performed.

The first chapter of the book frames the basic research question in three brief pages; there is a casual mention that the last chapter “describes the study’s conclusion in layman’s terms, including the changes that may be needed to solve the problems of health care access and protection from its costs in the United States.” Were this an Agatha Christie mystery or a José Saramago novel, I wouldn’t dare peek at the last chapter. But in a book that intends to provide the all-embracing research details in the intervening chapters, nonacademicians are all but invited to skip to the plot’s climax. If suspense is important to your reading enjoyment, then stop reading this review now, because I will divulge the outcome. The answer is that in order to enact national health insurance, countries need to achieve four necessary conditions: both federal and financial authority in health care (that is, the national rather than the local government manages and funds the health care system), a multiparty system, a health care legislative legacy, and strong trade unions. Countries also need one of two sufficient conditions: labor-party power and lack of veto points (that is, the ability to block legislation — easily — from within or outside the system).

The United States comes up short on almost every one of these six counts. I found the discussion of the veto points the most interesting. For the past century, almost every legislative gesture was soundly defeated by an unelected body — the American Medical Association (AMA). Behan takes pains not to paint the AMA as the devil, since plenty of senators, representatives, and presidents added their own obstructionism. But the historical discussion reveals that the most consistent pressure came from within medicine itself.

The very nature of the American political system — the winner-take-all voting system, the free-market attitude toward lobbyists, the ability of legislators to compromise bills into nothingness — makes far-reaching social change almost impossible. The necessary and sufficient conditions needed to achieve universal health insurance seem constitutionally unachievable in American society. Behan’s sad conclusion is that “many of the chief blessings of democracy” — and health care as a right is clearly included here — “will, ironically, elude those pioneers of democracy, the American people.”

AFL-CIO statement on comprehensive reform

AFL-CIO Executive Council statement

AFL-CIO
Executive Council
March 6, 2007

The nation is once again focused on the crisis in health care and the American people are looking for a comprehensive solution, instead of the inaction and incredibly ineffective piecemeal approach of the past 10 years.

Nearly forty-seven million U.S. citizens are uninsured. Tens of millions more worry about losing the coverage they have. Workers fear changing or losing jobs because they are at risk of losing their health care coverage. American businesses that provide adequate health benefits are at a significant disadvantage, competing in the global marketplace with foreign companies that do not carry health care costs on their balance sheets. The same is true for businesses in domestic competition against employers that provide little or no coverage.

As a society, we all benefit from improvements in public health. We are a more creative, vibrant, productive and democratic nation because of it. We are all at risk of illness, injury or poor health, and we all suffer when individuals are denied needed care. The shortcomings of the American health care system–which ignores these fundamental realities–strain our nation’s social and economic fabric.

The time for talking about this crisis is past. All families deserve the security of a universal health care system that guarantees access based on need rather than income. Health care is a fundamental human right and an important measure of social justice.

As a nation, we need to exert the political will to enact comprehensive health care reform nationwide. There is strong evidence the crisis can be solved with tools at hand and at a cost that pales in comparison to the toll in human lives the current system exacts.

It is time to mobilize America behind a concrete plan to enact universal health care and the AFL-CIO commits its full resources to asserting leadership in this historic effort.

Universal health care does not mean mandating that everyone must buy a health insurance policy and then handing them the bills. Meaningful health care reform must be measured by the following tests:

Universal Coverage

* Everyone should have health care coverage, without exclusions or penalties.

* While the market has an important role to play, our government–as the voice of all of us–must play the central role in regulating, financing and providing health care.

* Coverage should be accessible through the largest possible groups that pool risk to ensure coverage regardless of gender, age, health status or other factors.

Comprehensive, Affordable Coverage

* Coverage should be affordable and comprehensive.

* Unions and employers should continue to play a role and retain the ability to supplement coverage.

Choice of Providers

* Individuals should retain the ability to select their own doctors and other health care providers.

Financing Through Shared Responsibility

* Because everyone faces the possibility of poor health, risks should be shared broadly to ensure fair treatment and equitable rates, and everyone should share responsibility for contributing to the system through progressive financing.

* A level playing field should be provided for all businesses. Every employer must participate in ensuring health coverage and no employer should be disadvantaged because of the age or health of its workforce or number of retirees.

Effective Cost Control

* Reform efforts must include effective mechanisms for controlling costs, requiring information on provider performance and enhancing efficiency.

* Investments should be made in systems and technology to reduce medical errors and costs, streamline administration and promote best practices.

* Employees who are frontline caregivers should have a protected voice in improving health care.

Do No Harm

* Until we have a comprehensive alternative for all Americans, reform efforts should not undermine existing coverage or put people at risk of unmet health care needs.

Our approach should be to build on what’s best in American health care. At the same time, we should draw from the best experiences of other countries that have achieved universal coverage at a fraction of U.S. health care costs.

One concrete plan that meets the test of comprehensive, universal health coverage would build on our nation’s successful universal health coverage plan for seniors: Medicare.

In its 40-year history, Medicare has delivered substantial advances for the health care of older Americans and people with disabilities. Medicare has guaranteed coverage, made health care more affordable, included a form of shared financial responsibility, significantly reduced administrative costs compared with those of private plans and has been the largely unheralded financer of America’s medical science advances. Medicare also has been a leader in advancing quality care and improvements in health care service delivery in the United States.

Such an approach would require updating and expanding Medicare benefits to fit the working population and children, as well as negotiating prices with physicians and providers that families–and the country–can afford. It would encourage innovation in health care services and medical technology. Employers’ responsibility for health care financing would be broadly and equitably shared, substantially reducing burdens on all businesses and reducing disadvantages currently faced in the global marketplace. In building on Medicare to move toward a universal program, we can find a practical, achievable and affordable solution to our country’s health care crisis.

We call on congressional leaders to unite behind such a plan.

Unlike our fragmented and flawed health care system, a successful universal health care system would provide benefits and cost savings for all stakeholders. The leadership to make comprehensive reform possible, then, must come from all quarters:

* Governments will have to forge the tough consensus that commits necessary public funding while paying only for care that is effective and efficient, based on the best science available.

* Employers must provide strong political support for a transition away from the current employment-based system and be willing to provide continuing financial contributions sufficient to responsibly contribute to the new funding requirements.

* Unions and other organizations that represent users of health services must make enactment of comprehensive health reform legislation a top priority and make a long-term commitment to improving health care service delivery.

* Health care providers and practitioners need to commit their leadership and lend their knowledge and experience to achieving necessary improvements in the quality and effectiveness of care, and use their considerable political clout to support the effort.

We will mobilize our members to build support for bold, meaningful and comprehensive reform and work to pass legislation that assures everyone affordable, comprehensive coverage. We will recruit employers to join us in achieving universal coverage. And we will evaluate the health proposals of candidates for president in 2008 based on the test we have outlined and their capacity to make meaningful change to meet this urgent goal.

Until comprehensive national reform is enacted, we will continue to defend the health benefits workers have fought and sacrificed to establish over the past 50 years, and we will strongly oppose President George W. Bush’s changes in the tax treatment of existing employer-provided coverage.

We also will continue to fight to preserve and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicaid coverage, improve the Medicare drug benefit and alleviate the legacy health care costs that threaten coverage for millions of workers and retirees, as well as the health of the economy. And we will continue to push for comprehensive reforms at the state level, with the knowledge that other nations have built the political consensus for national reform by first enacting comprehensive care region by region.

http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/ecouncil/ec03062007.cfm

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

To repeat, “Universal health care does not mean mandating that everyone must buy a health insurance policy and then handing them the bills.”

It means abandoning the “incredibly ineffective piecemeal approach of the past 10 years,” and moving forward with meaningful reform that meets the tests of an equitable, efficient, high quality, affordable, comprehensive system that covers everyone.

WonderWoman: Rose Ann DeMoro

Bay Area BusinessWoman
Published: March, 2007
March 2007 Vol. 14 No. 6

Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association (CNA), has been hailed as the “The Woman who met the Terminator’s match.” For the last 13 years, she has run the boisterous, nearly all female 70,000-member union that neutralizes its opponents, including actor-turned governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, with creative direct action, alliance building and media manipulation.

Under DeMoro’s helm, the CNA has tripled in size, and has become a major political player in the state. Now it’s taking its influence across the country, organizing RNs in 40 states and pushing for legislation making federally funded healthcare available for everyone.

DeMoro believes that she benefited from the courage of some strong and influential women in a period of time, the late ’60s and early ’70s when the country was questioning its political priorities and woman were demanding their rightful place at the table — giving her the capacity to fight and advocate for the too often undervalued women in the nursing profession.

After earning her degree in Women’s Studies from Southern Illinois University, DeMoro moved to Santa Barbara where she started working toward a PhD in sociology. But she abandoned her studies to cut her teeth in union organizing.

Fast-forward 20 years to the early ’90s when each nurse in California had ten or twelve patients and service was so terrible that some were calling 911 from their hospital beds. That’s when DeMoro took over the reigns of the nurses’ union and started pushing for a minimum nurse-to patient ratio.

She launched a huge 10-year fight against fierce opposition from powerful HMOs that climaxed with the enactment of the nation’s first nurse-to-patient safety law. Then Schwarzenegger, elected in November 2004, almost immediately tried to scrap the law. In response, DeMoro targeted Schwarzenegger in one of the most aggressive and colorful labor campaigns in decades.

The nurses also took the lead in forming a coalition with California’s other powerful unions enraged over Schwarzenegger’s call for a special election in November 2005 which featured ballot initiatives that would curtail their power. Schwarzenegger’s union-taming initiatives went down to massive defeat, and days later his administration quietly dropped its court battle to block the nurse-patient ratio law.

DeMoro and the CNA are not only grassroots heroes in California. Nurses nationwide are asking DeMoro for help in challenging the growing power of corporate hospital chains and other states’ anti-worker initiatives.

What’s the most important thing you learned in school — or in the “school of hard knocks?”

History does not reward timidity in bringing about social justice to the health care arena.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Fighting the misbegotten notion that our current health care un-system can be repaired through piece meal incrementalism of profit-based private health insurance.

What’s your favorite quotation?

“If there is no struggle there is no progress — power concedes nothing without a demand. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted.” — Frederick Douglass.

What achievement are you most proud of?

Playing a significant part in the reconceptualization of the lost historic role of the RN from bedside patient advocate to social advocate.

What’s your advice to girls and/or women who are interested in the Health Care profession?

Now is the singularly best historical moment to enter the profession and demonstrate that advocating for one’s patients is inseparable from advocating for social justice.

What does it take to be an effective activist for change?

To rebel against “conventional wisdom” that maintains the ‘dynamic status quo,’ to find courage to follow your beliefs to advocate for change when it seems hopeless. To be collective, creative, inclusive — and relentless.

AFL-CIO Endorses Medicare for All

AFL-CIO Executive Council statement
Health Care
March 06, 2007
Las Vegas

The nation is once again focused on the crisis in health care and the American people are looking for a comprehensive solution, instead of the inaction and incredibly ineffective piecemeal approach of the past 10 years.

Nearly forty-seven million U.S. citizens are uninsured. Tens of millions more worry about losing the coverage they have. Workers fear changing or losing jobs because they are at risk of losing their health care coverage. American businesses that provide adequate health benefits are at a significant disadvantage, competing in the global marketplace with foreign companies that do not carry health care costs on their balance sheets. The same is true for businesses in domestic competition against employers that provide little or no coverage.

As a society, we all benefit from improvements in public health. We are a more creative, vibrant, productive and democratic nation because of it. We are all at risk of illness, injury or poor health, and we all suffer when individuals are denied needed care. The shortcomings of the American health care system–which ignores these fundamental realities–strain our nation’s social and economic fabric.

The time for talking about this crisis is past. All families deserve the security of a universal health care system that guarantees access based on need rather than income. Health care is a fundamental human right and an important measure of social justice.

As a nation, we need to exert the political will to enact comprehensive health care reform nationwide. There is strong evidence the crisis can be solved with tools at hand and at a cost that pales in comparison to the toll in human lives the current system exacts.

It is time to mobilize America behind a concrete plan to enact universal health care and the AFL-CIO commits its full resources to asserting leadership in this historic effort.

Universal health care does not mean mandating that everyone must buy a health insurance policy and then handing them the bills. Meaningful health care reform must be measured by the following tests:

Universal Coverage

* Everyone should have health care coverage, without exclusions or penalties.

* While the market has an important role to play, our government–as the voice of all of us–must play the central role in regulating, financing and providing health care.

* Coverage should be accessible through the largest possible groups that pool risk to ensure coverage regardless of gender, age, health status or other factors.

Comprehensive, Affordable Coverage

* Coverage should be affordable and comprehensive.

* Unions and employers should continue to play a role and retain the ability to supplement coverage.

Choice of Providers

* Individuals should retain the ability to select their own doctors and other health care providers.

Financing Through Shared Responsibility

* Because everyone faces the possibility of poor health, risks should be shared broadly to ensure fair treatment and equitable rates, and everyone should share responsibility for contributing to the system through progressive financing.

* A level playing field should be provided for all businesses. Every employer must participate in ensuring health coverage and no employer should be disadvantaged because of the age or health of its workforce or number of retirees.

Effective Cost Control

* Reform efforts must include effective mechanisms for controlling costs, requiring information on provider performance and enhancing efficiency.

* Investments should be made in systems and technology to reduce medical errors and costs, streamline administration and promote best practices.

* Employees who are frontline caregivers should have a protected voice in improving health care.

Do No Harm

* Until we have a comprehensive alternative for all Americans, reform efforts should not undermine existing coverage or put people at risk of unmet health care needs.

Our approach should be to build on what’s best in American health care. At the same time, we should draw from the best experiences of other countries that have achieved universal coverage at a fraction of U.S. health care costs.

One concrete plan that meets the test of comprehensive, universal health coverage would build on our nation’s successful universal health coverage plan for seniors: Medicare.

In its 40-year history, Medicare has delivered substantial advances for the health care of older Americans and people with disabilities. Medicare has guaranteed coverage, made health care more affordable, included a form of shared financial responsibility, significantly reduced administrative costs compared with those of private plans and has been the largely unheralded financer of America’s medical science advances. Medicare also has been a leader in advancing quality care and improvements in health care service delivery in the United States.

Such an approach would require updating and expanding Medicare benefits to fit the working population and children, as well as negotiating prices with physicians and providers that families–and the country–can afford. It would encourage innovation in health care services and medical technology. Employers’ responsibility for health care financing would be broadly and equitably shared, substantially reducing burdens on all businesses and reducing disadvantages currently faced in the global marketplace. In building on Medicare to move toward a universal program, we can find a practical, achievable and affordable solution to our country’s health care crisis.

We call on congressional leaders to unite behind such a plan.

Unlike our fragmented and flawed health care system, a successful universal health care system would provide benefits and cost savings for all stakeholders. The leadership to make comprehensive reform possible, then, must come from all quarters:

* Governments will have to forge the tough consensus that commits necessary public funding while paying only for care that is effective and efficient, based on the best science available.

* Employers must provide strong political support for a transition away from the current employment-based system and be willing to provide continuing financial contributions sufficient to responsibly contribute to the new funding requirements.

* Unions and other organizations that represent users of health services must make enactment of comprehensive health reform legislation a top priority and make a long-term commitment to improving health care service delivery.

* Health care providers and practitioners need to commit their leadership and lend their knowledge and experience to achieving necessary improvements in the quality and effectiveness of care, and use their considerable political clout to support the effort.

We will mobilize our members to build support for bold, meaningful and comprehensive reform and work to pass legislation that assures everyone affordable, comprehensive coverage. We will recruit employers to join us in achieving universal coverage. And we will evaluate the health proposals of candidates for president in 2008 based on the test we have outlined and their capacity to make meaningful change to meet this urgent goal.

Until comprehensive national reform is enacted, we will continue to defend the health benefits workers have fought and sacrificed to establish over the past 50 years, and we will strongly oppose President George W. Bush’s changes in the tax treatment of existing employer-provided coverage.

We also will continue to fight to preserve and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicaid coverage, improve the Medicare drug benefit and alleviate the legacy health care costs that threaten coverage for millions of workers and retirees, as well as the health of the economy. And we will continue to push for comprehensive reforms at the state level, with the knowledge that other nations have built the political consensus for national reform by first enacting comprehensive care region by region.

AFL-CIO Decides to Campaign for Medicare for All

AFL-CIO Backs Changing Health Care System, Expanding Medicare to Whole Country

By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer
3/12/2007

WASHINGTON (PAI)–Armed with universal denunciation of the failing, creaky, expensive present employer-based insurance-company-run health care system, the AFL-CIO Executive Council unanimously voted March 6 to campaign for a massive change: Expanding Medicare to the entire country.

Union leaders ranging from AFSCME President Gerald McEntee to Steel Workers President Leo Gerard to leaders of building trades unions–even those with multi-employer health care plans jointly run by unions and management–blasted the present setup. “We’re getting killed by this stuff,” one said.

The vote puts the federation on record with a specific universal health care plan that would involve payments from individuals, government and business, with government running it to cut administrative costs and bargain prices, just as it now runs Medicare.

It also marks a notable break from the past, as unions helped construct the present system, but watched it become increasingly and overly expensive for workers and companies–even while 47 million people are uninsured and millions more are underinsured. Companies have dropped health care for workers and retirees, and health care is the #1 battle in bargaining.

And the AFL-CIO’s statement marks a new factor in the national debate about health care, as the nation’s leading labor federation has now weighed in with a specific proposal, insisting that health care cover all, and rejecting the present system.

“The time for talking about this crisis is past,” the federation said. “All families deserve the security of a universal health care system that guarantees access based on need rather than income. Health care is a fundamental human right and an important measure of social justice.”

The statement laid down principles of universal coverage, that “government, as the voice of all of us, must play the central role in regulating, financing and providing health care,” that coverage “should be accessible through the largest possible groups to ensure coverage” for all, and that everyone–including employers–must share responsibility for health care financing.

It then said that “one concrete plan that meets the test of comprehensive, universal health coverage would build on our nation’s successful universal health coverage plan for seniors: Medicare.”

“We tried to look for fundamental principles for cost-efficient, high-quality universal coverage, taking the load off employers, while we can create the largest pool” of clients “and have government play the lead role,” said Gerard, chair of the federation’s Legislation Committee.

“This is a roadmap to universal coverage, and I’m not interested in having Wal-Mart sell insurance so that people can go to a Kaiser Permanente clinic in the store,” he added.

After lauding Medicare, which has the federal government provide universal coverage, paid for through payroll taxes, and with seniors having a choice of doctors, the AFL-CIO adds expanding it to all “would require updating and expanding Medicare benefits to fit the working population and children, as well as negotiating prices with physicians and providers that families and the country can afford.”

In passing, the federation rejected anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush’s scheme to tax workers who get what Bush calls “gold-plated” health insurance. “Until comprehensive national reform is enacted, we will continue to defend health benefits workers have fought and sacrificed to establish over the last 50 years,” the federation said. Bush would tax those plans, pushing many companies to dump them.

While the leaders did not endorse any specific bill to change the nation’s health care system, AFL-CIO health care policy specialist Gerald Shea said several fit its proposal. They include the single-payer government-run health care system bill (HR 676) by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Medicare-for-all bills crafted by Senate Labor Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) and House Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark (D-Calif.).

“Conyers would put single-payer in place, while the others would build on Medicare,” Shea said. Those other bills would extend Medicare to the whole country, but still leave a role for private insurers, said Walter and Kay Tillow, who handle communications for the Louisville-based Nurses Professional Organization/All-Unions Committee for Single-Payer Health Care.

That group has convinced at least four unions, including USW, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Plumbers and Pipefitters, to back HR 676. Some 220 other union groups, with the latest being the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, back Conyers’ bill. The Tillows said their group welcomes the statement as “a big advance” over the present system, but criticized leaving a role for the private insurers.

Shea said the key to the federation’s getting support for extending Medicare to all is to recruit some employers. Employers in the aerospace, telecommunications, steel and paper industries have talked to their unions about backing the Medicare-for-all plan, but nothing has been put in writing.

Universal Health for Insurance Companies

by DrSteveB
Daily Kos
Thu Mar 01, 2007

Click here for the original post

Last week I outlined the generic components of so-called mandated or mandatory plans. This week we will, with the help of Professor Len Rodberg briefly outline some of specific national proposals that have been in the news lately:

* America’s Health Insurance Plans
* Better Health Care Together Campaign
* Health Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured
* Sen. Ron Wyden with SEIU & Safeway
* Federation of American Hospitals
* John Edwards

What they share is the goall to keep the insurance companies healthy… lets see how that works.

First a note about Len. Len is not only a great guy, but has been involved in numerous progressive health care reforms from numerous single payer plans going back at least to the Dellums bill (look it up), to early promotion of Community Health Centers, to compiling and analyzing of hospital statistics statewide. He is the only Urban Studies professor I know of with a PhD in Physics (seriously).

As we noted last week, “Universal” Health Care is back in the political arena, for the first time since Hillary-care crashed and burned in 1993-1994. This is mostly due to the fact that costs rising far faster than inflation: From 2000 to 2006 health insurance premiums have one up 87%, compared to 20% for overall inflation and 18% for workers earnings. In our primarily employer-based coverage system more companies are either dropping coverage altogether, or raising the amount paid by employees (contributions to premium, copays, deductibles, reduced coverage).

The national average premium cost for employer-provided insurance is now up to $4,024 per year for single coverage and $10,880 per year for family coverage. Compare that to an annual income at minimum wage of $10,300 and the alleged average annual of a Wal-Mart worker of $17,114. If you have to buy your own, even at the reduced group rate that companies get, there’s not much left over for food and housing.

Not surprisingly the numbers of uninsured have been going up dramatically: from 22 million in 1975, we broke 30 million in 1985, 40 million in 1995, and are now around 46-47 million.

So what about those plans…

* The Good News: “Universal health care” is accepted as the goal.
* The Bad News: This is defined to mean using tax dollars to help the uninsured buy private insurance from the existing high-overhead middlemen of the for-profit insurance companies.

1. America’s Health Insurance Plans & Federation of American Hospitals

* – aka: “the private insurance & private hospital protection plan.”
* Expand SCHIP and Medicaid eligibility for very low-income
* Provide federal and state subsidies and tax deductibility to encourage everyone else to buy private insurance
* In other words: Use taxes to cover some more of the poor high risk, then give more tax dollars to the unnecessary middlemen private for-profit industry that eats up 31% overhead, compared to 4-13% achieved in direct plans.

2. Better Health Care Together Campaign

* aka: “The Grand Coalition”
* Members: ATT (big biz), Kelly Services (temp company), Wal-Mart (bigger biz), SEIU & CWA (unions), Center for American Progress
* Principles but no Program:
* a. Quality affordable insurance coverage for everyone
* b. Individuals are responsible for maintaining and protecting their health
* c. Improved value for health care dollar
* d. “Shared Responsibility”: Businesses, government, individuals all contribute. By business they mean both employers and the private for-profit health care industry.
* Widely covered press Conference, but no real specifics.

3. Health Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured

* aka: “The Even Grander Coalition”
* Members: UnitedHealth, Blue Cross & Kaiser (insurers), American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, Chamber of Commerce & National Association of Manufacturers (biz lobbyists), Pfizer (pharmaceutical company), AFL-CIO (well national anyway; many states, councils and locals have been endorsing Conyers HR-676 “Medicare for All”single payer), SEIU (well Stern anyway, many locals endorsing Conyers HR-676 “Medicare for All”, AARP, Families USA (well Pollack anyway; he’s still feeling too burned by 1994)
* Coalition was so “Grand” that they could agree only on:
* a. Expanding coverage as a goal
* b. Expansion of SCHIP
* c. Tax credits for children’s insurance

4. Senator Wyden’s Healthy Americans Act

* aka: “Employer coverage is dying, so let’s kill it faster”
* Supporters: SEIU, Safeway, Families USA
* Eliminate the tax deductibility of employer-based insurance with goal to ends employer-based health coverage.
* Requires individual purchase of insurance
* Transitional payments by employers
* Subsidies to low-income individuals
* Relies on competition between private insurers to contain costs (but unclear how this would happen since no evidence that health insurers work that way… they only compete for who can get the healthy and wealthy).

5. John Edwards Plan

* I give him some credit for at least making a relatively specific proposal.
* but some do call it “individual mandate with a pretty face”
* essentially same as Jacob Hacker plan from Econimic Policy Institute (EPI)
* Interestingly Edward’s also offered a mandate plan when he ran in 2000.
* Employer mandate (“play or pay”)
* Individual mandate with community rating
* Government subsidies for low-income
* Regional purchasing plans (“Health Markets”)
* Choice of Government program (which is DISHONESTLY referred to as single-payer; shame on them) as well as Private Plans.
* Claim: For everyone: Shared responsibility
* Claim: For the fearful: Lets people keep what they have
* Claim: For those worried about cost: Everyone will work together to make the system more efficient
* Claim: For single payer advocates: Individuals and businesses can choose if they want the government plan; if so, the system will “evolve toward a single-payer approach.”
* No cost control!!!
* Requires additional taxes and expenditure above what we pay already
* by comparison: Single-Payer costs about 5% LESS than current expenditures to cover everybody with high-quality coverage and no out-pocket expenses. That what you can do with the $350 Billion in savings by cutting out the 31% bloat of the unneeded middlemen of the private for-profit insurers.

So, once again… What’s Wrong with an Individual Mandate?

Well among other things:

* Will not lead to universal coverage. Comparison to mandatory auto insurance where at least 10% don’t have.
* Enforcement is anti-public health
* Affordable premium vs half-decent coverage: can’t leave private for-profit insurers in the middle and still have both, as Massachussetts is discovering. Feds discovered this when tried to have Medicare Manged Care and privates could not make enough profit and dropped out, until offered 11% higher payments than regular Medicare!
* Employers will drop coverage (“crowd out”) if play or pay cutpoint is set at affordable level.
* Insurance companies resist community rating (same premium rate for everybody regardless of pre-existing conditions or risk) and mandatory coverage(have to take everybody regardless of pre-existing conditions or risk)
* Leaves in place the consumer nightmare of copays, deductibles, exclusions, denials, appeals.
* Expands the complexity (and humiliation) of Medicaid’s humiliation of means testing (not so easy for the majority of workers who are not on straight regular salary; usually require income tax return to be shown).
* Add new layers of bureaucracy such as the “Health Markets”.
* Additional high cost of about $120 Billion in Federal tax money and some unknown still for individuals.
* No cost control, just continuing rising costs!

Len goes on to argue that none of these plans will happen, because:

* They cost hundreds of billions of additional dollars
* They benefit only those with low incomes and those without insurance, who are politically weak.
* Does nothing for the 50% of middle- and lower-income adults who have insurance but still experience serious problems paying medical bills or insurance premiums.
* Does nothing for the people with insurance and still going into bankruptcy. 50% of bankruptcies due to medical bills and 75% of those folks had health insurance.
* Does nothing for the 12-18% of folks who are underinsured.
* They don’t solve any of the problems (especially rising costs) that concern everyone
* None envisions a real structural change.

In the 1940s and 1950s America moved forward with employer-based group health care coverage.

Going backwards to individual purchase of insurance is not the answer.

What is common to these plans is that they identify the wrong problem and then offer the wrong solution:

* Identification of the problem: too many uninsured.
* Their solution: Require everyone to have insurance
* Employers should contribute but not necessarily offer insurance
* Their real mission: Save the private insurers

The problem really is the Private For-Profit Insurance Industry:

* None of these plans does much about what is the real problem
* Excessive administrative costs
* Excessive complexity
* Continuously rising costs
* Lack of coordination, budgeting, and planning
* Regressive financing via premiums (premium is the same if you are rich or poor)
* Widespread underinsurance and bankruptcy
* Interference in physician decision-making
* The “hassle factor”: paperwork at every level, filing claims, automatic or phony denials, re-submitting claims…

Solution:

* Expand Medicare to cover everyone: The hassle difference between folks who use Medicare is astounding.
* Improve the coverage it offers (drugs, dental, mental)
* Eliminate private insurance
* Automatic enrollment in Medicare for All
* Income-based financing through employers and employees (yeah for “shared responsibility”), preferably through progressive income and corporate taxes, but possibly via deduction taxes (e.g., ~8% corporate; ~2.5% on individuals).

For more on how single-payer works: peviously I outlined and described in some depth how single payer works, and debunked some of the myths propagated against single payer.

Something else all those so-called “politically practical compromise plans” have in common.

* They are all are just inside the beltway elites and lobbyists talking to each other (the same ones over and over, as you may have noticed).
* None actually has any grassroots support.
* The one plan with a grassroots movement behind it is Rep. John Conyers HR-676 “Medicare for All”.

HR 676 has been endorsed by over 235 union organizations in 40 states including 60 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 17 state AFL-CIOs (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO & MN), as have many other civic and religious organizations. Including several locals of SEIU.

The bill garnered nearly 78 co-sponsors in the last Congress, more than any other reform proposal, including the chairman of Ways and Means (Rangel, D-NY) and the chair of Ways & Means health subcommittee (Pete Stark, D-CA). At least three of the newest members of Congress made support for single payer national health insurance a key issue in their campaigns. Senator Kennedy has been the Senate sponsor in past years.

HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system in the U.S. by expanding a greatly improved Medicare system to every resident: It would cover every person in the U. S. for all necessary medical care including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision care, hearing aids, chiropractic and long term care. HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 235 union organizations in 40 states including 60 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 17 state AFL-CIOs (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO & MN), as have many other civic and religious organizations.

So, here is what YOU can DO now:

1. Ask your congressperson to sign-up as a co-sponsor of HR-676!

* You can look-up your elected officials here

2. Get any organization you belong to — civic, religious, labor, community, etc. to pass an HR-676 endorsement resolution:

* Here is how to do that via Physicians for a National Health Program.
* or here hereif you prefer via a non-physician group.

Just do it!

The Des Moines Register on mandating private insurance

Mandating private health insurance is misguided

Taxpayer-financed health coverage is a better approach.

By the Register Editorial Board
The Des Moines Register
March 5, 2007

It sounds simple enough: Get everyone insured by requiring them to purchase health insurance. So-called “individual mandates” are part of Massachusetts’ plan to get all residents covered. They are included in a proposal by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a recent conversation about health reform in Iowa, state Sen. Jack Hatch said he supports individual mandates because they inject “personal responsibility” into health care.

But forcing people to purchase private-sector insurance is far from simple, especially considering the government absolutely must ensure the coverage it makes people buy is adequate.

Proceeding with this idea would be a mistake.

Just a few weeks ago, this editorial page told the story of Jan and Gary Clausen, who didn’t have the option of buying health insurance through an employer. They went out on their own and bought AARP-endorsed plans for about $700 a month. They were left with more than $200,000 in medical bills after Gary was diagnosed with cancer.

Some insurance.

If the state is going to force people to purchase insurance, it must guarantee necessary services are covered and the bills are paid when health disasters strike. It must require insurance companies to protect Iowans against catastrophic costs.

Of course, that’s where things really get complicated.

Will the state define coverage in private-sector insurance plans? Will it increase oversight of the insurance industry? Will it prohibit insurance companies from increasing prices? What is the definition of “affordable” insurance? Who will qualify for a public subsidy to purchase insurance, and how will that be paid for?

All these questions and more need to be answered.

But our greatest concern is that an individual mandate moves this country in the wrong direction by relying too heavily on the private sector to achieve universal coverage.

Private is not better than public when it comes to health insurance.

Private health-insurance companies spend a greater percentage of dollars on administrative costs than government programs such as Medicare. Private companies also use health dollars to pay outrageous CEO salaries. UnitedHealth Group Inc. paid a former CEO $8 million a year. He also had unrealized gains on company stock options totaling nearly $1.6 billion.

Try finding a government worker with a personal jet.

Private-sector insurance has been a financial failure in Medicare Advantage plans, where the government subsidizes insurance companies to take over the care of seniors rather than keeping them in less expensive traditional Medicare.

According to a study by The Commonwealth Fund, Medicare spent $922 more on each senior in private plans than it would have paid to cover those patients in traditional Medicare in 2005. That’s a total of more than 5.2 billion tax dollars that could have been saved or spent elsewhere if seniors would have remained in the basic, government plan.

Why push anyone into the more costly private sector?

A taxpayer-financed system of health care that offers basic coverage for all Americans is a better approach. It would be administered by the government, and it would save money.

According to the National Coalition on Health Care, the nation’s largest alliance working to improve care, a system like this could save 1.1 trillion health-care dollars over 10 years. Of four plans proposed by the coalition, a universal, publicly financed one was the best deal.

Of course, a national system would require those in Washington to get busy solving the problem rather than leaving states to scramble for ways to cover their residents – and pursue misguided ideas like individual mandates.

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070305/OPINION03/703050303/1035/OPINION

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

This is the message that the nation must hear. The private insurers are incapable of providing us with coverage that is both affordable and effective in preventing financial hardship for those with health care needs.

When an AARP-endorsed plan with a premium of $700 a month leaves a couple with $200,000 in medical bills, we know that private insurance is not the solution. Mandating participation in a fatally flawed system represents the worst of public policy proposals.

This editorial should be downloaded and distributed widely. Everyone needs to understand what will work, and what won’t.

Doctors call on Albany over health insurance

Business First of Buffalo
Monday, March 5, 2007

The New York State Academy of Family Physicians has called on Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the state Legislature to create a single payer health-care system.

Family physicians from across the state gathered in Albany Monday to lobby lawmakers. Their concerns include the fact that nearly 3 million New Yorkers are uninsured and many more are underinsured, while others have insurance that does not cover significant items like medications.

Rising costs have a growing number of employers either dropping or reducing coverage. The doctors also complain that dealing with multiple insurance plans, with their different rules, forms, and procedures, wastes an estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the health care dollar.

The Academy, which represents about 3,000 family doctors and more than 700 medical students, would like have all payments funneled through a single payer, eliminating multiple rules and procedures, enrollment and eligibility problems.

“A single payer health plan is the best way to control costs and reduce administrative waste and thereby insure long-term survival of universal, affordable coverage,” said Dr. Linda Prine, chair of the Academy’s Commission on Public Health.

“In Albany, the attempts at expanding coverage and cost control, though laudable, only tinker with the current system. The weakness we all witness with tinkering is that New York has achieved neither universal coverage nor
effective cost control. Instead, we are bankrupting ourselves, making small dents only in adding broader coverage, and implementing even more administrative procedures. Moving to universal coverage is a big step. The current system is not working; we should not take a failed system and make it a bigger failure.”

http://buffalo.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2007/03/05/daily4.html

Liberal Fables About Health Care

John Edwards' Big Lie

By CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
March 6, 2007

When Ann Coulter used the f- word last week to describe John Edwards, she was just trying to sell Ann Coulter to her conservative base.

When Hillary Clinton morphed into a southern black preacher, she was desperately trying to sell Hillary Clinton to a southern black audience.

When John Edwards mailed out 70,000 DVDs advocating “universal health care” to Iowa voters this week, he was just trying to sell John Edwards to the corn belt.

All were scamming the public in pursuit of fame and fortune.

Coulter was her crass and calculating self.

Hillary deserves what that moment bought her.

As for Edwards, as the only avowed “populist” in the race, he wants voters to believe that his health insurance plan will lead to affordable universal coverage.

It won’t and he knows it.

But as a liberal Democrat, his hands are tied.

No liberal Democrat with a shot at the nomination can tell the truth about health care.

Because telling the truth means social insurance, single payer, Medicare for All.

Telling the truth means wiping out private insurance companies and their $350 billion in excess administrative costs–enough to cover the uninsured and underinsured–without paying anymore than we do now.

Today we spend $7,000 per person on health care in the United States–that’s twice as much as the rest of the industrialized nations.

Edwards’ plan is a complex brew of health markets, public incentives and private mandates.

Dr. Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Program has one word for Edwards’ plan–“lousy.”

“The idea of setting up a public plan to compete with private plans has been thoroughly discredited,” McCanne told Corporate Crime Reporter. “No matter what regulations are established, private plans will continue to select the healthy–especially the healthy workforce and their healthy families. The private plans cover the majority of us who are healthy and cost very little, while as taxpayers we pay most of the costs for health care for those with medical needs.”

The Edwards plan’s complex mixture of private and public plans will not wipe out the hundreds of millions of dollars in excess administrative costs needed to fund the uninsured.

McCanne believes social insurance–everyone covered by government insurance–is the best system–next to government sponsored medicine–like the Veterans Administration.

McCanne believes the Edwards plan was drafted by Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker.

“Hacker is the darling of the progressive Democrats,” McCanne told Corporate Crime Reporter. “It is the same as the Edwards proposal. I suspect Hacker wrote the Edwards proposal.”

“Insurance has to do two things,” McCanne said. “In the past, all it had to do was transfer from the healthy to the sick. The medical costs of the sick were paid by the majority of people who were relatively healthy. Now, health care costs are so high that the healthy group can no longer afford the premiums. Now, we need a transfer from the wealthy to average income individuals and then continue a transfer downward. It is this transfer from the wealthy to average and lower income individuals that the Edwards’ fragmented model can’t accomplish.”

The country is bursting at the seams looking for leadership the to usher forth Medicare for All.

Sure, if you are bought into a corporate or government bureaucracy, you might be fine–for now.

In Tucson, Arizona, we ran into a young mother who got a job working part-time at Trader Joe’s just to get health insurance for her family.

But millions of Americans are uninsured and even buying into the system full-time won’t solve their problems.

Recently, a friend told us the story of a father of three in the Rust Belt who was training to be a technician with Comcast.

Comcast promised him 60 hours of work a week. He was really excited. But then he was told–no benefits.

No benefits at 60 hours a week?

How did they pull that one off?

“Well, they told him he would work 30 hours a week as an employee,” my friend related. “And 30 hours a week as a contractor.”

No insurance.

Edwards has a choice.

Reverse course, join the majority of the American people, and speak out for Medicare for All.

Or stick with the insurance industry and lose to the more experienced politicians in the race.

Corporate Crime Reporter is located in Washington, DC. They can be reached through their website.