Common rhetoric in presidential campaigns asks “Are you better or worse off than you were four years ago.” As we close in on the anniversary of the Measure 23 initiative campaign, to enact universal single payer health care in Oregon, a similar question comes to mind. The answer falls out pretty easily from data recently released by the Kaiser Family foundation, and from the US census Bureau.
Looking at the surface information, health insurance premiums have gone up an average of 14%, the worst in five years and more than double the ’99 increase of 5.3%. This at a time when the FED expresses concern about DEFLATION of the rest of the economy. This high level of premium inflation, is expected to continue into the foreseeable future, doubling every 5 years. The predictable result is, according to The Census Bureau, that in the last year the number Americans without health insurance jumped by 2.4 million to a total of 43.6 million people. This is the largest increase in more than a decade.
As a primary speaker for the Measure 23 campaign for several years, I made presentations, responded to questions and concerns from citizens, and debated the opposition, representing insurance companies, insurance agents, and employer groups. Through this activity I became aware of most of the relative questions. I believe it will be informative to look at the irony of the aftermath of this campaign by sighting where all the opposing forces find themselves ten months later.
* The employee with employer provided family coverage is paying 12.9% more for premiums with less coverage.
* The Employer is paying 14% more in premiums.
* Members of the Oregon Health Plan, who wouldn’t support the measure because they believed they were secure with health care provided to them without cost. Now many of them have no coverage, many more have coverage which no longer meets their needs.
* The employees whose jobs and benefits disappeared in the economic downturn now finds that because of the high cost of providing benefits employers are not rehiring.
* Employers who would not support the plan because they were afraid they could not afford its costs find they are paying far more or having to reduce or terminate their coverage.
* Insurance companies and agents who believed they could remain fat and happy skimming the cream off the top of the insurance premiums are now seeing that fewer and fewer people can afford insurance, so their customer base is actually shrinking (of course this does not compare to being eliminated by a single payer plan so they remain happy if not quite as fat).
* Doctors find that more and more of their patients are without insurance. 8,000 of them have signed onto a proposal for a universal single payer plan put forth by Physicians for National Health Care.
* The AFL-CIO leadership adamantly opposed our campaign and now finds, as we predicted, that an increasing number of union workers are without both jobs and benefits.
* Those on Medicare find that prescription drug coverage,promised them in the last presidential campaign remains elusive with its need serving as a means for the current administration to privatize Medicare so that its resources will provide profits for the insurance industry instead of health care for Seniors.
* Finally, as predicted, hospitals, which universally opposed the plan, find the very viability of their emergency rooms threatened by an inundation of uninsured patients. The cost of this expensive care is then passed on to those who do pay for care. This is a major factor in the increased cost of medical care and insurance for those who do pay.
It is hard to find many who can say that their position with respect to health care is better than it was a year ago. Certainly, looking at the overall society the picture is pretty bleak. If the deteriorating situation causes you to ask, “what can we do now (beside kick ourselves)?”, the answer is certainly not simple. For all practical purposes, we will unlikely be able to deal with this crisis through the initiative process.
The two major reasons are: a) The same organizations who poured unlimited funds into the campaign to defeat measure 23 would do it again, and b) the AFL-CIO sponsored initiative to prohibit paying signature gatherers by the signature will effectively prevent grass roots movements from being able afford to put initiatives on the ballot. That leaves only the possibility of a political solution. Unfortunately, the insurance industry directs so much money toward the legislature, that we may expect it will only respond to thecomplete and total collapse of the system (perhaps not far away).
On the national front, while Dennis Kucinich has consistently supported universal single payer health care, those who control the media have decided to ignore his presidential campaign. However, he stands as our best chance for reform on a federal level.
In the wake of the demise of measure 23 the basic parameters remain the same. Virtually all studies show that only a universal single payer health plan has any hope of reversing the disintegration of the American health care delivery system. It is time for the US to catch up with the rest of the western industrialized world. If you believe in representative democracy, then it is time you to let your respective representatives know that the health care crisis requires their attention and that a UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM appears to be only one viable solution.
Marc Shapiro was the Lane County Chair for the campaign to enact Measure 23