Update: The insurance industry has been circulating this video of Rep. Schakowsky as a way to frighten their members. Of course, not everyone finds this frightening.
While the US Senate has been capitulating to the banksters on meaningful banking reforms, the Senate leadership has been busy making sure there will be no meaningful reform of the US health care system. Yesterday, Sen. Chuck Schumer proposed a "compromise" of the "public plan" element that appears to give away the core of what health care reform should be about.
From the NYT, Schumer Offers Middle Ground on Health Care:
Mr. Schumer said his goal was "a level playing field for competition" between public and private insurers. But [insurance industry lobbyist] Ms. Ignagni said, "It's almost impossible to accomplish that objective."
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, asked Mr. Schumer to seek a solution. In his response, Mr. Schumer set forth these principles:
¶The public plan must be self-sustaining. It should pay claims with money raised from premiums and co-payments. It should not receive tax revenue or appropriations from the government.
¶The public plan should pay doctors and hospitals more than what Medicare pays. Medicare rates, set by law and regulation, are often lower than what private insurers pay.
¶The government should not compel doctors and hospitals to participate in a public plan just because they participate in Medicare.
¶To prevent the government from serving as both "player and umpire," the officials who manage a public plan should be different from those who regulate the insurance market.
To understand why this "compromise" is more like a capitulation, follow the Times' verbal sleight of hand in making this a conversation about insurance. What the US needs is universal health care and an agreement on how to manage and pay for those mechanisms that don't yet exist. But what Baucus/Schumer are talking about is not health care, it's health insurance, two entirely different things. Follow the Times:
Scorched by Republican opposition to the idea of a new public program like Medicare, Senate Democrats are looking for a middle ground that would address the concerns of political moderates. One way they propose to do that is by requiring the public plan to resemble private insurance as much as possible.
So, to accommodate people like Arlen Specter and Ben Nelson !!! and avoid threatening private insurance companies, the Senate would give up on providing health care and focus on providing insurance.
Our Senate seems to have lost track of what this about. Sen. Grassley helpfully reminds us that the US pays up to twice as much for health care as other major nations, but gets less quality and leaves nearly 50 million people uninsured (and that problem is getting worse). More comparisons here.
We also know that providing health care via private for-profit insurance costs 50 percent or more than the same care under Medicare. Yet a major concern of those seriously following the debate is deciding where we'll get the money to pay for health reform.
The answer is staring us in the face (or on your insurance premium statement). The money to pay for universal CARE is being wasted in inefficiency/excess profits of private INSURANCE administration. So net revenues must come from reducing the dollars we waste there. There is no dispute the private, for-profit insurance model has failed to provide fair, universal, or affordable health CARE. It's a national disgrace. So reforms that shield that failed model from competition are inherently misguided and should be ruled off the table. Meaningful reform requires that the current model be strongly challenged by a better model.
The Senate needs to get back to addressing the problem of universal care and sustainable affordability. It has no business trying to protect blatant unfairness, inefficiency or excess profits in any industry, let alone one that by design remains profitable by refusing to cover patients or claims, hassling doctors and hospitals and financially decimating those who need care but cannot afford premiums.
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