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If We Want Good Health Care from Obama, We Better Push Him to Change His Plan

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http://www.alternet.org/election08/97160/if_we_want_good_health_care_from_obama%\

2C_we_better_push_him_to_change_his_plan/

 

 

Barack Obama's health care plan coddles the corporations that profit

from the misery and illnesses of tens of millions of Americans.

 

Barack Obama's health care plan coddles the corporations that profit

from the misery and illnesses of tens of millions of Americans. The

plan is naive, at best, and probably disingenuous when it insists

that we can coax these corporations, which are listed on the stock

exchange and exist to maximize profit, to transform themselves into

social service agencies that will provide adequate health care for

all Americans. I wish we lived in such a rosy world. I know, and I

suspect Obama knows, that we do not.

 

" Obama offers a false hope, " said Dr. John Geyman, the former chair

of family medicine at the University of Washington and author of " Do

Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry Is Dying, and How

We Must Replace It. " " We cannot build on or tweak the present system.

Different states have tried this. The problem is the private

insurance industry itself. It is not as efficient as a publicly

financed system. It fragments risk pools, skimming off the healthier

part of the population and leaving the rest uninsured or

underinsured. Its administrative and overhead costs are five to eight

times higher than public financing through Medicare. It cares more

about its shareholders than its enrollees or patients. A family of

four now pays about $12,000 a year just in premiums, which have gone

up by 87 percent from 2000 to 2006. The insurance industry is pricing

itself out of the market for an ever larger part of the population.

The industry resists regulation. It is unsustainable by present trends. "

 

We face a health crisis. The Democratic and Republican parties, awash

in campaign contributions from the beasts they should be slaying on

our behalf, have no interest in addressing it. A report in the

journal Health Affairs estimates that, if the system is left

unchanged, one of every five dollars spent by Americans in 2017 will

go to health coverage. Half of all bankruptcies in America are

because families are unable to pay their medical bills. There are

some 46 million Americans without coverage and tens of millions more

with inadequate policies that severely limit what kinds of procedures

and treatments they can receive.

 

" There are at least 25 million Americans who are underinsured, " said

Dr. Geyman. " Whatever coverage they have does not come close to

covering the actual cost of a major illness or accident. "

 

Obama, like John McCain, did not support HR 676, the single-payer

legislation. The corporations that run our for-profit health care

industry, which would be shut down if the bill was enacted, have

vigorously fought it through campaign contributions and armies of

lobbyists. A study by Harvard Medical School found that national

health insurance would save the country $350 billion a year. But

Medicare does not make campaign contributions. The private health

care industries do. They have lavished money on Obama. He received

$708,000 from medical and insurance interests between 2001 and 2006,

according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And Michelle Obama

is a vice president for community and external affairs at the

University of Chicago Hospitals, a position that paid her $316,962 annually.

 

" The private health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical

industry completely and totally oppose national health insurance, "

said Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, one of the founders of Physicians for

a National Health Program. " The private health insurance companies

would go out of business. The pharmaceutical companies are afraid

that a national health program will, as in Canada, be able to

negotiate lower drug prices. Canadians pay 40 percent less for their

drugs. We see this on a smaller scale in the United States, where the

Department of Defense is able to negotiate pharmaceutical prices that

are 40 percent lower. "

 

Sen. Obama argues that we can improve the system by expanding

government oversight. The government, he says, should require doctors

and hospitals to prove they provide quality care. His plan links

payment with reported quality. This would mean that health care

providers would have to hire even larger staffs to collect and report

this data to the government. There would be a $10-billion federal

investment in health care information technology over five years

under the Obama plan, in essence turning record keeping from paper to

electronic data.

 

Obama's plan, said Dr. Don McCanne, who writes on health care issues,

would actually make health plans " more expensive, which compounds the problem. "

 

Obama says he would require insurance companies to use more income

from premiums for patient care.

 

" There isn't an enforcement mechanism, " Geyman said bluntly. " Most

states have been unable to control rates or set a cap on rates. "

 

Obama's plan would also not cover all Americans. Unlike in Canada,

citizens would not be enrolled in a plan automatically. Americans

would have to go looking for one they could afford. And if they could

not find one they would remain uninsured. Dr. Woolhandler, who is

also a professor at Harvard Medical School, estimates that " tens of

millions " of Americans would remain uninsured under Obama's plan.

These numbers would swell as employers, who provide plans for 59

percent of those who are employed, continue to reduce coverage.

 

 

" The only way everyone will get insurance is with national health

insurance, " she said from Boston in a phone interview. " There is

nothing in the Obama plan that will change the bitter reality that

working-class families face when their breadwinner gets sick. People

with catastrophic illnesses usually lose their jobs and lose their

insurance. They often cannot afford the high premiums for the

insurance they can get when they are unable to work. Most families

that file for bankruptcy because of medical costs had insurance

before they got sick. They either lost the insurance because they

lost their jobs or faced gaps in coverage that meant they could not

afford medical care. "

 

Obama has borrowed John Kerry's idea to have the government absorb

certain severe costs, although again the details are not spelled out.

Insurers, he says, would no longer be able to discriminate based on

preexisting conditions. All children would have health coverage. He

would, he says, expand Medicare and Medicare-like coverage to protect

the very young and the elderly. This is laudable, if he can make it

happen. But the fundamental problem is a health industry run for

profit. Our health system costs nearly twice as much as national

programs in countries such as Switzerland. The overhead for

traditional Medicare is 3 percent, and the overhead for the

investment-owned companies is 26.5 percent. A staggering 31 percent

of our health care expenditures is spent on administrative costs.

Look what we get in return.

 

We on the left, those who should be out there fighting for universal

health care and total and immediate withdrawal from Iraq and

Afghanistan, sit like lap dogs on the short leashes of our Democratic

(read corporate) masters. We yap now and then, but we have forgotten

how to snarl and bite. We have been domesticated. And until we punish

the two main parties the way big corporations do, by withdrawing

support and funding when our issues are ignored, we will remain

irrelevant and impotent. I detest Bill O'Reilly, but he is right on

one thing-we liberals are a spineless lot.

 

Labor unions don't negotiate with corporations on the basis of good

will. They negotiate carrying the threat of a strike. What power do

we have as long as we cave on every issue we stand for, from

opposition to the death penalty to battling back against the

military-industrial complex?

 

It is not about liking or not liking Obama. It is not about race or

class or gender. It is not about growing up poor or a member of the

working class. There is no shortage of greasy politicians who, once

in power, sold out their own. Look at Bill Clinton. It is about

fighting back. It is about confronting a system that belittles us,

what we stand for and what is best for the majority of Americans. We

need to throw our support behind alternative candidates who champion

what we care about, whether Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader. Bob

Barr's health care plan, like John McCain's, is even worse than

Obama's tepid proposal. We need to begin to actively and militantly

defy the corporate state, and this means stepping outside of the

two-party system. Universal health insurance is one issue. There are

others. Nothing we care about will change until we do.

 

The Democrats, who promise to end the war in Iraq, create jobs and

provide universal health care, ignore these promises once election

cycles are over. And we never make them pay. They gave us NAFTA, the

destruction of welfare and increased military spending, and we gave

them our vote. This is the party that took back Congress in 2006 on

an anti-war platform and then increased troop levels and funding for

the Iraq war. This is a party that talks about the crushing weight of

debt carried by Americans and then refuses to cap predatory interest

rates as high as 30 percent imposed by credit card companies. This is

a party that promises to protect our constitutional rights and then

passes the FISA bill to protect the telecommunications companies. The

list goes on. These politicians, including Obama, must begin to feel

heat. They must learn that there is a cost to be paid for working on

behalf of corporations and disempowering citizens.

 

 

 

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