Rep. John Conyers at IUSYes we can. That was the rallying cry for the Obama troops during the campaign last year. Hope was the fuel. Change was the goal. I was caught up in the enthusiasm as much as anyone. I believed that the page was turning and a better day would dawn if only...
That was then. This is now. I confess to disappointment in the tentative approach Obama is taking to the presidency. He was off to a good start with the closing of the prison at Guantanamo, but now it's time for some reconsideration of that bold move. A few thousand more soldiers to Afghanistan; surely there's a plan.
Let's let bygones be bygones. If Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Yoo, Feith, and the boys from Blackwater pushed the envelope a little, just let it go. At least they're gone now and who wants all that poking around in closets looking for skeletons anyway? Just be happy that McCain didn't win because, well he was old and... Or just be happy that the eight years of Bush have ended and now things are...
Saturday at IUS the topic was health care, but the prescription was self-help. A forum was put on by the Southern Indiana chapter of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, the group working for passage of House Resolution 676, Single Payer universal health coverage for the U.S.. Several of the excellent speakers brought the same sobering news: If we want change, the kind of change that brings us up to the standards of health enjoyed in the rest of the industrialized world, we're going to have to hold Obama's feet to the fire. He's on film speaking eloquently about the virtues of a single payer health plan when he was running for State Senate, now he looks to the influence pedalling lobbyists and takes their cues to slow that train down. Unless we take the initiative,Conyers said, "we will get the kind of health care we deserve, not the kind we want." Now Obama says, paraphrasing, if we were starting out with a clean slate, we'd design a better system for health care, along the lines of a single payer plan.
We're not starting with a clean slate. We're starting with a slate on which health insurance sellers rack up $25 billion a year in profits. We're starting with a slate where these same corporations work not to deliver health care to the hapless purchasers of their flawed products but, rather, to deliver profits to their investors. They are in business not because that is how they deliver their needed service, but because it is a business, and a hugely profitable business. On their slates they write about the unfettered holy mandate of the marketplace. They write that a single-payer system of health coverage results in long waits, inferior treatment and a slight wafting of a European odor which is not to their liking. They write that they will voluntarily wring TWO TRILLION DOLLARS out of the heaven-sent cost increases to which they are entitled but which they will forgo because they are "team players" and they are on the capitalist team. That's how it's done, they write on their not-so-clean slates, in the land of the free, by choice.
Is it by choice that nearly fifty million citizens of the richest nation on Earth play the health care equivalent of Russian Roulette by having no coverage? Is it by choice that our once most valuable manufacturing powerhouse, General Motors, is brought to the brink of bankruptcy, in part by the current and legacy burdens of private health insurance which GM pays, but which is paid by the governments of foreign producers? Is it by choice that our citizens have shorter life spans than citizens of nations with universal health care? Is it by choice that in the U.S., according to a Harvard study in 2005, that half the personal bankruptcies are caused by the high cost of medical treatment? Is it by choice that the U.S. spends nearly a half trillion dollars more to deliver health coverage than is spent in Western Europe? Is it by choice that this excess spending delivers less care?
Huge numbers of people want a single payer health system for this nation, some polls report as high as 65% in favor, nearly 60% of doctors favor it,and yet it seems now that it will not happen. Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, the author of HR 676, spoke to the IUS gathering. He spoke of his heroes, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Rosa Parks. What these people all had in common was that they did not take no for an answer. They knew what was right and they persevered. Civil rights legislation was not seen as a viable option at the time. Marches on Washington brought segregation to an end and opened voting booths to all races. Ending the Viet Nam war was impractical, countries are like dominoes you know. Focused effort ended that war. Today the health care industry comprises 17% of our economy, those who benefit from the role of middleman in the transaction portray their work as critical to the success of the nation. Those who are shut out of the system, and those who are bankrupted by the system, and those who see health care as a right of citizenship, may be excused for seeing the health insurance industry as so many leeches feeding off the populace. The nation needs to adjust to new economic realities. Reform of the health care system, providing health care for all as a right not a commercial gewgaw, is one of a few important steps in that adjustment.
Congressman Conyers's admonition to those who see the health care system as broken, and those who feel the weight of that broken system, is that we must now do what those who preceded us did when they encountered injustice. We must now take the fight to the halls of power. We must let legislators know that we will not stand for the status quo on health care. When they don't listen, we must open their ears. When they are swayed by lobbyists oozing cash we must say, "Enough". Now is the time to take this right to health into our hands and make it real. We now must let Obama know the status quo is in need of change. We must recapture the hope which made us believe the words "Yes We Can" and utter those words once more. This time they must signal our knowledge that we can bring meaningful change to our broken,sub-standard health care system. If we don't act now, we will get what we deserve.
8 comments:
$25 billion a year equals about $80 per person. Hardly a dent, even if these folks are correct.
What about the $350+ billion spent each and every year on Medicaid. Surely spending that more effectively would be a better place to start.
Councilman John Gonder has wisely written about what we must do to win health care. Please write to your Congressperson to encourage him or her to sign on to HR 676, national single payer health care. The politicians must hear from the people.
Kay Tillow
www.kyhealthcare.org
We wouldn't have to spend $350 billion a year on medicaid, if everyone had medical coverage. Those on Medicaid often wait until they are extremely sick before they see a doctor, and that is usually at the emergency room. Those on Medicaid often still have a small co-pay. When you are living on $600 a month, $5 to see a doctor is still a lot of money. So these people and those with no coverage wait until they have no choice and then go to an emergency room. These people often have their diabetes or high blood pressure diagnosed after the heart attack. They have their cancer discovered after it reaches fourth stage. The way to lower those costs is to provide health care for all.
That does not make sense.
I needlessly complicated the issue by mentioning that the health insurance industry gleans $25 billion in profits from the current system.
The real shame is that nearly a half trillion dollars is lost to inefficiencies of the current system.
That is money which could be directed toward better, more widely distributed care. The remainder could be put to other uses.
A problem with the current set up is that ineficiencies naturally lead to greater profit for the health care industry. It is unlikely that a for-profit provider would work against its own commercial interests by introducing the efficiencies found in the government system of Medicare.
John,
Thanks for a really well-written piece.
Research has shown that 20 to 30 cents of every health care dollar is spent on HMO overhead including marketing, duplication, CEO salaries and profits, not to mention strategizing to dodge and deny claims. Moreover, the insurer as middleman adds to the costs others must pay. Physicians and hospitals must deal with over 1200 insurers (each with multiple plans). Money that could be spent on hiring nurses or therapists is spent on staff needed to process the billing. Patients worried about getting well are swamped with paperwork.
Under single payer, there would be one designated government agency processing the bills. Doctors and hospitals would be paid fairly and on time.
Medicare cares for some of our least healthy people, yet Medicare is very cost-effective. It pays patient claims as promised, and holds overhead to an estimated three percent. We need to bring everyone, including those on Medicaid under the single payer Medicare-for-all umbrella. In one huge pool we would share risk and costs--and provide coverage for everyone. That's how insurance is supposed to work.
With a single-payer system, Medicaid will no longer be a drain on state budgets. Municipalities will be relieved of the burden of ever-escalating premiums for their employees. How much of the New Albany Council budget goes for health care coverage? How much of Metro Louisville's budget?
Today alone, I heard of two friends who have lost their jobs and therefore their family's health care. Transitional COBRA coverage is unaffordable.
I recently spoke with a young mother--who has insurance. Last year she had a baby and it cost her $2000 out-of-pocket. Is this what our country has come to? My young cousins in Canada go into the hospital to have their babies and no worrisome bill ever arrives.
Rep. Conyers is right, "Now is the time." It is time for everyone in Kentuckiana to say "no" to greed, to say "yes" to single payer. Call your representatives in Congress. They do listen to their consituents.
John,
Excellent article. I think you need to sent this to the Courier and the Tribune as a guest column or a letter to the Editor.
The attendance at IUS was good but we still need to reach more people.
Shirley
"You do things again and again, and nothing happens. You have to do things, do things, do things. You have to light that match. light that match, light that match, not knowing how often it's going to sputter and go out and at what point it's going to take hold. Things take a long time. it requires patience, but not a passive patience--the patience of activism."
Howard Zinn, historian, author
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