The False Promise of Health Care Reform, and An Alternative

Seven Drawbacks of Health-Care Reform

By Jim Petras

While our local Congressman, Maurice Hinchey and Senator Charles Schumer joined President Obama in celebrating the passage of the new health care bill, the working people of Binghamton will see few benefits and many drawbacks from the legislation. There are seven especially harmful aspects to this bill, which will become obvious to any working man or woman in the Southern Tier.

1. The bill excludes almost half of the currently uninsured working men and women in the US from access to any affordable coverage for at least the next 9 years – affecting at least 23 million of us.
2. The bill requires millions of workers to buy costly private plans, which will cost between 10% and 20% of their income and will at most only cover 70% of approved medical costs, leaving them still vulnerable to financial ruin if the worker or a family member becomes seriously ill. Many low and medium wage earners in Broome County and the surrounding Southern Tier of New York will find such policies too expensive to afford or use because of the high co-pays and deductibles. The private insurance giants and Big Pharma will be free to raise premiums and drug prices to ensure their mega profits because the bill gives federal and state regulators virtually no power to prevent price gouging. It is not surprising that the stock of the largest health insurance and pharmaceutical giants shot up after the bills passage.
3. The bill will transfer over $447 billion dollars of public money to the private insurers by drastically reducing Medicare payments for doctors and other professional services, laboratory tests and procedures. This means that medical care for retirees will be significantly cut. The bill intends to rob Peter (Medicare) in order to pay Paul (subsidies to private health insurance industry).
4. Middle class and unionized American workers, who have long sacrificed wage increases in order to obtain full health coverage for their families (the so-called Cadillac Plans), will now have to pay a stiff tax on their work-related benefits.
5. The cost of health care will continue to skyrocket as private insurance and pharmaceutical companies will set prices in order to maximize their profits.
6. Women’s reproductive care and rights will be further eroded because of the ban on health plans covering abortion (even to save the life of the mother) and all other reproductive services. This comes at a time when maternal deaths have nearly doubled; making US maternal mortality figures the worst in the industrialized world.
7. This bill is riddled with loopholes which will allow the health insurance companies to continue to make it difficult for people with so-called pre-existing conditions to obtain the care they desperately need. The proposed fines on insurers who refuse to cover life-saving services are so low that enrollees in need of certain types of care will die.
   
   

What Happened to Single Payer?

Most working people in Binghamton and the surrounding Southern Tier of New York would support replacing this failed and fatal system of private, for-profit health insurance with a system of publicly financed, single payer health care based on an improved Medicare for All as advocated by thousands of physicians, nurses and other health care workers all over the country. This would ensure the delivery of truly universal, equitable, comprehensive and affordable health care to all. It would put the patient, the family and the health care workers in control, rather than the private insurance CEO’s, administrators and their stock-holders. This would cut well over $400 billion dollars a year wasted in the form of ‘administrative costs’ of the private health insurers, a savings which would go a long way to paying for universal coverage. The savings in health care costs per American, which are twice that of the next most expensive country (Switzerland), would increase our competitive position in the world economy. As all the other industrialized nations have discovered, only a single payer system has the power to lower the costs of life saving and life enhancing pharmaceuticals by over 80% via bulk purchasing and direct negotiation with the drug companies.

Majority Support National Health Care System

It is worth repeating that over 59% of US physicians support a national, single payer health system. Currently physicians and other health providers have to spend a huge amount of time and money negotiating with bureaucrats running the thousands of private individual health plans and paying the overhead for extra-office staff and billing agencies – this is time and effort taken from patient care and from the real work your health care professionals love and want to be free to do.

Republicans & Democrats Ignore Unemployment – Jobs with Benefits Disappear

With official unemployment in Broome County reaching 10%, under-employment exceeding 10% and well over 15% of full-time workers without adequate health coverage, the current bill will make no difference to the lives of tens of thousands of workers and their families in this country. The President and the Democrat-controlled Congress have not done anything to tackle the devastating wave of lay-offs, all the while our Democrat Congressman and Senator have wasted over a year cutting deals with Big Pharma and promising huge subsidies to the private health insurance companies in the not-so-fine print of their health care reform bill. The Republican Party is equally responsible for the crises, bailout of Wall Street, and the breakdown of our health system, as was evident when they controlled the presidency and leadership of Congress. Meanwhile, not a single piece of legislation has been passed to create or, at least, retain well-paying manufacturing jobs with full health care coverage. As a result, in Broome County, we have lost 2,400 manufacturing jobs in 2009, leaving us with only 14,500 such jobs as of January 2010 – the lowest on record!

As conditions worsen, in terms of employment and access to medical care, it has become clear to over 80% population nationwide that the current two parties are incapable of addressing the crisis and the needs of the people. The obvious answer is to make a clean-break with a new political movement.