WHY THE DEMOCRATS ARE SO COWARDLY ABOUT HEALTHCARE
CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER - The majority of the American people want a
single-payer health care system ? Medicare for all. The majority of
doctors want it. A good chunk of hospital CEOs want it. But what they
want doesn't appear to matter. Why?
Because a single-payer health care plan would mean the death of the
private health insurance industry and reduced profits for the
pharmaceutical industry.
Presidential candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and
Mitt Romney and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger talk a lot
about universal health care. But not one of them advocates for
single-payer ? because single-payer too directly confronts the big
corporate interests profiting off the miserable health care system we
are currently saddled with.
"Currently, we are spending almost a third of every health care dollar
on administration and paperwork generated by the private health
insurance industry," said Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an Associate
Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of
Physicians for a National Health Program. "Countries like Canada spend
about half that much on the billing and paperwork side of medicine. If
we go to a single-payer system and are able to cut the billing and
paperwork costs of health care, that frees up about $300 billion per
year. That's the money we need to cover the uninsured and then improve
the coverage for those who have private insurance but are
under-insured."
"The idea behind single-payer is you don't have to increase total health
care spending," Woolhandler said in an interview with Corporate Crime
Reporter. "You take the money we are now spending but cut the
administrative fat and use that money to cover people."
None of the declared Presidential candidates ? with the exception of
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) ? is supporting single-payer. Last
year, Kucinich and Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan), introduced a
single-payer bill, HR 676, which garnered support of more than 75
members of the House. Woolhandler expects that number to grow
substantially this year.
And Woolhandler says grassroots activists have been mobilizing at the
state level. "State single-payer organizations have been very active,"
she said. "Early in the process, you can get a lot of politicians
interested ? they want to show up at your rallies to show support for
national health insurance. But as you get closer and closer to actual
passage of a law, it is harder to keep the politicians on board.". . .
Woolhandler called the universal health care law passed in Massachusetts
by Governor Mitt Romney "a hoax."
"The core idea is the individual mandate ? forcing uninsured people to
go out and buy insurance," Woolhandler said. "And if they don't buy
insurance, we are going to fine them. The first year it is an $80 fine.
The second year, it's half the value of the lowest priced policy ? we're
talking about a $2,000 fine. So, they are saying anyone who earns more
than three times poverty has to bear the entire price of a private
insurance policy."
"Romney's bill was written by Blue Cross," Woolhandler said. "Romney was
saying he was going to offer health insurance starting at $200 a month.
And of course, that was a hoax. No insurance policy in Massachusetts
comes in at $200 a month. When Blue Cross was asked to produce the
policy, it turned out the policy was going to cost $380 a month for a
policy that had a $2000 deductible. So, you are going to tell this poor
bloke who is earning $29,400 a year that he has to go out and spend
$4,000 a year on an insurance policy. And if he gets sick, he doesn't
even have any coverage until he has spent $2,000. And that's not family
coverage. That's individual coverage."
Former Senator John Edwards would have a Medicare-like system compete
with private insurance. "Edwards plan is not going to work," Woolhandler
says flatly. "We know there is not going to be fair competition between
Medicare and the private plans. You have to take on the private health
insurance industry and tell them ? you are out of here. This is an
entitlement program like traditional Medicare or Social Security. We are
going to get the administrative efficiencies you get from running it as
a single program and use that to expand coverage. That's what you have
to do."
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) doesn't want to get specific. "She
is nowhere on this issue," Woolhandler says. Ditto Senator Barack Obama
(D-Illinois).
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