Health Care Reformish

Monday President Obama delivered yet another one of his health care reform talks, pushing same as of late, only this day he seemed particularly spirited, I must say. More like a campaign rally from back in the day. I don't have the cable out here, so I can't keep up on such things live as I could before, I have to watch after. Sometimes way after; I'm just now catching up.

What he's hawking now is not quite the same though, as it was at the beginning, to be sure, but I suppose it is at least something. Clearly reform of our current health care racket is long overdue, so whatever it takes to pick up a Republican "aye" or a couple, I'll pretend that much is cool. Sometimes the gates of history swing on small hinges, as the saying goes; think the 1957 Civil Rights Act (why did I never learn of this?)

Don't get me wrong, I have regard for what the president has managed thus far toward getting changed an awfully broke and corrupt system, despite opposition from both parties. God knows he has brought closer to bringing off reform than any previous attempt, and this time around at least something will likely get passed, albeit watered down. What bothers me the most is that whatever the final end, the president will still be kowtowing to the insurance industry, despite his public rhetoric castigating the industry as a huge part of the existing problem.

The public option as what was proposed at the beginning of all of this hooha, arguably only a bargaining point to begin with, has gone missing from the Obama's final plan in lieu of some sort of national health insurance exchange. Of course, though not the same as the universal coverage he kept harping about earlier on, this new plan is still spun as covering at least more Americans than now, and for cheaper. The public option is not necessarily dead for the final bill, but it likely won't be brought back.

Either way, with or without it, the plan will after all still be not right. For the insurance companies, despite feigned incensement on any reform, a public option plan worked back into the bill, mandating that people buy insurance, would be a bureaucrat's wet dream. Even Howard Dean said last December, "key reformers are offering to use government coercion to force fifty million Americans to become new health insurance customers. What industry wouldn’t want the government to create 50 million new customers overnight?"

To take that further, requiring that individuals buy insurance from competing private plans or else the public plan, the insurance companies' business not only gets boosted as Dean summed it up, but from that new businessthey could and would cherry pick just the young healthy ones (that is to say lucrative), while the sick or older patients would be required to opt into the public plan. Pretty sweet corporate-friendly, that.

The done-over version the president is presently plugging purportedly protects (I heart alliteration) consumers from insurance companies' abuses, and brings greater accountability, by providing "common sense rules of the road" that will keep premium costs down; make it competitive to give millions of Americans the same insurance choices congressional members have, pre-existing conditions notwithstanding.

In theory, the health insurance exchange would prompt companies to trim costs and lower premiums to compete with other providers. The potential problem there, if it turns out that too many people sign up only when they get sick for however months long and then drop their policy, companies won't be able to break even. In that case, no way, no how are the insurance companies going to keep premiums low, although I doubt if they would suffer so much.

And the proposed industry regulation? Seeing how the president's plan is ratherish vague on specifics, only to review "unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices" (which sounds about as plain as the "common sense rules of the road" blurb also thrown in) I don't see and wouldn't count on an advantage there for the consumer whatsoever.

The biggest problem of this whole thing is that he has taken the single-payer option from off the table, with a "drop dead" mindset toward anyone who thinks differently. Last year Max Baucus said, speaking on behalf of the president and others, said that single-payer is not practical or politically feasible. "Everything's on the table, nothing's off the table. Nothing. Nothing, with the possible exception of single-pay. I'm not going to waste my time pushing on something that isn't going to happen."

Although, once upon a time, then-Senator Obama was all in for it. In 2003, Obama said he supports a single-payer health care system, and that the only reason we "may not get there immediately" is "because first we have to take back the White House" - which, of course, we have done.

"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program...I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody... A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see."

Id est, one eliminating private insurers and their overhead costs, by having government finance health care. Monday, though:

"I don't believe we should give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America."

Dr. David Himmelstein of the Physicians for a National Health Program, says his take on this turnabout is that Obama is caving to the insurance industry, that the president who once acknowledged single payer reform as the best option, is now completely shutting out advocates of it to protect corporate heath care interests.

The PNHP has posted an Open Letter to President Obama to Support Single-Payer Health Care that says:

"Single payer reform, as embodied in these bills, would eliminate the bewildering patchwork of private insurance plans with their exorbitant overhead and profits, as well as the costly paperwork burdens they impose on providers. These savings on bureaucracy - nearly $400 billion annually – are sufficient to cover all of the uninsured and to provide first dollar coverage for all Americans. No other approach can provide comparable coverage at a cost our nation can afford."

The other day I mentioned in passing that one of the standards of the Green Party's platform where I concur and why I switched, is regarding a single-payer health care system. This is why, in part:

It would save time, money, and it would save choice. It is not socialized medicine, where the government owns the hospitals and employs the doctors. Single-payer is socialized insurance, where the government pays the hospitals, and pays the dotors - but hospitals and doctors are still part of the private sector.

It isn't free care, but it is certainly less expensive. And most importantly, it would be available to everyone. Regardless. Pick a reason why maybe not, still not a problem. Watch here, it neatly sums it up, what is single-payer.

Like a said a coon's age ago at the beginning of this, and in spite of whatever impression I may have created being critical, I truly am pleased at any forward progress being made toward achieving a better health care system than what we currently are stuck with.

Credit is indeed due to President Obama for that, and I realize the politics of achieving anything these days requires compromise. It just ought not have to be that way, however small the hinges swinging the gates of history, not for this issue, not in my opinion.