HEALTH REFORM - Where is the Wizard of Oz When We Need Him?

In Print and Online

Horse Fly
Taos, New Mexico  August 15, 2009

By Carol Miller 

The people are crying-out for access to health care. The economy is in
freefall with no sign yet of the bottom. It is time for bold action. Poll
after poll finds that two out of every three Americans supports converting
to a universal health care system similar to Medicare.

I find myself wishing there was someone like the Wizard of Oz to give
courage to politicians, the courage to stand up for us—the people, the
taxpayers, the voters.

So, what’s the problem?

One problem is that most elected leaders, from the president on down, are
cowards when it comes to standing up to the corporations. A few recent
examples: bailouts for banks while homeowners still face foreclosure and
homelessness; the AIG mega-insurance corporate bailout; and the current
and most cruel bailout—protecting large sickness insurance corporations
rather than giving us guaranteed access to health care. This is not
reform.

A truly reformed system would focus on improving health by expanding
public health, prevention, wellness programs, and easy access to health
care without causing fear as to how individuals will pay for it.

It is becoming obvious that there is more interest in raising current and
future campaign funds than giving us access to the higher quality,
lower-cost health care that the rest of the industrialized world enjoys.

How much money has corporate health care invested in politicians to
protect their profits? In the past 10 years, a cool $3.4 billion. 2008 was
a big investment year for health corporations: $167 million to
Congressional candidates (60% to Democrats), $18.7 million to the Obama
Campaign, and $7.3 million to McCain. While that sounds like a lot to us,
it is pocket change for these corporations—they make billions in profit
every year.

A Billion Dollars a Day
I know there are a lot of numbers in this commentary, but if you want to
memorize only one, here it is: health insurance administrative costs alone
waste one billion dollars a day, $365 billion dollars a year, and a
trillion dollars every two and a half years. This is a trillion dollars
that are sucked out of the health care system every couple of years for
wasteful paperwork and corporate profit. Not one penny of this provides
any health care. This is why the corporations are fighting to have the 49
million uninsured handed over to them.

Elected Politicians are Helping Government Haters Kill Health Reform
When our elected officials refuse to strongly defend the popular,
lifesaving and well-run government health programs, they open the door and
airways to endless government bashing. We see now how out of control these
government haters have become. Some of these are even the people we have
elected to represent us!

Why won’t the president stand up and defend government health programs? He
has had so many opportunities, but instead he plays into the hands of the
sickness insurance corporations, feeding the myth that people like their
insurance companies.

U.S. Socialized Medicine Is Popular
Americans are so trained to think that socialized anything is bad that
they get frightened when they hear lies in the media that the government
is going to impose socialized medicine. The definition of socialized
medicine is when the government owns the hospitals and clinics and all of
the staff are government employees.

This system actually sounds very familiar to 20 million Americans, and
almost one out of every four New Mexicans. You know why? The United States
already has a very large socialized medical system that includes military
health, veteran’s health, and the Indian Health Service.

Why doesn’t President Obama ever mention this? He could let people know
that the VA is a great system, recently honored as having the highest
patient satisfaction of all health plans for the sixth year in a row. The
military has always had a socialized health system, and service members
consider it the most important benefit of service.

America Already Has a Single Payer System
It is amazing that the thought of government-run health care frightens so
many people, including those who already have it. The United States today
has the largest single payer health care system in the world, with 103
million beneficiaries—more than one out of every three Americans.

In New Mexico, 800,000 people have single payer health care, through
Medicare and Medicaid. Add in the more than 400,000 in the socialized
system, and two out of every three New Mexicans is already in government
run health care. The truth is, most of them like it and are more satisfied
with their coverage and care than people in corporate sickness insurance.

Here is why Medicare is popular—it keeps the private delivery system
intact and leaves it to the government to pay the bills. If people want
“choice,” they will find more choice of doctors and hospitals in Medicare
than any other insurance plan.

The president has said time and again that if we were starting the system
from scratch, he would favor a single payer system. He is clear that he
knows it is the best. But he always follows this up with the comment that
a lot of people like what they have, so we will build on the current
system. But 123 million people already have government health care, 41% of
the country. Why not get to universal health care by building on these
systems?

At a recent AARP Forum on Health Reform, President Obama was unable to
convince a Medicare beneficiary that Medicare is actually a government-run
program. The person refused to believe that the government could operate
such a great program.

Rather than standing up for the government, the president missed the
perfect opportunity to educate and move the country. He could have
explained that reform will not be about taking away anything from the 45
million seniors in Medicare, but instead would welcome their children and
grandchildren to join them in the most popular government program.

Compare that to the current system which has grandma in Medicare, mom and
dad either uninsured or in another plan, and often the children in yet
another, each with annual enrollment, changing rules, and benefits unknown
until you are sick and an insurance company bureaucrat tells your doctor
what care you can get. Imagine the whole family in one health system, with
the same rules, benefits, and enrollment for life—this is an idea worth
fighting for!

People Like Their Insurance?
Really? Who are these people? This is a huge lie. The president says it
over and over. Our members of Congress say it over and over, but repeating
this lie will never make it true.

For the most part, people like their doctors and the hospitals and clinics
where they get care, but in my many years of working in health care, I
have never met anyone who told me they love their insurance company.

Insurance companies collect money every month, supposedly to pay for
health care, but their profits are based on denying and rationing as much
care as possible. The rationing starts before someone even signs up for an
insurance plan, because sales agents are trained to discourage or deny
coverage to sick people or people who they think might become sick.

With corporate for-profit insurance, you never know in advance what will
be paid for and how much they will leave for you to pay. Too many people
have learned the absolute heartlessness of ruthless insurance companies.
More than 500,000 people in the United States go bankrupt every year as a
result of medical bills or illness. Most who declare medical bankruptcy
are “insured,” or so they thought. They paid their premiums every month,
but when they or a family member became sick, they learned that they were
not protected from financial ruin.

Who benefits from this system? Insurance executives and CEOs with sky-high
compensation packages reaching to the tens and hundreds of millions of
dollars. The former CEO of United Health Care holds the record, receiving
over one billion dollars in a single year in salary and stock options.
This is the same corporation that just “won” the contract to run the
behavioral health system in the State of New Mexico.

Continuing the for-profit sickness insurance industry and using tax
dollars to expand it further is yet another unaffordable corporate
bailout. This is a nonessential industry that makes profits from rationing
health care to people who need it and, even worse, it rations the care to
people who have already paid for it!

My challenge to the New Mexico Congressional delegation and the president
is this: even if you don’t have the courage to support a transformation of
the health care system that would let everyone into a restored Medicare
program, why not at least let the 49 million uninsured enroll in this most
popular government program? This is the easiest and least costly way to
cover the uninsured.

There are two bills in Congress to create a Medicare-for-All program,
House Bill 676 and Senate Bill 703. On July 30th, U.S. House of
Representatives Speaker and California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi
committed to a vote on HB676 when Congress comes back from vacation in
September.

The outcome of that vote depends on us making sure that all of our
representatives know we oppose the looming corporate bailout and want
health care, not health insurance.

What we want is simple: one system, everyone in, nobody out.