Listing Reasons for Health Care Reform

I found an excellent summary of the reasons to support the current health care reform proposal. It came in an email from Health Care Can't Wait.

A lot of angry, over-the-top rhetoric is muddying our discussion of health care reform. To help clear things up, here’s a brief summary of President Obama’s plan, including how it will stop insurance company abuses and help you—even if you currently have a strong health benefits plan.

Health care reform will stop insurance company abuses.

• Insurance companies won’t be able to refuse to pay a claim or give you coverage because of “pre-existing” conditions.
• Your out-of-pocket expenses will be capped. No more going broke because of a serious illness or injury.
• Insurance companies won’t be allowed to charge women higher rates than men or drop you if you get sick.
• Insurance companies will have to cover your children until age 26 instead of dumping them at 19.

Health care reform will hold down rising costs.

• A public health insurance option will force private insurers to compete and will lower costs for everyone.
• By requiring companies to pay their fair share, we’ll stop them from dumping their health care costs on the rest of us.

Health reform means affordable care will be there for you, no matter what.

• If you lose your job,
  
• or your kid loses his.
  
• If you get sick.
  
• When you retire. Affordable health care will be there for you, no matter what. That means you and your family can’t fall through the cracks
  
• and won’t go broke because of health care bills.

The reality is that health care costs are spiraling out of control, and everyone in America deserves quality and affordable care. Health care reform simply can’t wait. We will all be better off with real reform.

There is a good new site to correct the masses of misinformation going on about health reform. People who believe in truth and morality need at least to listen to each other and make sure they are not running around fighting against empty enemies. There are no death panels. There is not a takeover of the health care system in this plan. Frankly, I wish the plan would do more than it does to reduce costs, but this is the compromise plan.

Even if You Have Employer-Subsidized Health Insurance, You Don't Really

At the excellent "think-tank" blog on economics and finance, The Baseline Scenario, James Kwak has posted an article on health insurance that draws back the curtains, blows away the fog, and shatters the mirrors of illusion. The "in-your-face" title is "You Do Not Have Health Insurance." He says that unless you are over 65 in the U. S., the word "insurance" does not really apply. I'll quote the first section to spell out the heart of his argument, which will knock you over.

Right now, it appears that the biggest barrier to health care reform is people who think that it will hurt them. According to a New York Times poll, “69 percent of respondents in the poll said they were concerned that the quality of their own care would decline if the government created a program that covers everyone.” Since most Americans currently have health insurance, they see reform as a poverty program – something that helps poor people and hurts them. If that’s what you think, then this post is for you.

You do not have health insurance. Let me repeat that. You do not have health insurance. (Unless you are over 65, in which case you do have health insurance. I’ll come back to that later.)

The point of insurance is to protect you against unlikely but damaging events. You are generally happy to pay premiums in all the years that nothing goes wrong (your house doesn’t burn down), because in exchange your insurer promises to be there in the one year that things do go wrong (your house burns down). That’s why, when shopping for insurance, you are supposed to look for a company that is financially sound – so they will be there when you need them.

If, like most people, your health coverage is through your employer or your spouse’s employer, that is not what you have. At some point in the future, you will get sick and need expensive health care. What are some of the things that could happen between now and then?

Your company could drop its health plan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (see Table HIA-1), the percentage of the population covered by employer-based health insurance has fallen every year since 2000, from 64.2% to 59.3%.

You could lose your job. I don’t think I need to tell anyone what the unemployment rate is these days.

You could voluntarily leave your job, for example because you have to move to take care of an elderly relative.

You could get divorced from the spouse you depend on for health coverage.

For all of these reasons, you can’t count on your health insurer being there when you need it. That’s not insurance; that’s employer-subsidized health care for the duration of your employment.

Once you lose your employer-based coverage, for whatever reason, you’re in the individual market, where, you may be surprised to find, you have no right to affordable health insurance. An insurer can refuse to insure you or can charge you a premium you can’t afford because of your medical history. That’s the way a free market works: an insurer would be crazy to charge you less than the expected cost of your medical care (unless they can make it up on their healthy customers, which they can’t in the individual market).

In honor of the financial crisis, let’s also point out that all of these risks are correlated: being sick increases your chances of losing your job (and, probably, getting divorced); losing your job reduces your ability to afford health insurance.

There is more in the article, explaining some further dangers about companies rescinding policies, denying claims, not covering various critical procedures, and COBRA that help us realize how precarious our health coverage is. As he points out, unless your job is insured (there is no way you can lose your job or go out of business), your access to health care is not insured.

We need this reform. Make it plain to your Congressional Representatives.

Making the Message Plain on Health Care

Here is a short video made for TV that makes the key point about why the public option is so critical. A single-payer system would be even better, but a public option will address the key problem of uninsured people and rising costs by creating a different playing field for selling health insurance plans.

Asking for Too Little on Health Reform

I have been a fan of the single-payer approach to funding health care since the 80s. When the possibilities for reform in the 90s went corporate, then crashed, I was disappointed. Ever since, what has happened is the consolidation of Big Health and more and more interference with our health care decisions.

I have had to change primary physicians three times since the mid-1990s, even though I have stayed on the same health insurance plan. I am having all kinds of trouble getting my daughter an appointment with a doctor of her choice now that she has grown out of her pediatrics practice. The current system does not allow us to choose our own doctors. Bureaucrats in corporate offices tell us who to see.

My primary care physician changed practices last year, and my wife's primary care physician followed him a few months later because the big behemoth health provider in our town was giving them too many regulations and rules on how to practice and to whom they could make referrals. Now their new practice has joined a "health management" firm, and I can already feel the regimentation squeezing me when I go for an appointment.

When the Presidential campaigns were promoting health care reform, which everyone knows we need, the head honcho of my insurance provider started funding a media disinformation campaign to make sure that his high-profit non-profit could prevent competition that might bring down our costs. This disinformation is now widespread, and Big Health is winning the battle.

An article by Jeff Cohen at truthout got me thinking. I was campaigning for the "public option" as a form of competition to reduce health care funding and improve services. Yet I keep hearing people say, "I believe in the single-payer plan, but since that is not going to pass . . . ." Well maybe it is not going to pass, but it is the best solution. Why not ask for the best, and see how close to it the policy debate will move? To provide for more people, to reduce overhead and paperwork, to end profiteering by excluding the sick, to stop proliferation of unnecessary procedures, to make sure no one loses access to health care, we need a single-payer system. As my friend Steve Bumgardner keeps telling me, the Medicare system works and is already in place. As Cohen says, "Medicare for All" is the solution. Tell your Congressional Representatives to support HR 676, the Expanded Medicare for All Act.

Hagan Announces Support for Public Option

Thanks to Michael Westmoreland-White for finding this information. Talking Points Memo describes Hagan's press conference statement in support of the public insurance option. I know I did not make it happen with my letter and blog yesterday, but with the support of plenty of other folks, she saw the light. That's a big step in the right direction. Now we need to press on and get a bill passed without gutting it.

Where Does Hagan Stand on Health Reform?

I am trying to find out where Senator Hagan stands on health care reform. Here is the letter I sent her today.

Hello, Senator,

A while back I sent a letter asking you four questions about your position on health care reform.

We live in a difficult time for most people, and a major cause of our economic difficulties is the out-of-control health care system. On the one hand, the medical profession and hospitals operate as quasi-monopolies, keeping numbers of physicians low and buying up smaller practices to eliminate competition.

On the other hand, the business invokes the free market as justification for excessive charges, as if persons seeking medical care can shop around the way they do for a hamburger, a pair of shoes, or a gallon of milk. The powerful insurance companies and health care institutions already place severe limits on which doctors we can see, what treatments we can get, and even how long our doctors can talk to us. That is not a free market.

US costs double or triple the costs of excellent health care systems in other parts of the world. Something must be done to get this runaway train to stop.

That is why I support a public insurance option immediately for all people who want to choose it. The highest priority is to get rid of layer upon layer of administrative costs, all focused on keeping me from getting medical care paid for rather than focused on keeping me healthy.

So again, I want to know the answers to four questions.

1. Do you support a public healthcare option as part of reform?

2. Do you support a public healthcare option that is ready on day one?

3. Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to our government?

4. Do you support a public healthcare option that has the clout to establish rates with providers and big drug companies?

Don't listen to the critics who say this will create long lines: we already cannot get an appointment to see a doctor without waiting months.

Don't listen to critics who say this will lead to bureaucrats making health decisions for us: we already have to put up with that from the insurance companies.

Don't listen to critics who say this will be unfair competition: they want to maintain their high executive salaries and focus on profit rather than trim their costs and organizations to make health care affordable.

Don't listen to critics who say this will make medicine less attractive for bright people to choose as a career: the insurance and health care management companies are already driving doctors out of the profession because of the regimentation and demand for shorter and shorter patient visits.

Stand with all of us for a better health care system. Stand for the public plan option.

Questions to Ask Congress About Health Reform

I sent the following to the senators from NC about health reform. Something has to change. For now, my family is getting by pretty well, but it keeps getting harder. My wife and I have good jobs (at the moment), but many people who make less or have been laid off must be struggling seriously in this economy. Being poor ought not to mean that a person does not deserve medical care. I encourage you to ask for answers from your Senators and Congressional representatives.

My wife and I have watched our health costs skyrocket. Insurance is eating up more of our income each year. We worry about our kids who are approaching the age that they will not be our dependents. What will they do in an entry level job if health benefits keep being diminished?

Health care ought not to be a luxury. Everyone needs access. People should not have their finances ruined by a standard hospitalization.

A public healthcare option should be available to all citizens. That way, the semi-monopoly that exists as "private insurance" plans will have to compete with a plan that has its primary purpose the public health, not profits.

Do you support a public healthcare option as part of healthcare reform?

If so, do you support a public healthcare option that is available on day one?

Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable our government?

Do you support a public healthcare option that has the clout to establish rates with providers and big drug companies?

As a constituent, I would really like to know the answers to these questions. Please respond to these questions in writing via email.