Posts filed under ‘Single Payer’
Medicare and Jobs: Not Mutually Exclusive!
The more people have health insurance, including Medicare, the more they stay healthy and are able to work. If health insurance is provided by Medicare or health care reform or any avenue outside the tired employer-based system, it reduces costs for employers and encourages hiring. Ask any employer.
Continuing to tie health insurance to employment only continues a system that COSTS jobs. It creates a disincentive for employers to hire. It creates an incentive for the new employment reality: Freelance, contract work, part-time, whatever you want to call the newly underemployed who do not have benefits and for whom employers do not pay into Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment, or Workers Comp. This is a big problem for everyone involved, including individual workers, their families, AND the solvency of important programs that Americans value and that have lifted generations out of poverty and provided fair access to health care.
Pay attention, people! We not only can have Medicare and jobs – we will have more jobs if we increase access to Medicare and health care. Don’t raid Medicare to pay for jobs. That will only reduce access to both.
Don’t Walk Away From Health Care Reform!
The Center for Medicare Advocacy supports efforts to pass the Senate’s health reform bill. We reiterate what President Obama asked of Congress in his State of the Union address, “don’t walk away from [health] reform!” Paul Krugman agreed in his NewYork Times editorial.
Now is not the time to retreat, or to insist that the perfect defeat the good. Too many people have no health insurance, too many are denied coverage because of preexisting conditions, too many face bankruptcy because of uncovered medical bills for us to give up.
What would Ted Kennedy do? He would agree! He would push forward to pass the Senate health reform bill. As he writes in his memoir about his efforts to pass reform – in 1977:
“My staff and I worked hard to craft a plan that would be capable of having broad-based support. Specifically, we negotiated long and hard in 1977 to persuade .. the AFL-CIO and … the UAW, to compromise on their strong commitment to a single-payer system, where health care providers would be paid from a single national fund like Medicare - and agree instead to support a plan built on our existing system of private insurance provided that coverage was mandatory and universal. I had personally supported single payer in the past and understood the benefits of it, but I also knew that it would be politically impossible to pass.” True Compass, p. 359 (2009)
Listen to Teddy! Pass the Senate health care reform bill as soon as possible – if that’s what can be done, if that’s what’s feasible - do it!
To speak to your members of Congress, call (800)828-0498.
Thank you! 60 Senators Bring Us One Step Closer to Health Care Reform
True, the bill that passed the Senate is far from perfect. But, can you imagine what the opposition would be saying if the bill met our standards for true health care reform? As it is, the brave Senators who led this battle have endangered their political careers. This includes Senator Chris Dodd (CT), senior Senator from the Center for Medicare Advocacy’s home state.
So we thank Senator Dodd and everyone who worked to get this good bill passed. Here are some highlight’s from Families USA: Manager’s amendment: Providing more competition and affordable choices for Americans ; Manager’s amendment: Improving quality and controlling costs ; Manager’s amendment: Enhancing affordable choices for small businesses .
Get some rest, all! Another big push to provide health care equity awaits us after we ring in 2010.
Yes, We Still Support Health Care Reform
We’ve decided, we can’t afford to let the perfect interfere with the possibility of good health reform. There are millions of Americans waiting for insurance coverage and an economy waiting for businesses to be relieved of health care’s extraordinary costs. At best the Senate is likely to pass a bill that disappoints but, as of today, we support it.
As economist Paul Krugman says in today’s New York Times, “Pass the Bill, the current health care bill falls a long way short of ideal, but it is better than anything that seemed possible just a few years ago.”
So – today the Center for Medicare Advocacy sent the following letter to Senate health reform leaders:
Dear Senators Reid, Durbin, Dodd, and Baucus:
The Center for Medicare Advocacy, Inc. is a national, non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of older people and people with disabilities to ensure access to health care. We thank you for your efforts to enact health insurance reform.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will provide access to health insurance for millions of Americans, provide subsidies to those with limited incomes and resources, improve access to preventive services, and limit discrimination in the offering of health insurance. Additionally, the bill protects the integrity of the Medicare program by reducing overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans and by promoting delivery system reforms to encourage high quality, coordinated health care. The bill further assists people with limited means by extending eligibility for Medicaid for the under 65 population.
Overall, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will move this country towards the goal of achieving universal access to health care. We are pleased to support this legislation.
Center for Medicare Advocacy, Inc.
Can We Afford a Private Health Plan Option?
Last week, Congressman Anthony Weiner (D. NY) asked TV commentator (and former Congressman) Joe Scarborough a series of questions about private insurance companies that form the lynchpin of our current health care system and around which health care reform may be based. Congressman Weiner asked: ”Why are we paying profits for insurance companies? Why are we paying overhead for insurance companies? Why are we paying for their TV commercials? What is their value? What are they bringing to the deal?”
Here’s what we know about the role private health insurance companies play in our health care system – and might well play in healthcare “reform”:
1. Private insurance companies decide which doctors we see. Most Americans are in network plans that require them to use the doctors who allowed into their network. Some plans allow members to go to non-network providers, but only if the individual pays more out-of-pocket. Private insurance supporters argue that people are always free to go to a doctor who isn’t in their insurance plan’s network, but if they do so they have to pay the full cost themselves, something most Americans cannot afford.
2. Private insurance plans decide who gets insurance. They reject people who use too much health care, rescind contracts from high health-care users, and deny health insurance and/or coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Plans also charge higher premiums for people based on what they determine to be a pre-existing condition or based on the individual’s gender, making health insurance unaffordable for many people.
3. Private insurance companies decide what health care will be provided and paid for. They decide what services will be covered in the insurance package they offer. They establish drug formularies and prior approval requirements for drugs and procedures. They set the standards for the documentation and proof they require to determine whether a prescribed treatment is medically necessary, and each plan has its own requirements. Private insurance plans are not bound by what your doctor thinks is best for you, and they may override your doctor’s recommendation, and refuse coverage.
4. Private insurance companies increase the administrative work load for doctors’ offices. Staff must submit different health claim forms for different insurance companies and comply with each plan’s own formularies and requirements for submitting medical records to justify claims. They must spend hours on the phone with insurance companies to verify coverage, cost sharing, and formulary rules.
5. Private insurance companies encourage people to ration health care. By developing products with high deductibles and cost-sharing, private health insurance companies encourage enrollees to think twice about getting the care their doctors prescribe. Unfortunately, such decisions are often based on cost rather than on medical necessity and/or quality of care. Someone who delays needed care because of a high deductible or high cost-sharing amount may leave a condition untreated, and may end up requiring more costly health care in the future.
6. Private insurance companies are highly profitable industries, for their investors. According to insurance industry filings with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, profits for the 10 largest publically traded health insurance companies rose 428% from 2000 to 2007, from $2.4 billion to $12.9 billion. During the same time period, the number of uninsured continued to rise, although the economic downturn enabled some individuals to get insurance through state Medicaid programs, many lost their health insurance due to lay-offs.
What do we get from private insurance companies? A system that decides who gets insurance and who does not; that comes between patients and their doctors – and that makes profits for investors. Is this the right direction for our country to take in “reforming” the health care system? Can we afford this? And who stands to gain?
Medicare, We Hardly Know Ya
44 years ago Medicare was enacted into law. All of today’s dire warnings about a public health option – socialism and government barring the doctor’s door – were made in opposition to Medicare. Despite such opposition from “conservative,” leaders, including Senator Bob Dole, Medicare passed.
Before Medicare, 50% of everyone 65 or older had NO health insurance. Now, as a result of Medicare, almost all older people are insured. Medicare, which is national, government-run health insurance, succeeded in insuring older people where private insurance failed. And, until the Bush Administration privatized Medicare with the extraordinarily subsidized private “Medicare Advantage” and Part D plans, Medicare was remarkably cost-effective too. It’s private Medicare, not the traditional, public program, that’s bleeding taxpayers of billions of dollars.
Medicare has been a success, fiscally and morally. It took on the job of insuring health coverage and care to people that private insurance had abandoned. Since 2003, on the other hand, private Medicare plans have cost us all tens of billions of dollars that went to support the private insurance industry, not to providing health care. In addition, private Medicare plans have too often engaged in marketing abuses and restrictive coverage practices.
As Paul Krugman recognizes in today’s New York Times, people with Medicare love it. They do not want government to fool around with the traditional program. Ironically, these are sometimes the same people who worry that a public health care option will cause long waits for health care and government invasions into their private medical decisions. They, and their family members, (which accounts for pretty much all of us), forget that the traditional Medicare program is a public health insurance option.
Hello, America, meet Medicare: Our 44 year-old public health insurance option that provides care to all its enrollees, anywhere in the country, and that has provided health and economic security for millions of older people, people with disabilities, and their families.
Happy anniversary, Medicare. Thank you for showing us what a true public insurance program can offer.
Mr. President: Listen to Your Doctor!
The (President’s) doctor orders Medicare for all. He’s right. If conventional wisdom is correct, and a single payer system is not “on the table,” surely the President and reform leaders must at least insist on a public health insurance option.
If the goal of health care reform is to provide coverage for all as cost-effectively as possible, a public health insurance plan MUST be included in any health care reform package. We can’t afford to be scared again by dire warnings about Big Government. Big Insurance costs a lot more than a public program and it helps people get health coverage a lot less. Ask anyone who really knows about the public Medicare program and private Medicare plans.
Support a true public health insurance option! It’s best for people who need health care and most cost-effective for taxpayers. Isn’t that what the President and his doctor ordered?
Medicare for All?
This morning I showed my brand spanking new Medicare card to my 27-year old uninsured son, Patrick.
He looked the card over carefully and said “I wish I had one of these.”
“Venting” About Single Payer Health Care
Dr. Walter Tsou, a former Commissioner of Health in Philadelphia and a public health physician, eloquently testified before Congress on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 about why a single payer health plan is necessary. Although the Washington Post saw fit to characterize his and other speakers’ thoughtful and reasonable opinions as “venting”, in fact Dr. Tsou made many excellent points. Among them were:
- The only affordable means to achieve quality health care for every American is through a “properly financed, single payer national health insurance program”;
- Attempts to reconcile universal coverage with cost control are futile without a single payer plan;
- Cost controls will mean that either taxpayers , physicians, hospitals or the private health insurance industry will have to ‘pay the piper’
- The private health insurance industry, which has dominated health care for the past 50 years in a supposedly competitive marketplace, has proven unable to control costs, even while the quality of health care in the U.S. is “suboptimal” (the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s term, not Dr. Tsou’s) and nearly 50 million people are uninsured
- A single payer plan cuts costs by cutting insurance firms’ profits, streamlining the massive administrative apparatus that adds to the costs of hospitals and doctor’s offices, using bulk purchasing, negotiating fee schedules with physicians, and putting hospitals on predictable, global budgets
- By entrusting health care to private health insurers, we have saddled the U.S. with an inefficient and exorbitantly expensive health care system that drives jobs overseas where health benefit costs are low, and discourages entrepreneurs from striking out on their own for fear of losing their health insurance coverage
- The $19 billion dedicated to health information technology is doomed to failure because our health care system will remain too fragmented under any system but a single payer plan.
Medicare is a single payer system. It’s time that an “Improved and Enhanced Medicare for All” be seriously considered and adopted by Congress and President Obama. It is the best solution to our current health care mess.
The complete text of Dr. Tsou’s remarks can be found here.
