- The current health care "debate" shows how
far gone representative government is in the United States. Members of
Congress represent the powerful interest groups that fill their campaign
coffers, not the people who vote for them.
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- The health care bill is not about health care. It is
about protecting and increasing the profits of the insurance companies.
The main feature of the health care bill is the "individual mandate,"
which requires everyone in America to buy health insurance. Senate Finance
Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont), a recipient of millions in contributions
over his career from the insurance industry, proposes to impose up to a
$3,800 fine on Americans who fail to purchase health insurance.
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- The determination of "our" elected representatives
to serve the insurance industry is so compelling that Congress is incapable
of recognizing the absurdity of these proposals.
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- The reason there is a health care crisis in the US is
that the cumulative loss of jobs and benefits has swollen the uninsured
to approximately 50 million Americans. They cannot afford health insurance
any more than employers can afford to provide it.
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- It is absurd to mandate that people purchase what they
cannot afford and to fine them for failing to do so. A person who cannot
pay a health insurance premium cannot pay the fine.
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- These proposals are like solving the homeless problem
by requiring the homeless to purchase a house.
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- In his speech Obama said "we'll provide tax credits"
for "those individuals and small businesses who still can't afford
the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange" and he said
low-cost coverage will be offered to those with preexisting medical conditions.
A tax credit is useless to those without income unless the credit is refundable,
and subsidized coverage doesn't do much for those millions of Americans
with no jobs.
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- Baucus masquerades as a defender of the health impaired
with his proposal to require insurers to provide coverage to all comers
as if the problem of health care can be reduced to preexisting conditions
and cancelled policies. It was left to Rep. Dennis Kucinich to point out
that the health care bill ponies up 30 million more customers for the private
insurance companies.
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- The private sector is no longer the answer, because the
income levels of the vast majority of Americans are insufficient to bear
the cost of health insurance today. To provide some perspective, the monthly premium
for a 60-year old female for a group policy (employer-provided) with Blue
Cross Blue Shield in Florida is about $1,200. That comes to $14,400 per
year. Only employees in high productivity jobs that can provide both a
livable salary and health care can expect to have employer-provided coverage.
If a 60-year old female has to buy a non-group policy as an individual,
the premium would be even higher. How, for example, is a Wal-Mart shelf
stocker or check out clerk going to be able to pay a private insurance
premium?
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- Even the present public option--Medicare--is very expensive
to those covered. Basic Medicare is insufficient coverage. Part B has
been added, for which about $100 per month is deducted from the covered
person's Social Security check. If the person is still earning or has
other retirement income, an "income-related monthly adjustment"
is also deducted as part of the Part B premium. And if the person is still
working, his earnings are subject to the 2.9 percent Medicare tax.
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- Even with Part B, Medicare coverage is still insufficient
except for the healthy. For many people, additional coverage from private
supplementary policies, such as the ones sold by AARP, is necessary. These
premiums can be as much as $277 per month. Deductibles remain and prescriptions
are only 50% covered. If the drug prescription policy is chosen, the premium
is higher.
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- This leaves a retired person on Medicare who has no other
retirement income of significance paying as much as $4,500 per year in
premiums in order to create coverage under Medicare that still leaves half
of his prescription medicines out-of-pocket. Considering the cost of some
prescription medicines, a Medicare-covered person with Part B and a supplementary
policy can still face bankruptcy.
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- Therefore, everyone should take note that a "public
option" can leave people with large out-of-pocket costs. I know a
professional who has chosen to continue working beyond retirement age.
His Medicare coverage with supplemental coverage, Medicare tax, and income-related
monthly adjustment comes to $16,400 per year. Those people who want to
deny Medicare to the rich will cost the system a lot of money.
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- What the US needs is a single-payer not-for-profit health
system that pays doctors and nurses sufficiently that they will undertake
the arduous training and accept the stress and risks of dealing with illness
and diseases.
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- A private health care system worked in the days before
expensive medical technology, malpractice suits, high costs of bureaucracy
associated with third-party payers and heavy investment in combating fraud,
and pressure on insurance companies from Wall Street to improve "shareholder
returns."
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- Despite the rise in premiums, payments to health care
providers, such as doctors, appear to be falling along with coverage to
policy holders. The system is no longer functional and no longer makes
sense. Health care has become an incidental rather than primary purpose
of the health care system. Health care plays second fiddle to insurance
company profits and salaries to bureaucrats engaged in fraud prevention
and discovery. There is no point in denying coverage to one-sixth of the
population in the name of saving a nonexistent private free market health
care system.
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- The only way to reduce the cost of health care is to
take the profit and paperwork out of health care.
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- Nothing humans design will be perfect. However, Congress
is making it clear to the public that the wrong issues are front and center,
such as the belief of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and others that illegal aliens
and abortions will be covered if government pays the bill.
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- Debate focuses on subsidiary issues, because Congress
no longer writes the bills it passes. As Theodore Lowi made clear in his
book, The End of Liberalism, the New Deal transferred law-making from
the legislative to the executive branch. Executive branch agencies and
departments write bills that they want and hand them off to sponsors in
the House and Senate. Powerful interest groups took up the same practice.
- The interest groups that finance political campaigns
expect their bills to be sponsored and passed.
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- Thus: a health care reform bill based on forcing people
to purchase private health insurance and fining them if they do not.
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- When bills become mired in ideological conflict, as has
happened to the health care bill, something usually passes nevertheless.
The president, his PR team, and members of Congress want a health care
bill on their resume and to be able to claim that they passed a health
care bill, regardless of whether it provides any health care.
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- The cost of adding public expenditures for health care
to a budget drowning in red ink from wars, bank bailouts, and stimulus
packages means that the most likely outcome of a health care bill will
benefit insurance companies and use mandated private coverage to save public
money by curtailing Medicare and Medicaid.
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- The public's interest is not considered to be the important
determinant. The politicians have to please the insurance companies and
reduce health care expenditures in order to save money for another decade
or two of war in the Middle East.
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- The telltale part of Obama's speech was the applause
in response to his pledge that "I will not sign a plan that adds one
dime to our deficits." Yet, Obama and his fellow politicians have
no hesitation to add trillions of dollars to the deficit in order to fund
wars.
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- The profits of military/security companies are partly
recycled into campaign contributions. To cut war spending in order to finance
a public health care system would cost politicians campaign contributions
from both the insurance industry and the military/security industry.
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- Politicians are not going to allow that to happen.
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- It was the war in Afghanistan, not health care, that
President Obama declared to be a "necessity."
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- Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307396061/counterpunchmaga>The
Tyranny of Good Intentions. His new book, War of the Worlds:
How the Economy Was Lost, will be published next month by AK Press/CounterPunch.
He can be reached at:<mailto:PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com>PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
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