Wednesday
Nov252009
Single Payer Advocates Ask Congress To Start Over On Healthcare Reform
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 1:46PM
Travis Martinez - University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service
Single payer health insurance advocates are calling on Congress to scrap its healthcare reform bills, and start over using a single payer model.
Single Payer Action President Russell Mokhiber, Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris of Physicians for a National Health Program, opposed both the Senate and House's reform plans during a press conference on Wednesday.
“It’s unfair to call this health care reform. This is an insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry bailout,” said Mokhiber. Health care is a human right. Everybody in, nobody out. Join with us in this historic movement to defeat the Democratic bill.”
Flowers questioned how favorably Congress's bills would stack up against a single payer system.
“It’s designed to fail. If our goal for this country is to provide health care for every person in a way that is financially sustainable and have it be both universal and cost-efficient, this is not the way to do it,” she said.
The plan advocated for by the panelists would ensure that all Americans obtain health care coverage through one national insurance program. In 2005 Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced H.R. 676, legislation that would have created a single payer system by using existing government revenues to insure people and increasing personal income tax on the top five percent of income earners - including a tax on stock and bond transactions.
Earlier this year, the four panelists from Wednesday's discussion were ordered out of the Senate Finance Committee hearings after the committee rejected a single payer amendment. Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) had all four arrested in the hearing room. They later pleaded not guilty and were ordered to refrain from protesting on Capitol Hill for one year.
Single payer health insurance advocates are calling on Congress to scrap its healthcare reform bills, and start over using a single payer model.
Single Payer Action President Russell Mokhiber, Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris of Physicians for a National Health Program, opposed both the Senate and House's reform plans during a press conference on Wednesday.
“It’s unfair to call this health care reform. This is an insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry bailout,” said Mokhiber. Health care is a human right. Everybody in, nobody out. Join with us in this historic movement to defeat the Democratic bill.”
Flowers questioned how favorably Congress's bills would stack up against a single payer system.
“It’s designed to fail. If our goal for this country is to provide health care for every person in a way that is financially sustainable and have it be both universal and cost-efficient, this is not the way to do it,” she said.
The plan advocated for by the panelists would ensure that all Americans obtain health care coverage through one national insurance program. In 2005 Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced H.R. 676, legislation that would have created a single payer system by using existing government revenues to insure people and increasing personal income tax on the top five percent of income earners - including a tax on stock and bond transactions.
Earlier this year, the four panelists from Wednesday's discussion were ordered out of the Senate Finance Committee hearings after the committee rejected a single payer amendment. Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) had all four arrested in the hearing room. They later pleaded not guilty and were ordered to refrain from protesting on Capitol Hill for one year.
Reader Comments (6)
Single payer funding can be accomplished in two ways either:
1-Through general taxes like in Canada. I would support this model only if there are substantial copays in order to not abuse the system and for the doctors to be compensated adequately
2- Or like the french sytem which is primarily employers employees funded throuh payroll deduction up to a ceiling like our fica deduction,
..or like in our present employers funded system where the employers picks up either all the cost or a share of the cost. All the money would be sent to the Single Payer insurance instead of the differents private ones today.
The french system has a 30% Co-pay.. which can be reimburse at east partiaslly if not fully by taking (not mandatory) a private not for profit supplemental insurance
To all single payer advocates--
If you want to kill health care reform, hand the Republicans the congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012, and kick this can down the road another 10 years, feel free to mobilize against the bills (House and Senate) but to be honest, nobody in D.C. cares. That's why single payer has never gotten traction in a significant way. You are considered a fringe interest group. There isn't enough of a movement for single payer, and the majority of Americans, if you told them what switching to a single payer system would involve, are against it.
So instead of whining and whining about how ineffectual you are, maybe do something constructive like you know, PUSHING FOR A MEDICARE+5% PUBLIC OPTION WITH EVERYONE HAVING ACCESS, ALONG WITH THE RON WYDEN 'FREE CHOICE' AMENDMENT TO OPEN THE EXCHANGES.
That's realistic. Single payer isn't. And this is what separates those in power and those who hold onto a dated concept that won't make it past committee in the House, much less the Senate.
Just sayin'.
Shawn is mistaken in his assertion that the majority of Americans are against single payer. Here's a recent Kaiser Health Tracking Poll:
Do you favor or oppose, "Having a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance through an expanded, universal form of Medicare-for all?" Favor 58%, Oppose 38%, NA/DK 3%
Check it out at http://unionsforsinglepayerhr676.org/poll_data
The people want single payer health care. The job now is to persuade the politicians.
Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
Good information can be learned by actually watching the press conference. The "robust public option" has been gutted. Very few currently uninsured will actually gain coverage. It's worth getting past the empty sloganeering of the failed public option and seek out real information about healthcare and economics. Physicians for a National Health Plan (http://pnhp.org/blog/) has very good, understandable information. This interview with the Harvard professor who designed Taiwan's health system is worth reading: http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health-care-abroad-taiwan/#more-11287 Can you answer the same questions about the house and senate bills? Do you really know what you will have to pay for premiums and out-of-pocket expenses after reading the house and senate bills? No you do not. You can only guess and hope it will be ok because it's thousands of pages of confusing language with vague promises to consumers and expensive promises to pharma and insurance companies. Go ahead, try. Write down the questions from the NYT's interview and try to answer them with what you know about the house and senate bills. Then compare the answers with Taiwan's experience. If the gutted public option is the only health reform we will get for the next 15 yrs, then it's worth doing some reading and asking good questions now so we can know for sure what we'll be stuck with later.
Shawn,
Just how realistic is what you propose? The Senate is struggling to pass even a SUPER weak public option with opt out for the states. By your logic, we shouldn't be pushing for what you suggest, but for what is being proposed in the Senate now - since that is the most realistic thing at this point.
What you don't understand is that it makes no sense to start with your lowest bargaining position. You start out asking high (both the public and the politicians). Then if the politicians need to negotiate, that is their job. That's NOT the job of the public! The public should keep on asking for what they want - they should keep asking for their goal. The public should not do the compromising - the politicians will be more than willing to take on the compromising role.
If Obama's followers had not obediently followed Obama in taking single payer "off the table" (because they thought they could get no better or because they were more loyal to Obama than their ideals) then single payer would have been in the discussions on the national front. And single payer is something that is EASY to promote and defend if anyone would listen; we'd be in a whole better place on health care than we are now. But because of Obama and his followers, it was taken out of prominent national discussion and so then mainstream media wouldn't address it at all. As a result, the public won't listen and is uninformed.
If the bulk of Obama's supporters had not been willing to take single payer off the table from the get go, there would have been a real discussion of the solution - and with a real discussion, there would have been a real chance for it to pass. And if single payer didn't pass after a real discussion, then the original public option (the one where anyone could opt into it and they would be immediately joined into the existing Medicare, Medicaid, VA pools) would have been seen as the moderate choice, and that would be what the Dems would be trying to pass now, instead of the super lame water downed opt-out (possibly triggered) "public" option.
Don't lay the lameness of the Democrat health care bills at the feet of the single payer advocates; lay it at the feet of Obama and his followers, where it belongs.
And if even if that lame public option doesn't pass, it's not the fault of the single payer advocates, as all the legislators who stood for single payer (aside from Kucinich and Messa) jumped over to promote the need for public option. Obama and his followers made sure to cut off single payer and it's advocates at the knees - as a result, they don't really have the power to take down these lame health care bills. If even this weak public option fails, it's the Democrats' fault - not the single payers.
I should have said it will be the fault of the Democrats AND the Republicans.