John Nichols: The President's Healthcare Deform Plan

from the Nation:

BLOG | Posted 01/24/2007 @ 11:38am
The President's Healthcare Deform Plan

It is no secret that, in this era of spin uber alles, State of the Union addresses are nothing more than public-relations events. At best, they offer presidents a chance to rally the troops. But, with George Bush's approval ratings falling beneath those of Richard Nixon in the thick of the Watergate scandal, he has very few troops left to rally. Even Republicans are fleeing the president's camp, and nothing he said Tuesday night will bring them back.

That does not mean, however, that this State of Union address was completely irrelevant.

In fact, it will be remembered for having produced what could well be the worst domestic policy proposal of an administration that is not without accomplishment when it comes to turning the wheels of government to make the bad into something truly awful.

What is being referred to by the White House as the President's State of the Union Health Care Initiative is, even by the standards of this administration, a truly nightmarish proposal.

Employing the administration's Orwellian flair for language, the President is pitching his plan as "health care reform."

The accurate term would actually be health care deform.

The President wants the federal government to begin treating contributions from major corporations to help cover the health insurance costs of their employees -- most of which were won through decades of organizing, struggle and bargaining by the unions that represent those employees -- as taxable income. In effect, workers who have quality coverage would be punished, as would the firms that provide that coverage.

The Bush plan's race-to-the-bottom approach to health care policy is being pitched as a way to encourage Americans who currently lack insurance coverage to go out and buy it -- and then to take advantage of an expanded tax deduction for individuals and families that purchase plans. ........(more)

The rest of the article is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=160082

plus deny care, forcing sick people and their doctors to fight just when it's the most difficult, plus run out the clock, hoping the person dies before they have to shell out.

Insurance companies are the PROBLEM. They can never be part of any solution.

Conservatives in both parties need to stop trying to put bandaids on a bad system to protect their insurance industry campaign contributors.

single payer plans adopted by most of the rest of the world is the only effective way to bring health care costs and premiums into line.

The concept of insurance is to spread the risk among the largest possible pool. This is impossible to do when you have over four hundred carriers writing policies. This fragments the pool so that efficiency is not possible for any of them. As other nations have learned, a single universal pool is the only way to efficiently insure their populations.

There are of course other problems with such a fragmented pool that is so poorly regulated. These include, but are no limited to skimming the pool, ie. carriers cherry picking the healthy applicants and refusing coverage to those with pre-existing conditions; the quest for profits by carriers thru the use of denying claims and (one of their SOPs) delaying payment of claims by putting the insured through a steeplechase of claim verification.

Additionally, efficiency in health care financing demands that the profit motive be taken out of the system. This is impossible under the system of private sector insurance. Savings of up to forty percent of the premium is likely by switching to a single payer national health care system.

The big problem we face is that as I said above it will take the Democrats to educate the population, and many Democrats, like their republican counterparts are Dependant on campaign contributions from the insurance industry for campaign contributions.

And that brings us to the core of all the problems our nation faces, the way we finance our election system. But here the cure is simple, and a majority of the voters favor it. The cure is simply to take the profit motive our of our campaigns. We as a nation must declare that it will be a felony for anyone to give a candidate any money for an election campaign, and a felony for any candidate to take money from a party other than the Federal Election Agency tasked with that financing. I truly believe that this would cure most of the problems we face.

Of course, there is a more effective, though a more draconian way to force our politicians to answer to the people, not the corporations. All politicians under this harsher plan would be elected for a life term, or until they resign. Then every year they are in office we hold an election to see if we agree to let them live another year. I think I can guarantee no more political corruption under this plan.