NYT's BoB Herbert: "reform the insurance companies can believe in"

August 18, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
This Is Reform?
By BOB HERBERT
It’s never a contest when the interests of big business are pitted against the public interest. So if we manage to get health care “reform” this time around it will be the kind of reform that benefits the very people who have given us a failed system, and thus made reform so necessary.
Forget about a crackdown on price-gouging drug companies and predatory insurance firms. That’s not happening. With the public pretty well confused about what is going on, we’re headed — at best — toward changes that will result in a lot more people getting covered, but that will not control exploding health care costs and will leave industry leaders feeling like they’ve hit the jackpot.
The hope of a government-run insurance option is all but gone. So there will be no effective alternative for consumers in the market for health coverage, which means no competitive pressure for private insurers to rein in premiums and other charges. (Forget about the nonprofit cooperatives. That’s like sending peewee footballers up against the Super Bowl champs.)
Insurance companies are delighted with the way “reform” is unfolding. Think of it: The government is planning to require most uninsured Americans to buy health coverage. Millions of young and healthy individuals will be herded into the industry’s welcoming arms. This is the population the insurers drool over.

This additional business — a gold mine — will more than offset the cost of important new regulations that, among other things, will prevent insurers from denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions or imposing lifetime limits on benefits. Poor people will either be funneled into Medicaid, which will have its eligibility ceiling raised, or will receive a government subsidy to help with the purchase of private insurance.

If the oldest and sickest are on Medicare, and the poorest are on Medicaid, and the young and the healthy are required to purchase private insurance without the option of a competing government-run plan — well, that’s reform the insurance companies can believe in.
And then there are the drug companies. A couple of months ago the Obama administration made a secret and extremely troubling deal with the drug industry’s lobbying arm, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The lobby agreed to contribute $80 billion in savings over 10 years and to sponsor a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in support of health care reform.
The White House, for its part, agreed not to seek additional savings from the drug companies over those 10 years. This resulted in big grins and high fives at the drug lobby. The White House was rolled. The deal meant that the government’s ability to use its enormous purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices was off the table.

...Meanwhile, the public — struggling with the worst economic downturn since the 1930s — is looking on with great anxiety and confusion. If the drug companies and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public interest is being left behind.

More here http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/opinion/18herbert.html

seeing it unfold for months!

We've all been rolled.

Lost "Hope" when Obama selected his Cabinet, especially the DLC Enforcer Rahm as the "Gatekeeper".

Despair now creeping in.

And I say this with a heavy heart, as someone who went from being a registered Independent to Democrat, and campaigned for Obama without being prompted or noticed by anyone in the public sector for doing so.

Of course I'm concerned about healthcare coverage portability, pre-existing conditions, and all the other 1001 ways insurance companies nickel and dime their consumers.

There is no benefit to us as the plan is currently drafted; we're likely to be taxed on our benefits, if not due to income, due to our coverage being stellar. But why should I support a plan, ostensibly to cover the uninsured, "out of the goodness of my heart"? I would have hoped that any loss to me tax-wise, would be made up in the aggregate, i.e. from the government negotiating better drug prices. But that was taken off the table in the dead of night.

Why are we rewarding bad insurance practices with more customers, without first mandating changes to reduce fraud, to pursue better rates by buying insurance from any state, etc. To my mind, Obama's administration has been cowardly, if not outright duplicitous, ready to drop anything that is clearly in the public interest at the slightest sign of opposition.