The healthcare "reform" bill consolidates the death grip of the insurance industry over healthcare

December 29, 2009

Worse Than Nothing
Krugman's Health Care Sell-Out
By DAVE LINDORFF

Certainly the Senate bill, and the only slightly less cruddy House version, with which it must be reconciled (let’s be clear here that the ultimate act, when passed, will much more closely hew to the Senate version than the House version, given the number of conservative Democrats in the Senate), does a few good things, such as increasing funding for community health clinics, expanding Medicaid, the health insurance system for the poor, and banning the current insurance industry practice of denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. But these small positive steps pale in comparison to the truly noxious things this bill does, and the things it fails to do.

The most outrageous thing the health “reform” bill does is further consolidate the death grip that the insurance industry has over health care access and delivery in America. It does this by mandating that everyone buy health insurance, on pain of being slapped with a heavy fine by the IRS. Since most of the 47 million Americans without health insurance are younger and healthier than average, what this measure does is hand the private insurance industry a huge captive customer population who will be stuck with high-cost, low-benefit insurance that will generate huge profits for the industry. The industry will be further enriched by nearly half a trillion dollars in subsidies needed to help low-income people or small businesses buy their mandated health insurance--subsidies which will end up going directly to insurance companies, which will be offering in return wretched bare-bones plans that will only cover some 60% of actual medical costs.

Supporters say that mandating that everyone have health insurance is akin to mandating that every driver of a car buy liability insurance, but there actually is a huge difference. Driving is a matter of choice. If a person doesn’t want to buy car insurance, she or he can decide not to own a car. That reality at least forces auto insurers to compete in offering low-cost minimal insurance plans. Nobody can decide not to buy health insurance under this plan though. It is a historic first: a law requiring American citizens to buy a service from a private company.

Adding insult to injury, the bill does almost nothing to limit costs. This is why doctors, hospital and drug companies and the insurance industry, all of which spend millions of dollars lobbying for this law, love it (health insurance company shares jumped on word of Senate passage). Indeed, the government’s own Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), predicts that the law, if enacted, will cause US health care costs--already the highest in the world on a per capita basis and as a share of GDP by a factor of almost two--to rise faster than ever. Furthermore, to keep the projected costs of this bill at an alleged $871 billion over ten years, a huge amount of money is stolen from important existing programs, including $43 billion from payments to safety-net hospitals (mostly public institutions in urban centers which serve poor populations), and from cuts in Medicare funding that could for the first time lead significant numbers of physicians to stop seeing elderly patients on Medicare.

The reform plan is terrible for other important reasons too. In order to sell it to one lone hold-out Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Senate leaders allowed strict limits to be put into the bill making it almost impossible for low-income women or families to buy insurance that includes payments for abortions. The bill also undermines trade unions by taxing, at a rate of as much as 40%, those health plans which, through years of negotiations, offered quality care to workers. As the group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) points out, group health insurance costs are also largely driven by geographical and demographic considerations, and thus this penalty tax actually targets workplaces that employ more women, or that have older workers, or which are located in higher-cost regions such as New York or California.

But surely the worst thing about this bill is that far from putting the US on a course towards some eventual humane national health system like those that exist in the rest of the developed world, and even in many countries in the less developed world, it actually locks in the power of the insurance industry even more solidly, making achieving true health reform an even more difficult challenge than it has been.

Read the full article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff12292009.html

This is why this bill must be killed.

This bill at least introduces some "bridling".

For example, controls on insurance premiums.

The strong public option to put downward pressure on private health insurance premiums.

How about powerful anti-trust action, is that in the bill?

Will at least 30 million people be forced to buy private health insurance or is that also b.s.?

I'm listening!

There are regulations contained in the bill. The requirement to spend 85% of premium intake on care could make a great bill in and of itself. I'm sure you will come back with some nonsense about "how do I know they will enforce it" and all that garbage. I could cite many other great regulations too, but you will ignore them because it doesn't cater to what you want to believe. Go ahead and post more conspiratorial nonsense from the widely discredited counterpunch website. I don't care. The bill is passing as it damn well should. You might as well get over it. There isn't a god damn thing you can do about it.

"There isn't a god damn thing you can do about it."

That sounds like the cocky attitude displayed by the insurance industry and their political whores in Congress.

So .... I have to ask you this question.

Whose side are you on, the insurance and big pharma crooks or the people?

The belief in something for which one has no concrete evidence or proof.

You've read these arguments. These are credible arguments from people that actually, unlike you and your counterpunch/firedoglake hacks, know what they are talking about. I'm not going to hold your hand and repeat them. I don't waste my time like that. Just because I refuse to do that gives you no license to dismiss my argument. I'm not going to entertain your imaginary battle with the "big pharma crooks", I'm not going to acknowledge your conspiratorial, batshit insane nonsense. You are a leftist version of a Glen Beck follower. Right side, wrong argument and just equally as ludicrous.

Here is how easy it is to get passed it.


Claims Administrator becomes "Quality Care Associate"

Now the money is being spent on "care"

Congrats on your "victory" of getting the billed passed and I am sure the familes of the people who will continue to die from lack of health care in this country thank you as well.

Bernie the Quitter Fools Us Again


David Lindorff needs to put down the pipe:

Thanks, but I think I've read enough already.

I understand the feeling.

Apologists for the insurance industry and big Pharma are having a hard time selling this piece of crap.

The best they can do is claim "it's better than nothing".

I don't think it is.