Michael Moore's movie 'Sicko' documenting America's health insurance crisis is likely to incite strong grassroots demand for a "single-payer" Medicare-For-All type of solution. So the Washington consultants/appeasers are at it again.
Stoking the passions of rank-and-file Democrats for a government takeover of the healthcare system amounts to political folly, respond some liberal veterans of Washington's healthcare battles.
"To presume that the private sector is going to sit idly by to see the destruction of private coverage I think is a misreading of reality," said Ron Pollack of the advocacy group Families USA. "I think the presidential candidates understand that if healthcare reform is going to have a chance of success, it will require bipartisanship and a balance of public and private coverage. It cannot be the triumph of one ideology over the other."
This is what I call the "Afraid Rush Limbaugh Will Say Something Bad About You" syndrome. Clue: He will anyway.
Conventional Wisdom thinking is that you have to include private insurance companies in any plan, or they'll put so much money and effort into opposing your plan - and you - that nothing can pass. In the 90's the Clinton administration offered a comprehensive health care plan that involved private insurers instead of a "Medicare-For-All"-style national health plan, hoping to ward off industry opposition. ... And of course the private insurance companies did oppose the Clinton plan anyway, putting so much money into opposing it that it never even came up for a vote.
.. So here is some news for Democrats who are offering health care plans that offer tribute to private insurance companies: They are going to oppose your plan.
The logic seems to be that if we appease them, they will compromise. This ignores the reality - they want it all.
"Medicare For All" is simple to understand and implement. On this subject Ezra Klein wrote,
That's why Medicare-for-All is such a great banner. Medicare happens to be a very good, though deeply underfunded program. It keeps costs down better than the private sector, it enjoys sky-high satisfaction ratings from those on it, its administrative costs are dirt cheap, and so forth. ... It's just normal health care that the government pays for. Simple as that.
Better yet, Republicans can't demonize the idea because it already exists and everybody's parents and grandparents use it.
And if companies complain about all the jobs that will be lost - what they are saying is that the private sector is less efficient than a government solution. Medicare's overhead is a fraction of the insurance companies.
It is time. It's simple. Let's expand Medicare to cover everyone.
Dave Johnson is a leading participant in the progressive blogging community. He is a featured contributor at Huffington Post and writes at many other sites including AlterNet, DailyKos, MyDD, OpEd News and Common Dreams. In September, 2006 Dave was among a group of bloggers invited to meet with former President Bill Clinton, and then was invited to cover the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative conference, and covered it again this year.
"Dave Johnson is a fantastic grandfather of the blogosphere." – Mike Stark, BraveNewFilms.com
Mr. Johnson is on the Boards of Directors of Media Transparency and The People Choose 2006, is an advisor to The Philanthropy Network and is a member of the Netroots Advisory Council of the Drum Major Institute.
As a Senior Fellow with the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream Dave works on progressive messaging. As a Commonweal Institute Fellow, Mr. Johnson researches and writes about the activities of the conservative movement and their influence on American society. He has investigated and reported on the Right's ongoing attacks on public education and teacher unions, university professors and trial attorneys and the tort legal system.
I am hoping that this next presidential election helps get some type of workable universal health care into place. When I lived in England I used their health care system and I had no complaints. There were as many doctor offices as there were pubs – at least one on every block. Never had long waiting times and didn’t even have to make appointments in most cases. I know a lot of people want to claim that it’s socialized medicine so it must be “bad”.
Few of these people stop to think that health care premiums are one of the biggest overhead costs to employers. In fact anywhere from one third to one half of the cost of keeping employees is medical insurance. You would think that large corporations would be cheering for universal healthcare because it would increase their bottom line.
I would also think there would be major religious support for this as well (helping take care of your fellow man philosophy - which last I heard was still a big Christian tenet) yet I haven’t heard any religious leader speaking out in favor of universal health care. Why?
I believe when Charleston Hesston played Moses he had a line in the movie where he said “Hungry slaves make few bricks. Dead slaves make none”. Maybe a more modern translation would be “Sick employees do little work while dead employees do none”.
by
RLAnchors (7 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 39 comments)
on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 3:36:57 PM
