Health Care for America Now!
On Tuesday, July 8, a new campaign will be launched - for Health Care for America Now! - at press conferences in Washington and 55 other cities and towns. We at the Campaign for America's Future are proud to play a leadership role in launching this much-needed campaign, led by 100 national and local organizations. The steering committee includes ACORN, AFSCME, Americans United for Change, Campaign for America's Future, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Center for Community Change, MoveOn, NEA, National Women's Law Center, Planned Parenthood, SEIU, UFCW, and USAction - not a bad core group to make history with. And now is the time!
Profound economic changes are convincing the public that we need to take action together to build a healthy, sustainable economy and ensure real security for all families. And that includes, first and foremost, making sure everyone has quality, affordable health care.
The mission of the Campaign for America's Future is to develop and promote bold policy ideas that can build a majority for change. We brought together environmentalists and union activists to promote an "Apollo project" investment agenda to make America energy independent - and to create the next generation of good American jobs. We sounded the alarm about conservative plans to privatize Social Security, and - working with a coalition similar to HCAN - we helped to defeat those dangerous plans to undermine retirement security.
So it was only natural that over the last two years, we have been encouraging health care experts to think big: to come forward with plans to cover everyone who doesn't have good health care coverage, while reining in spiraling costs by reorganizing the most inefficient aspects of what is today a very fragmented, wasteful and unstable health care system. For two years, we have worked to promote discussion of the Health Care for America plan, written by Yale health expert, Jacob Hacker and published in January 2007 by the Economic Policy Institute. Praised by activists, policy experts and labor leaders, the Hacker-EPI plan helped inform the policy work and public opinion testing of many progressive organizations. And partly as a result of our discussions with the presidential candidates and their policy teams and our pointed health care questions to them all over the blogosphere during the primary election debate, it became the template for the health care plans of candidates Edwards, Clinton and Obama.
NPR
Parsing Democratic Health Care Plans Julie Rovner and Michele Norris
All three plans (Obama's, Clinton's and Edwards') came from the same source: Yale University political science professor named Jacob Hacker. And all three were based on the concept of something called "shared responsibility," where government, individuals and employers all pay something. So, Clinton and Obama would let people keep their existing coverage if they want to, or buy into a government-sponsored plan like Medicare, and the government would subsidize small businesses and the poor.
Most Americans know that we can't depend on the health insurance industry - or the drug companies - to solve the big health care problems of spiraling costs and millions with inadequate insurance or no coverage at all.
In fact, those companies and their lobbyists are a big part of the problem. Clearly, if insurance and drug companies want to be part of a national system to cover everyone, they cannot be allowed to exclude people from coverage, including people with pre-existing conditions; they will have to sell good, comprehensive insurance that we can afford, and stop shifting costs to us through high deductibles and co-pays and employing devious tricks to deny people with coverage payment for their health care services. And, while we believe everyone should be free to keep or elect private health insurance, everyone should also have the choice to enroll in a public, Medicare-style insurance plan without a private insurer middleman that guarantees affordable coverage.
So a big part of our contribution to HCAN will be to distribute research and analysis that makes the case not only for why we need change, but for the kind of change we need. Information is power, and we will distribute this information to the many parts of our grassroots coalition. And we will push forward health care policy experts and opinion leaders whose views on health care need to be heard, nationally and locally, in Congress, in the media, on the web and in the field. And here's another project HCAN and CAF will lead: a campaign that engages the public and demonstrates all the many ways that insurance and drug companies put their profits before our health care and use their political influence to undermine health care change.
Most politicians now say they favor some kind of health care "reform," but HCAN is mobilizing a citizens' force that can make sure we do it right, based on the principles of choice, affordability, shared responsibility, and fairness. Without the kind of public mobilization HCAN is bringing to this debate, we could end up, once again, with a system that leaves us at the mercy of predatory private insurance and drug companies.
We're excited to continue our leadership on this critical kitchen-table issue, and confident that the new Health Care for America Now coalition will empower the public to triumph over special interest influence and solve the growing health care crisis.
Comments (13)
Good Luck with HCAN but it seems NOT to be health care? It is disease care.
We must not continue the high tech-high cost treatment driven disease care system in this nation or abroad since that approach is NOT economically sustainable.
We must enbrace both individual(health behaviors) and institutional(public health) prevention as the only economically responsible approach.
I first published an #8 point plan based on prevention in 1995(revised after Katrina). Hillary for one actually liked it. I will post it here later.
Dr.Rick Lippin
Health Care Sector Forecaster
Southampton,Pa
July 7, 2008 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dr. L.,
I prefer the term "sickness-care" to your term, only because I think it somewhat more inclusive. For example, trauma is not a disease, and probably not a sickness either, but to label the industry "healthcare" completely misses the mark.
FB
July 7, 2008 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are many proposals for “reform” of the U.S. health care system out there. For the newcomer it can be very confusing. Here are the four simple questions to ask of any health care proposal.
Is it Universal? Does it cover all people? This would seem to be pretty basic, insofar as all other developed countries do it. But just being, or claiming to have, universal coverage is not enough. It is a common error to claim universality and then let it go at that. When thinking about a so-called health care reform proposal you must also explore how the proposal deals with items 2, 3 & 4:
Is it Comprehensive? Dos it cover all needed conditions, prevention, treatment? What care is included under the proposal? What care is not covered?
How much is it going to Cost Individuals? Is it affordable year-in and year-out. How much does it cost you and your family if you are not sick? Can you afford to get sick. What is the total cost of the system to you and your family including taxes, premiums, deductibles, copays, uncovered conditions/expenses, coverage refusals. What is your total out of pocket costs? If you get sick are you going to go bankrupt?
How much is it going to Cost Overall? What is the cost to the system, to the country, for example as a percent of GNP? How does it control costs. How is it paid for, and who is paying, all the pieces, direct and indirect?
Too many folks fall for the trap of hearing “reform” or even “universal” and don’t realize that it is not really Universal Coverage, IF that Coverage is really “coverage” because it leaves you with too much legitimate care not actually covered, leaves you and your family with bankruptingly high out of pocket expenses when somebody does get sick, and the total system costs keeps rising as percent of GNP.
Which is why, alas, well meaning but pre-compromised grand coalitions that leave the for-profit private health insurance companies in charge will not work. They may get enacted, but they will not work. At the end of the day, cannot accomplish it all with the for-profit private health insurance companies still in place. Will have to come around to single-payer. See: for-profit private health insurance companies
July 7, 2008 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
An interesting set if criteria:
How about thise instead:
Does it improve recovery rates for major illnesses?
Does it reduce waiting time for access to care?
Is the heath care consumer treated as a cost to be managed or as a customer to be satisfied?
July 7, 2008 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
No health care proposal will go anywhere except to the legislative backlog, unless it openly discusses the costs and who pays the costs. Any universal coverage plan will increase our tax bills or cost us in addition to our tax bills. I favor the tax increase over having to pay a separate bill just for health care.
A corollary is that any health care proposal which can be shown to increase our total tax bill will be far too unpopular to ever go into effect.
And, that is the gorilla in the house. So, we need a concerted effort to shoot the gorilla. We need to educate our citizens that taxes cannot always be cut without having consequences that are unacceptable to almost all of us. Furthermore, adding services, no matter how desirable they are will result in either more deficit spending by the government or tax increases.
Lots of luck with that.
July 7, 2008 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I promised above here is my economically sustainable real health care plan that HCAN can incorporate into its disease care plan.
I recognize that too much prevention is not politically popular because it is viewed as reduction in or even denial of treatment.Yet I and others contend much more prevention is the ONLY way to free up necessary $ for treatment for those who need it.
My #8 point plan is....
GROW UP AMERICA-A HEALTH CARE PLAN FOR ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS- proposed by Richard. A Lippin MD*
-Stop prolonging death. It’s both expensive and dehumanizing at best, greedy and cruel at worst.
-Empower US citizens to assume increased individual responsibility for health and convince medical consumers that it is in their best interests not to assume the role of helpless, dependent victims/patients.
-Yet also recognize that we have medicalized America’s social problems. So we must provide healthy and safe jobs for all able citizens thereby reducing poverty and all its subsequent health impacts (possibly 1/3rd of health care costs)
-Provide healthy environments including healthy air, water, soil and food.
-Rebuild America’s public health infrastructure to ensure we provide appropriate macro and individual interventions to especially low income citizens such as childhood and adult immunizations and response to man-made and natural catastrophes.
-Face the reality that a very large percentage of illnesses, injuries and hospitalizations are entirely preventable. Subsequently, the elimination of tobacco, alcohol, drug, medication and dietary abuse alone could immediately reduce medical costs by a factor of at least fifty percent.
-Incent and train physicians to maintain the health of patients and populations. Radical changes in provider re-imbursement and medical education strategies are necessary
-Recognize that early childhood preventive medical education can profoundly affect lifelong health behaviors.
*proposed in June of 1995
Revised January 2006/2007
Dr. Rick Lippin
Health Care Sector Forecaster
Southampton,Pa
ralippin@aol.com
July 7, 2008 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
We have already tried banning alcohol consumption. That didn't work out too well. So, banning tobacco, alcohol, recreational drugs, and fatty foods isn't ever going to work.
How about killing two birds with one stone? Lets increase the tax on health hazard products, like alcohol, tobacco, fatty foods, and recreational drugs(?). If the tax cost of a smoke were $5 per cigarette, would that both reduce smoking and help pay for universal health care? If the tax cost of one ounce of alcohol, whether in beer, wine or hard spirits, were $5, would that both reduce drinking and help pay for universal health care? And, if foods were taxed at $1 per gram of fat, would that reduce our consumption of fatty foods, and help pay f or universal health care?
In a country so under educated that Republicans still get about 50% of the votes, it is inconceivable that our citizens can ever be taught to reduce their usage of the above items just by imparting knowledge to them. That leaves taxes as the only viable alternative.
July 7, 2008 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
What you propose would not raise much momey. That kind of greed would certainly create a huge black market. There is not much real world difference in banning beer and taxing it at $5 an ounce. Like you said, its been tried before with fairly bad results.
July 8, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Americans think that they have unique problems and need unique solutions. The biggest parts of the health care problems have already been addressed in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Japan and elsewhere.
Obviously solutions exist that are affordable and that also lead to better outcomes. The US scores poorly compared to these countries on measures such as life span, child mortality rates and per capita costs.
There are no technical problems that need to be discovered to make US health care comparable to these other country's, only political ones. Are we willing (or able) to eliminate the for-profit waste in the system (30%), the excess profits of the drug and medical supply firms and the fee-based medicine decisions which leads to over treatment?
Are we willing to remove the corruption of doctors and scientific researchers by the drug firms which fund their research or pay them to promote their products?
If you want better health care in the US get the profiteers out of the system. Now explain not what needs to be done (we know that), but how you are going to overcome the power of big business.
July 7, 2008 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
@rdf
Well, Canada routinely sends patients to the US for service due to lack of capacity in the Canadian system. They can hold costs down that way, but that won't work for the US for the obvious reason. The Jepp quads are but one example.
But we score better in measures such as breast cancer survival, waiting time, and customer satisfaction. The problem with both life expectancy and child mortality is that those are both greatly affected by factors outside the control of the health care system. Differences in the rate of out of wedlock birth and maternal drug abuse will have substantial impact on infant mortality. Likewise rates of violence, tobacco use, alcohol use, and drug abuse, as well as genes, and diet all effect life expectancy.
For example the US has a rate of obesity more than twice that of Canada. To imply that the life expectancy difference between the two countries is due to the health care system is bogus.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity
July 10, 2008 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
I posted this yesterday on TPM and drew all of one comment. I'll try again.
Supply Side Economics & the Health/Sickness Care Issue
July 6, 2008, 8:20PM
[Note: The following was written on and transmitted to the Official Barack Obama Campaign Website. The piece is re-printed here with no alterations except spelling corrections, which I was no able to do on the Obama site.]--FB
It's a nasty word in Democratic circles: Supply Side Economics.
But aside from its Reaganesque connotations, its a side of the healthcare equation that needs examination; and if such examination is instituted, one will observe that the supply of physicians has been artificially restricted by the American Medical Association, essentially the lobby for physicians.
Most of the proposals for Universal Health Care have the effect of increasing the Demand side of the equation. But none of the proposals I am familiar with address the Supply side of medical care, particularly the number of physicians practicing medicine.
Below I will excerpt a few paragraphs from an article published in USA Today on March 2, 2005. I will also supply a link to the full article.
"The predictions of a doctor shortage represent an abrupt about-face for the medical profession. For the past quarter-century, the American Medical Association and other industry groups have predicted a glut of doctors and worked to limit the number of new physicians. In 1994, the Journal of the American Medical Association predicted a surplus of 165,000 doctors by 2000....
"It didn't happen," says Harvard University medical professor David Blumenthal, author of a New England Journal of Medicine article on the doctor supply. "Physicians aren't driving taxis. In fact, we're all gainfully employed, earning good incomes, and new physicians are getting two, three or four job offers."
"The marketplace doesn't determine how many doctors the nation has, as it does for engineers, pilots and other professions. The number of doctors is a political decision, heavily influenced by doctors themselves.
"Congress controls the supply of physicians by how much federal funding it provides for medical residencies — the graduate training required of all doctors. "
Rather than merely increasing the Demand side without any concomitant increase in the Supply side of medical care (as measured by numbers of physicians), proposals should address both sides of the equation.
Obviously, an increase in the supply of physicians-per-capita is going to mean a decrease in the average income of physicians, not a result the AMA is likely to support.
But since physicians enjoy a monopoly on medical care by the grace of Government, their special interest in limiting the supply of medical care must be subordinated to the overall interest of the Public.
The AMA is a tough opponent to take on. But unless some politician does so, the Nation is doomed to having its resources sucked into the Black Hole of sickness-care forever.
This is the link to the full article:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doctor-shortage_x.htm
July 7, 2008 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Corporate America is lining their pockets with the profits made from the selection of the worst insurance coverage policies at the cheapest cost to them. We need to begin by offering Middle and upper-Middle class America-which include everyone from your Ph.d's to those with Bachelor's degrees-choices of whom they select to cover them. There should be hundreds of choices to drive costs down and ensure that those who have jobs get the best coverage. Government absolutely needs to step in to then help small business and individuals who are unemployed temporarily or live in poverty. Everyone in this day and age,no matter what they contribute to the economy, should be entitled to at least have the opportunity to have a shot at living a life where quality health care isn't offered only to the rich. Don't we call this a Democracy?
July 8, 2008 1:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks FredrickBernanke
Appreciate the thought
(to use a cliche most accidents are avoidable)
Dr. Rick Lippin
July 8, 2008 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink