Have You Heard This Health Care Song & Dance Before?
. . . wanna buy a new improved vacuum cleaner ?
Warning in advance -- the following commercial announcement is brought to you by:
Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with more than $5 trillion in annual revenues and nearly 10 million employees. Member companies comprise nearly a third of the total value of the U.S. stock markets and pay nearly half of all corporate income taxes paid to the federal government. Annually, they return $133 billion in dividends to shareholders and the economy.
Business Roundtable companies give more than $7 billion a year in combined charitable contributions, representing nearly 60 percent of total corporate giving. They are technology innovation leaders, with more than $70 billion in annual research and development spending - more than a third of the total private R&D spending in the U.S.
Here's the pitch:
Business Roundtable's Health Care Reform Plan
Health care delivery needs a new business model: one that puts customers in the center and uses the power of the market to lower costs, improve quality, create more consumer choice and expand accessibility.
Business Roundtable has a four-pillar plan that, we believe, will put us on the path to a competitive health care system:• Creating greater consumer value in the health care marketplace by using health information technology and empowering consumers with more information about good quality health care.
• Providing more affordable health insurance options for all Americans by creating an open, all-inclusive private market for health insurance and replacing today's fragmented state-by-state market with multistate markets. To ensure that insurance plans are solvent and meet certain minimum requirements, the role of individual states as the primary regulator should continue. Broader, more competitive markets will create more choices for more health care consumers.
• Engaging all Americans in taking an active role in their health care. First, this means placing an obligation on all Americans to obtain health insurance either through their employer or the private market. Second, we must encourage all Americans to participate in employer- or community-based prevention, wellness and chronic care programs.
• Offering health coverage and assistance to low-income, uninsured Americans that create a stable and secure public safety net. This assistance would be financed from the cost savings and efficiencies generated by a more competitive and value-driven health care system.
Today, our health care system leaves major consumer needs unmet, costs unchecked and basic practices untouched by the productivity revolution that has transformed every other sector of our economy.
The Business Roundtable Health Care Value Comparability Study should add to the urgency felt by all major U.S. stakeholders to stimulate faster improvement in the performance of America's health care system. We can do better. The global competitiveness of U.S. employers and workers depends on it.This executive summary of the study is available online (.pdf)
Just give the "more competitive and value-driven health care system" with "broader, more competitive markets [that] will create more choices for more health care consumers" another chance.
It all sounds like the same old song and dance routine we have all heard before.
It all sounds so well prepared.
~OGD~
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. . . no vacuum cleaner ?
Hows 'bout a shiny new car with high compression hubcaps and a suede fanbelt that runs on hot air?
~OGD~
March 13, 2009 2:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
As I was reading this, duck, I came to the same conclusion you did in your closing paragraphs. What is new here?
My biggest concern yet is that these business groups will somehow lobby for getting away from employer contributions toward health care - independent of what kind of plan we arrive at. This could result in a very significant loss of wage/benefit for workers and represent a real coup for business.
And if business can get away from bearing any responsibility for our health care costs, Katie bar the door.
March 13, 2009 2:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Single Payer would allay your fears, SJ. We'd all be in it together, and our payroll taxes would go where they are needed—to us.
I hope you know that these insurance companies (the architects of the 2003 Screw Up Medicare Act) are the recipients of the money deducted from Social Security checks that is supposed to go to fund Medicare, rather than the the Medicare system itself. That's what these Medicare Advantage programs are. Advantage, yes. To the private insurers!
March 13, 2009 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that single payer would solve virtually all the issues I've raised. But an intermediate compromise - wherein employers no longer pay for private insurance Co. premiums - would be fraught with problems that would settle upon the shoulders of the working stiffs. That's why I get real nervous when I hear talk about how we have to easily transition toward single payer. Too much opportunity in the "middle grpound" for the insurance companies to rape and plunder on an even larger scale.
March 13, 2009 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's no way that I want any kind of transition over to single payer. It needs to happen independent of any concerns the private insurers have.
Because, as you say, the costs for care would land on the workers, not the employers in a transition or hybrid scheme. But, of even greater concern to me, if the private insurers are left with a foothold in the health care equation, they'll move the system back to their way as soon as they can manage it.
The bastards have to be thrown out. And if they're worried about their being downsized (like the employees they'd cut in a second, if there were any threat to their profits), they can simply consider that their companies will be "repurposed."
March 13, 2009 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't "employer contributions" a misnomer?
Earned pre-tax employee benefits organized by employer, is what I believe you refer to. And yes, taking those away without direct replacement would constitute theft.
March 14, 2009 12:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are exactly right, eds. Theft of a pre-tax employer organized benefit is what it would be. And I have no doubt in my mind that if the Insurance Co's could figure out some way to steal it they would -perhaps as the price to pay to get the Chambers of Commerce to sign on to a deal.
Paranoid? Perhaps, but there's alot of that going around these days as people in positions of authority and (previously) respect continue to beggar thine neighbors.
March 14, 2009 12:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is the same song and dance and certainly falls short of what we need for universal health care. Single pay is the only viable choice for all!
March 13, 2009 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Down with the middlemen in health care!
March 13, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Middlemen: insurance companies and those who want to bamboozle the public into the insurance run around - as if that were health care!
Remember the analogy of the castle. And the tents outside it?
In case you've forgotten where this so-called health care market place is:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/03/the-fallacy-of-republican-heal.php
March 13, 2009 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, I will stick to my Roundish Table.
What a bunch of crap. And TheraP gives her own great blog on this and some of the comments are heartbreaking.
March 13, 2009 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
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All this mumbo-jumbo . . .
. . . comes down to the 10 words in bold higlight below.
~OGD~
March 13, 2009 11:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
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And the President chimes in . . .
~OGD~
March 14, 2009 12:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Translations:
Creating greater consumer value in the health care marketplace by using health information technology and empowering consumers with more information about good quality health care.
SELLING YOU OUR TECHNOLOGIES.
• Providing more affordable health insurance options for all Americans by creating an open, all-inclusive private market for health insurance and replacing today's fragmented state-by-state market with multistate markets. To ensure that insurance plans are solvent and meet certain minimum requirements, the role of individual states as the primary regulator should continue. Broader, more competitive markets will create more choices for more health care consumers.
COLLUDING TO EXCLUDE MORE WHO NEED INSURANCE IN MORE PLACES SO THOSE WHO DO AND DON'T NEED IT SO MUCH SAVE MORE.
• Engaging all Americans in taking an active role in their health care. First, this means placing an obligation on all Americans to obtain health insurance either through their employer or the private market. Second, we must encourage all Americans to participate in employer- or community-based prevention, wellness and chronic care programs.
LEGISLATING PRIVATE INSURANCE (FORCING YOU TO BUY OUR MEMBERS' PRODUCTS) AND FORCING THE SMALLER BUSINESSES TO REDUCE CLAIMS FOR US IN EXCHANGE FOR PICAYUNE DISCOUNTS.
• Offering health coverage and assistance to low-income, uninsured Americans that create a stable and secure public safety net. This assistance would be financed from the cost savings and efficiencies generated by a more competitive and value-driven health care system.
THE FUNDING EQUIVALENT OF AN OLD BADMINTON NET HALF DISSOLVED IN THE SEA.
Today, our health care system leaves major consumer needs unmet, costs unchecked and basic practices untouched by the productivity revolution that has transformed every other sector of our economy.
WE'RE THE MAJOR CONSUMERS WHOSE COSTS WE'RE WORRIED ABOUT, NOT YOU, BUT DAMMIT, THE COMPUTERS WE SOLD YOU SHOULD MAKE YOU PRODUCTIVE ENOUGH TO PAY OUR PREMIUMS FOR INDIVIDUAL POLICIES YOU LAZY BUMS.
The Business Roundtable Health Care Value Comparability Study should add to the urgency felt by all major U.S. stakeholders to stimulate faster improvement in the performance of America's health care system. We can do better. The global competitiveness of U.S. employers and workers depends on it.
WE, AND THE US CHAMBER OF COMMERCE WANT YOUR MONEY. YOU CAN DO A BETTER JOB OF GIVING IT TO US, OR WE'RE GOING TO DRIVE STAKES THROUGH YOUR HEARTS. OUR GLOBAL LARGESSE DEPENDS ON IT.
March 14, 2009 12:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
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Five star comment rating ... * * * * *
Woodson shoots and scores. There is no doubt that that whole report is a shining example of our premiums being used to fund the marketing of a newly polished turd.
As posted above, this is the type of "cost issue," and a major cost at that, in the "broken system" that Obama was referring to:
~OGD~
March 15, 2009 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink