[PAA-Discuss] Fwd: [coalitionofworkingpeople] Health care bill: Successes and Failures

[Bill Crosier]

See the forwarded article below for a good report on the new health care bill and some of its many shortcomings that the main stream press isn't talking about.

Thanks, Herb, for sending this.

Bill


>To: coalitionofworkingpeople at lists.riseup.net
>From: Herbertrothschild  <herbertrothschild at hotmail.com>
>Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:43:23 -0700 (PDT)
>Subject: [coalitionofworkingpeople] Health care bill: Successes and Failures
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>
>Below is an excellent analysis of the health care reform legislation that just
>passed. The author is executive director of the California Nurses Association,
>which, under the name of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, is a member
>of our Coalition of Working People and the Poor.
>
>REMINDER: the March CWPP newsletter-in glorious color-is available on-line
>at http://www.hpjc.org/images/stories/1003_cwpp_newsletter_web.pdf 
>
>THE HEALTH CARE REFORM
>
>By Rose Ann DeMoro
>Executive Director, National Nurses United, AFL-CIO and California Nurses
>Association and member of the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO.
>
>Passage of President Obama's healthcare bill proves that Congress can
>enact comprehensive social legislation in the face of virulent rightwing
>opposition. Now that we have an insurance bill, can we move on to
>healthcare reform?
> 
>As an organization of registered nurses, we have an obligation to provide
>an honest assessment, as nurses must do every hour of every day. The
>legislation fails to deliver on the promise of a single standard of
>excellence in care for all and instead makes piecemeal adjustments to the
>current privatized, for-profit healthcare behemoth.
> 
>When all the boasts fade, comparing the bill to Social Security and
>Medicare, probably intended to mollify liberal supporters following
>repeated concessions to the healthcare industry and conservative
>Democrats, a sobering reality will probably set in.
> 
>WHAT THE BILL DOES PROVIDE:
> 
>--Expansion of government-funded Medicaid to cover 16 million additional
>low income people, though the program remains significantly under funded.
>This limits access to its enrollees as its reimbursement rates are lower
>than either Medicare or private insurance, with the result some providers
>find it impossible to participate. Though the federal government will
>provide additional subsidies to states, those expire in 2016, leaving the
>program a top target to budget cutting governors and legislatures.
> 
>--Increased funding for community health centers, thanks to an amendment by
>Sen. Bernie Sanders, that will open their doors to nearly double their
>current patient volume.
> 
>--Reducing but not eliminating the infamous "donut hole" gap in
>prescription drug coverage for which Medicare enrollees have to pay the
>costs fully out of pocket.
> 
>--Insurance regulations covering members' dependent children until age 26,
>and new restrictions on limits on annual and lifetime on lifetime
>insurance coverage, and exclusion of policies for children with
>pre-existing conditions.
> 
>--Permission for individual states -- though weakened from the version
>sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich -- to waive some federal regulations to
>adopt innovative state programs like an expanded Medicare.
> 
>All of these reforms could, and should, have been enacted on their own
>without the poison pills that accompanied them.
> 
>WHERE THE BILL FALLS SHORT
> 
>--The mandate forcing people without coverage to buy insurance. Coupled
>with the subsidies for other moderate income working people not eligible
>for Medicare or Medicaid, the result is a gift worth hundreds of billions
>of dollars to reward the very insurance industry that created the present
>crisis through price gouging, care denials, and other abuses.
> 
>--Inadequate healthcare cost controls for individuals and families.
> 
>1. Insurance premiums will continue to climb. Proponents touted a "robust"
>public option to keep the insurers "honest," but that proposal was
>scuttled. After Anthem Blue Cross of California announced 39 percent
>premium hikes, the administration promised to crack down with a federal
>rate insurance authority, an idea also dropped from the bill.
> 
>2. There is no standard benefits package, only a circumspect reference
>that benefits should be "comparable to" current employer provided plans.
> 
>3. An illusory limit on out-of-pocket medical expenses. But even in the
>regulated state exchanges, insurers remain in control of what they offer
>and what will be a covered service. Insurers are likely to design plans to
>attract healthier customers, and many enrollees will likely find the
>federal guarantees do not protect them for medical treatments they
>actually need.
> 
>--No meaningful restrictions on claims denials insurers don't want to pay
>for. Proponents cite a review process on denials, but the "internal review
>process" remains in the hands of the insurers, and the "external" review
>will be up to the states, many of which have systems now in place that are
>dominated by the insurance industry with little enforcement mechanism.
> 
>--Significant loopholes in the much touted insurance reforms:
> 
>1. Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double
>charges to employees who fail "wellness" programs because they have
>diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical
>conditions.
> 
>2. Permitting insurers to sell policies "across state lines", exempting
>patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will likely set up in
>the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public
>protections won by consumers in various states.
> 
>3. Allowing insurers to charge three times more based on age plus more for
>certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to
>cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.
> 
>4. Insurers may continue to rescind policies, drop coverage, for "fraud or
>intentional misrepresentation" -- the main pretext insurance companies now
>use.
> 
>--Taxing health benefits for the first time. Though modified, the tax on
>benefits remains, a 40 percent tax on plans whose value exceeds $10,200
>for individuals or $27,500 for families. With no real checks on premium
>hikes, many plans will reach that amount by the start date, 2018, rapidly.
>The result will be more cost shifting from employers to workers and more
>people switching to skeletal plans that leave them vulnerable to financial
>ruin.
> 
>--Erosion of women's reproductive rights, with a new executive order from
>the President enshrining a deal to get the votes of anti-abortion
>Democrats and a burdensome segregation of funds, that in practice will
>likely mean few insurers will cover abortion and perhaps other
>reproductive medical services.
> 
>--A windfall for pharmaceutical giants. Through a deal with the White
>House, the administration blocked provisions to give the government more
>power to negotiate drug prices and gave the name brand drug makers 12
>years of marketing monopoly against competition from generic competition
>on biologic drugs, including cancer treatments.
> 
>Most critically, the bill strengthens the economic and political power of
>a private insurance-based system based on profit rather than patient need.
> 
>As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote after the vote, "Don't believe
>anyone who says Obama's healthcare legislation marks a swing of the
>pendulum back toward the Great Society and the New Deal. Obama's health
>bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican
>(a private market approach) rather than a New Deal foundation. The New
>Deal foundation would have offered Medicare to all Americans or, at the
>very least, featured a public insurance option."
> 
>Unlike Social Security and Medicare which expanded a public safety net,
>this bill requires people
> 
>-- in the midst of the mass unemployment and the worse economic downturn
>since the Great Depression -- to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket to
>big private companies for a product that may or may not provide health
>coverage in return.
> 
>Too many people will remain uninsured, individual and family healthcare
>costs will continue to rise largely unabated and private insurers will
>still be able to deny claims with little recourse for patients.
> 
>If, as the President and his supporters insist, the bill is just a start,
>let's hold them to that promise. Let's see the same resolve and
>mobilization from legislators and constituency groups who pushed through
>this bill to go farther, and achieve a permanent, lasting solution to our
>healthcare crisis with universal, guaranteed healthcare by expanding and
>improving Medicare to cover everyone.
> 
>Leaders of the National Nurses United have raised many of these concerns
>about the legislation for months. But, sadly, as the healthcare bill moved
>closer to final passage, the space for genuine debate and critique of the
>bill's very real limitations was largely squeezed out.
>
>Much of the fault lies with the far right, from the streets to the
>airwaves to some legislators that steadily escalated from deliberate
>misrepresentations to fear mongering to racial epithets to hints of
>threatened violence against bill supporters.
> 
>For its part, the administration and its major supporters shut out
>advocates of more far reaching reform, while vilifying critics on the
>left.
> 
>Both trends are troubling for democracy, as is the pervasive corruption of
>corporate lobbying that so clearly influenced the language of the bill.
>Insurers, drug companies, and other corporate lobbyists shattered all
>records for federal influence peddling and were rewarded with a bill that
>largely protected their interests, along with a Supreme Court ruling that
>will allow corporations, including the health care industry, to spend
>unlimited sums in federal elections.
> 
>Rightwing opponents fought as hard to block this legislation as they would
>have against a Medicare for all plan. As more Americans recognize the bill
>does not resemble the distortions peddled by the right, and become
>disappointed by their rising medical bills and ongoing fights with
>insurers for needed care, there will be new opportunity to press the case
>for real reform. Next time, let's get it done right.


-- 
Bill Crosier
paa at crosierbiomed.com      713-641-4941
Progressive Action Alliance   http://progressiveactionalliance.org/
KPFT - Radio for Peace - 90.1 FM Houston   http://kpft.org