Advocacy Group for Single-Payer
Mark Gruenberg, Editor
Press Associates
Union News Service
NEW YORK (PAI)—As the debate over the future of national health care heats up—at least among the Democratic presidential hopefuls—an advocacy group for single-payer government-run health care has published a leading medical scholar’s point-by-point criticism of the health care plans offered by the top three Democrats.
Not surprisingly, Len Rodberg, research director the New York affiliate of Physicians for a National Health Plan, concludes that the plans offered by Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) would be inferior to Canadian-style government-run national health care.
Single-payer government-run health care is drawing increasing grass-roots support among local unions and particularly central labor councils, even though the two union federations—the AFL-CIO and Change to Win—have taken no stand on exactly how to achieve universal health care coverage in the U.S.
Instead, both federations vow to put universal health care, type unspecified, atop the domestic agenda for the 2008 election, forcing candidates from both parties to take the issue on. The unionists would then decide, after the election, what method to back to achieve that goal. The AFL-CIO has not ruled out single-payer health care. Change to Win has taken no official position on any health care alternative.
Several leading unions, notably the Steel Workers, the California Association of Nurses, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the Auto Workers and at least one building trades union, support government-run single-payer health care.
By contrast, Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees—the union with the most health care workers—does not rule out single-payer but says it may well be politically unachievable.
Many of those unions endorse the single-payer bill (HR 676) offered by veteran Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). His district includes many Auto Worker retirees and present UAW members who see their health care benefits dwindle or in possible danger, while the not-so-Big-any-more-Three dumped health care on the union.
HR 676 would virtually extend Medicare and its government-run system to the entire nation, trashing the health insurance companies, their co-pays, denial of coverage and care, high premiums and the 18,000 yearly deaths they cause—according to government estimates—due to denial of payment for treatment of their policyholders. Insurers’ overhead now takes at least 20% of health care dollars, while Medicare’s overhead is 3%.
One of the other Democratic hopefuls, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), is a lead co-sponsor of Conyers’ plan, but Rodberg’s analysis does not mention that.
In his critique, Rodberg makes several key points:
- In their details, none of the three leading Democratic hopefuls offer “universal” coverage. Rodberg points out Obama’s plan is universal only for children. The senator claims his plan cuts costs so much it would become universal for adults, too.
But Rodberg disputes that. He says none of the three plans cuts costs, because all three leave the insurers in place to run the system—with no cost controls.
- “Large employers must provide insurance for their employees or—in the case of Edwards and Obama—pay into a fund to subsidize insurance for their employees,’ Rodberg notes. But he says the plans are silent on minimum coverage requirements the insurers must meet, relying on “competition’ to produce improved health care coverage. That could produce minimal, Wal-Mart-like coverage at high cost.
Clinton, Rodberg noted, even used the health insurers’ phrase “American Health Choices Plan” as a label for her plan. That “suggests that what consumers want is a choice of plan,” not universal coverage, Rodberg added.
- Workers and their families would be forced to buy insurance individually, again without cost controls. Rodberg says the three hopefuls’ plans would offer “income-related subsidies through the tax system” to help those who cannot afford insurance.
- Insurers would be barred from rejecting people for pre-existing conditions and Clinton’s plan would also ban “large premium differences based on age, gender, or occupation.” But again there would be no cost controls, leaving insurers free to declare that they would insure certain people—the elderly and those who ‘cost’ more—at enormous prices, Rodberg states.
“Since multiple payers would remain—even if one of them might be a public payer (similar to Medicare)—few of the savings and simplifications that are possible with a single payer plan can be achieved,” he contends.
“Consumers must purchase insurance, but no limits are proposed on what insurers can charge them. No regulations are proposed to assure the adequacy of benefits or that would affect either the restrictions insurers now impose on the choice of doctor and hospital or the way they handle, and deny, claims.
“And there is no simplification of the complex and wasteful private insurance sys-tem with its co pays, deductibles, exclusions, and claim denials,” Rodberg ends.
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Press Associates, Inc. (PAI) — 11/26/2007