Speak up at Sen. Daschle's house parties
Participant Guide for Health Care Community Discussions
Obama-Biden Transition Project
Policy Background and Key Questions
II. The President-elect’s Health Care Plan
Expand Coverage to all Americans:
- Build upon and strengthen employer coverage;
- Allow people to keep the coverage that they have and maintain patients’ choice of doctor;
- Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange that offers a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan option;
- Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans regardless of their health status or history can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums;
- Expand Medicaid and SCHIP and provide sliding-scale premium assistance for low-income people.
III. QUESTIONS
1. Briefly, from your own experience, what do you perceive is the biggest problem in the health system?
2. How do you choose a doctor or hospital? What are your sources of information? How should public policy promote quality health care providers?
3. Have you or your family members ever experienced difficulty paying medical bills? What do you think policy makers can do to address this problem?
4. In addition to employer-based coverage, would you like the option to purchase a private plan through an insurance-exchange or a public plan like Medicare?
5. Do you know how much you or your employer pays for health insurance? What should an employer’s role be in a reformed health care system?
6. Below are examples of the types of preventive services Americans should receive. Have you gotten the prevention you should have? If not, how can public policy help?
7. How can public policy promote healthier lifestyles?
http://change.gov/page/-/Health%20Care%20Community%20Discussion%20Participant%20Guide.pdf
Health Care Community Discussion: Host and Moderator Guide
II. Your Role
If you are serving as the moderator, you should not strongly advocate for specific health policy positions. Instead, your role is to listen, facilitate discussion that elicits the views of all attendees, and help the participants draft a submission to the Transition Health Policy Team. In addition, please identify the most compelling personal stories that illustrate the need for health care reform in our country.
http://change.gov/page/-/Health_Care_Community_Discussion_Moderator_Guide.pdf
To sign up as a host:
http://change.gov/page/s/hcdiscussion
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
Throughout the nation during the next two weeks HHS Secretary-designate Tom Daschle is encouraging grassroots, community level discussions of health care reform. The purpose is to give the public a sense that they are actively involved in the reform process, avoiding a repetition of the Clinton political error of crafting reform behind closed doors.
If you look at both the moderator guide and the participant guide, it’s quite clear that this is not an effort to collect information to guide the policy makers in their decisions. The fundamental policy decisions have already been made, and they are listed above. This is strictly a process to build on the momentum for reform.
We have seen this process before. In 2006, a series of community hearings for the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group (CHCWG) were held throughout the United States:
“When given a choice of ten reform options at public hearings held by the CHCWG, participants clearly favored a national health program by a margin of at least 3 to 1. At meetings where participants were asked to rank the 10 options, national health insurance was ranked first 16 of 19 times (Billings, MT; Denver; Des Moines; Detroit; Eugene, OR; Jackson, MS; Kansas City, MO; Memphis; Miami; New York, NY; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Providence, RI; Sacramento; and Seattle). At two meetings participants were neither polled nor options ranked. Despite the clear public mandate, the CHCWG’s report makes no mention of the vast support for a national health program. Instead, the group’s official recommendations include only generic suggestions such as promoting ‘efforts to improve quality of care and efficiency,’ and finding a way to protect ‘against very high health costs.’” (http://www.pnhp.org/news/2006/october/citizens_health_ca.php)
The organizers of the CHCWG process were caught off guard by the intense support for a national health program. During the sessions the computer programs had to be modified to include serious consideration of the public insurance option. Yet the final report did not reflect the intensity of this support.
The scripted discussions for Sen. Daschle’s community meetings exclude any consideration of a single payer national health program. The closest they come is to discuss a “public plan like Medicare” that can be purchased as another option to a private plan through an insurance exchange. Yet a legislative staff member for a Democratic Senator recently stated that the “public option” proposal looked at present to be completely blocked by the Republicans - they will only discuss changes based upon the existing private insurance industry. One of the reform negotiators, Republican Senator Mike Enzi, last week wrote, “… we must focus on promoting new options and choices for patients. This means expanding competitive, free market plans – not moving toward a single payer health care system.”
Even though the process is a sham, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t speak up. We should do so, though in a civil but firm manner. The very first question asking what is the biggest problem in the health system can be answered by stating that our fragmented financing system based on private plans and public programs is wasting a huge amount of funds that should be used for health care for the uninsured and underinsured, and we can actually do that by replacing our dysfunctional financing system with a single payer national health program. We need to be certain that Sen. Daschle is shocked yet pleasantly surprised to see overwhelming support for single payer about which he has written is “brilliantly simple, ensures equity by providing all people with the same benefits, and saves billions of dollars by creating economies of scale and streamlining administration.”
Be sure to stay at the meetings long enough to be certain that the single payer message is included in the submission to the Transition Health Policy Team. We need to send that message. It remains to be seen whether or not the bureaucrats are going to try to bury it again. If they do, then maybe it’s time for a march on Washington.