Pariah Diplomacy
by JOEL ALBERS
Southside Pride
Proposed solutions to the health care crisis have reached a crossroads, with essentially two paths that Minnesota and the U.S. can follow. One path views health care as a market commodity, in which health care is for sale. Patients are also consumers who must shop around, compare prices and quality of care, and buy insurance. That is if you can afford it. If you cannot, you are uninsured. And therein lies the crisis.
The other path views health care as a public good: government-funded through taxes, like education, social security, Medicare and roads. With everybody in one big pool (creating economies and efficiencies of scale), represented by a single-payer, health care would be universal, comprehensive, a human right, based on need, and free at the household level. As in the rest of the world, cost is essentially out of the picture.
In this legislative session, like in others before it, the Minnesota Senate and House have each passed major health care bills based on the market commodity model described above. The bills are now in conference committee where their differences will be worked out. The House bill, HF 3391, is sponsored by Rep. Tom Huntley (DFL-Duluth) and the Senate bill, SF 3099, is sponsored by Senator Linda Berglin (DFL-Mpls). As may be expected, these bills were fully backed by HMO health insurers and big business.
The Minnesota Health Plan, bill SF 2324, (a Single-Payer bill—a government-funded approach, and, according to surveys, backed by most Minnesotans), was scuttled shortly after the legislative session began, only passing through one committee. Year after year this scenario is replayed resulting in a worsening of the health care crisis.
What’s behind this contradictory trend in which insurance companies and big business circumvent democracy, and what can be done about it? A major factor is rigged, handpicked Task Forces, currently, the “Health Care Transformation Task Force,” whose recommendations became the basis for the aforementioned Huntley and Berglin bills.
Here’s the mechanism of how it works. The so-called Health Care Transformation Task Force was intentionally created by the 2007 Legislature and signed by Governor Pawlenty last May. This allowed the governor to appoint (handpick) all members of the Task Force, including its co-chairs, Rep. Tom Huntley (DFL-Duluth) and Human Services Commissioner Cal Ludeman who also serves as the chair of Governor Pawlenty’s Health Cabinet (also handpicked). Rep. Huntley, in turn became a chief author of the aforementioned bill.
Examining the composition of the 13-member Health Care Transformation Task Force reveals most members represent, not you and me, but corporate health insurance companies and big business: Medica HMO, Park Nicollet, Mayo Clinic, Definity (HSA, Health Savings Accounts), Minute Clinic, General Mills and the Carlson Companies. Only two Task Force members are health care practitioners, both physicians, yet with potential business conflicts of interest; one is former medical director of HealthPartners HMO; the other is a fellow for the Center for the American Experiment (conservative “free market” think tank).
The two remaining Task Force members appear to be more community-based, representing the Citizens League and a major labor union, yet are far from it. In fact, last year the Citizens League convened its own 26 member “Citizens League Medical Facilities Study Committee” charged with examining the expansion of medical facilities such as hospitals in Minnesota. Again, very few citizens or health practitioners. As for the labor union representative from AFSCME Council 6, he sat on the 1992 Minnesota Health Care Commission, and helped it pave the way for the takeover of Minnesota health care by “managed care” HMOs, a market-based approach that called for universal coverage in Minnesota by July 1, 1997.
Previous commissions similarly handpicked and unrepresentative of Minnesotans include: the MN Medical Association Health Care Task Force of 2005, the MN Mental Health Action Group of 2005, the MN Citizens Forum on Health Care Costs (also known as the Pawlenty-Durenberger Commission) 2004, and the MN Health Care Access Commission of 1989.
It would be naive to think these Task Forces are simply oblivious of the gold standard solution to the health care crisis: the Single-Payer, government-funded approach. Many of us have explicitly presented the evidence, including exhaustive studies, public surveys and focus groups in Minnesota, nationally, and internationally. The data are quickly dismissed.
So what can we do to reverse this disturbing state-of-affairs in which rigged Task Forces and Commissions essentially undermine democracy?
A more democratic participatory alternative would be to hold open public hearings. Although this occurred in 2004, the hearings lacked openness with permission to speak only about the problem, not the solution, and with major time limits to testimony.
Another solution is to demand that the composition of Task Forces represent Minnesotans, including people of color, community-based health care reform organizations, and especially health care practitioners and patients. And most importantly, the prohibition of business or financial conflict of interest, as is clearly the case with all previous Minnesota Health Care Commissions, since 1989.
Our community-based organization, Universal Health Care Action Network of Minnesota, is responding by coordinating the formation of a Multidisciplinary Health Practitioner Work Group. The task will be to counter the usual ” official” Minnesota Health Care Commissions by drafting public policy statements, which advance a progressive framework for fundamental health care reform.
Similarly, communities can form their own parallel “Peoples Health Care Commission.”
And finally, when our elected or appointed officials are unaccountable to the public, the public has a right to hold demonstrations, pickets and other important and respected forms of protest, such as civil disobedience. As was said during the civil rights movement (and the right to health care has indeed been called the civil rights issue of the 21st century), “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”.
Joel Albers is a member of the Universal Health Care Action Network of MN, a grassroots health care reform resource center and action network.