Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith, community organizer

WASHINGTON, DC -- Sometimes the pictures just tell the story without too many words.

I arrived in Washington this afternoon, and as I walked to baggage claim I saw a line of limo drivers anxiously awaiting their very special passengers.  Each of the drivers held a sign with the sponsoring company -- in this case the Bayer folks -- and each had the name of one of the folks coming in to spend some time in DC at a conference like the one being hosted by AHIP -- the American Health Insurance Plans industry group. They'll all be sharing a little lobbying time together.  Limos, fine wine, great food and a fabulous setting... what's not to like about that?

As I snapped my picture, I became even more confident in the need for some massive cleaning up of the healthcare system that has enough profit bloat in it to afford limos for some at the same time it denies life-saving care for others.  Tonight in America, at least 75 families mourned the death of a loved one who might have been saved if they'd had access to healthcare while those lucky folks who were picked up in the limos this afternoon were treated to a bit of the fine life in our nation's capital.

Well, tomorrow, I am hoping to join a group of people calling for a clean-up of this mess. 

"One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small," so begins the verse from Jefferson Starship's classic song, White Rabbit.  "And the one that AHIP's selling, won't do anything at all."

O.K., so that's not the way the verse really goes, but my subject, healthcare reform and the placebo politics that surround it is enough to make me mad as a hatter. Actually, it's made a lot of us angry, and we're getting organized for the fight of our lives. Our success and our ability to achieve true healthcare reform has everything to do with perception, placebos, and a good dose of myth-busting reality. 

When it comes to health care reform, any politician that welcomes insurers to the table as invited guests and expects them to behave like polite company, will be sadly, even tragically disappointed. Like the oysters in Lewis Caroll's classic, The Walrus and the Carpenter, we must be especially wary when the insurance industry repackages and markets itself as a solution to the health care crisis. "Now if you're ready, oysters dear, we can begin to feed."    

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), are doing just that; they're gluttonously greedy and they're pandering for an invitation to 'fix' the crisis they created. Skyrocketing costs; marginal, reduced, detrimental-to-our-health 'benefits'; recissions, denials, exclusions, and huge profiteering by insurers has eroded and eaten away at our collective health like a cancer.  There can be no doubt about it. In medicine we have a term for that, pathognomic: distinctively characteristic of a particular disease or condition.  For example, lesions in the brain which are pathognomic of a cancerous glioma.

"So, what is that tumor or neoplasm thing in my head, nurse?" Senator Edward Kennedy might have asked that question of his trusted nurse, after his venerable doctors left the room. The short answer might have included a definition and an analogy to aid in the patient's understanding. "A neoplasm is best described as a new, uncontrolled growth of tissue that's serving no useful physiologic function.  It's crowding out healthy tissue and it's very greedy.  It doesn't share or play fair with the oxygen, nutrients, and the blood vessels that supply them.  That's why you're sick."  Like for-profit health insurers who serve no useful function in health care, they're shortening our lives and we're dying because of them.

The two major party candidates for President of the United States have extended that "invitation" anyway. It's party-convention time, and we the people are seated at the table. It's time to shed our naivete.  AHIP is not unlike the fabled Walrus and Carpenter; they're waltzing in with their buckets of campaign cash, profits they took at our expense. They're hoping we won't recognize them for who they are and they're hoping to control the party's platform. They're hoping to keep control of a system that works for them, and they're hoping that Harry, Louise, and the rest of us believe their  love affair with our premium dollars will be enough to sustain a long term relationship that's been in their best interest, not ours.  "It seems a shame, the walrus said, to play them such a trick." In reality, AHIP has no shame.  A bandaid for your cancer, Senator? Salmonella on your salad, anyone?

In an ocean of sobering reports on the collapse of the U.S. healthcare system, this just released report from The  Center for Studying Health System Change, is among the most horrifying I've seen.

Falling Behind: Americans' Access to Medical Care Deteriorates, 2003-2007

The number and proportion of Americans reporting going without or delaying needed medical care increased sharply between 2003 and 2007, according to findings from the Center for Studying Health System Change’s (HSC) nationally representative 2007 Health Tracking Household Survey. One in five Americans—59 million people—reported not getting or delaying needed medical care in 2007, up from one in seven—36 million people—in 2003. <u>While access deteriorated for both insured and uninsured people, insured people experienced a larger relative increase in access problems compared with uninsured people.

The American Association of Health Plans (AHIP) is the national trade
group for some 1,300 private health insurers, which collectively
provide some kind of coverage for more than 200 million Americans. As
the voice of industry, AHIP’s web site boldly describes its goals “to
provide a unified voice for the health care financing industry, to
expand access to high quality, cost effective health care to all
Americans, and to ensure Americans’ financial security through robust
insurance markets, product flexibility and innovation, and an abundance
of consumer choice.” This post examines how successful the industry has
been in one of these goals --- the cost and affordability of coverage.

The Wall St. Journal is freaking the heck out about Michael Moore’s new movie SiCKO.  Obviously they’ll   fan the flames of controversy and drive more ticket sales.  But their terror makes clear what a great moment we have ehre: finally the American people’s fear and loathing of drug and insurance companies is about to hit the big screen, which is just what this country’s ill healthcare system needs.  The question for us: how to leverage this into the most on-the-ground advances for healthcare reform?  Your thoughts are needed…