Guaranteed Healthcare

There's a fundamental lesson in collective bargaining that seems to have been lost on the White House, and those in Congress who devised their failing strategy on healthcare reform:

Don't make all your compromises before you walk in the room.

For all those now wringing their hands over the apparent abandonment of the public option and like Rachel Maddow  dissecting the train wreck of the once promising opportunity for genuine healthcare reform, it's time to ask:  what happened? who could have foreseen that semi barreling down the highway? and what do we do now?

In Canada, it took the dogged determination of one province, Saskatchewan, and a visionary leader Tommy Douglas, to pave the path to a national health care system, which they call Medicare.

For all the detractors of the Canadian system in the studios of Fox News and the board rooms of rightwing think tanks, consider this one note: In 2004, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation conducted a national poll to select the greatest Canadian of all time. The winner in a landslide -- Tommy Douglas. 

Hundreds of people, nurses, doctors, medical students, grassroots activists, and California School Employees Association members gathered in downtown Los Angeles Monday to deliver an unequivocal message about the nature of the healthcare reform Americans so desperately need.

For those inside the tightly scripted White House Forum or anyone watching the live feed on line, that message was blacked out. Inside the pre-selected speakers kept within the accepted framework: we need reform, costs are out of control, Americans are hurting, and preventive care will solve all our problems ('fraid not). Unfortunately nothing proposed in the forum is likely to cure this crisis.

With the final White House Forum on healthcare scheduled Monday, April 6 in downtown Los Angeles, advocates of single payer/guaranteed healthcare have one more opportunity to shake up what has become a dreary conventional wisdom about the presumed acceptable parameters of the debate.

Hundreds of nurses, doctors, healthcare and labor activists will rally at 9 a.m. outside the California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda St., Los Angeles.

It will mark the fifth time, at all five White House regional forums, that the single payer/Medicare for all message will come to the stage, outside and inside the forum.  You can extend that to the town hall meeting at the White House last week where the President was asked why we can't have a national healthcare system like they have in other industrialized nations.

Haven't we heard this song before? It sure looks like the people who already control our healthcare system are framing the biggest issues of the present healthcare reform debate.

From the back rooms to the committee hearings to the White House summits to the front pages of the newspapers, the demands of the insurance industry are given enormous deference and accommodation.

Is it fear of Harry and Louise, the insurance campaign that some believe torpedoed the muddled Clinton health proposal? Is it the considerable influence of insurance industry contributions in the pockets of many legislators?

Despite presidential forums, committee hearings and advertising campaigns, we're no closer to meaningful reform measures that would meet human rights standards and fulfill our human right to health care.  To hold health care reformers accountable for delivering universal, equitable health care that meets human rights standards, the Human Right to Health Program, run by the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) and the National Health Law Program (NHeLP), has published ten principles for financing health care. Go to http://ww.nesri.org/ or download directly http://www.nesri.org/Human_Rights_Principles_for_Financing_Health_Care.pdf

It's time to lay to rest the myth that spending billions on more high tech is the salvation for rising healthcare costs. Some people will peddle any notion to avoid addressing the best way to rein in costs, pushing the insurance companies out of the way with a single payer system.

It's become an article of faith that a national system of electronic medical records would produce huge savings.  President Obama made it a centerpiece of his healthcare plan during the campaign (as did Sen. John McCain), and has emphasized it repeatedly in legislation and speeches.

As a first step, the stimulus bill allotted $17 billion in incentives to prod doctors and hospitals to get on board during a five year period beginning in 2011, along with financial penalties if they don't.

Hours after President Obama's speech to Congress in which he laid down a marker for achieving "comprehensive" healthcare reform, and getting it done this year, top administration aides have outlined the goals of what they want to achieve.

What Politico called "the 8 keys to his health plan,"  certainly reflect a bold determination for action and a grand vision.

There's only one problem. Virtually all the proposals being bandied about in various Congressional committees -- and the administration made it clear this week they will let Congress figure out the details -- fail to meet the test of those "8 keys."

I have some comments on my story on the NRP radio program, the Story with Dick Gordon, that aired Tuesday (Nov. 18)...

SINGLE PAYER MINUTE
October 27, 2008

This episode we look at the unconscionable salaries that Health Care and
Pharmaceutical CEO's are paid, while 50 million of us go without
insurance, millions more suffer medical bankruptcy, and suffer
premature mortality.