Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

So, all the great fanfare and all the king’s horses.  The great and almighty U.S. Senate has spoken.  I will have to buy private health insurance – forever, amen.  The defective product that has left me wanting for real healthcare for all of my adult life is now a step closer to being the law of the land.

A lump of Christmas coal all polished up with sparkling rhetoric. 

Here’s what the Chicago Tribune said this week, and I agree: 

By Donna Smith 

It’s 2009.  We’ve elected President Barack Obama.  We’ve elected a Democratic majority in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.  Those bastions of social policy are now in place to protect basic human rights.  Good things should be in the offing – at least we should make progress in the direction of more equity for women and their families and perhaps most especially for women of color.  Right? 

And we’ve declared that healthcare is a basic human right.  Women surely fall into the category deserving of equal access to basic human rights.  So far, so good.  Surely we’re setting ourselves on a course to expand more healthcare equity to women.  Surely it must be so.

But, alas, it’s not to be. 

Sing along with the healthcare pirates... brought to you by our Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care partners Consumer Watchdog.

President Obama and congressional leaders have arrived at one early conclusion for health reform: single payer proposals are off the table. Despite single payer bills pending in Congress and state legislatures, and opinion polls showing significant support from the public as well as doctors and nurses, a serious discussion of a single payer model has not taken place. NESRI’s new human rights analysis of single payer plans seeks to encourage such a discussion, and shows why single-payer plans are superior to market-based proposals in moving us closer to a health care system based on human rights.

Read the human rights assessment of single payer plans here:

http://www.nesri.org/Single_Payer_Human_Rights_Analysis.pdf

by Donna Smith

It's coming. You and me and every middle class, working person in this nation is about to start handing over more and more of their hard earned cash to the private insurance industry, courtesy of our own elected members of Congress and our very popular President. Fire up those Treasury Department presses. We're going to be printing and providing money for insurance companies like no bail-out we've seen yet this economic crisis cycle.

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.

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."