Guaranteed Healthcare

Although many may think today that we have always had employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) in this country, that is not the case. While some companies offered coverage in the 1930s, the basic concept gained momentum only after the start of World War II. The war effort required a rapid buildup of industrial capacity in the face of a severe labor shortage as many men went off to war. Employers needed a healthy workforce, and needed to compete for workers. Federal wage and price controls made it difficult for them to offer higher pay, so that ESI became an important recruitment tool. Employers were helped by an IRS ruling that made their costs of ESI tax-deductible;  these benefits also were not taxable for employees. (Somers, AR, Somers, HM. Health and Health Care: Policies in Perspectives. Germantown, MD. Aspen Systems Corporation, 1977, pp 109-11)

We saw in our last post how the intensifying class war in America over the last 30 years has hollowed out the middle class and led to the widest gap between the haves and have nots in our country’s history. In this Second Gilded Age, the right has been winning the war by its promotion of deregulated markets and its attacks on government, thereby sacrificing the public interest to the benefit of the politically elite and the few at the top. In this new landscape, Social Darwinism increasingly prevails—sink or swim, take care of yourself, don’t expect any ‘handouts’.

As the Great Recession rolls on after three years, without signs of relief on the horizon, a growing army of many millions of Americans is finding it impossible to gain access to necessary health care that is affordable. Meanwhile, class warfare is gaining intensity with a widening gulf between the left and right over the major issues of the day, including the future of U.S. health care. As political gridlock continues, the battlefield is littered with many preventable deaths, many lives wounded by the ravages of untreated or under-treated disease, and growing stress in affected families.

Under the theory of moral hazard, it is postulated that insured people overuse health care services and that patients themselves are a leading cause of health care inflation. If they would just have more “skin in the game” through enough cost-sharing (co-payments, deductibles and other restrictions), it is assumed that costs could be reined in.

Up to the middle of the last century, most Americans could count on good access to generalist primary care physicians with the training and commitment to evaluate and treat their medical problems, whatever they might be. Those days are long gone. The ratio of generalist physicians to specialists in this country reversed from about 80:20 percent in 1930 to 20:80 percent in 1970. Since then we have seen the generalist tradition being carried on by family physicians, general internists, general pediatricians, and osteopathic physicians, but their aggregate numbers today are no more than 30 percent. And that number is falling fast as more medical graduates seek out the higher pay and more attractive life styles of the non-primary care specialties.

Yesterday’s blog post by John Goodman and Thomas Saving of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is the latest in an avalanche of unfounded assertions and distortions that have characterized the writings from this center for many years. The Dallas-based NCPA, established in 1983, describes itself as a “nonpartisan public policy research organization, with the goal to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector” (its website). This latest post puts forward, without context and with cherry-picked references, carefully selected statements that might seem to some to support their case—that deregulated markets will solve all of our health care problems. It would take a very long paper, or a number of papers, to respond to the many unfounded claims in their latest post.

When the nurses come to Washington, D.C., next week, there will be other advocates and activists for social justice seeking support for some of the same issues and bills.  The vision NNU’s leaders and members have for a more just nation in which Main Street issues matter – like good jobs, education, healthcare, and a healthy environment – is a vision that embraces many issues our allies share and are working to support.

This is an action that takes just moments to complete, but has the potential to change the future. 

A petition drive has been launched by several groups, asking the Senate Democratic Caucus to support the DNC Afghanistan Withdrawal Resolution and Sanders’ American Health Security Act of 2011 (S.915).  To sign the letter,  http://www.pdamerica.org/forms/sign/Sign-Letter-Senate-Democratic-Ca].

This letter will be distributed to the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus on June 7, as part of the National Nurses United  June 7 Rally and Lobby Day. (If you can’t make it to DC for the rally and lobby day, then please mark your calendars for the June 7 National Call-in Day, and find more information on that here: http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=48701501].

Many of our allies in the progressive movement have endorsed and signed this letter—we hope you’ll join them.  [Sign here http://www.pdamerica.org/forms/sign/Sign-Letter-Senate-Democratic-Ca].

Our allies have a goal to gather at least 25,000 signatures between now and midnight, June 5.  [Click here to sign http://www.pdamerica.org/forms/sign/Sign-Letter-Senate-Democratic-Ca], and then please post this to your Facebook page and forward this email to your likeminded friends and family members.

Tim Carpenter, of the Progressive Democrats of America, noted, “Bin Laden is dead; the Afghanistan mission is accomplished. It is time to bring our troops and war dollars home and start addressing the very real hardships facing Americans, including providing comprehensive healthcare for all and the spiraling costs of healthcare.”

By Donna Smith

After this past weekend of horrific storms and tornadoes, it was clearly appropriate for our elected officials to declare a federal disaster in some areas.  With the designation comes some federal money and help for the storm-ravaged areas and residents.  Few would quarrel with our government stepping up and stepping in when so many lives and so many livelihoods have been damaged and lost.  It is the right thing to do, and some suffering will be mitigated.

By Donna Smith

The budget crisis in Arizona means the Republican Governor Jan Brewer and her Republican legislature have decided some death is preferable to more debt.  Human life has a very measureable price in Arizona, and those who look the other way as folks who might be saved die in Arizona can expect the same to come to their states sometime soon.

Many Republicans like to frame themselves as the party that protects human life from the moment of conception, no matter what.  Many Democrats like to frame themselves as the party that protects the downtrodden and the working class folks.  So, where are any of these people when the sick in Arizona are preparing to die?

Here’s one take on the news stories of recent days: