Put Single Payer Health Insurance Back on the Table: A Call to Action

Now is the time to contact the president and Democratic Leaders in Washington urging them to support a single payer health insurance program for all.  The following provides background information.  The bottom line is that the large health insurers and pharmaceutical companies, have joined with Republicans to launch a major campaign, spending millions of dollars, to discredit the public health insurance initiative.

Mismanagement, incompetence, greed and scandal have characterized many segments of the private sector in recent years.  Business interests unanimously criticize government intervention on the one hand while they hold out the other hand for unprecedented bailouts and government help.  This country cannot allow private for profit corporations to control the future of health care for all Americans.

Senator Max Baucus made a public statement several weeks ago that is still bouncing around the country like an echo fading off into the distance:

“Without question a single payer national insurance program would not be part of any new health care initiative.”

With those astounding words, Baucus and the media would extinguish all hope that any kind of meaningful health care for all legislation will be passed in this congress.  Americans simply cannot accept that statement.  We must rise up and speak.

If a health care package for all does not pass now, when will it ever happen?Evidently Baucus (D—Montana), by virtue of his chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, had already capitulated on behalf of all of us to the big health care interests without a fight.  Through their Republican cronies, those big interests seem to be setting the agenda for the nation’s health care debate.

Where did this decision come from?  Who decided that a single payer program would not fly?  Most polls, before and after the election, indicated that a substantial number of Americans favor a single payer system.  The lastest polls, reported in the media on June 23rd, showed 72% of Americans wanted a medicare-like program and 72% wanted a government insurance program.

Health care was one of the issues that made us all work so hard to elect President Obama.  We do not need more studies or reports.  We do not need a Republican alternative plan that protects the gigantic health industry or private insurance corporations.  We need Congressional action providing health care for all and we need it now!  We need strong leadership and we need it now!

If the Democratic leadership in Washington and in congress does not understand the scope of the nation’s health problems at this point, maybe it is time for them to hang it up or resign.  This is the time for all Democrats to get in the fight to put national single payer health care back on the table.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
The Whitehouse:  202.456.1111
Senator John Cornyn’s DC Office: 202.224.2934 (fax: 202.228.2856).  
Local Houston office: 713.572.3337 (fax:  713.572.3777)
(Senator Cornyn’s website currently features his comments about health care.)
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s DC Office:  202.224.5922 (fax: 202.224.0776)
Local Houston Office:  713.653.3456 (fax:  713.209.3459)
Representative Pete Olson’s DC Office:  2 02.225.5951 (fax: 202.225.5241)
Local Office:  2 81.240.2959

Other people to contact:
The White House:  Nancy DeParle, Director, White House Office of Health Reform; Budget Director Peter Orszag; Senator Max Baucus (D—Montana),  Senator Olympia Snowe, (R—Maine); Representative Henry Waxman (D—California).  Barney Frank (D—Massachusetts)

Background Information on Health Care
Provided by
The Ft. Bend Democrats

“Without question a single payer national insurance program would not be part of any new health care initiative.”  With this short statement, a national insurance program that would cover everyone would seem to be disappearing off the national stage.  We cannot let that happen.  This Congress is willing to pay billions to tend to the health of our large businesses in this country.  Surely it is just as important to tend to the health of our citizens and their children.

This is the time for Democrats to pay attention to health care issues and to act.  If a health care program is ever going to happen, now would seem to be the time.  But some key Democrats in Washington are backing off from efforts to provide single payer health care for all in this country.  Yet health care is all over the news, so if Congress is not going to discuss single payer health care, what are they going to do?

Now it seems debate is focused on whether we should even have a public government insurance option program as part of the private insurance options, one that would provide minimum competition to the big health interests.  (By the way, perhaps you should ask yourself this question:  If one of those huge health insurance giants was teetering on the edge of financial collapse, would we find the billions of federal dollars to rescue it as we did AIG?  There certainly is concern in Washington about the health of America’s corporations.)

Many profess concern about a potential government bureaucracy and inefficiency in the proposed health care programs.  It must be pointed out to those folks that the privatization model has been fraught with failure, mismanagement, and scandal and is hardly a paragon of efficiency and quality, particularly in those areas impacting the health and education of the people.

Do you want to continue to have large insurance companies with a faceless LVN, on the other end of the phone line in another city, getting between you and your doctor, deciding whether you will receive treatment, health care that can be a life or death matter.  Do you want the large health interests gouging you with premiums, but remaining unwilling to pay the cost of a particular therapy …or deciding whether you will be permitted to enter a hospital or get a device you need.  For example, do you want an insurance employee telling you that a mastectomy is day surgery and the patient with drains still in the incisions will not be permitted to stay in the hospital for one single night?  

The “Gas” Police   There is more than one kind of ‘gas’ issue worth considering in Washington.  A young person I know well was hospitalized for surgery and noticed an unidentified individual visiting her room daily to ask whether she had passed gas.  Amused, then puzzled, the patient finally asked a nurse about it and was told that it was an insurance company representative checking on her because the rule was that she had to go home once she passed gas.  I thought the doctors were the ones qualified to decide when a patient was ready to be released.  Some would have us fear having a government bureaucracy make their health care decision.  Does anyone believe that a giant bureaucracy is not making non-medically governed decisions about our health care now—decisions driven by the bottom line?  

Opponents to government sponsored health care constantly threaten that the government will have the power to withhold or control the care you and your family will receive and you will be helpless to appeal.  Well!  What do they think is happening now?  And you cannot vote out the president of your health insurance company.

A Look Around the World

Of the countries with national health programs, several have better, less expensive, higher quality and more comprehensive programs than we have in America, but our Republican friends continue to misrepresent national health care in general by telling the same old tales designed to foster fear and confusion.

The United States spends more on health care than any other country.  Studies suggest that as much as 30% of it—perhaps $700 billion a year—may be wasted or spent on things like unnecessary surgical procedures.  That money goes into the pockets of large pharmaceutical corporations, hospitals, private nursing homes and insurance company executives.

One of the largest and best national health programs in the world costs less than half the portion of its nation’s GNP than the health care costs we pay in the United States.  We seem to hear only about the worst programs operating in other countries and lots of doomsday predictions about what might happen if we had a national health program.  Surely we could model our programs based on the best programs in the world, not the worst.  The savings would be enormous, the quality and availability would be improved, and everyone would have access to care.

Medical errors, under the current system in the U.S., are now estimated to be the eighth leading cause of death.  Our current private system is not without problems that would benefit from oversight and review.

Our national long term budget problems are largely believed to be health care related.  All this is said to point out that private sector insurance, while excellent in many ways, is not entirely exemplary as it stands today.

Under the current system, large drug companies basically have to prove that their products are better than placebos to get FDA approval.  No one has to show that their drug or device works better than rival products or treatments.

The health care pie is more than $2 trillion and the lobbyists’ slice of that amount is significant.  It has been reported that nine Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee, over the last six years, received $17.7 million from the large drug companies, medical suppliers, nursing homes, health insurance corporations, hospitals, and HMO interests, etc.  Do you want Republicans like Chuck Grassly, Orrin Hatch, John Kyl, Jim Bunning, and Senators Crapo, Roberts, Ensign, Enze and our Texas Senator, John Cornyn, deciding the route national health care reform should take?  With such sums of money involved, could they be anything but beholden to their interests.

And what about our Democratic Chairman?

Senator Max Baucus, the so-called Democratic leader of the health reform efforts, has himself received donations totaling $3.4 million ($1500 a day, every day from January 2003 to 2008) from health interests, which is about 23% of all his donations.  Baucus’ Republican counterpart on the Finance Committee, Senator Grassly, also received 23.5% of his funds from health and insurance interests.  

It is reported that Baucus and other Democratic leaders as well as President Obama have excluded national single payer health insurance from the health care debate and will not even consider it.  Is that what you voted for?  Do you want to settle for that?

Clearly the health, pharmaceutical and insurance interests are targeting Baucus and his Committee.  “I’m convinced that this (money) has a profound influence,” said Quentin Young, National Coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program.  “Otherwise how could Baucus, an otherwise respected and wise politician, say categorically that single-payer (national health insurance) is off the table?” (Billingsgazette.com)

A lawyer friend of mine is now paying over $26,000 a year in health premiums for himself and one employee for a plan with a huge deductible.  Do you think he would be paying more than $26,000 for a health care tax that many seem so afraid of?  Clearly any health reform program will cost money, but that doesn’t mean it is money that shouldn’t be spent.  It is costing everyone a lot of money now.  Surely this great country can afford good health care for everyone.

What are we currently paying for private health care, care that may be inferior to that of some other countries yet costing double what other countries may be paying?  That question prompts another one: Why would the Republicans, who espouse the virtues of the private sector with its tough, economical business practices, vote as one unit against a bill requiring the government to negotiate for savings on drugs the way the Veterans Administration has done.  It is difficult not to wonder whether the money spent by the large drug corporations in donations to politicians has resulted in a big payoff.

Just as the lobbyists are targeting the developers of this new legislation, we must also target our legislators and leaders as well.  We must speak out loud and clear to our President, our state’s two Senators, the Senate Finance Committee, and everyone on our e-mail lists to get national health insurance—a single payer program—back into the debate.  There is very little time left.  And short of national insurance for all, at the very least, a public insurance option should be a given as a no-negotiation starting point.

Senator Baucus has said that this will be the last major health reform for the next 20-30 years.  Do not accept this reform unless it includes a single payer program with insurance for all or at the very least, a substantial role for government and a public option that is not controlled in any way by private corporations.  As it now stands, powerful forces are at work to water down proposed Democratic health legislation with Republican plans that cater to the special interests that view Washington as their fiefdom.

At the June Meeting of the Ft. Bend Democrats, we voted to ask all the members to write letters, send e-mails and make phone calls to the Democratic leadership on this issue.  Also remember there are many other vital pieces of legislation that will get watered down or become lost in the shuffle if we are not prudent, watchful and pro-active.  Our leaders must have our support and our views to be effective.

(signed)
The Ft. Bend Democrats Club

CONTACT INFORMATION:
The Whitehouse:  202.456.1111
Senator John Cornyn’s DC Office: 202.224.2934 (fax: 202.228.2856).  
Local Houston office: 713.572.3337 (fax:  713.572.3777)

(Senator Cornyn’s website currently features his comments about health care.)
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s DC Office:  202.224.5922 (fax: 202.224.0776)
Local Houston Office:  713.653.3456 (fax:  713.209.3459)
Representative Pete Olson’s DC Office:  2 02.225.5951 (fax: 202.225.5241)
Local Office:  2 81.240.2959

Other people to contact:
The White House:  Nancy DeParle, Director, White House Office of Health Reform; Budget Director Peter Orszag; Senator Max Baucus (D—Montana),  Senator Olympia Snowe, (R—Maine); Representative Henry Waxman (D—California).  Barney Frank (D—Massachusetts)