This item from Overheard in New York:
Redhead: I wish I was a pirate.
Brunette: No, you don't. Pirates are dirty. They don't have toothbrushes.
Redhead: Yeah... But they drink so much alcohol that it kills the bacteria in their mouths anyway.
Brunette: Really? Well, they still don't have health insurance...
illustrates, I think, the degree to which health insurance is on the minds of all of us. UPDATES AFTER THE JUMP
Now that The Simpsons have replaced SICKO as movie topic in my house, perhaps it’s possible to try to think through how to put health insurance on front and center on the agenda of Congress. I hope not to understate the difficulty of doing this. Some people, much better informed than I am on the nuts & bolts of health insurance, seem to think that universal single payer is just around the corner. For this view more hopeful than mine, check out this
interview in The American Prospect of founders of
Physicians For A National Health Program .
So, while Cancer patients get to ask presidential candidates questions on health insurance via
YouTube , the candidates get to bob & weave. While those who are seriously ill need perfect insurance and excellent advocacy to survive as shown in this heart-felt tale by
Denise Grady . In that story, the husband’s excellent insurance which may have facilitated his wife’s survival, came via his high management employment at Starbucks – irony of ironies, since store level “partners†there get zip. The power of insurers to throw road-blocks in the way of an individual’s health care was set out in another, recent, Grady article – hidden now behind the Times Select screen --
here If you still need more on health insurance, click
here for an article which, incorrectly, I think, lays the medical flaw at the feet of the compensation system for physicians.
UPDATE 1: For Joe Conason's very smart take on GOP health strategy click
here
UPDATE 2:
NYC Activists For Singe Payer Meet On August 14, 2007, 6:30-8:30 PM. It's a follow up meeting to one which drew 150 or so folk at St. Bart's last month. (I can't go; another bike trip)
"Location: 25 W. 43rd Street, 18th floor (double classroom)
Now Our Work Begins: We've had our first meeting. Now come and hear work reports from our action groups and plan for the coming year.
Members of Private Health Insurance Must Go! Coalition:
AiDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP); American Medical Student Association (Region 2); Brecht Forum; Children Rise Foundation, New York City Region; Green Party of New York State; Housing Works; NYC Chapter of Healthcare-NOW!; Long Island Coalition for a National Health Plan; Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; New York State Nurses Association; Physicians for a National Health Program- NY Metro Chapter; Progressive Democrats of America; Student National Medical Association (Region IX); We be Illin."
.
A few weeks ago, I called a number of Congress Members to get their views on health insurance and on my own (& Michael Moore’s) selected solution: universal single-payer health insurance; John Conyers bill: HR 676 which, if enacted would provide Medicare for all. The response from electeds, even my favorites was underwhelming and disappointing. Many gave lip-service to the concept of universal health insurance. None endorsed HR 676. (Congress Member Gary Ackerman’s staff never even came forward with his views, notwithstanding more than a dozen telephone calls.) In a political scene when voters list health insurance as the key domestic issue, when even a majority of GOP voters favor universal health insurance – why do our Members of Congress – mostly fairly progressive representatives – back away? I have not been able to get a direct answer from them so I am left to guess:
1)They are frightened of the health insurance industry. Could the memory and the ghosts of Harry & Louise advertisements have made them wary of even the mildest attempts to take on these interests? (For a good review of Health Insurance wars past click
here .) It’s only 7 months since Democrats have become a House majority; 12 years in the minority may have made them health-insurance shy.
2)Many Democrats are getting political support from health care corporate interests and don’t want to bite the hands which are feeding them.
3)Many Democrats do not see universal health insurance as having political traction. When Democrats had a huge majority in both houses, they couldn’t get universal insurance passed. Even if it plays well in Peoria (and it does), Washington is different.
Whatever the reason many seem to think that leaving the existing, vastly wasteful to people but profitable health insurance industry standing is the only way out. Clinton, Edwards and Obama all propose plans which cost a big bundle because they plan to leave in place the profits of the insurers. See, for example, this thoughtful, but in my view, wrongheaded,
Talk of The Town piece from the New Yorker. And so, for some possible meaningful change, their advice goes, wait ‘till 2009.
Congressional Democrats, in the meanwhile, propose to slice away at the problem so as to make small to moderate improvements. This, I take it, is the practical view of
Marion Wright Edelman. Reauthorize the State-Children’s Health Insurance Programs (S-CHIP) in such a way as to reduce the number of uninsured children drastically and the number of uninsured adults a little – and pay for it by a heavy tobacco tax. These bills have passed the House and Senate, need to be reconciled in September when Congress returns and face the prospect of a Bush veto. Since S-CHIP is set to expire Sept. 30th, this particular fight will need all of us, I think. GOP Congress Members who voted against include out own Peter King and Vito Fossella.
Some see modest solutions coming from
state government attempts but see Ezra Klein’s article
article in the Washington Monthly.
One thing we have definitely learned is that the proposal touted last year by the Working Families Party – to force large employers like Wal-Mart to either offer insurance or pay the state for it – is not going anywhere. The NYS proposal died from Pataki-veto, never to be revisited, the Maryland-model was struck down as a violation of ERISA (the federal employee benefit statute) as was a Suffolk County (NY)
requirement . One lesson I draw from this is that I need to be significantly more critical of progressive proposals than we have been in the past. In all the discussions about Fair Share medical coverage, I never uttered the word ERISA, even though the concept of such a challenge was obvious at the outset.
Personally, I think the GOP opposition to S-CHIP --which is couched in anti-big-government rhetoric -- can be a significant factor in defeating Republican candidates in 2008. As a result, I guess I've gotten to the point at which I advocate waiting till the end of 2008 election cycle. If their fondness for the war in Iraq and their opposition to Health Insurance for all can be used to drive many of them from office, perhaps we'll have room for more effective change.
