More proof out this week that the insurance industry’s sweet words for health care reform are dripping with hypocrisy. America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), which has been pushing a sham health care reform campaign masquerading as a grassroots initiative, now seems to be using dirty tricks and outright falsehoods in an attempt to keep some of their most profitable programs.
Jason Rosenbaum writes on Health Care For America Now! that AHIP is sending letters to Massachusetts newspapers under the names of real seniors—who are unaware their names are being used—demanding that their representatives in Congress protect the Medicare Advantage health care program.
Medicare Advantage is George W. Bush’s privatization experiment, which put millions of dollars in the hands of private insurance companies. President Obama has proposed to stop subsidizing private insurers through Medicare Advantage.
Unlike the health insurance industry, a large majority of Americans supports President Obama’s plan to finance national health care reform by eliminating tax breaks for the rich, according to a poll by Lake Research Partners.
The poll shows a clear majority of Americans (63 percent) favor a health care funding proposal to raise taxes on those who earn more than $250,000 per year by decreasing their tax deductions. An even larger majority of those polled (80 percent) oppose funding health care reform by treating employer health care benefits as income.
Obama’s budget sets aside more than $630 billion over the next 10 years as a reserve fund to help finance reforms to the nation’s health care system. To help pay for it, Obama will allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent to expire in 2010 and will eliminate other tax breaks for those making more than $250,000 a year.
Support for this approach to funding health care reform has majority backing in every region of the country and among independent voters (52 percent) and Democrats (85 percent), according to Lake’s poll.
This is the right fight. Who cares about tea when this nations survival depends on fixing the health care crisis. The keys to winning this fight is complicated. The winning combination has to be affordability and widespread acceptance.
If Obama presents smart, nuanced, and a “no-nonsense” way to pay for a smart, nuanced and “no-nonsense” public health program, then it could gain traction in Congress. The funding has to be as attractive as the plan.
As I understand it, what sunk the Clinton plan back in the 1990′s was in large part the plan itself wasn’t sold well, and the cost. It was not widely received because it was perceived to be too expensive and the workings of it were kind of clunky. There is a pretty good account of the Clinton plan on the Alan Katz Health Care Reform Blog. Katz contends that the Clinton plan failed because it lacked bipartisan (special interest) input and thereby had no bipartisan (special interest) support. But in my humble opinion, sometimes special interests get to drive the legislative lobby train, and sometimes it’s driven by the populace. Acceptance by a large swath of America can get a bill passed just as quickly and that means you and I have to get busy once an agreed upon piece of legislation hits the floor. We can get out and sell it if the legislation is something we can sink our teeth into with a cool way to pay for it.
There are many ideas out there floating around, some good some wacky, about how to pay for public health care. Here’s an idea: What if there were a small contribution from everyone’s payroll with a small matching fund from their employers, similar to the Medicare tax and Social Security tax, to help pay for a good public plan? What if the government just dropped Medicare entirely, put all of our elderly and poor on the new plan, and just switch the Medicare tax to the public health tax with a slight bump in rates? Employers should go for this because they can drop their coverage and put all their employees on the public plan at much less cost to them.
Oh! You DID consider that if a public plan is passed, there will be millions of employer-based health plans dropped – overnight – didn’t you? WalMart has most of their low-level, entry-wage part-timers (millions) on public health NOW. WalMart is the nation’s largest employer.
The right (and their echo chamber – the main stream media) is going to oppose it on ideological grounds no matter what comes out of the White House. Someone, like Rush Limbaugh will come up with ridiculous statements that will say something like Obama will deny you the right to see your own doctor because they are watching which office you walk into or the administration just doesn’t want to pay YOUR doctor because they don’t like you, and government bureaucracy will dictate what treatments you can have as opposed to insurance bureaucracy telling you which treatments you can have.
In 2004 during a hearing in Congress on the health care crises, legislators defined a public health care plan as “rationing” health care and pharmaceuticals. From an article at AlterNet by David Sirota:
In 2004, the nonpartisan group Families USA was asked to testify before a House committee on the issue of health care.
But of course, the hearing was only a formality, really. Congress had no intention of listening too much to anyone who didn’t come bearing a very large check. Still, the political goons in the employ of the big insurance companies understand that in even the most mundane situations in Washington, the truth must be squelched at all costs. So it was no surprise when amidst the boring proceedings, fireworks started.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) apparently had heard enough about the health care crisis. So in the middle of the testimony by Ron Pollack, Families USA’s executive director, Rogers snapped. “Just so I understand your organization,” he said, “you support rationing, limited drug use, pharmaceutical use?”
…Like a drooling pit bull snarling at a passerby, Rogers barked, “You support rationing health care for American citizens and limiting the ability for them to have access to pharmaceutical treatment in order to keep costs down.”
Medical rationing?
Incredible. Be prepared for the right wing’s fake outrage over any public plan proposed. We have to gird ourselves for a fight, even to the point of phone canvassing and door belling.
In February, 2009, Keith Olbermann debunks the right wing corporate lies that are already out about health care reform and this was just the stimulus bill debate. Keith interviews Lawrence O’Donnell about the falsehoods.
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A Second Look | Speak Out! Pass Health Reform But Protect Wage Earners!
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via AFL-CIO NOW BLOG | Send a Letter Today Urging Congress to Pass Quality Health Care Reform
by Mike Hall, Sep 30, 2009
Let me interject something here concerning that last bullet. Senator Max Baucus, in his “chairman’s mark” he included in the bill now under intense debate in the Senate Finance Committee, a proposal for an excise tax on the most generous insurance plans. That tax is referred to as the Cadillac tax, and it would only effect the plans that meet certain values. These generous insurance plans would be taxed as one’s income is taxed, being a big part of the benefit package offered to an employee.
But the sticky part is that there are union members and others who aren’t rich by any means, but have very expensive health plans from their employer. A union member’s health plan is negotiated whenever contracts expire and are often weighed as heavily or heavier than wage increases, meaning the union rank and file would rather give up a larger wage increase if it means getting a juicier and larger health care package. This new Cadillac tax could kick in now, or after their health benefit package grows in the years to come, and burden them with higher taxes if portective language isn’t placed in the bill now.
What’s good about it? The good part of this Cadillac tax is that it will pay for a big chunk, maybe as much as 35%, of the cost of the health reform bill.
The Cadillac tax is the subject of an article from a couple days ago in Bloomberg.com.
That means that if the premiums for your health insurance package from your employer are more than $25,000 for you and your family, if the cost to the employer to provide super duper insurance is more than $25,000 per year, then you will be liable for a 35% excise tax on that insurance package. In other words, they are treating that insurance as a luxury and as income. Your insurance package would be reported to the IRS and the 1040 forms amended to include a block under “wages, salaries, tips, etc.”. The bad part of the Cadillac tax is that it could hit average Americans hard, something that Obama campaigned against.
Do you want that?
Me neither. So, write letters to these knuckleheads in Congress at let them know it.
So what are you waiting for? You don’t have to be a union member to help with this effort. Write that letter! Tell Congress to pass meaningful health reform with a public option and include protection for wage earner’s health plans from a new tax.