October 2nd / 4th, 2009
"’No Public Option is Not an Option"
Last week PACE Airlines owner William Rogers was arrested for allegedly
failing to pay Blue Cross Blue Shield for his employees’ group health
insurance. According to charges filed, Rogers knowingly terminated the policies
without giving a mandated notice (45 days) to the 337 affected workers.
This sad story simply accentuates just how flawed our healthcare system
is.
By and large, as working individuals, we are solely dependent upon our
employer and one insurance giant for our medical coverage. If we lose that
job, we lose our coverage. We then must hope that we land a new job quickly
so we can purchase a new policy. But we also must hope that we won’t be
denied a new policy due to a pre-existing condition. If all goes well, we
then have to make enough money at our new job to be able to afford the new
premiums. Then all we have to do is avoid a serious illness which would result
in termination of our new coverage.
No wonder over 70% of Americans favor some kind of healthcare reform. Yet,
most do not favor a public option. The two beliefs are irreconcilable.
That’s because a public option is the only mechanism by which companies like
Blue Cross will offer lower premiums with better, and continuous coverage. I’
ll bet that every one of those 337 PACE workers now favor a public option,
but the problem is, most of us don’t understand the need until we
ourselves are in crisis. A public option is just what the name states. It is an “
option”, and one that would have either prevented or lessened the financial
hardships of the PACE people.
Unfortunately, Congress is not likely to pass a healthcare reform bill
that includes a public option. In fact, the latest compromise bill (the Baucus
bill) is so watered down that we would actually be better off with no
reform at all. Cigna whistle blower Wendall Potter says that the bill was
essentially written by healthcare lobbyists, and warns, “The bill will guarantee
that more Americans will go bankrupt because of the continued cost
shifting that will occur”.
Here’s why. Yes, the Baucus bill will prevent insurance companies from
dropping you if you get sick. And, it won’t allow them to deny coverage due to
a pre-existing condition. But those are hollow concessions for two
reasons. First, as was alluded to earlier, there are no provisions in the bill for
capping premiums, so insurance companies would be able to charge as much
as they want. The second problem was best described by CNN legal analyst
Jeffrey Toobin who observed, “Under the watered down reform bill, everyone
will be required to buy medical insurance, and if you can’t, then the
government will subsidize it for you, which means the bill guarantees 40 million new
customers for the health insurance industry which we, the middle class,
will pay for”.
Only a handful of intelligent, compassionate lawmakers understand the
implications of this shell game. One of them is Senator Jay Rockefeller who
says he’d rather have no reform than to vote for the Baucus bill. And that’s
OK with the insurance guys who win either way. It’s an outcome that
lobbyists have ensured by spending over $1.4 million dollars per day to defeat
true healthcare reform in general, and a public option in particular.
Likely then, nothing will change, and victims of our flawed system will
keep piling up like so much garbage. 700,000 people will go bankrupt this
year because of a medical problem. 45,000 will die because they had no
insurance. Meanwhile, the health insurance industry will keep turning record
profits, which have risen by 428% since 2000. According to the latest Kaiser
Foundation report, insurance companies have raised premiums by a rate of 131%
while those of us lucky enough to have a job, have seen our wages rise by
only 38%.
Still, the loud mouthed right wing commentators and politicians continue
to frighten and misinform the gullible masses, saying that healthcare reform
will lead to socialism, death panels, and a loss of our freedoms (not true
on all counts).
They also warn that a public option would put private companies out of
business.
But as Toobin points out, “Penn State and Ohio State did not drive Harvard
out of business, and the United States Postal Service hasn’t driven Fed Ex
or UPS out of business”. The right wing arguments may not hold up, but by
pressing them on the air and in angry town hall meetings, they have
successfully held up meaningful reform which most Americans say they want.
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