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Listen Up!
August 10, 2006 • Volume 6, Issue 32Over the last year, the members of the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group—a group of 15 health care experts—have traveled around the country seeking the American people’s view on health care. In June, the Working Group drafted six recommendations to Congress and submitted them for public review.
Reading those recommendations, it’s clear these experts have not been listening. Overwhelmingly, in the Working Group’s public meetings and online polls, the American people have said they wanted a health care program run by the federal government that covers everyone. We call that Medicare for America. That’s not surprising: polls regularly show that 70 percent of the public support a “single payer” system—the system used by every other industrialized country to provide higher quality health care for its citizens for much less than what the United States spends.
But the Working Group recommendations do not reflect that view, even though its mandate from Congress is to develop recommendations that reflect the public input they received. Instead, the Working Group proposes a system of catastrophic insurance policies with deductibles as high as $30,000 that mirror the Bush administration’s push for health savings accounts. This idea was not even discussed in the community meetings and garnered substantial opposition in online polls.
Warmed-over proposals, based more on ideology than reality, do nothing to address America’s swelling health care crisis.
Instead of using the market power of Medicare to restrain costs, as the program has been able to do with hospital rates, for example, advocates of the consumer-driven model care believe that individuals in dire need of health care will shop around for the lowest cost, highest quality provider since they will be footing the bill. That is not realistic.
Fantasies of individuals bargaining down surgery rates are just a gloss for the real motive behind “consumer-driven health care”—shifting the rising costs of health care to consumers. As the premiums rise for health insurance that provides decent coverage, the Bush administration is pushing insurance that does not provide decent coverage.
The administration’s solution to the high cost of decent coverage: worse coverage.
The Citizens’ Health Care Working Group needs to be reminded that its job is to listen to what the American people want. We want to build on the success of Medicare and provide health coverage for all Americans—Medicare for America. Send your comments on the draft recommendation to the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group.
Medical Record
“This proposal to provide catastrophic coverage to all is offered at a time when many employers, facing high and rising premiums, are withdrawing from offering health insurance to their employees, exposing more Americans to the potentially devastating financial impact of getting sick or injured. It is our intent and expectation that a policy requiring all Americans to be covered for high out-of-pocket costs would both help stabilize existing employer based health insurance and expand the private individual and small group health insurance market offering protection to Americans who are currently uninsured or underinsured against high health care costs.
We recognize that when new requirements for insurance coverage are put into place, incentives to employers and individuals are affected. In the current environment, some employers may reduce the coverage they offer because their employees would be able to obtain this new high cost coverage on their own. However, we also expect that many employers who were intending to drop health insurance coverage as a fringe benefit would now participate in the purchase of high cost coverage for their employees, resulting in an expansion in coverage over what would occur under current market conditions” (“Interim Recommendations of the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group,” Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, June 1, 2006).
In response to a question about options for assuring health care coverage for all Americans, 72.2 percent of online respondents either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the option “Create a national health plan, financed by taxpayers, in which all Americans would get their health insurance.” At the same time, 61 percent of respondents “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed” with the option “Rely on free market competition among doctors, hospitals, other health care providers and insurance companies, rather than having government define benefits and set prices” (“Appendix C: Online Health Care Poll,” Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, June 1, 2006).
“When asked to evaluate different proposals for ensuring access to affordable, high quality health care coverage and services for all Americans, individuals at all but four meetings [of the 31 community meetings held by the Working Group] ranked ‘Create a national health insurance program, financed by taxpayers, in which all Americans would get their insurance’ the highest” (“Dialogue with the American People,” Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, June 1, 2006).
***** The Medicare Rights Center (MRC) needs to hear about all the problems with the Medicare Part D benefit, whether they happen to you or someone in your community. With this information, we will be armed with the needed evidence to push for a Medicare-administered drug benefit.
Fast Relief: Part D Monitoring Project
Submit your story at www.medicarerights.org/partdstories.html
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The Louder Our Voice, the Stronger Our Message Asclepios — named for the Greek and Roman god of medicine who, acclaimed for his healing abilities, was at one point the most worshipped god in Greece—is a weekly e-newsletter designed to keep you up-to-date with Medicare program and policy issues, and advance advocacy strategies to address them. Please help build awareness of key Medicare consumer issues by forwarding this action alert to your friends and encouraging them to subscribe today.
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