George Bush has spoken: no guaranteed healthcare, not for kids, not for nobody. Thank you Mr. Bush for putting your unpopularity behind the private insurance sector--just as their "individual mandate" laws in Massachusetts are running into trouble. Bush's veto provides the single-payer movement with the greatest strategic opening in memory.
All this and more in today’s Guaranteed Healthcare Update, cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.
It was on ideological grounds that George Bush vetoed the expansion of Medicaid to more kids: "My concern is that when you expand eligibility . . . you're really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government."
We have the least popular President in a generation putting his moral weight behind the private insurance companies—and opposing the idea of society guaranteeing healthcare to all kids, and adults.
In the words of Pink, thank you, Mr. President. This is our opportunity to sharply frame the debate: throw patients to the insurance industry wolves or fight for guaranteed healthcare? Trust in George Bush and Blue Cross...or the medical systems working in every other industrialized nation in the world? The more nurses, patients, and other guaranteed healthcare advocates can point out the links between Bush and the private insurance industry, the better off our movement is. It’s a tragic veto, but a strategic gift we should all exploit.
Speaking of wolves, count Ron Wyden in: "’We’re right at the cusp of an ideological truce on health care,’ declares a beaming Ron Wyden." His truce is a massive expansion of the role of private insurers through a legal mandate to become their customer. In other words... to the ideology of George Bush and Mitt Romney
Ironically, the original individual mandate bill, RomneyCare in Massachusetts, is having trouble and legislators are rushing to tinker. The big problem? "Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray recently warned: ‘If we do not constrain health-care costs, the system we worked so hard to create and implement will collapse.’" It is, of course, impossible to make the economics of healthcare work when you use 30% of care dollars to prop up an unnecessary private insurance sector middleman. That’s why health care providers in Mass. are leading the fight against the program, with a petition saying, "the state is offering plans with skimpy coverage and little real health security..."
Elsewhere, Larry Summers shares a dark vision of how we’ll get to guaranteed healthcare: "Incrementalism is not enough, we need full and fundamental reform. But I suspect that Congress will do incremental reform for a while until it fails, and crisis forces radical change." Let's work to skip the even-worse crisis part, because that's a code word for patient suffering.
Finally, medical students are among the nation’s most committed healthcare reformers, and one drew up this great animation on single-payer.
To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a "Medicare for All" or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.