The insurance industry is celebrating today.
How could so many good people be so wrong?
Has MoveOn lost its mind?
Why is a group of top notch, progressive Americans waving the white flag of surrender before the first shot is fired in what will be a take-no-prisoners battle of historic dimension?
We're talking about the looming healthcare battle.
We're talking about a very simple concept. Bringing healthcare in the United States up to the same standard as the rest of the civilized world.
Healthcare for all. Guaranteed and affordable healthcare. Single-payer healthcare. Call it what you want.
Our friends at HCAN, and they are our friends, should know better. But I guess they don't.
Oh, and before I go any further, dear friends at HCAN and MoveOn, you don't go into battle with one arm tied behind your back.
You fight fire with fire.
Why has this flashy new healthcare advocacy group, which is already sucking up all the air in the room, totally removed from their proposal the only option which will remedy the healthcare catastrophe in the United States? That option (which they pretend doesn't even exist) has been, and always will be, single-payer. Only single-payer will once and for all, drive a stake through the heart of the insurance industry.
HCAN is made up of real smart people and organizations. They should know you don't bargain against yourself. You don't negotiate against yourself. You don't disarm unilaterally. And you certainly don't take any options off the table. But this is what they're doing.
And it pains me to have to say any of this, but I must.
And let me go one more step, imagine if all this brain-power, money, and political muscle, had simply added to its advertising campaign the straightforward notion that single-payer healthcare works beautifully in the rest of the world, so maybe, just maybe, it could also solve our own American healthcare catastrophe.
MoveOn, our house is on fire why are you sleeping with the arsonists?
Even a moron jackass like George Bush knows that when your facing a mortal enemy like Iran you don't unilaterally take any options off the table. If George knows this, then what's wrong with the HCAN crew?
The for-profit insurance industry is the mortal enemy of all Americans, what in the world is HCAN thinking?
And why is MoveOn promoting this adventure as "tak[ing] on the HMOs and private insurance companies"? The only way you take on this murderous industry is by taking them out. The only way you take them out is with single payer healthcare, which by the way, works so well for the rest of the civilized world.
The statement of common purpose of HCAN, sounds okay, but in fact it's deceptive and it's co-opting the rhetoric of the single-payer movement.
One little sliver tells me whoever wrote it, though well-intentioned, is living in a world of denial--no pun intended. A watchdog role on all plans? This is an Al Capone criminal industry, criminals have no use for watchdogs. How about we regulate them out of existence?
A watchdog role on all plans, to assure that risk is fairly spread among all health care payers and that insurers do not turn people away, raise rates or drop coverage based on a person’s health history or wrongly delay or deny care.
There is no greater heroine in the fight for single-payer healthcare than the executive director of the California Nurses Association, Rose Ann DeMoro.
Here is some of Rose Ann's brilliant explanation why HCAN is so damn wrong, and why you should be so damn upset.
Why is Health Care for America Now giving up on real reform?
By Rose Ann DeMoro
The big splash of news and internet coverage for the new Health Care for America Now coalition of labor, progressive and liberal groups is a reminder of the critical importance of health care reform. And a reminder that partial solutions, such as those proposed by the coalition, will only perpetuate, not end the health care crisis.
The groups behind the new coalition are working in concert with the Obama campaign and Democratic leaders in Congress to build "consensus" around a plan that would presumably be introduced in the first days of the next administration, and pushed through to a quick vote before opponents can mount a "Harry and Louse"-style counter attack.
But, in search of a supposedly politically viable plan, the advocates of this approach have surrendered in advance on the only overhaul that will actually cure the disease, a single-payer, expanded and improved Medicare for all reform.
Their good intentions will leave the same failed system in place, and will not even blunt the political opposition from those on the right and corporate interests who will continue to challenge anything that looks like even modest reform.
Remember 1993-1994? Remember Harry and Louise?
A bit more from Rose Ann.
They've also missed one of the most important lessons of the failure of the Clinton plan of 1993-94 which collapsed in part due to the absence of a broad, grassroots, activist movement needed to counter the insurance industry. Only single payer engenders such a movement, the very reason the single payer bill now in Congress, HR 676, has more co-sponsors than any other reform bill with tens of thousands around the country already working to enact it.
Health Care for America Now has identified the main culprit and obstacle to genuine reform. As their inaugural ad proclaims, "Will health insurance companies ever put your health ahead of their profits? We can't trust insurance companies to fix the healthcare mess."
There's just one problem -- the coalition's proposal does nothing to end the actual practice of insurance companies putting their profits ahead of your health. Nor does it fix the two central components of the health care morass -- insurance company denials of care and the financial squeeze facing American families due to ever skyrocketing healthcare costs which is exacerbated by the escalating credit crisis.
And more. As I said, has Move-on lost its mind?
Consider the four healthcare questions posed by families in the first 30-second ad: "Will they pay for his inhaler? Is my surgery covered? Can I choose my child's doctor? Will they cover the chemo?"
All are the direct result of care denials and price gouging by the insurers -- and none would be solved by the HCFAN "statement of common purpose."
How does the HCFAN coalition propose to crack down on the insurance pirates? With a "watchdog role" on the plans "to assure that risk is fairly spread" and that "insurers do not turn people away, raise rates or drop coverage based on a person's health history or wrongly delay or deny care."
You can watch someone rob your bank, but unless you stop them, the vaults are still going to be stripped bare. If you're looking for the hammer or any enforcement mechanism in the HCFAN proposal, don't bother, it's not there.
A little more. Does Rose Ann DeMoro sound a little like nyceve?
The insurers don't care if we know they are thieves, they will continue to deny and delay care because it's in their DNA. It's how they are set up to operate, it's how they make money for their shareholders, it's how they generate plush pay packages for their executives, and it's how they compete with the other insurance giants.
Nor does the HCFAN proposal contain any effective cost controls on the insurers. Their commitment to basing pricing on "ability to pay" is a recipe for merely getting the healthcare you can afford, not what you need. It also fails to assure real choice of providers beyond the limited network established by all private insurance plans.
The bone the coalition sponsors throw to single payer advocates is the false promise of a public plan side by side with private insurance. The public plan, they contend, will be so much more attractive that the private plans will just wither away. Don't count on it.
There's only one way to stop the insurance industry abuses -- it's to actually stop them. The rest of the world has figured this one out -- see the study in Britain earlier this year that found that the U.S. ranks last in preventable deaths among 19 industrialized nations even though we spend twice as much on healthcare as anyone else. Isn't it time we figured it out here as well?
You can read the entire text of Rose Ann's statement in Chico David RN's diary from yesterday.
So here's my simple challenge to HCAN, MoveOn and the others.
- In your survey add a single payer option, and explain the merits of single-payer.
MoveOn, HCAN, be honest. Be fair. AHIP is the mortal enemy of the American people and you know it. Take on this thug industry, don't negotiate with them.
Let's see what America really thinks.