Anyone who may have seen my previous diaries knows how frustrated this family physician is with the current health system. And yet I have advocated here and elsewhere that we take the incoming administration seriously and hold meetings and provide our input about health care reform as they formulate policy.
Today I received the first glimpse of the Health Care Community Discussion: Host and Moderator Guide sent to hosts by the Obama transition team. It is profoundly disappointing....
Rather than ask us to engage our friends and neighbors in a truly open and wide ranging discussion of what kind of changes are needed--- I had proposed a discussion of problems with the system followed by a discussion of what should be the essential elements in a new system--- the transition team has outlined a meeting format designed to bolster support for a weak expansion of our current employer-based health insurance system. Rather than explore just what the people want, the "discussions" are designed to give the public a sense that they are actively involved in the reform process, to avoid the political fiasco suffered by the Clinton administration's attempt at reform.
Not a word in the host guide even alludes to the reality that there is an existing proposal, H.R. 676, co-sponsored already by nearly half the Democrats in the House, which would transform our system, provide coverage for all, and reduce our national expenditures on health care.
In 2006 the Citizen's Health Care Working Group, working under the authority of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, held a series of hearings to solicit public input about health care reform. Faced with a choice of ten reform options, citizens at 16 of 19 hearings held around the nation chose "national health insurance". Sadly, this support was ignored in the final watered down report, a report whose modest recommendations were subsequently explicitly rejected by President Bush.
We need to make sure that our voices are not rejected again. I will still cling to hope and urge all to find and participate in a health care discussion so that our voices may be heard. As the sage Dr. Don McCanne advises, we should attend these meetings and speak our opinions
though in a civil but firm manner. We should define the biggest problem in the health system as "our fragmented financing system based on a disjointed mix of private plans and public programs which wastes a huge amount of funds that should be used for health care for the uninsured and underinsured".
We need to be certain that Sen. Daschle is shocked yet pleasantly surprised to see overwhelming support for single payer which he himself has described as "brilliantly simple," and "ensures equity by providing all people with the same benefits, and saves billions of dollars by creating economies of scale and streamlining administration."
Be sure to stay at the meetings long enough to be certain that the single payer message is included in the submission to the Transition Health Policy Team. We need to send that message. It remains to be seen whether or not the bureaucrats are going to try to bury it again.
If they do, then maybe it's time for a march on Washington.