I have been reading blogs questioning which healthcare policy is better, that of Hillary Clinton or that of Bernie Sanders. Part of the discussion seems to flounder on who has a real plan and who simply has some suggestions. This focus on actual plan details vs. more general policy advocacy fails to deal with the underlying cause of our disastrous healthcare uniqueness.
In many other major industrialized democratic countries, you will not find an industry dedicated to hugely profiting from the condition of the health of that country’s population. Health insurance corporations are either banned from selling basic healthcare coverage (they continue to sell elective coverages, i.e. cosmetic enhancement surgery, hospital private room-insurance, etc.), OR their pricing structure is very closely regulated by the government. The prevailing national attitudes are that healthcare is a public moral obligation, not a private commercial commodity. All of these countries have had many successful decades with some version of Single Payer Healthcare. Their cost savings are enormous.
The American healthcare industry accounts for a mind boggling 17.6% of our GDP, and it is rising! For Single Payer-type nations it is only from one-half to two-thirds of that, with better outcomes in population longevity, infant mortality, and several other standard medical criteria. The hundreds of billions of dollars that we would save (by individuals, employers, and government) could be re-directed towards productive social and economic activity, e.g. education, affordable housing, business expansion, infrastructure repair, etc.
One of the reasons that the ACA, “Obamacare”, is unsustainable is the same reason that RomneyCare in Massachusetts (upon which the ACA was modeled) is unsustainable. Both rely upon the for-profit health insurance industry to control their own pricing structure. U.S. taxpayers currently help to supplement the increasing insurance premiums of some poor people under ACA, but there is no way that the U.S. Treasury will ever be able to subsidize health insurance corporation premiums for the whole American middle-class.
The healthcare policy distinction between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is glaring, once we focus upon this 800 pound gorilla in the middle of the room, -- the parasitic. superfluous health insurance industry.
Bernie says, yes we can change the system, starting now. I’m sure he is aware of the progress that is already being made in many states. The voters in Colorado will vote in November 2016 for a modified Single Payer bill that will severely restrict the freedom of the health insurance industry in that state, and create a kind of state-wide health insurance co-op, stepping-stone to Single Payer. California passed Single Payer legislation in 2006 and again in 2008, only to have it vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. A new bill can be expected.
Vermont was on the road to Single Payer until its Governor, using faulty calculations (which have since been refuted), temporarily stymied process. There is significant Single Payer activity in at least six other states. In Canada, Single Payer-type legislation took hold one Provence (State) at a time, starting in Saskatchewan about 60 years ago.
Hillary Clinton, out of political opportunism, claims that Bernie is threatening to scrap our lifeline to health insurance coverage, our ACA, while attempting to build a whole knew system, that probably won’t pass, anyway. She recommends incrementalism, trying to fix small things that, over time, will make the ACA better.
This is very reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s recommendations for fixing another 800 pound gorilla, Wall Street. Unlike Bernie Sanders, Clinton is opposed to reconstituting the Glass-Steagall Act that protected Americans for so many, many decades, until Congressional Republicans and Corporate Democrats led by President Bill Clinton voted to destroy those financial protections by having the Act rescinded. Hillary’s Clinton’s answer to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders is again, -- incrementalism. Yes, we need to do something about those To Big To Fail Banks, she agrees. But we certainly don’t want to do anything that substantially alters the current state of affairs because, after all, they are so BIG! Besides, the $600,000 that Hillary Clinton collected from the banksters in speaking fees (in just one year) has nothing to do with her reluctance to accept really serious, meaningful Wall Street reform. Similarly, only a cynic would say that Hillary’s political contributions from the insurance industry and its allies have anything to do with her “incremental” healthcare reform position that protects their profits for a long, long time into the future.
There are two kinds of Democrats: Progressive Democrats and Corporate Democrats. One kind says “Yes we can. Let us strive to get it done”. The other kind says, “We agree that there is a problem, but we must seek solutions that avoid biting the hand that feeds us”. Your choice.