A pay-go option for health-care reform

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/july/paygo_that_builds_r.php

"As Congress recessed for the July Fourth holiday, the debate over health-care reform was reaching a fever pitch. Now the top domestic issue for the Obama administration, the biggest questions are how much a reform bill will cost and how to pay for it, quite aside from how effective a “reform package” will be...


Conventional “wisdom” (as generated by the mainstream corporate media) says that any health-care reform will cost a lot, and that there is no pay-go option. But there is.

Single-payer financing (public financing coupled with a private delivery system, a reformed “Medicare for All”), as embodied in Rep. John Conyers’ bill (HR 676 in the House) with its 83 co-sponsors, will yield savings of some $400 billion a year. That’s enough to assure universal coverage for all Americans while eliminating all co-pays and deductibles — the ultimate pay-go. Single-payer will give us far more efficient, affordable, effective and reliable health care than our present multipayer system. Health insurers have known for years that they can’t compete on a level playing field with single-payer, and have only been surviving by favorable tax policies and other subsidies from the government..."


Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD

"As expected, Congress ran into problems when they tried to figure out how to pay for health care reform. They stubbornly adhered to the principle that reform must be built on our dysfunctional system of profitable private plans for the healthy and taxpayer-financed public programs for the sick, even though numerous studies have shown that this is the most expensive model of reform...


For the average American, they are establishing a standard of a bottom-tier package of benefits (a bizarre concept that requires greater out-of-pocket spending for those needing health care than that required of the wealthy with their higher-tiered plans). They are paring back the income eligibility levels such that there would be no subsidy above 300 percent of the poverty level ($32,500 for an individual or $66,000 for a family of four). These numbers simply do not make health care affordable for middle-income Americans when you consider that the Milliman Medical Index is now $16,771 (the average cost of family health care for the healthier sector covered by employer-sponsore plans). That doesn’t even count the taxes that middle-income Americans pay to support the massive government spending on health care programs.

Congress’s “market innovation” for pay-go is to fully fund the waste built into the private insurance model of health care financing, and pay for it out of the pockets of middle Americans who happen to need health care - defeating the very purpose of health care reform.

John Geyman is right. Single payer financing, a reformed Medicare for all, is precisely the pay-go solution that Congress desperately needs if reform is to accomplish the goal of making health care affordable for all. All we need is for President Obama to meet with Baucus, Kennedy, Dodd, Waxman, Reid, Pelosi and a few others to see who is going to give Karen Ignagni the bad news - bad news for her and her industry, but great news for America."

[Hydra]

1. Hmm...Chances that DC will tell the next great bubble that they

Will not be getting a grand favor? I'd say the same chances of the MIC getting shut down.

[slipslidingaway]

2. I agree with you and also with Kucinich...

who said what is lacking is political leadership.

[dccrossman]

3. I agree, but

as soon as the program is labeled "Medicare for All", you lose the PR battle and the popularity contest that all politics is these days.

Whether you agree with them or not, the average American does not tend to believe that Medicare is effective. They believe the ads from the Medical industry that Medicare is just expensive bureaucratic crap the cuts payments to doctors and puts up barriers to care.

Obama didn't help when he seemed to dismiss the idea of single payer as asked in a youtube question at the town hall from last week.

Congress is swayed by big money and excessive lobbyists. The medical industry is spending what... $1.4 M per day? I think that was the figure. They're willing spend hundreds of millions to keep their billions down the road.

So, what to do? Unfortunately, I think it's the lesser of evils.

But I hope that we get some kind of public option that can offer a plan that healthy people would be willing to buy and that we then regulate the hell out of the insurance companies.

[slipslidingaway]

4. Yes that is a problem because the terms have been used to mean

different things.

I hope that a public option will be able to compete with the private companies, it is much more complex and expensive, also that will be our last chance at health reform for quite awhile.

:(