Reform Flashback: The Secrets to Healthcare Political Profiteering

[Joanne98]

Reading the healthcare reform headlines and analysis this week, I’ve been having some flashbacks. It seems every bad idea, every damaging policy, every special-interest laden piece of refuse that I’ve written about in the last few months has been included in HR 3590. The Senate has effectively legislated increased protection for fat, powerful health insurers; lazy, uncompetitive pharmaceutical companies; and profiteering hospitals. Even physicians were granted a two-month reprieve on Medicare reimbursement so a permanent solution could be included in the final healthcare bill. What did we, the patients, get? Join in this trip down memory lane as we answer that question.

First, there was the CBO’s score for the Senate Finance Committee bill, which preceded the Senate combined bill, HR 3590. It wasn’t all that exciting, except for the obvious holes its reasoning. There it was, trying to predict mostly that which was outside of its control, in other words, private insurance premium increases over the next 10 years. I called this faulty math, and it seemed that the House understood it, as they promptly dedicated themselves to moving more people into an expanded Medicaid program to lower costs and make them predictable.

The Senate, meanwhile, has gone for the opposite approach of letting private insurers steal our wallets without recourse. Senators conveniently forgot that the reason we need a strong public option is to provide competition to keep insurance costs in check. Then there was the brilliant idea of independent Medicare commissions that could research and pilot cost-savings measures. Since their decisions could bypass Congress, the Senate quickly crippled them. Henceforth, they can no longer enforce cost-saving measures on providers until the Medicare inflation rate is greater than the overall healthcare cost inflation rate. That would be never.

So, under HR 3590 we are now mandated to buy insurance from private, money-hungry insurers. But we can let the states run their own single payer pilots, right? We can see what works best and adopt it throughout the rest of the country? Nope, we'll leave that to China. The Senate killed all public options, including Bernie Sanders’ state single-payer amendment. Nancy Pelosi conveniently forgot the Kucinich and Weiner amendments during House debate. But don’t worry, we’ll have subsidies available to buy insurance. Too bad that’s a very slippery slope, a topic on which both I and Jeff Goldsmith elaborated.

At least we’ll have comparative effectiveness research to show us and our insurers which treatments are worth our money, right? Well, sort of. Medicare is strictly forbidden from using it for reimbursement purposes. And as we’ve seen, Congress can always be relied upon to derail any unpopular science-based recommendations.

As for affordable medications, they were yanked away from us because the Senate just didn’t have time for Republicans to read one reimportation amendment out loud. Conveniently forgetting that Americans pay 10 times more than other developed nations for our prescriptions, reimportation was beaten down due to ‘significant safety concerns’. Ahem. A full 40% of active ingredients in our domestic prescription drugs come from India and China. The real reason is that senators voting against reimportation accepted 66% more in Big Pharma campaign contributions than those who voted for it. Just like insurance campaign contributions directly correlate with senators’ public option stance.

I think you see by now that Senate healthcare reform legislation really amounts to “medical mobster protection money”, as Keith Olbermann so memorably put it. What did we, the patients, get out of Senate legislation? Sold down the river, that’s what.

But it's not too late. Take action by signing a Center for Policy Analysis petition here on Change.org that tells the Senate and the President to put the good stuff back in the bill. You can also send MoveOn.org's message telling Senate progressives to block the bill until it's fixed. Or personally deliver Democracy for America's message to your Congressional representatives, saying you oppose the bill unless it contains a public option. No matter how you feel, there's an option to make yourself heard.
http://healthcare.change.org/blog/view/reform_flashback_the_secrets_to_healthcare_political_profiteering#

[clear eye]

1. One thing that sticks in my memory

is the refusal of the CBO to report on the cost of single payer.

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.

[unapatriciated]

3. K&R