A Message to Sen. Clinton -- Forcing People to Buy Insurance is Not Universal Healthcare

[ProSense]

A Message to Sen. Clinton -- Forcing People to Buy Insurance is Not Universal Healthcare

Posted February 4, 2008 |

Someone needs to tell Senator Hillary Clinton and her minions to stop practicing consumer fraud on healthcare. Forcing people to buy insurance is not "universal healthcare."

Especially when you let insurers continue to charge as much as they want, and do nothing to stop their callous, all too routine practice of denying medical treatment or blocking access to specialists or diagnostic tests because they don't want to spend the money.

Sen. Barack Obama is right on this point. And his mailer, which the Clinton camp has denounced, is right when it opposes "forcing everyone to buy insurance even if they can't afford it. Is that the best we can do for families struggling with healthcare costs?"

In analyzing what is wrong with an individual mandate, start with its flawed premise that treats health as a commodity which must be purchased.

"Having" insurance is not the same as being able to use it. You're only being mandated to purchase the premiums; they're not mandating the insurance companies to make sure you get the care you need.

Nor does "having" insurance protect you from financial ruin. Consumer Reports, for example, last year identified four in 10 Americans as "underinsured." Among those, more than half postponed needed medical care due to cost and a third had to dig deep into their savings to pay for medical expenses. Additionally, over a third postponed home or car maintenance repairs due to medical bills.

Add to those numbers the onset of a recession and it's not hard to imagine an individual mandate exacerbating financial insecurity and encouraging many families to self ration care because they can't afford the rising co-pays and deductibles while still having to pay the premiums. And threatening to garnish your wages or put a lien on your home if you don't go along.

The individual mandate cheerleaders claim that if you don't put everyone in the insurance pool, only the sick will buy healthcare and insurance companies will raise costs. Have any of them noticed that insurance premiums have gone up 87 percent nationally the past decade without a national individual mandate? Expecting the insurance industry to practice price restraint after marching 47 million more customers into their offices is like handing a lion more steak and expecting it to become a vegan.

That is part of why individual mandates are so popular with the insurance industry and those close to it. Insurers reap millions of new customers with minimal requirement to change their behavior. It further entrenches a dysfunctional system, expanding the reach of an industry that treats every dollar spent on care as a "medical loss ratio."

It distorts the role of government, which should be to protect people, not act as an insurance agent.

It transfers the health risk and financial burden from the healthcare industry to individuals and families; just a crushing burden on individuals to make it on their own.

Just ask Gina Dooley of Albuquerque, one of hundreds who responded to a California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee ad describing the disparity of care available to Vice President Cheney and members of Congress and the rest of us (www.cheneycare.org).

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Deborah Burger is a Registered Nurse and President of the California Nurses Association (CNA). CNA is a growing, progressive, female-dominated union dedicated to achieving a single standard of healthcare for all Americans. Over the past year, Burger has led the CNA through a wide-ranging confrontation with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger over his attack on patient safety laws, his unpopular special election, and his record-setting corporate fundraising. Burger has been nursing for over thirty years, in almost every hospital unit, and currently specializes in diabetes care management in Santa Rosa, California.

When Krugman was against mandates

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

1. exactly - her 1993 attempt was a corporate sham

screwing some insurance companies in favor of others, hence the big money backlash she recieved ... but screwing us all as consumers

paul wellstone tried to get her to take up single payer, as he details in his book, but it fell on deaf ears

[DesertFlower]

2. i think a lot of people are going to be pissed off

when they realize what she really means.

[rodeodance]

16. HILLARY does not play the Obama game of WORM (What Obama Really Meant).

[Fredda Weinberg]

3. But it is the way we handle auto insurance. A mandate we live with

And who knows? As HRC says, mechanism is less important that principle.

[Kittycat]

5. Owning a car is a choice, not a right.

[Fredda Weinberg]

19. And nobody makes you seek medical care. But for those of us who

do, universal coverage will lead to the lowest overall costs.

[Leopolds Ghost]

33. "Nobody makes you seek medical care"

Sounds like something Newt Gingrich would say, though.

[jgraz]

24. A convenient re-definition, but not accurate. Especially out here in CA

Most people could not hold a job if they did not have a car. Forcing them to pay corporations in order to drive is simple fascism.

[Leopolds Ghost]

34. Yes, although car ownership should BE a choice.

We just can't power 1 billion cars worldwide on coal, or hydrogen powered from coal or nuclear. If we did, we'd run out of uranium in 50 years.

If owning a car is a choice, it means people can get by comfortably using transit. That should be national policy.

Financial and Insurance cos have redlining and high liability areas for auto insurance and car financing, the government should do the same for transit servicability areas. Why is the gov't liable for metal playground furniture and the citizen is liable for insurance to pay the cost of running you down in an auto, but the gov't is not liable for creating an attractive nuisance by building 5-foot wide narrow sidewalks next to 8 lanes of traffic?

[John Q. Citizen]

7. And eveybody knows there are millions of uninsured drivers on the road. It sucks.

[Fredda Weinberg]

20. And the uninsured can show up at emergency rooms. The situation

can be improved, even if it doesn't lead to perfect results.

[John Q. Citizen]

29. It's a lack of leadership that keeps promoting half assed solutions.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

22. HRC supporters say that her mandate-driven plan will lead to single payer universal

Has mandatory auto insurance led to single payer universal auto insurance?

I mean, why don't we all just pay a surcharge on gas that would provide every driver with liability coverage? :shrug:

[Recursion]

27. Actually, why don't we?

That's a good idea.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

30. I know. It's been proposed in some states.

It would get rid of the ininsured motorist problem.

[jgraz]

43. It's an excellent idea that always gets crushed by the insurance companies

Want further proof that we don't live in a democracy? Try getting a pay-at-the-pump insurance initiative passed in your state.

[jgraz]

23. Which is also a transparent sop to corporations

We tried a few years back to get single-payer car insurance in California and the big insurance companies rose up and brought it down.

[ErnestoG]

4. GarnishGate is going to be her undoing.

[sandnsea]

6. You Can't End Homelessness

by mandating everybody to buy a home.

Deval Patrick.

[GoldieAZ49]

10. a very good analogy! n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

35. Don't give the DLC Dems any ideas.

Cities like Orlando and New Orleans and Washington DC

Are doing all but that -- eliminating rental housing, public housing and any programs or urban amenities that create "perverse incentives" for non-homeowners to remain in city limits instead of moving out to the green lawns of suburbia "where they will be better off."

The Washington Post even wrote a front page article titled
"For Some Katrina Survivors, A Silver Lining" -- a man whose
entire family drowned, "on the bright side" when he was forcibly
evacuated to Fayetteville Ark, he got a job with Wal-Mart and
got to live in a white majority suburb "for the first time in his life".

I'm not exaggerating the "let them eat cake" tone of the article, either.

[Armstead]

8. Exactly

I live in Massachusetts.

Mandates into the private system is Corporate Welfare and the worst of the Nanny State without the bennies.

[DebraK]

9. Her healthcare plan is a joke

She's going to drain the middle class dry by stealing from their wages to pay back the insurance companies that have funded her campaign so far. She is the only candidate who takes federal lobbyist and PAC money.

Stop the corruption, vote Obama.

[Bread and Circus]

11. Kicked,

[Bread and Circus]

12. What I love about this is that it's a nurse saying it, someone who

actually understands what rendering care is all about. I'm a physician, I know what it's really like. Jackasses like Krugman don't have the first clue about what it really takes to render care.

This lady spins circles around Krugman.


BTW CNA supports PNHP and true universal health care.

[ProSense]

14. Krugman's behavior is bizarre! n/t

[Summerza]

13. Not mentioned: Clinton will subsidize those who can't afford health care

Do you still feel sorry about those rich people who should be putting money in the health care coffers in order to drive costs down, but that will surely sign up only when they get sick?

[Diogenes2]

17. Subsidized healthcare for those who cannot afford it.

I'm a little in the dark here-- how little does one have to make to be considered "not able to afford" healthcare? If industry price-inflated insurance is mandated out of your hourly wage-earner paycheck, and that doesn't immediately impoverish you to the point where you're living out on the street, does that mean you can "afford" it? Or do you just continue to "barely scrape by" with a large chunk taken out of your check for insurance you hope you never have to use for fear of a rate-hike or refusal of coverage?

[Leopolds Ghost]

37. How many rich people are uninsured?

I suppose the uninsured beneficiaries of public charity are the secretly
wealthy "urban elites", who drive "Welfare Cadillacs".

[OHdem10]

15. Harold Ford, CHM DLC was on C. Rose tonight. It might be

worth your time to CharlieRose.com and check out the entirety
of Fords comments. Very Interesting. DLC will be coming out
with the Party's Position on Foreign Policy(we will provide
a very large strong Defense and budget to pay for it) and
National Defense, the Partys' positon on different Aspects
of Domestic Policy. IMO this is a good thing. Our party
needs to have an overarching phiospophy and where Democrats
stand no matter who is President. If they do get this accomplished
it is a good thing.

For example without taking sides with any candidate--he is remaining
neutral--he did indicate regarding policy matters....Lets pretend
Obama is the Candidate, he could well be running on Senator
Clinton's Health Policy.

This was no way saying who might win or lose but explaining how
once the Democratic Party establishes the Positions and Philosophy
this is what might happen in reality.
position on

[sandnsea]

25. The DLC is not the party

The DNC is. Hillary Clinton and her DLC can take a big bite.

[Leopolds Ghost]

32. Wow, hmmm.

[DebraK]

18. kick

[lynch03]

21. This will be really bad for her if it gets out enough

The idea that you're going to force people to pay for health care is preposterous.

[pnwmom]

26. You, like many here, have misrepresented HRC's plan.

She won't be forcing ANYONE to buy private health insurance, because she will be making available government-run plans like Medicare for anyone who chooses them.

Insurers are going to have a tough time competing with the government plans, and they know it. They won't be able to cherry pick customers by denying people with preexisting conditions. And if they set their premiums too high, then people will desert them. Instead, they can opt for a Medicare-type plan that will cost less because it won't involve profit for a middleman.

Both Clinton and Edwards have stated, in different words, that they recognize that their plans might drive the private insurers out of the health care business -- leading ultimately to a single payer government system -- and that's fine.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/healthcareplan/

[ProSense]

28. I didn't write this, and Hillary did say:

"Going after people's wages"

[Leopolds Ghost]

31. K&R -- this is almost exactly what I wrote several days ago

And I'm not an expert, but I have family who work in Gov't and Medical Research all their lives.

[BootinUp]

36. Do these whiners complain about paying taxes too? nt

[Leopolds Ghost]

41. Poor people = "whiners"

And yes, if they can't afford them under our regressive tax code,

Replete with sales taxes and property taxes (to keep poor people
out of neighborhoods with good schools) and WAGE GARNISHMENT for
insurance payments that are NOT adjusted to a % of ones' income.

[BootinUp]

42. You only say that cause you wont try to comprehend the plan?

[BootinUp]

38. But NO ONE will be forced to buy private insurance,

When will people stop trying to spin that yarn. There will be a government insurance option that will put downward pressure on private insurers and will be available to all.

[Leopolds Ghost]

39. If mandated subsidized private HC is anything like Medigap was for my grandma's long term care --

You have to sell your house and all your posessions to become eligible for a program that can only accommodate a tiny percentage of the working poor or destitiute --

otherwise, just expand Medicare to cover all uninsured Americans under a certain income level and have done with it!!

Oops, sorry, can't do that. Wouldn't be prudent.

[Yossariant]

40. A message to ProSense

The only way to have universal coverage is to require universal coverage.

It ain't rocket science.

[jgraz]

44. That's a pretty silly statement

It's all down to the kind of universal coverage that is being offered. Nobody has to "opt-in" to fire or police protection for their house. Why should we have to do it for health care?

[goodgd_yall]

49. Why force people to get health care? So everyone can afford it

We don't want health care costs going up because some people choose to forego it, thinking they'll never need it, or use the ER and get treated without ever contributing. I know Obama has a system for getting money from those people if that were to happen, but the cost of the bureaucracy to track those cases and do the required paperwork seems to be inefficient to me. Additionally, people would go without preventative care.

[ProSense]

46. I'm not the CNA. Here:

In Health Debate, Clinton Remains Vague on Penalties

[usregimechange]

45. Kick!

[goodgd_yall]

47. This OP is deliberately deceptive

Burger's assessment is based on the 2nd paragraph of her message being true, which it isn't.

This strikes me as ill-informed. Hillary's plan will put controls on the insurance companies. That's the difference. She will not be forcing people to buy insurance with no changes made to the system.

From www.hillaryclinton.com under the summary of her health care choices plan:

End to Unfair Health Insurance Discrimination: By creating a level-playing field of insurance rules across states and markets, the plan ensures that no American is denied coverage, refused renewal, unfairly priced out of the market, or forced to pay excessive insurance company premiums.

I encourage all of you to go to her site and read the summary of her plan.

[ProSense]

48. Transcript:

In Health Debate, Clinton Remains Vague on Penalties

[goodgd_yall]

50. Is that link supposed to convince me of something?

The details on how to force signing up for health care are to be worked out with legislators. I don't think garnishing wages to pay for it is bad idea. Those who truly can't afford it will be covered by programs like Medicaid. Those who can afford it, but might not want to spend money on their own coverage, I'm sure will get coverage if they know they'll be forced to get it one way or another.

[ProSense]

51. "I don't think garnishing wages to pay for it is bad idea." That's why

her plan is horrible!

[goodgd_yall]

52. She didn't say she would do that, but I wouldn't find that out of line

If that were to be the case, I'm sure a way of determining whether you qualified for Medicaid would be used, if the income was so low that no health care plan was affordable. You seem to have some fantasy in your mind about wages being garnished without any previous protocol being set in place to determine the individual circumstances.