A False Promise of Healthcare Reform: Press Release of Physicians for a National Health Program

[Better Believe It]

Pro-single-payer doctors: Health bill leaves 23 million uninsured
A false promise of reform
For Immediate Release
March 22, 2010

The following statement was released today by leaders of Physicians for a National Health Program, www.pnhp.org. Their signatures appear below.

As much as we would like to join the celebration of the House's passage of the health bill last night, in good conscience we cannot. We take no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer.

Instead of eliminating the root of the problem - the profit-driven, private health insurance industry - this costly new legislation will enrich and further entrench these firms. The bill would require millions of Americans to buy private insurers' defective products, and turn over to them vast amounts of public money.

The hype surrounding the new health bill is belied by the facts:

About 23 million people will remain uninsured nine years out. That figure translates into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually and an incalculable toll of suffering.

Millions of middle-income people will be pressured to buy commercial health insurance policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering an average of only 70 percent of their medical expenses, potentially leaving them vulnerable to financial ruin if they become seriously ill. Many will find such policies too expensive to afford or, if they do buy them, too expensive to use because of the high co-pays and deductibles.

Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of their shoddy products. This money will enhance their financial and political power, and with it their ability to block future reform.

The bill will drain about $40 billion from Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals, threatening the care of the tens of millions who will remain uninsured.

People with employer-based coverage will be locked into their plan's limited network of providers, face ever-rising costs and erosion of their health benefits. Many, even most, will eventually face steep taxes on their benefits as the cost of insurance grows.

Health care costs will continue to skyrocket, as the experience with the Massachusetts plan (after which this bill is patterned) amply demonstrates.

The much-vaunted insurance regulations - e.g. ending denials on the basis of pre-existing conditions - are riddled with loopholes, thanks to the central role that insurers played in crafting the legislation. Older people can be charged up to three times more than their younger counterparts, and large companies with a predominantly female workforce can be charged higher gender-based rates at least until 2017.

Women's reproductive rights will be further eroded, thanks to the burdensome segregation of insurance funds for abortion and for all other medical services.

It didn't have to be like this. Whatever salutary measures are contained in this bill, e.g. additional funding for community health centers, could have been enacted on a stand-alone basis.

Similarly, the expansion of Medicaid - a woefully underfunded program that provides substandard care for the poor - could have been done separately, along with an increase in federal appropriations to upgrade its quality.

But instead the Congress and the Obama administration have saddled Americans with an expensive package of onerous individual mandates, new taxes on workers' health plans, countless sweetheart deals with the insurers and Big Pharma, and a perpetuation of the fragmented, dysfunctional, and unsustainable system that is taking such a heavy toll on our health and economy today.

This bill's passage reflects political considerations, not sound health policy. As physicians, we cannot accept this inversion of priorities. We seek evidence-based remedies that will truly help our patients, not placebos.

A genuine remedy is in plain sight. Sooner rather than later, our nation will have to adopt a single-payer national health insurance program, an improved Medicare for all. Only a single-payer plan can assure truly universal, comprehensive and affordable care to all.

By replacing the private insurers with a streamlined system of public financing, our nation could save $400 billion annually in unnecessary, wasteful administrative costs. That's enough to cover all the uninsured and to upgrade everyone else's coverage without having to increase overall U.S. health spending by one penny.

Moreover, only a single-payer system offers effective tools for cost control like bulk purchasing, negotiated fees, global hospital budgeting and capital planning.

Polls show nearly two-thirds of the public supports such an approach, and a recent survey shows 59 percent of U.S. physicians support government action to establish national health insurance. All that is required to achieve it is the political will.

The major provisions of the present bill do not go into effect until 2014. Although we will be counseled to "wait and see" how this reform plays out, we cannot wait, nor can our patients. The stakes are too high.

We pledge to continue our work for the only equitable, financially responsible and humane remedy for our health care mess: single-payer national health insurance, an expanded and improved Medicare for All.

Oliver Fein, M.D.
President

Garrett Adams, M.D.
President-elect

Claudia Fegan, M.D.
Past President

Margaret Flowers, M.D.
Congressional Fellow

David Himmelstein, M.D.
Co-founder

Steffie Woolhandler, M.D.
Co-founder

Quentin Young, M.D.
National Coordinator

Don McCanne, M.D.
Senior Health Policy Fellow

******
Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org) is an organization of 17,000 doctors who support single-payer national health insurance. To speak with a physician/spokesperson in your area, visit www.pnhp.org/stateactions or call [phone].

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2010/march/pro-single-payer-doctors-health-bill-leaves-23-million-uninsured

[Mari333]

1. posted this earlier, knr

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7998608

[Better Believe It]

5. Sorry. I didn't see your post and just read the press release.

Well, I was able to post the entire text of their statement here because it's not copyrighted material.

[Mari333]

7. even better!!!

[pnwmom]

2. Too bad the much larger AMA opposed single payer. n/t

[eridani]

8. They do not represent the 59% of physicians in favor of single payer n/t

[laughingliberal]

20. The AMA represents about 19% of doctors & they are the Chamber of Commerce style doctors

Just as the ANA is mostly represents the elitist, probusiness nurses. NNU, who supports single payer is much more representative of the nurses who work in the trenches taking care of the sick. Likewise, the PNHP has a lot more front line, primary care physicians in its ranks.

[stray cat]

3. So they think this is a step backwards and we should keep the present status quo

at present until we can get something substantially better.

[Donnachaidh]

4. stop with the damned spin

WHERE did you read that in the press release?

WHERE?

[sabrina 1]

17. Rather than post pointless rhetoric, how about

addressing the issues they raised?

One question I would like someone who supported this bill to answer, do you support the privatization of our public institutions? Did you support Bush's faith-based initiatives? Are you in favor of privatizing Social Security? Because you know that's on the agenda of Corporate America I'm sure.

Do you support the privatization of Prisons, Schools, Fire Depts. Police Depts, our military (mercenaries like Blackwater).

If not why would you support the extension of the privatization of our Health Care System, which is what this bill does? Wasn't electing Democrats supposed to STOP this privatization train rather than support it and move towards a public Universal Health Care system?

I rarely get an answer to that question from supporters of Mandated Insurance with 'subsidies' which will go now into the hands of private insurance directly from Public Funds for Medicaid and Medicare. Now those funds which should be used exclusively for health care costs, will be minus the profits taken out before payment reaches Health Care providers.

What makes anyone think that the same failed industry will do a better job with public funds than they did with privately paid premiums?

Social Security 'reform' is next. Will progressives once again abandon their principles and excuse it and trash once again, every progressive member of Congress who opposes it? It will be interesting to watch and I'm betting on the same thing happening with SS as just happened with the privatization of our Health Care System. And this is why we cannot get real reform.

[Skittles]

26. you'll never get an answer, sabrina

it doesn't fit into their "VICTORY MODE"

[sabrina 1]

28. I know, SkittlesI never do. But I keep asking anyhow, and in a way

the silence itself is an answer ~

Up next, Social Security Reform! All aboard for the next 'ride' we are about to be taken on!

[Skittles]

29. America is so fucked

repukes are against HCR for the wrong reasons and half of Dems are for it for the wrong reasons

[Hannah Bell]

32. +100. All public institutions are being privatized, & the spinsters' job is to deflect anything

that might help people realize what's happening.

Which is, they're going to be fucked worse than they could currently imagine.

[Ignis]

50. Hey look, it's yet another example of the False Dichotomy fallacy!

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=false+dichotomy+fallacy&l=1

[skyounkin]

53. HAH!!! Great link!

[Nikki Stone1]

6. K & R

.

[pleah]

9. K&R

[sabrina 1]

10. I really wish I could

join the celebrations also. That was the purpose of supporting Democrats taking over the government completely so we could start moving away from the corporate-friendly government which was growing under Republican rule.

I couldn't agree more with this statement from article:

Instead of eliminating the root of the problem - the profit-driven, private health insurance industry - this costly new legislation will enrich and further entrench these firms. The bill would require millions of Americans to buy private insurers' defective products, and turn over to them vast amounts of public money.

The continuation of the privatization of public funds and programs ~ this time under Democratic leadership. But it's still the same thing, whether it has a 'D' or an 'R' stamp of approval.

[Citizen Worker]

15. So called HCR reform has institutionalized profits

Sabrina is right as are the physicians of PNHP. Any suggestion to improve or "tweak" the existing legislation will be met with, "we need to give it a chance to work." Remember Clinton's "welfare reform?" We were told when Clinton signed the bill that it wasn't perfect and that congress would address necessary changes at a later date. Well, here we are some 14 years later with some 6 million, mostly single mothers, reporting no monthly cash income and not a peep about "tweaking" the existing system of welfare. And as free trade and monopoly capitalism gains traction it will only get worse. As with the giveaway to the pharmaceutical corporations so called health care reform has done nothing but further enrich the corporate hierarchy at the expense of the working class. Until we march through the streets nothing will change. Our government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the multi-national corporations and they will not concede without a fight.

[bvar22]

11. I STAND with the PNHP.

Had Obama & The Democrats campaigned on Individual Mandates with NO Public Option, they would NOT have gotten my vote.
I suspect that they wouldn't have gotten very many votes at all if they had been honest from the start.

"I did not campaign on a Public Option."

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

12. K&R!

[leftstreet]

13. K&R

[dflprincess]

14. "Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money"

And there we have the what the point of this exercise really was. Just another taxpayer bailout of another corrupt industry that's "too big to fail".

So much for "keeping them honest".

[sabrina 1]

30. Exactly!

I bet the champagne is flowing in the offices of Big Insurance. I wonder how long before the big bonuses (from the Medicaid funds they will now control) start being reported? I'm thinking pretty soon as they KNOW they have nothing to fear from us. I bet they laugh every time they read a progressive blog. We really do make it so easy for them ....

[liberation]

59. I assume we can add "honesty" to the list of terms which do not mean what the DLC think they mean

right there with "change" and "yes we can."


Funny now we are being sold "small incremental patch" and "no we can't because..." as the very justifications for the bang up job this administration is doing.

[slipslidingaway]

16. knr nt

[Ysabel]

18. k and r / nt...

[Cleita]

19. Hey we each got a bone! So STFU!

We won! We won!

:sarcasm:

[pecwae]

33. Mine didn't have any meat on it, though.

[OneBlueSky]

51. "Hey we each got a bone! " . . .

try masturbating . . . it helps . . .

[amborin]

21. K&R Such an opportunity squandered, just tragic

[Skittles]

27. it wasn't an opportunity squandered

what we got is exactly what was intended

[amborin]

55. yep

had NO intention of a PO, for starters

[woo me with science]

22. K&R

This bill was a terrible mistake, for precisely the reasons they say. We have now entrenched the for-profit system, rather than bringing about fundamental change.

[flyarm]

23. Statement of NOW President Terry O'Neill

Statement of NOW President Terry O'Neill


http://www.now.org/press/03-10/03-21b.html

Health Care Reform Victory Comes with Tragic Setback for Women's Rights

Statement of NOW President Terry O'Neill

March 21, 2010

As a longtime proponent of health care reform, I truly wish that the National Organization for Women could join in celebrating the historic passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It pains me to have to stand against what many see as a major achievement. But feminist, progressive principles are in direct conflict with many of the compromises built into and tacked onto this legislation.

The health care reform bill passed by Congress today offers a number of good solutions to our nation's critical health care problems, but it also fails in many important respects. After a full year of controversy and compromise, the result is a highly flawed, diminished piece of legislation that continues reliance on a failing, profit-driven private insurance system and rewards those who have been abusive of their customers. With more than 45,000 unnecessary deaths annually and hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies each year due to medical bills, this bill is only a timid first step toward meaningful reform.

Fact: The bill contains a sweeping anti-abortion provision. Contrary to the talking points circulated by congressional leaders, the bill passed today ultimately achieves the same outcome as the infamous Stupak-Pitts Amendment, namely the likely elimination of all private as well as public insurance coverage for abortion. It imposes a bizarre requirement on insurance plan enrollees who buy coverage through the health insurance exchanges to write two monthly checks (one for an abortion care rider and one for all other health care). Even employers will have to write two separate checks for each of their employees requesting the abortion rider.

This burdensome, elaborate system must be eliminated. It is there because the Catholic bishops and extremist abortion rights opponents know that it will result in greatly restricting access to abortion care, currently one of the most common medical procedures for women.

Fact: President Obama made an eleventh-hour agreement to issue an executive order lending the weight of his office to the anti-abortion measures included in the bill. This move was designed to appease a handful of anti-choice Democrats who have held up health care reform in an effort to restrict women's access to abortion. This executive order helps to cement the misconception that the Hyde Amendment is settled law rather than what it really is -- an illegitimate tack-on to an annual must-pass appropriations bill. It also sends the outrageous message that it is acceptable to negotiate health care reform on the backs of women.

Fact: The bill permits age-rating, the practice of imposing higher premiums on older people. This practice has a disproportionate impact on women, whose incomes and savings are lower due to a lifetime of systematic wage discrimination.

Fact: The bill also permits gender-rating, the practice of charging women higher premiums simply because they are women. Some are under the mistaken impression that gender-rating has been prohibited, but that is only true in the individual and small-group markets. Larger group plans (more than 100 employees) sold through the exchanges will be permitted to discriminate against women -- having an especially harmful impact in workplaces where women predominate.

We know why those gender- and age-rating provisions are in the bill: because insurers insisted on them, as they will generate billions of dollars in profits for the companies. Such discriminatory rating must be completely eliminated.

Fact: The bill imposes harsh restrictions on the ability of immigrants to access health care, imposing a 5-year waiting period on permanent, legal residents before they are eligible for assistance such as Medicaid, and prohibiting undocumented workers even to use their own money to purchase health insurance through an exchange. These provisions are counterproductive in terms of controlling health care costs; they are there because of ugly anti-immigrant sentiment, and must be eliminated.

Fact: The bill covers only 32 million of the 47 million uninsured in this country, does not contain a meaningful public option and provides no pathway to a single payer system like Medicare for all. Democratic negotiators crumpled before powerful business interests and right-wing extremists, and until they get a spine there will be no true competition to help rein in costs.

The bottom line is that everyone -- citizen and non-citizen, undocumented immigrant and visitor -- has a fundamental human right to health care. This right has been denied in the U.S. for far too long, while the rest of the industrialized world moved ahead to assure universal and affordable care for their people.

We call upon President Obama and elected officials in both houses to commit to a process of steady improvement of our health care system that will result in true reform with universal coverage, realistically affordable rates and no discrimination. We still have a lot of work to do before we can genuinely celebrate.

###

For Immediate Release

[pundaint]

54. Gee, if only NOW had been for a better bill for everybody when the sold out for only

abortion rights, when an uprising for a public insurance option was happening. NOW has traded it's credibility on healthcare, when, as with the unions, there were willing to trade the best interests of the Whole for their own agenda.

[ibegurpard]

24. K&R

[Skittles]

25. they see it for what it is: A SCAM

[Kablooie]

31. It's valid to criticize and fight for changes.

It's not valid to try and kill what has been accomplished. - the Republican approach

[Better Believe It]

34. And what exactly have the private insurance industry and Big Pharma accomplised?

Take as much space as you'd like.

[Kablooie]

37. They will get more customers but also they cannot drop the most expensive customers.

It is better, of course, for people with preexisting conditions.
I'm not clear on what price controls are in the law but I know there are some.

The next step is to add government options as an alternative to private ones.
Now that we have the basic law, it is an adjustment to current law, not establishing a new one.

It's not going to be immediate, and it's not going to be easy but it will be easier and quicker than creating a completely new law like they just did.

In the meantime, previously uninsured people will have insurance and if it still becomes too expensive, once again, changes to the current law can be made to correct the situation.

To have a flawed law that can be modified is better than having no law at all.

[misanthrope]

41. They can decline the most expensive customers...

...and pay a fairly weak fine for doing so.

[Kablooie]

44. I've heard that reported and also heard reported that this is not the case.

I haven't read the bill so I can't say for sure.
But if this is the case, it's just one more thing that has to be changed.

The law is undeniably flawed but can be fixed once the flaws become apparent.

It will take public pressure to change it but at least there is something on the books to change.

[liberation]

60. Then how can you defend a bill you haven't even read?

Some of us have read parts of it, that is why we don't like what we have seen.

The insurers can't drop their most expensive customers, but there are no caps on premiums. And the deductibles are defined as a percentage of the premiums.

Furthermore the penalty on the insurer is fairly minimal. So many insurance cos will drop their least profitable customers and simply pay off the small penalty. And that is if they are real dumb, because they can simply raise the cost of the policy to the point it becomes impossible for the patient to pay up their dues and will either drop out of the coverage on their own accord, or here is the kicker... the patient won't be able to pay up the deductible associated with the same % of a premium which may have gone up 10 times (thus making their payments 10x as large) and thus actually putting the patient at risk of being penalized by the government for not having a policy. Or the insurance carrier can simply stall treatment or right out deny coverage, which is the whole point of having to reform this fucking health care system to begin with.

So yeah, by all means... why some of us be less than thrilled with this "reform?" Geez... no idea why, we must be such spoiled brats!

[walldude]

43. The price controls are pathetic for pre's...

There are tons of "risk factors" involved in pricing. What has me bugged is Pelosi said today:

Asked if insurance companies might raise their rates on health coverage and blame the increases on the new health-care bill, Pelosi said that the insurance companies should be aware that they’re not “automatically included” in the new health exchanges the bill creates.

“Unless they do the right thing, they’re not going in,” she said. “They will be relinquishing the possibility of having taxpayer-subsidized consumers in the exchange,” she said.

Unless they do the right thing? So we passed a bill and are counting on the insurance companies to "do the right thing"? I'm still waiting on Wall Street to "do the right thing"...

[Jackpine Radical]

61. The price controls consist of requiring them to jigger their books

so that they appear to be paying out 85% of their income for health care.

[Echo In Light]

35. k/r

[WeekendWarrior]

36. Would lOVE single-payer, but

that's impossible at this point thanks to the makeup of Congress. We need to work to change that, and maybe we'll see Medicare for all in the future.

[Better Believe It]

46. So how many Democrats do you need in the Senate. Obama said he ....

didn't even have 51 Senate votes for a very weak public option to pass under reconciliation.

My guess is that 100 Democratic Senators would need to be elected and I'm not so sure that 60 of them would be liberals who support Medicare for all.

What's your best guess and in what future election do you think the Democrats will obtain big majorities in Congress and elect a liberal Democratic President?

[snot]

38. [self-delete]

[Greyhound]

39. K&R.

[uponit7771]

40. .....and here come the people to shit on the county fair

[golddigger]

42. K&R

[quiet.american]

45. Okay, that's it, then. Might as well slit my wrists now. Why bother to live anymore?

(I'm sure that news will delight most in this thread.)

[Better Believe It]

47. What? Just hang in there and fight for universal health care. Don't give up!

[quiet.american]

48. According to this press release, I can't possibly live long enough to do that!

(Okay, yes, I'm being facetious, but the right has nothing on the left when it comes to pronouncing that this bill will bring about Armegeddon.)

[Better Believe It]

49. Please refute the the points you disagree with in their news release. Thanks.

I'm listening.

What you've written so far is about as vague as one can get.

[quiet.american]

56. I've come to feel that "refuting" is a waste of time.

I've been all over this board during this process "refuting" with actual language from the bills and their summaries -- and the facts and language are either completely ignored or the goalposts moved time and again.

After reading the piece by these physicians, it left me with the feeling that according to how they view the bill, it's enactment will bring about bodies lined in the streets ten deep and everyone cowering in dark, candlelit hovels with no running water and with hair and nails ragged, because our very soul and being has been sold to the insurance companies.

As physicians, you'd think they might have mentioned at least one positive thing about the bill, such as the fact that the government kicks in cost-sharing to pay up to 94% of plan costs for those on the lower end of the income scale, expanded Medicaid funding for all states, the requirement for new plans to eliminate co-pays and deductibles for preventive services, the elimination of co-pays and deductibles for those under Medicare for preventive services, the subsidized high risk pool slated to start this year, Sen. Sanders' funding for the creation of health centers nationwide which will treat local people on a sliding income scale, and at the least, they could have mentioned the inclusion of a Waiver for states to start their own single-payer system if they choose (yes, not until 2017, but it's in there and subsidized by government funding -- guess I can't help doing a little "refuting" -- the links that source all this are at the end of this message) -- but no, the doctors are going straight out for total "DOOMSDAY" in the face of not having gained single-payer at the federal level.

Fine. That's their vision. I've come to feel there's not a single thing on earth that can sway it.

And I'm pretty familiar with all the arguments that come after this. That's why I agree with every single Democratic leader and representative who has referenced the bill as imperfect. But it's difficult for me to read down the list of items in the bill, and agree with the doctors' premise that it's a "false promise."

Sources:
http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/TIMELINE.pdf
http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/legislation?id=0361

[Fire1]

57. [phone]!

[JTFrog]

58. Exactly! n/t

[Better Believe It]

63. It appears from your response that you "read" their news release with a blindfold on!

Here's just one of your "observations" as an example.

You wrote: "As physicians, you'd think they might have mentioned at least one positive thing about the bill ...."

In order to make such a statement you had to ignore their comment .... "Whatever salutary measures are contained in this bill, e.g. additional funding for community health centers, could have been enacted on a stand-alone basis." Is that what happened?

The bottom line is that you once again failed to refute ANY of the points made in their news release. In fact, you completely ignored ALL of their points in your "response"!

[quiet.american]

64. Case in point. What more need be said.

Yes, it can be interpreted that I missed that point, but the reality is that it was a backhanded compliment, still couched in the doctors' wishful thinking about doing actually what the Republicans wanted to do -- pass piecemeal legislation. I don't buy the "it could have passed piecemeal" from the left any more than I do from the right.

Instead of pointing to how the inclusion of the health centers strengthens the bill, the doctors point to how it should, in their opinion, have been passed piecemeal. That's not an illustration of my point about pointing to positives in the legislation.

(I read their release at least twice, by the way - quickly, but at least twice).

[Jakes Progress]

52. Under single payer

these are the kinds of people who would become doctors.

It is good to hear from those in the business who know what they are talking about. Of course the country has taken the course of asking insurance company executives how to solve the problem. There solution -- the bill we just got.

[emilyg]

62. k/r