Currently viewing the tag: "health care"
Under the Romney Business plan to grow our economy, expect the rich to suck taxpayer money out of our government as they get richer. That’s his “successful” business model that he used at Bain Capital. Now he and the Republicans are touting this successful business experience as a reason to vote for Romney and spread his plan across America.
Under Romney we can expect more corporate control of public services and investment in areas like health care, increased privatization of public schools, and banks and investment companies running social security. Free enterprise to Romney and the conservatives under the Bain capital model would mean putting profit over public good.
For many Government is there to protect the public good over private gain, that is unless you are a conservative in America. The Bain Capital model of business was the accumulation of wealth by it’s investors, regardless of the consequences to its workers and the community it was in.
To see the real life consequences of this business model one just needs to looks at how Romney made his fortune. As detailed in the New York Times article entitled, “Companies’ Ills Did Not Harm Romney’s Firm“
Mr. Romney’s experience at Bain is at the heart of his case for the presidency. He has repeatedly promoted his years working in the “real economy,” arguing that his success turning around troubled companies and helping to start new ones, producing jobs in the process, has prepared him to revive the country’s economy. He has fended off attacks about job losses at companies Bain owned, saying, “Sometimes investments don’t work and you’re not successful.” But an examination of what happened when companies Bain controlled wound up in bankruptcy highlights just how different Bain and other private equity firms are from typical denizens of the real economy, from mom-and-pop stores to bootstrapping entrepreneurial ventures. Bain structured deals so that it was difficult for the firm and its executives to ever really lose, even if practically everyone else involved with the company that Bain owned did, including its employees, creditors and even, at times, investors in Bain’s funds.”
So what does Romney propose to do for the takeover of America under this business model. Well he and his conservative right wing friends propose to take over the US Government and run it like a business. In his mind, his friends and mega-contributors are his investors . His goal is basically a takeover of our Public Government and turning over the profits to his wealthy friends and corporate America. Their goal is to privatize most services now provided by Government to help its citizens.
The profits of course are whatever taxes are still paid by the so called workers of America. Romney’s corporate and wealthy individual investors see our Government as another opportunity to take from the people and transfer more wealth to themselves. The so called investors will put the minimum in taxes into the government to give the appearance that they are participating but their goal is to figure out how to maximize what they can withdraw from the Government for themselves..
Do you think I am joking? Look at what he is proposing to do in Public Education. It a profit maker for his investors if he can privatize it by Charter Schools and vouchers guaranteed by the government. They are already getting tax dollars via on line schools where they sign up as many people as possible for paying tuition by advancing them loans and getting federal guarantees for payment, regardless of the qualifications of the students to complete the courses. It is similar to what the banks and mortgage companies did to homeowners, ignoring their ability to qualify for repayment and then reselling the so called qualified loans to others for a profit.
Diane Ravitch in the New York Times Review of Books writes about Romney’s recently released education plan in an article entitled “The Miseducation of Mitt Romney”. His main focus is that turning public education over to the private for profit sector is the answer to our education future:
“The central themes of the Romney plan are a rehash of Republican education ideas from the past thirty years, namely, subsidizing parents who want to send their child to a private or religious school, encouraging the private sector to operate schools, putting commercial banks in charge of the federal student loan program, holding teachers and schools accountable for students’ test scores, and lowering entrance requirements for new teachers. These policies reflect the experience of his advisers, who include half a dozen senior officials from the Bush administration and several prominent conservative academics, among them former Secretary of Education Rod Paige and former Deputy Secretary of Education Bill Hansen, and school choice advocates John Chubb and Paul Peterson. …Romney offers full-throated support for using taxpayer money to pay for private-school vouchers, privately-managed charters, for-profit online schools, and almost every other alternative to public schools.”
As to public colleges and the for profit free enterprise opportunities they represent to Romney’s investment partners in America, Ravitch says that:
”Romney will encourage private sector involvement in higher education, by having commercial banks again serve as the intermediary for federal student loans, an approach Obama had eliminated 2010 as too costly. (Until 2010, banks received guaranteed subsidies from the federal government to make student loans, while the government assumed nearly all the risk. When the program was overhauled by the Obama Administration, billions of dollars in bank profits were redirected to support Pell Grants for needy students.) To cut costs, Romney encourages the proliferation of for-profit online universities.”
We have seen this turn the taxpayer dollars over to the private sector in other areas of Government and it would be accelerated under Romney. Privately run health care in the US is the most expensive in the world. Romney wants to repeal and defund the Affordable Health Care Act and keep health care in the for profit private sector. Costs continue to escalate. The Affordable Health Care Act limited the profit part of health care to 20% and even that is too little for Romney’s private sector business model. The goal of corporate America is to maximize profits, not maximize the health of America’s citizens. That model allowed private health care insurance companies to deny insurance to people, including children with pre-existing conditions. It allowed insurance companies to drop people’s health care insurance when they got sick. It allowed them to write policies that were woefully inadequate in covering major illnesses.
There is a reason for government involvement in health care and it is an ethical one. Someone needs to put the health and welfare of our citizens over the profits of the corporate health care insurance system. When Sara Palin said there were death panels she was right. But it wasn’t the Government, it was private insurance companies denying coverage or cancelling coverage for health care for Americans. Romney wants to abolish the Affordable Healthcare Act and put private for profit corporations in control of your health care.
In March in USA Today Romney wrote:
“…It is past time to abolish the program, root and branch. …… the case against ObamaCare extends far beyond questions about its constitutionality. President Obama‘s program is an unfolding disaster for the American economy, a budget-busting entitlement, and a dramatic new federal intrusion into our lives.It is precisely for those reasons that I’ve opposed a one-size-fits-all health care plan for the entire nation. What we need is a free market, federalist approach to making quality, affordable health insurance available to every American. Each state should be allowed to pursue its own solution in this regard, instead of being dictated to by Washington.”
What he’s really saying is that his investors backing him do not want the Federal Government limiting their profits or regulating how they do business. But our system is broken and continuing it as it is would be a tragic mistake for America. Heath care run for profit as we’ve seen with the Bain Capital business model would put profit over people’s lives and quality of health care.
An article in the Huffington Post last year reported that:
“The nation’s health care tab is on track to hit $4.6 trillion in 2020, accounting for about $1 of every $5 in the economy, government number crunchers estimate in a report …How much is that? Including government and private money, health care spending in 2020 will average $13,710 for every man, woman and child, says Medicare’s Office of the Actuary.
Compare it to this year, when U.S. health care spending is projected to top $2.7 trillion, about $8,650 per capita, or roughly $1 of $6 in the economy. Most of those dollars go to provide care for the sickest people.
Along with rising costs, the report found that the share of the health care tab paid by the government keeps growing, approaching half the total. …
…the United States continues to spend far more on health care than other economically developed countries. The study by the Commonwealth Fund found that U.S. health care spending per person in 2008 was more than double the median – or midpoint_ for other leading economies. “
If you followed Romney’s business practices to maximize profit to his private investors, expect that the same way he putting maximizing profit of his investors over retaining or creating jobs, he would as president let insurance companies once again drop patients that were costing too much and also allow insurance companies to pick and choose who they decide to insure in the first place. There is nothing inherently ethical about creating profit but there is about caring or not caring for and helping America’s sick. That is why keeping health care protection as a public good is necessary. The Romney Business Takeover Model to maximize profit for the few regardless of the cost and pain to the many needs to be rejected.
America can not afford to elect Romney and adopt the Romney Business Model of maximizing profits for the wealthy few. They are pushing what is essentially a hostile takeover of public education and health care and other services now provided by our Federal Government and want to privatize as much as possible for private gain. Creating wealth for a few at the expense of the many is a recipe for disaster for our country.
Keith Obermann in a recent interview in the New York Times magazine apply summed up the reality facing Democrats as they head into the next big election in 2012. “This is a freaking war out there.”
The war started two years ago when Republicans in Congress decided that their game plan was to be the Party of No. Democrats, especially starting from the top down, need to engage in battle for what we believe in. We need to be fighting for the American people and letting them know we are doing it.
Here is the question asked Keith Obermann by Deborah Solomon that aptly points out the current reality for Democrats.
It’s certainly true that Democrats have been criticized for not getting angry enough and wimping out. Do you think President Obama lacks vitriol?
Now we will have Mitch McConnell saying you need to repeal health care reform, you need to defund health care reform. This is a freaking war out there, and it is to me somewhat unrealistic to approach it any other way. I’m not saying that President Obama should throw off the dignity of the office and start going in and head-butting opponents.
The reality is that we will lose this war unless we speak out and engage to defend our principles and fight for doing what is right. Defending the changes that benefit the American public in the new Heath Care law passed by Congress are a given. We need to engage in setting the dialogue and not let Republicans criticize away without pushing back..
You know Sarah Palin was right in a way when she talked about “Death Panels” They exist. But its not the government that was setting them up. They already existed. They are called insurance companies.
Before passage of the current legislation, insurance companies could deny coverage for “pre-existing” conditions. They could refuse to insure you. They could drop your coverage if they didn’t want to pay for needed medical expenses. They could refuse to pay for certain procedures. These death panels ruled based on their bottom line of profits. They made life and death decisions based not on health care needs of people like your Grandmother or Grandfather but on the financial return to their investors.
Republicans want to repeal the health care legislation passed by Democrats. They want to once again give life and death decisions back to the Death Panels hidden behind the corporate boardrooms of large insurance companies.
Democrats and others need to speak out against this attempt to undo the historic legislation passed by Democrats. We don’t need to go back to the past nor can we afford to. The choice is simple. It’s a choice between corporate profits or making health care a right for everyone, not a privilege that only the wealthy can afford.
David Frum last week resigned from the right wing American Enterprise Institute after they cancelled his pay and office. Frum is a former President George W Bush speechwriter and decided to speak his own thoughts rather than follow the current Republican campaign strategy of saying no to anything and everything the Democrats and President Obama proposes. Frum’s comments relate to the just passed health care reform legislation.
The Republicans hope that Congress’s not acting on many critical issues helps Republicans get elected. The only thing they don’t consider in this negative strategy is that the public may wake up and realize that it’s the Republicans that are causing this inaction, not the Democrats.
David Frum, in his column entitled Waterloo on Frum Forum irritated the right wing by his comments that the Republican strategy on health care was and is wrong. It’s not that he’s supporting the Legislation that passed but he believes the Republicans are making a big mistake.
This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
His comments were not a one time fluke. He repeated his comments on CNN the next day in an atricle entitled How GOP can rebound from its “Waterloo”
“Some Republicans talk of repealing the whole bill. That’s not very realistic. Even supposing that Republicans miraculously capture both houses of Congress in November, repeal will require a presidential signature.
More relevantly: Do Republicans write a one-sentence bill declaring that the whole thing is repealed? Will they vote to reopen the “doughnut” hole for prescription drugs for seniors? To allow health insurers to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions? To kick millions of people off Medicaid?
It’s unimaginable, impossible.”
Such blunt talk didn’t sit well with his right wing free enterprise think tank employer. Hence his resignation.
While Frum discusses the GOP’s mistakes and problems he also see the issue from a larger perspective which it is important to keep in mind. Consider these comments he made later to the The Globe and Mail in an article entitled David Frum makes no apologies to Republicans
“The health-care status quo is for sure not sustainable. The United States is now spending 17 per cent of its GDP [on health care] and Canada spends about 10. The average in most developed countries is about 10 1/2 and the runner-up in Switzerland spends about 11. If the United States spent as much on health care as Switzerland does per person, relative to the economy, you would liberate six points of GDP. You would get your entire defence budget for free and have two points of GDP left over to pay down your debt.”
Such straight talk is uncommon these days from Republicans. While I don’t agree with his proposed “solutions” to changing the health care reform legislation just passed, it is refreshing to see a Republican discuss some hard realities of the problems that our current health care system has produced.
The Republican myth making nonsense that there is something wrong with Obama and the Democrats in the US Senate using the reconciliation process to resolve the health care impasse is finally being challenged. And the Republican mirage is being shown as just that.
As EJ Dionne Jr points out in his column yesterday in the Seattle Times entitled “The GOP’s astonishing hypocrisy on health care and ‘reconciliation’”
“…The health-care bill passed the Senate last December with 60 votes under the normal process. The only thing that would pass under a simple majority vote would be a series of amendments that fit comfortably under the ‘reconcilation’ rules established to deal with money issues.”
Dionne is responding in his opinion piece to statements by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch trying to paint the Democrats in the US Senate as somehow acting contrary to the views of the founders who wrote the US Constitution. Funny thing is that, as Dionne notes, there is nothing in the US Constitution about 60 Senators needing to be in agreement to pass any piece of Legislation.
But the mirage the Republicans are trying to paint that the Democrats are proposing to do something Republicans would never do is the big joke here. As Dionne notes
“…the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which were passed under reconciliation and increased the deficit by $1.7 trillion during his presidency, were “substantive legislation.” The 2003 dividends tax cut could muster only 50 votes. Vice President Dick Cheney had to break the tie. Talk about “ramming through.”
The underlying “principle” here seems to be that it’s fine to pass tax cuts for the wealthy on narrow votes but an outrage to use reconciliation to help middle-income and poor people get health insurance.’
As Media Matters remarks, the media has been slow to challenge the false assertions by the Republicans that there is something wrong with using reconciliation in resolving the differences between the House and Senate passed versions of the health care legislation.
Media Matters notes that the Republicans frequently used the reconciliation process to pass major legislation:
“GOP used reconciliation to pass Bush’s tax cuts. Republicans used the reconciliation process to pass Bush’s 2001 tax cut, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001; Bush’s 2003 tax cuts, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003; and Bush’s 2005 tax cuts, the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the 2001 tax cuts would “reduce projected total surpluses by approximately $1.35 trillion over the 2001-2011 period”; that the 2003 tax cuts would “reduce projected total surpluses by approximately $1.35 trillion over the 2001-2011 period”; and that the 2005 tax cuts would “reduce federal revenues … by $69.1 billion over the 2006-2015 period.”
The Media Matters article has many more instances where reconciliation has been used by the US Senate, noting that some 21 bills were passed by reconciliation between 1980 and 2005.
The Democrats need to move forward and act on passing health care legislation. The Republican’s goal here is not to help more Americans get health care coverage or lower costs. Their goal is to make the Democrats look incompetent in not getting anything done. The Republican goal is to try to get back in power.
What a mistake that would be for our country. It’s under their watch that the economy tanked and deregulation and lack of financial oversight brought us almost to financial disaster comparable to the Great Depression. Let’s move forward to resolve our problems, not backward.
Are there serious flaws in the approach Congress is taking on health care? Business Week estimates that some $700 billion of heath care costs each year are wasted and believes the current reform bills don’t address this problem. They state that a new Thomson Reuters (TRI) report finds that:
A sum equal to roughly one-third of the nation’s total health-care spending is flushed away on unnecessary treatments, redundant tests, fraud, errors, and myriad other monetary sinkholes that do nothing to improve the nation’s health. Cut that figure by half, and there would be more than enough money to offer top-notch care to every one of America’s 46 million uninsured.
The Business Week article attributes the $700 billion wasted as being the result primarily of the fee-for-service system that pays hospitals and doctors based on the quantity of medical services provided, rather than on the quality of care. Without fixing this flaw in the way we provide medical care, the article states health care costs over the next 10 years will double to some $5.2 trillion per year or about 21% of the nation’s gross domestic product.
What is interesting about the article is that it is not against health care reform; in fact it’s emphasis is on ideas that can be implemented now by the medical profession without legislation being required. A number of these ideas are ones that consumers and patients and the medical profession should be demanding that action be taken on because it is absurd that we have a health care system that is dysfunctional and outrageously expensive compared to that of other industrialized nations in the world.
Here is a list of their 10 ideas to cut health care costs now:
1.Crack down on fraud and abuse
2. Develop a healthy workforce
3. Coordinate care through family doctors
4. Make health a community effort
5. Stop infections in hospitals
6. Get patients to take their medicine
7. Discuss options near the end of life
8. Use insurance to manage chronic disease
9. Let well-informed patients decide
10. Apologize to the patient.
Here’s a great YouTube video celebrating our position as number 37 in the world in terms of health care.
Come on folks. It’s time for a change. Contact your Senators and Representatives and urge they act on reforming healthcare in the good ol USA.
Wendell Potter is the former Head of Communications for CIGNA Corporation – one of the largest health insurers in the US. Over on Common Dreams.org he now writes about how the health insurance industry has worked to sabotage health care reform for years.
Here are some of his remarks. I urge you to read the full article, entitled, “How Health Insurance Drives Debate” . He notes how the health insurance industry has been working behind the scenes to drive the debate and most people don’t see it. Their bottom line is not health care or the patients but profits. If patients are not profitable they get their policies dropped.
As Potter explains,
“… the industry funnels millions of its policyholders’ premiums to big public relations firms that provide talking points to conservative talk show hosts, business groups and politicians. I also described how the PR firms set up front groups, again using your premium dollars and mine, to scare people away from reform.
What I’m trying to do as I write and speak out against the insurance industry I was a part of for nearly two decades is to inform Americans that when they hear isolated stories of long waiting times to see doctors in Canada and allegations that care in other systems is rationed by “government bureaucrats,” someone associated with the insurance industry wrote the original script.
The industry has been engaging in these kinds of tactics for many years, going back to its successful behind-the-scenes campaign to kill the Clinton reform plan.
Potter is very explicit in warning Americans that the previous efforts to kill health care reform and today’s opposition are not spontaneous but are coming from the health care industry efforts to continue making profits off our current dysfunctional system that is profit based not care based.
Potter ends with this comment:
“The industry goes to great lengths to keep its involvement in these campaigns hidden from public view. I know from having served on numerous trade group committees and industry-funded front groups, however, that industry leaders are always full partners in developing strategies to derail any reform that might interfere with insurers’ ability to increase profits.
So the next time you hear someone warning against a “government takeover” of our health care system, or that the creation of a public health insurance option would send us down the “slippery slope toward socialism,” know that someone like I used to be wrote those terms, knowing it might turn many of the very people who would benefit most from meaningful reform into unwitting spokespeople for the industry.”
Such a sad commentary is unfortunately the case. The very people who would benefit from health care reform are arguing against it. If they have anything to be mad about it should be the lies and lack of coverage and shady tactics and outrageous costs that create so many problems for the very citizens the current private health care system is saying they can do a better job of helping than a public option would.
It’s obvious that the current health care system is class oriented in that it serves those with money best and does not believe in equality of care. Health care should be a right. Unfortunately in America it is a privilege driven by money. That is wrong.
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