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PHIMG Says : "Start from Scratch!" |
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Thursday, 31 December 2009 16:27 |
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Statement from the Private Health Insurance Must Go! Coalition
We demand the immediate enactment of an expanded and improved Medicare for All national healthcare system in the United States.
We demand the full rejection and defeat of any “health insurance reform” bill that results from a compromise of the cruel and cynical House and Senate “health insurance reform” bills. Any such compromise bill significantly deepens the healthcare crisis in the United States that for decades will consign millions of people to no health insurance, bankruptcies, continuing physical and mental health suffering, and tens of thousands of avoidable deaths due to the lack of health insurance. This is precisely because of residents’ inability to pay the ever increasing cost of skimpy health insurance plans controlled by a market-driven healthcare system.
These fake healthcare reform bills are products of the U.S. Congress’s political extortion and deliberate deception of the people residing in the United States who had placed their faith in their elected leadership to bring genuine healthcare reform.
The extent of deceit and abuse may well be chronicled as the best orchestrated public deception in the history of the United States. It will result in the most profound injury to the largest number of people residing in this country. Among the greatest insults caused by this brilliant deception is the fact that this fake reform is being touted by the Democratic Party and special interests as an historic moment analogous to the passage of Social Security and Medicare, both of which actually expanded the public social safety net. In this instance, the flagrant reverse is true. These bills will further weaken the healthcare social safety net due to an unprecedented and extreme intensification of the privatization of healthcare.
Barack Obama has often stated in the past that a single-payer system is the best reform and the best way to end the healthcare crisis in the United States. Despite his foreknowledge of the superiority of a Medicare for All solution to the healthcare crisis and the compelling support for such a solution by the national public, President Obama, in defiance of his prior position and by his indifference to the aspirations of the throngs of people who voted for “change they could believe in,” ordered the Democratic Party at the beginning of his historic presidency not to even entertain a congressional debate of the Medicare for All solution to the healthcare crisis. He ordered this muzzling of the democratic process despite the existence of nearly 90 Democratic Party co-sponsors of the popular congressional House Bill for an expanded and improved Medicare program that would be provided to all residents in the U.S., HR 676.
All independent scholars remain unanimous: the current market-based healthcare system is the primary cause of uncontrollable healthcare costs and the denial of access to comprehensive healthcare for the people residing in the U.S. Today, 47 million people lack health insurance resulting in 45 thousand avoidable deaths annually. Even under the best case scenario of the application of the Senate bill, at least 23 million people will be left without health insurance along with millions more who will remain underinsured.
Accordingly, every year 22 thousand people will be expected to die because of having no health insurance once this Senate bill goes into effect in 2014. This was the number of avoidable deaths recorded in 2002 when the healthcare crisis was considered at its height. These bills are a step backwards. Between 2010 and 2014, 180 thousand more people would have already died due to having no health insurance. These numbers will continue to increase every year.
This is the definition of the current healthcare crisis in the United States which is caused by the private health insurance industry; and this is precisely what needs to be reformed. These bills cannot end the healthcare crisis in the U.S. because they keep the private health insurance industry in the business of selling for-profit health insurance for medically needed care. Private health insurance must go!
Why must we start from scratch and why does this emerging “reform” in Congress make an already unbearable situation much worse? The following are just some of the reasons:
· Taxpayers will send nearly 500 billion additional dollars of federal subsidies to the private health insurance industry that has created and perpetuates the healthcare crisis. This infusion of liquidity further entrenches the political clout and economic power of this immoral industry that has already used its current economic power to defeat authentic healthcare reform at this phase of the struggle.
· The number of uninsured and underinsured will continue to increase to unacceptably high levels beyond the 23 million estimated to remain uninsured under this fake reform.
· The cost of healthcare for an individual family will continue to accelerate after beginning at an unacceptably high level.
· The federal government will compel, under the threat of criminal prosecution, all citizens who currently do not have health insurance, to purchase private health insurance that they do not want, cannot afford, and that will not provide comprehensive coverage for medically necessary care. This unprecedented new federal government role and intrusion into the lives of people are not only profoundly immoral but also arguably unconstitutional.
· The systemic racial disparities in the access to health care and healthcare outcomes are inadequately addressed and will be exacerbated because of the expanded role of private for-profit health insurance companies in the provision of medically necessary care and the criminal penalties for non-compliance with the individual mandate.
· No effective regulations are in place to force private insurance companies to control costs. For example, private health insurance companies can charge (1) 4 times more to older people, (2) more to people with pre-existing conditions, (3) more to people with chronic conditions, (4) more to people who are not engaged in Wellness Programs, and (5) and more to people for virtually any other reason they can think up to maximize profits that does not violate current civil rights laws.
· The current and formidable monopoly that the private health insurance industry already “enjoys” will be fortified.
· There will be no uniformity of health insurance coverage provided by these mandated health insurance plans.
· There will be no oversight of the denial of health insurance despite the fact that our tax dollars are providing an unprecedented 500-billion- dollar windfall to the private health insurance industry.
· Drug prices will not be regulated. · 43 billion dollars in Medicare payments will be cut from payments to safety net public hospitals and clinics while the sickest and poorest people will be driven into them. · Taxes on expensive employer-based health benefit packages will increase 40%, resulting in employers cutting back on these benefit packages and passing the increased costs to workers. · The bills deny people with disabilities comprehensive healthcare; they force them to stay poor to be eligible for Medicare in order to receive healthcare and critical resources that should be provided as a matter of human right. · Restrictions will be imposed on a women’s right to choose an abortion. · Undocumented people are excluded from all healthcare reform; this is fiscally irresponsible, negligent to serious public health concerns, and just inhumane. The Private Health Insurance Must Go! Coalition will mobilize by any moral means necessary in order to work with all grassroots groups to build an historic and powerful social movement in the United States to win Medicare for All by 2012.
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Conyers - Not Here to Compromise |
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Wednesday, 30 December 2009 16:41 |
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White House has declared war on the Netroots, aka the base of the Democratic Party |
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Sanders knocks it out of the park! |
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Thursday, 17 December 2009 23:28 |
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Thursday, 17 December 2009 07:34 |
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