Daschle: America’s Health Care System in Critical Condition

by Seth Michaels, Mar 6, 2008

How can our nation solve America’s health care crisis? According to former Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle (S.D.), it’ll take more than a clear assessment of where we are now––it will require real political leadership. (The AFL-CIO’s health care reform efforts are part of our campaign to Turn Around America. Find out more here.)

Daschle discussed our nation’s broken health care system and the obstacles to solving the challenges yesterday at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. He based his discussion on his new book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis.

The United States, Daschle says, has by far the most expensive health care system in the world: $2 trillion per year. That’s 16 percent of our economy, a figure that’s headed to 20 percent. Yet our health outcomes often lag behind other countries.

We’re not exactly getting what we’re paying for…we have a system that costs too much, covers too few and delivers too little.

Although Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) claimed on Tuesday night that the United States has “the world’s best medical care,” Daschle said that what we actually have are “islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity,” with the highest-quality options for those who can afford it and inadequate or inconsistent service for millions more.

Daschle critiqued the myths and outright lies spread by opponents of health care reform. Among them, that any change to the system would be “socialized medicine,” which Daschle says creates a false choice. Opponents also claim we “can’t afford” reform, even though the flaws in the system are raising costs.

The most pernicious falsehood, Daschle notes, is the notion that health care reform would require “rationing.” What this fails to acknowledge is that our current system has, as Daschle puts it, “the worst kind of rationing”—disparities in quality and access, millions of uninsured who can’t get the care they need and a pattern of denials of claims by those who have coverage.

Daschle, who served in the Senate from 1987 to 2005 and has been part of legislative efforts to improve our nation’s health delivery system, said that if we’re going to fix problems of access, cost and quality, we need to learn from the failure of past attempts.

The recent fight over the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) highlights the need for real political leadership—particularly presidential leadership—in moving health care reform, Daschle says. Although a broad coalition of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were unified behind a bill to renew and improve SCHIP, President Bush stopped it in its tracks by using the national stage, his veto power and his leverage over members of his party in Congress. For any fundamental change to happen, Daschle says, we can’t have a president determined to stand in the way.

Daschle says that a Republican president would be unlikely to take up necessary major health care reforms. In particular, he said, the McCain proposal on health care just won’t solve the real problems that exist.

By taking the McCain approach, we’re not doing anything but masking costs. The aggregate costs of our health care system don’t change in that approach. All we’re doing is cost shifting, and cost shifting doesn’t solve anything, it could exacerbate the problem. High deductibles exacerbate the problem, too. They go against the recognition that we need to spend more time on wellness than we do on sickness.

The two Democratic candidates contending for the nomination, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have released comprehensive health plans aimed at providing health care coverage.

As we approach the 2008 elections, Daschle says he’s optimistic the next president and new Congress will recognize the scale of the problems with our health care system and the need for change. However, it will take a strong, serious effort to overcome the myths, spin and distortion of opponents of reform.

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