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Public Plan Choice Needed in Health Care Reform |
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This is the first in a series of occasional articles looking at health care reform proposals from a wide range of groups and experts.
The incoming Obama administration is still developing a comprehensive plan to address a broad range of health care concerns. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a specific plan but has called for one that secures high-quality health care for all.
The AFL-CIO has endorsed certain concepts that any plan should be built around. One of those key elements is the creation of a public health care insurance plan as an option for workers and families who either have private insurance coverage or no coverage at all.
Recently, University of California professor Jacob Hacker published a white paper making the case for a public plan. (Find Hacker’s plan, the AFL-CIO response to the plan and other recent reports at the AFL-CIO health care site here.)
The Case for Public Plan Choice in National Health Reform: Key to Cost Control and Quality Coverage says such a plan would achieve three main goals:
- Contain costs.
- Improve quality.
- Drive value.
On the cost front, Hacker says:
public insurance has a better track record than private insurance when it comes to reining in costs while preserving access notes….Medicare [a public plan]…has proven superior at cost control not just to health plans in the private sector, but also to private plans that contract with the federal government
Concerning quality, Hacker says public insurance has “pioneered…quality-improvement methods that have frequently set the standard for private plans.”
More important, it has the potential to carry out these vital tasks much more effectively in the future, using information technology, large databases of practices and outcomes, and new payment approaches and care-coordination strategies.
Hacker also says a public plan would provide competition that would spur private insurers to improve their services and care. But without a public plan competing with private plans,
we will continue to lack strong mechanisms to rein in costs and drive value down the road. As a benchmark, a new public plan alongside private plans will help unite the public around the principle of broadly shared risk while building greater confidence in government over the long term.
Click here to read Hacker’s white paper.
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Secretary of Labor nominee Hilda Soliz was a co-sponsor.
THE NATIONAL SINGLE PAYER ALLIANCE
Ring in the New Year and the New Congress!
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY FOR HR 676, Single-Payer Healthcare
Wednesday, January 15, 2009
Dear Healthcare-NOW! Activists and Supporters:
The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare – National Single Payer Alliance Steering Committee is gearing up for the second national call-in day to Congress on Wednesday, January 15, 2009. Looking back, thank you to everyone who made the December 22nd call-in day a huge success. By 11am that day, Senator Kennedy’s office reported to have already received over 1000 phone calls! Many congressional offices across the country were flooded with the message to support HR 676 and stop Massachusetts style health care reform from being used as a national model.
Here’s how to escalate our efforts for the call-in action on January 15th.
The second Call-In Day on January 15th will target the Washington DC offices. Included in this email is a draft script for the call-in.
HR 676 has been reintroduced to Congress, so we are guaranteed to continue our work supporting the same bill number in the House. There are 86 co-sponsors of HR 676 from the 110th Congress who have been sworn into the 111th session. This number will quickly grow because of the extensive lobby efforts already in motion. Our goal is to make sure elected officials hear from their constituents to again cosponsor HR 676 and help to effectively double the number of cosponsors in the House.
We ask that you urge your Congress member to attend the briefing on HR 676 that will be held on January 28th from 3-5pm in the halls of Congress. The briefing will allow elected officials to learn about the economic impact a single-payer system will have in an economic recovery package. In August of 2005, The National Coalition on Health Care found in a fiscal analysis of health care reform that “the single payer model would reduce costs by over $1.1 trillion over the next decade while providing comprehensive benefits to all Americans.” Single-payer is the only reform proposal that can claim cost savings and comprehensive health care for all.
The second platform for the call-in day is to urge federal Senators to sponsor companion legislation to HR 676 in the Senate. This is a critical effort to compete with inadequate reforms currently posed to be discussed in the Senate.
Keeping calls brief and to the point is best and not only makes your members more willing to make calls but also makes logging the issue and sending a clear message to Congressional members much more efficient.
You may also wish to give your members contact information for one of your group’s “experts” on HR676, just in case the Congressional office wants more information. Or you may certainly give them Rep. Conyers’ contact information or Healthcare-NOW!’s information.
Please do keep track of your group’s outreach efforts – especially reactions to the calls that your members may note. All of this information is critical as we track the support in Congress for HR 676. Please report back about the Call-In day to Healthcare-NOW!http://www.healthcare-now.org/campaigns/call/ Healthcare-NOW! will be sending an email to remind everyone of the call-in day on Wednesday, January 15th. This email should be forwarded widely.
How to contact your representative: You can find your representatives contact information atwww.votesmart.org. We recommend calling and/or faxing on this day to get your message through. If possible, request to speak to the Chief of Staff or Health Care Aid, rather than leaving the message with whomever answers the phone. If calling or faxing is not possible, you can also contact your members of Congress by email.
Draft scripts are below (activists should tweak the call scripts as appropriate for their individual groups). It should also be noted that a high volume of calls have been getting through to Congress, so some activists suggested shortening the script as the call-in day progresses. HR676 Co-sponsor: Hi, my name is —————-. I am calling to thank Representative ___________________ for his/her support of HR676, John Conyers’ National Health Insurance Act. Rep. Conyers already reintroduced HR676 and I want to reaffirm my support for HR676, single payer healthcare legislation and ask Rep. ____________________ to do the same by signing on again as a co-sponsor working for true reform of this terrible healthcare system. Also, please learn more about single-payer and the economic impact of HR 676 at the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare Congressional briefing on January 28th from 3-5pm in Room 2237 of the Rayburn Building. With cost-savings estimated at $1.1 trillion dollars over ten years, single-payer is the ultimate bail out for the American people. Thank you.
Non-co-sponsors: Hi, my name is —————-. I am calling to urge Representative ___________________ to support of HR676, John Conyers’ National Health Insurance Act. Rep. Conyers already reintroduced HR676 and I want to reaffirm my support for HR676, single payer healthcare legislation and ask Rep. ____________________ to do the same by signing on as a co-sponsor and working for true reform of this terrible healthcare system. Also, please learn more about single-payer and the economic impact of HR 676 at the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare Congressional briefing on January 28th from 3-5pm in Room 2237 of the Rayburn Building. With cost-savings estimated at $1.1 trillion dollars over ten years, single-payer is the ultimate bail out for the American people. Thank you.
Message to your US Senator: Hi, my name is —————-. I am calling to urge Senator ____________ to sponsor companion legislation in the Senate to HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act that will implement a national single-payer health care system in the United States. The current health care legislation posed for discussion in the Senate is using the failed Massachusetts reform as a model for the nation. The reform in Massachusetts is leaving thousands uninsured and is far too expensive to be sustained because it leaves profit in the middle of our health care system. In the most recent election, local ballot initiatives supporting single payer and opposing individual mandates passed by landslide margins in all ten legislative districts where they appeared. With almost all precincts tallied, roughly 73 percent of 181,000 voters in the ten districts voted YES in support of a single-payer system. Say no to Massachusetts style health care, and yes to single payer health care as proposed in HR 676. Thank you.
THe first thing we all must do is to stop using the word insurance! As long as the insurance companies are involved in anything to do with health care we are all screwed with our pants on.
The only plan that is feasible is a not for profit Medicare for all plan that covers all of us. Dennis Kucinich has proposed this for years and the Congress is too much into receiving money from the insurance company lobbies to listen. That’s called receiving bribes to do what they tell you to do.
It’s time to turn our the members of Congress who receive bribes from lobbyists. They work for us and they are turning their backs on the needs of their constituents. We have to eliminate lobbyists altogether for the people to receive the treatment we pay for.
Call, write, email or visit your representatives and demand that they respond to our needs. They don’t need this plan. They all have excellent health care that WE PAY FOR! They should be tossed out on their fat asses for neglecting us when they have the care that we all need.
Labor needs to get solidly behind Single Payer at the state and federal levels, including moving to a completely public plan that eliminates the insurance companies.
You need a way for users to let you know when there’s a problem with a link. I was trying to read the health care post with the AFL-CIO’s “Our Take” in Hacker’s white paper. Both links in the message body go to “Our Take” rather than one to the white paper and one to “Our Take.” Then, when reading “Our Take.” the link to the AHIP’s Health Care Proposal: http://www.workingfamiliestoolkit.com wasn’t there. I have a AFT portal for the tool kit because my employer is Rutgers AAUP-AFT, but I am a member of CWA 1032. Anyway, this is not for posting on the blog but for asking for help with your links!
Hacker argues that tacking on a public option to a health care reform bill which leaves the private insurance system intact is a way of sneaking single payer in by the back door. I would argue that it’s putting lipstick on a pig. Hacker’s strategy was tried in Massachusetts with disastrous results–in effect it provided a “cover” for a highly regressive piece of legislation which has done nothing to resolve the health care crisis there. You can get details from http://www.masscare.org (they have a short pamphlet called “Massachusetts Health Reform: Solution or Stopgap?”) or from Martha Angell’s article in the American Prospect, 4/21/08.