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Economists Back Health Care Reform, Two Reports Highlight Need for Public Option |
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Reforming the nation’s health care system to cover everyone “is essential to economic recovery,” say more than 300 leading economists and health care experts in a statement released this morning.
In addition to the statement by the economists, two new reports were released today at a news conference by the Institute for America’s Future (IAF). The reports show a health care reform plan that includes a public plan option and also requires employers to provide health coverage for their workers or pay into a fund—known as play or pay—that will likely create jobs.
The trio of health care reform documents follow President Obama’s major speech to the American Medical Association (AMA) yesterday, where he told the physicians’ group health care reform can’t wait.
Make no mistake: The cost of our health care is a threat to our economy. It is an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It is a ticking time-bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America.
In the statement, the economists explain how health care reform will boost the nation’s economy.
We need to cover everyone now as part of comprehensive reform to rebuild our economy and restore prosperity. Affordable coverage with good benefits will give cash-strapped lower- and middle-income Americans greater financial security—and the ability to pay their mortgages, start small businesses, save for college, pursue new job opportunities and make other choices that will benefit our economy.
And it will help business owners to insure their workers. Ensuring health security for all will allow workers to move to those jobs that fit them best, not just those that provide health insurance, promoting entrepreneurship and labor market productivity.
Click here for the full statement and list of signers.
In a report prepared for the IAF and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), Phillip Cryan finds “there would most likely be significant job gains”
if health care reform includes a requirement that employers provide health coverage for their workers or pay into a fund to help finance a public health insurance plan option.
In “Will a ‘Play or Pay’ Policy for Health Care Cause Job Losses?” Cryan, a master’s candidate at the University of California at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, writes:
This report finds that the net effect on employment from a hybrid system of health care reform following the general outline proposed by President Obama is likely to be both positive and large. It would create many more jobs than it would eliminate.
Click here for the full report.
The second report was prepared by Jacob Hacker, co-director of the Center on Health, Economic and Family Security at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, and Ken Jacobs, chairman of the university’s Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. It offers recommendations for establishing a system that includes a public plan and a shared responsibility for coverage among employers, workers and the government, and also looks at the economic impact.
Play-or-pay proposals currently under consideration pose no economic threat to business and the economy. The cost to employers would be similar to a modest increase in the minimum wage. At the same time employers would benefit from access to the new pool, a reduction in the cost shift from uncompensated care into premium costs and other reforms that would bring down the cost of coverage over time.
Click here for the full report.
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Solutions,
The system is broken! It’s not just broken, but already controlled by the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. Where not the only ones held hostage by them, so are the doctors (paper work, payment for service). Last year our daughter was held hostage and refused emergency care, because the insurance company was behind paying the medical facility and combined with our inability to pay. This happened here in the USA by Americans! In Canada there would have been accountability! That’s one reason there system works. Accountability is a big part of there heath care system.
If you were Canadian, visiting in America and refused emergency care the Canadian Health Care System would pay for you to be flown back to Canada where you would get emergency care. The provincial system might not work as well in the upper territories of Canada. Just like in the US it’s difficult to get to a doctor for those living in rule areas or in an area where the care is not available or limited. A Canadian might have the same problem because of where they live, but they fly you there (for free), its part of the system. Everyone in, no one out!
The government already runs the VA and Medicare; it only works if taxpayers are willing to pay. You could go back and forth on this all day long, no system is perfect. As a taxpayer I would rather have the government run the health care system then the big insurance and pharmaceutical corporations! There is no perfect solution, but its time to look at solutions! Single Payer is one, better yet Medicare for all! I pray they come up with a better system for our children and grand children. You shouldn’t have to loose everything to be at the mercy of the government, but we also shouldn’t have to be at the mercy of big corporations…
Tina Nattell,
Brookings, OR
What will the effects on working people of the health care “reform” proposals being proposed by Obama and the Democratic controlled Congress? The over-riding priority interest of the Obama and the Democrats is not universal health coverage as it is to protect corporate profit. The needs of working people are be sacrificed to the greed of corporate profit and to expanding the bloated military budget.
Please consider these two critical articles:
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Congressional Budget Office projection
Democratic health bill would leave 37 million uninsured in 2019
By Kate Randall
17 June 2009
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/heal-j17.shtml
The Obama administration responded Tuesday to a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which estimates that health care legislation being drafted by a Senate committee would leave 37 million Americans uninsured while costing $1 trillion over 10 years.
The White House was quick to reiterate that any plan the president may eventually sign must subordinate an expansion of healthcare coverage or services to cost-cutting measures. The response was focused not on the tens of millions of potentially uninsured children and adults, but on reassuring financial interests of the administration’s commitment to fiscal responsibility.
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Congress on a Path to Transfer Hundreds of Billions in Tax Dollars to the Insurance Industry While Calling it Health Care Reform
by Kevin Zeese / June 13th, 2009 (5)
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/congress-on-a-path-to-transfer-hundreds-of-billions-in-tax-dollars-to-the-insurance-industry-while-calling-it-health-care-reform/
Thursday, as Senator Tom Harkin (D-IO) left the health care hearing room he leaned over to me and said:
I used to sell insurance. The basic rule is the larger the pool the less expensive the health care. Today we have 1,300 separate pools – separate health care plans – and that is why health care is so expensive; 700 pools would be more efficient and less expensive and one pool would be the least expensive. That’s why single payer is the answer.
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SUPPORT “SINGLE-PAYER”!!! ALL OTHER “REFORMS” DO NOT MEET THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE!!!
It is unfortunate that the President, after labor worked their tails off during the campaign to get him elected, after he has said he supported single payer and has now flip flopped on the issue. The players in the “reform” have been smeared with the ink of all the checks they have received from the pharmaceuticals, health insurance companies. Now the HC industry will be paid back with a watered down version of health “care”. The “public” option will not even cover all of the 46-37 million uninsured, so how will those with private plans have a chance to get into the public plan?
This is a rush job, right now none of this seems to pan out. Again labor NEEDS to persuade Obama that single payer is the answer. The system needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up and implemented with single payer.
I support single payer and I vote! We need to stop FOR PROFIT health care. That is another reason health care is so expensive here. Plus hundreds of millions in CEO pay and all the waste and redundant paperwork. We rank 37th in the world now and are not going up unless we change business as usual. American patients need to think about getting well, not fretting over how to pay for care. In no other industrialized countries this is not even a question. No wonder our happiness scale is #75 in world.
I sit on the board with Utah association of Health underwriters and http://www.BenefitsManager.net as well as http://www.HealthInsuranceSource.net for health insurance reform. Several interesting changes took place with H.B. 188 passage earlier this year that seems all too familiar on the federal level. The spirit of the bill allows private market place remedies. It essentially guarantees insurance providers a “no loss” or “no gain” over competing carriers in the insurance exchange portal which is http://www.UtahInsuranceExchange.info. On the surface it seems not to be attractive to participating carriers (voluntary at this point). But you have to understand the carriers’ goal is to cover their administration fees. That can be accomplished now. The other half of the equation is providers and their billing practices that need to be reformed. That is on the agenda. Keep an eye on Utah because the national health care debate seems much the same ground we have already covered.
In http://www.UtahInsuranceExchange.info which is the beginning of a state sponsored program addresses issues on a local state level that the federal level might look at. Coming from an underwriting background I know where the dime falls. I am of the opinion that large waste occurs from providers billing for procedures that developed “no outcome”. Insurance carriers are not the only bad guys on the block. In most of our purchasing decisions….don’t we pay ONLY when we know that we will get a desired outcome? Why is it if you ask the doctor how much a particular test or procedure is he doesn’t know? Shouldn’t providers be held to a transparent cost standard?
You must be in the health care business from some interaction point to make statements of fact in the face of historical changes. When you are in the system from any touch point (insurance, provider, hospital, Medicare or patient) you get the “real issues” because of real time experience.
I often quote the Switzerland health care system as an example of tough questions that we will have to face at some point down the time line. Did you know that premature babies are not resuscitate upon birth if they cannot draw breath? Did you also know that is the same with “senior care” experiencing system failure or failures? They don’t extend life of a senior with multiple failures like intubation as example. Anyone in the business of paying claims knows that the single most expensive bills in what we call “shock loss” is within NICU for newborns and seniors in acute / intensive care / hospital.
The Swiss apparently made decisions made based upon cost vs. quality outcome. Are we as a nation prepared to make that type of decision or to define when to incubate, resuscitate a newborn or a senior? To define the conditions and rules of practice? With a litigious society I think not. This is why we need tort reform. Without tort reform medical provider costs will never drop. Liability costs with medical providers are nearly half of operating expenses. With health insurance carriers it translates to about 10% of every premium dollar collected.
I don’t think we are hearing about tort reform because most of the house and senate on the federal level are lawyers and have practicing law firm interests / ownership. In the healthcare system there is no total innocence. Insurance executives with bonuses, doctors overbilling, hospitals overbilling because the street gang thug got dropped at their door with no insurance. The lawyers are there to stir the pot and promise lavish fortune at the end of the PERCEIVED misery chain. Am I saying we don’t need them? No, but I am saying there is clear and documented abuse of the legal system that awards outlandish claims in the millions for a $20,000 mistake. Ambulance chasers being the most abusive. What about those that educate their clients on defraud and then use the legal system to pirate insurers?
I agree with many other comments, WE NEED SINGLE PAYER! Why do so much of our dues go to Dems if Dems do nothing for us? Time to break with the parties of big business and form a labor party.