With all of the attention on the pending health care overhaul focusing primarily on scare tactics, misinformation, and rowdy town hall meetings, one option has flown conspicuously under the radar: a national single-payer system, or more easily understood as Medicare-for-all. The benefits of such a system, which President Obama supported as a Senator, include:
health care delivery would remain private, i.e. private doctors, private hospitals, etc
the government would act as the sole provider of health insurance which would drastically reduce paperwork and administrative costs (medicare operates at a 3-4% overhead as compared to 30-40% for the average for-profit insurance company)
no more insurance executives making hundreds of millions or, in the case of GroupHealth executive Bill McGwire, billions of dollars off of the sick and dying
by creating the largest pool of insureds possible, it would maximize the spreading of risk and provide the cheapest possible form of insurance
According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, FAIR, the answer simple: interlocking boards of directors among the media, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries. Their investigative reporting found that:
"nine major media corporations and their major outlets, Disney (ABC), General Electric (NBC), CBS, Time Warner (CNN, Time), News Corporation (Fox), New York Times Co., Washington Post Co. (Newsweek), Tribune Co. (Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times) and Gannett (USA Today) found connections to six different insurance companies. Five out of the nine media corporations studied shared a director with an insurance company; two insurance companies—Chubb and Berkshire Hathaway—were represented by more than one media corporation director.
"The study also found crossover between these media corporations and several large pharmaceutical companies, such as Eli Lilly, Merck and Novartis, whose profits would also likely be negatively impacted by a single-payer system. Out of the nine media corporations studied, six had directors who also represented the interests of at least one pharmaceutical company. In fact, save for CBS, every media corporation had board connections to either an insurance or pharmaceutical company."
This overlapping wouldn't be cause for concern had FAIR not discovered the following trend:
"single-payer was mentioned in only 164 articles or news segments from January 1 through June 30, 2009; over 70% of these mentions did not include the voice of a single-payer advocate. Over 45% of the pieces that did include a single-payer advocate were episodes of the Ed Show, an MSNBC program whose host, Ed Shultz, frequently advocates for single-payer healthcare. Without the Ed Show, just 19% of articles or news segments that mentioned single-payer would have included an actual advocate of the plan."
So the next time you hear a negative portrayal of a national single-payer system, such as Canada's, ask yourself if the media corporation telling you that has a conflict of interest in doing so...
In a bit of political showmanship, the democrat from New York's 9th district put forth an amendment for the pending health care legislation that would repeal Medicare, in effect forcing a vote on support for a "government-run health care system". He explains his reasons in the 5 minute video below. I love it.
And how did the Republicans vote? 57 against - 0 for. Way to trap the them in their own rhetoric!
As Congress debates groundbreaking health care legislation, the insurance industry continues to reap ridiculous profits. One corporation, in particular, caught my eye: UnitedHealth Group, the largest commercial health insurer based on revenue.
A few days ago, UnitedHealth Group posted a second-quarter profit that more than doubled last years, earning $859 million (73 cents/share) as compared to $337 million (27 cents/share), respectively. What makes this news even more shocking is that they made this profit with 6% drop in enrollment! They are making more money off of fewer insured customers. How is that possible without cherry-picking, overcharging, or denying legitimate claims?
As a reminder, this is the same company that paid their CEO, Bill McGuire, a total compensation package of $1.7 billion over his 10 year reign at the company. That works out to roughly $46,500 per hour (assuming he worked 10 hour days). That means this man "earned" the median household income in this country every single hour. Granted, he had to pay back almost $500 million in fines to the SEC for backdating options, but every dollar he made was a dollar that could have gone to providing health care. Who would you rather have between you and your doctor? A government bureaucrat, answerable to We the People, or a UnitedHealth Group bureaucrat who has financial incentives to deny claims so they can pay their CEO literally billions of dollars?
I just got this email from the office of Dennis Kucinich D-OH, one of the true progressive democrats in the House. For supporters of single-payer health care, this is great news:
"With your support, your phone calls, your emails, we won a major legislative victory today for a state single payer health care option in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. The House Education and Labor Committee approved the Kucinich Amendment by a vote of 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting yes.
The amendment propels the growing single payer health care movement at the state level. There are at least ten states which have active single payer efforts in their legislatures. They are California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. The amendment mandates a single payer state will receive the right to waive the application of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which has in the past been used to nullify efforts to expand state or local government health care."
With all of the attention on the pending health care overhaul focusing primarily on scare tactics, misinformation, and rowdy town hall meetings, one option has flown conspicuously under the radar: a national single-payer system, or more easily understood as Medicare-for-all. The benefits of such a system, which President Obama supported as a Senator, include:
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