Senate Rejects Plan to Import Low-cost Drugs
By ALAN FRAM
December 16, 2009 "AP" -- WASHINGTON — The Senate rejected a plan Tuesday to allow Americans to import low-cost prescriptions from abroad, handing drug makers a victory that may help secure passage of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.
The vote on the amendment by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., was 51-48 in favor, but 60 votes were needed to prevail under a special rule. Obama had supported the measure as a senator, but his administration echoed safety concerns raised by the pharmaceutical industry — which is supporting the Democrats' health care bill.
An angry Dorgan denounced a competing amendment that would permit drug imports if the Food and Drug Administration certifies it can be done without risks.
"Do not vote for this amendment and say you've done something about the price of prescription drugs because constituents will know better," Dorgan admonished his colleagues.
The alternative amendment by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., also failed on a 56-43 vote. The House bill is silent on the issue.
Dorgan's plan would have allowed American pharmacies and drug wholesalers to import federally approved drugs from Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan — placing them within reach of average consumers.
Both the pharmaceutical industry and the Obama administration were lobbying against the proposal, saying it would not protect people from potentially dangerous or ineffective drugs. Dorgan's plan would have cost drug makers billions of dollars and had bipartisan support.
A standoff over the proposal had complicated progress on health care overhaul, which has been snagged in the Senate for two weeks.
Lautenberg's state is a center of the pharmaceutical industry. His proposal permits drug imports but adds a requirement that the U.S. government certify that the imports will be safe — a guarantee that Democrats and Republicans agree would be impossible to make.
Dorgan and others saw Lautenberg's amendment as a way to lure away Dorgan's supporters. The North Dakotan has introduced his drug import amendment repeatedly over the last decade, only to see the Senate effectively kill it by adding requirements for safety guarantees.
"We've seen that before, and the pharmaceutical industry supports advancing this as a way to defeat importation," said Dorgan.
Many countries have price controls that let them charge lower prices than are common in the U.S.
Though Obama supported the importation of low-price drugs when he was running for the White House last year, the FDA last week criticized Dorgan's proposal for not doing enough to ensure that drugs entering the U.S. from abroad will be safe (Editor's emphasis throughout). Dorgan countered that his amendment had strong safeguards, allowing imports only of FDA-approved drugs from FDA-approved foreign plants.
White House officials have denied accusations by Dorgan's supporters that the administration was opposing importation as a way of retaining the drug industry's support for Obama's health care overhaul legislation, the president's top domestic priority.
In June, the industry agreed to provide consumers and the government with $80 billion in savings. Drug makers have spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads promoting the health overhaul effort, making them one of the biggest advertisers in this year's health care fight, and the administration has little interest in antagonizing its ally.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget office estimated that Dorgan's plan would have saved the federal government $19 billion over the coming decade. Dorgan says it would have saved American consumers four times that amount.
Editor's NOTE:
Big Pharma has once again succeeded in defeating a prescription drug bill which would have saved countless lives of Americans who cannot currently afford expensive medicines and saved the nation billions of dollars--all in the name of insuring unconscionable profits for the pharmaceutical industry. The "quality" excuse is a ruse as Senator Dorgan has rightly elucidated. This is an unapologetic attempt at maintaining a government guaranteed immoral monopoly.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Showing posts with label Big Pharma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Pharma. Show all posts
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Health Care Reform Debate Full of "Noise"
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
There is a tremendous amount of "noise" currently polluting the national discussion on health care reform. The first commonly misunderstood falsehood is that the system we now have operates according to "free-market" principles. In reality it doesn’t. For example, all Medicare reimbursements whether to doctors or hospitals are limited by the Federal government. Health Care providers are not allowed to charge whatever the market will bear as is the case in a so-called "free-market." Medicare publishes a list of maximally allowable charges that every provider who participates in the Medicare Program must abide by. Not only may "health care providers" not charge whatever they wish for their services, Medicare only reimburses a percentage of the Medicare maximum allowable charge.
For purposes of illustration; if a health care provider (in this example, a surgeon) charges a usual and customary fee of $2000.00 for a given procedure including all post-operative care, and a private insurance company through a negotiated (discount) care contract pays $1500.00 for the same procedure (a 25% discount), Medicare may set the maximum allowable fee--that the provider is allowed to charge--at $1000.00. From that number, Medicare will actually pay only a percentage of $1000.00 for example 80% or $800.00 that is, 40% of the usual and customary fee or a 60% reduction. The only way the provider in question could be paid the $2000.00 is if the patient paid the entire fee personally. However, Medicare does not allow a Medicare patient to pay a non-Medicare approved rate and therefore the patient would have to drop Medicare entirely if he wished to do so. This is extremely uncommon of course. Most patients of Medicare age are enrolled in the Medicare program and would not be willing to drop that coverage in order to pay a health care provider their usual and customary fee.
If on the other hand, such a patient had a supplemental insurance policy to help make up the difference between the Medicare allowed reimbursement of $800.00 and the allowable charge of $1000.00 the supplemental policy would pay a maximum of $200.00 which means the physician would receive a total of $1000.00 or 50% of their usual and customary fee rather than the 40% that Medicare alone would pay. In either case, the amounts are significantly lower than the so-called usual and customary fee which the surgical provider would charge for the same procedure on a non-Medicare patient with full indemnity insurance coverage. However, the supplemental option does not apply if the provider accepts Medicare assignment meaning that the Medicare approved amount of $800.00 must be accepted as payment in full. Should a physician/surgeon, who accepts Medicare assignment attempt to collect the remaining $200.00 from the patient, the consequence could be the physician’s permanent expulsion from the Medicare program. The Medicare system of reimbursement clearly disadvantages the providers who perform complicated lengthy procedures which are quite costly. They have no legitimate way of compensating for the steep reductions in reimbursements. To my knowledge none of the bills pending in Congress attempt to rectify this problem. Certainly none call for increasing long frozen or severely reduced fees for medical and surgical sub-specialists who for over 2 decades have been discriminated against unfairly. Primary care providers have been the primary beneficiaries of any Medicare fee increases.
The situation is even more drastic with respect to Medicaid reimbursement which is so low as to be incompatible with the financial viability of providers who treat a significant percentage of such patients.
Private insurance companies have largely adopted Medicare reimbursement rates as well over the past 2 decades such that very few if any remaining “for-profit” companies/policies pay the so-called "usual and customary" fees which 20 years ago were significantly higher than Medicare allowable rates. Through a variety of discount vehicles including HMO's, PPO's, and various other kinds of negotiated care contracts, the private health care system no longer operates according to free market principles. In fact, as Mr. Cockburn indicated in his piece, private medical practice ceased following a "free-market" model over 40 years ago when third party payers (insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid) entered the medical market place. The Health Care "product" from that point on instead of involving only medical providers and patients, thereafter became heavily influenced by the wishes, concerns, goals etc. of third party payers. Their goal was to pay as little as possible to providers through heavy discounting of fees while limiting costly treatments and procedures. This was accomplished by eliminating undesirable insured’s and avoiding those with pre-existing conditions all the while continuing to increase insurance premiums at a much greater rate than the annual rise in cost of living. In the private sector these increasing premiums were utilized to help build profits, increase stock price and pay exorbitant salary, bonus and benefits packages to management rather than being used to pay for needed medical care. This has been unconscionable.
It is a complete ruse to argue that health care reform would mean the end of "free-market" economics in medical care. It ended a long time ago. The only question remaining is whether insurance and pharmaceutical companies will be allowed to continue stealing an unconscionable percentage of the total health care dollars available or whether some significant change is to occur whereby the available monies will be spent directly for the benefit of patients. In other words, will the unjust and immoral monopoly that private health care mega-companies currently enjoy be allowed to continue?
In his article Mr. Cockburn was certainly correct in asserting that the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry are too powerful at present in their ability to exercise complete control over private health care policy. They of course have been unwilling to release their strangle-hold over the health care system. Unfortunately President Obama has been unwilling to “take-on” these two industries and has essentially folded his cards and admitted defeat without even trying to reign in their power. The Huffington Post reported that in his secret negotiations, Mr. Obama guaranteed the insurance and pharmaceutical industries that any potential health care reform plan would not allow negotiation over drug prices nor prescription drugs to be imported from other countries, essentially insuring that the currently excessive insurance and pharmaceutical corporations’ profits will be maintained. The President gave away the store before even trying to regulate the worst offenders.
Furthermore, it is ludicrous to blame physician health care providers for the enormous rise in health care costs when their reimbursements on an actual and relative basis have dropped year over year for over 2 decades as compared with the cost of living. Their only recourse has been to make up in volume what they have lost in per-case reimbursement. While some physicians have tried to do so, it is neither morally acceptable nor medically safe beyond a minimal degree. There is only a finite amount of time available and beyond a minor increase in volume of patients or procedures complications, errors and adverse outcomes must result at least in part by attempting to rush too many patients through the system per unit time.
Hospitals have largely experienced the same reimbursement reductions which were effected as part of the diagnosis related group (DRG) legislation 2 decades ago. Insurance and pharmaceutical companies on the other hand continued to raise their rates at an incredible double digit percentage year over year. It is obvious that the major problem with regard to the rising cost of health care is the unregulated nature of the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries which through incredibly effective lobbying efforts have managed to avoid necessary regulation. Unfortunately, the actual providers of medical care i.e. doctors, nurses and hospitals have all experienced drastic cuts.
The second most frequently false health care claim is that reform will lead to rationing of care and bureaucratic control of medical decision making. That is already the case and it is insurance companies and hospitals that are primarily responsible for doing it and to a lesser extent Medicare. Patients and physicians are still united in seeking to provide needed care in most instances while insurance companies and hospitals have a vested interest in not allowing costly, complicated and high-risk procedures and treatments to be done—in the interest of increasing profits. Sadly, this is even true of so-called “not for profit” hospitals.
Stories abound of patients who have had their insurance company deny payment for various reasons despite their procedures having been determined to be medically indicated by multiple medical providers/experts. Most people are aware that they can be dropped by their insurance company at any time and they must absorb the expense of hiring an attorney to contest the suspension of care when they are least able to do so both from a health and economic standpoint. Insurance companies realize this and take full advantage of it in an almost predatory fashion. Moreover, the insurance companies are not in business to provide their insured’s with health care but unfortunately to make as much money in profits as they can by finding reasons to avoid paying for needed care. It is commonplace for patients to receive a denial of benefits letter from the insurance company for reasons which often are totally spurious.
A third false health care claim is that to provide for the entire nation’s health care would simply be too costly. This is a completely phony excuse as it is obvious that the Federal government is willing to spend virtually any amount of money on making war, bailing out the so-called banks “too big to fail” and in artificially propping up certain industries. In all of these, anything but “market forces” are involved. The amount of corporate welfare (monies provided at taxpayer expense for the benefit of favored corporations) that is given out to certain entities is simply astounding (trillions of dollars so far).
To date the combined actual cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has approached one trillion dollars and the long terms costs associate with them is conservatively estimated at a minimum of another trillion dollars. This is an unconscionable sum of money spent for wars which were unwise, immoral and illegal under US and international law. Imagine how much health care could have been provided with 2 trillion dollars! The annual “Defense Budget” of the United States exceeds a trillion dollars if all the hidden costs are added. Moreover, the two Middle East wars have been financed by the continued passing of war supplemental authorization bills above and beyond the Defense Department’s annual budget to which must be added another almost 200 billion dollars annually in war supplemental’s since 2003. That adds up to another 1.2 trillion dollars through 2009.
The truth is that there is more than enough money to provide health care for the entire nation if our priorities are properly ordered. We should end our empire of foreign bases, our presence in Iraq/Afghanistan and re-regulate the finance industry . All “3” represent ongoing financial drains which we are simply incapable of sustaining. They only benefit a minuscule fraction of Americans—those who have managed through over-utilization of our corrupt campaign finance system to buy the US Congress and the Executive branch in order to insure their own personal self interest and ill-gotten gains.
In conclusion, the following is a summary of the major features which must be included in any serious attempt at health care reform.
1.) In order to be meaningful it must address the issue of corrupt insurance and pharmaceutical company practices. If the current system is allowed to persist, the number of Americans without insurance will continue to grow from the current almost 50 million to who knows what number as more and more Americans become incapable of affording their health care premiums.
2.) If the cost of prescription drugs is not drastically lowered in the United States, increasing numbers of patients will be forced to do without them either partially or completely which over time will only increase the cost of medical care.
3.) Equally important is the need to make it illegal to exclude patients from coverage because of pre-existing conditions or because they required costly medical treatments and or procedures both of which are examples of discriminating against patients who have a history significant illness.
4.) The uninsured must be brought into the system if we are to eliminate the high cost of treating them in emergency room settings after they have already become seriously ill. (author's emphasis throughout) This is particularly crucial if the “risk-pool” is to be made large enough to be able to reduce premium rates for groups and individuals.
The two most important problems which must be definitively corrected are the almost 50 million Americans without health care coverage of any kind and the monopoly exercised currently by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. A failure to resolve these 2 problems will result in higher heath care costs, reduced care and higher taxes that is, a situation worse than the one we face now.
Based on what has transpired to date, I fear that President Obama will allow the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to continue making obscene profits the way the banking industry has--which to date he has been unwilling to re-regulate.
I hope I am wrong. It increasingly appears that the US Congress and Executive branch are controlled by big Pharma, big Banking and the big health insurance companies.
To be continued…
There is a tremendous amount of "noise" currently polluting the national discussion on health care reform. The first commonly misunderstood falsehood is that the system we now have operates according to "free-market" principles. In reality it doesn’t. For example, all Medicare reimbursements whether to doctors or hospitals are limited by the Federal government. Health Care providers are not allowed to charge whatever the market will bear as is the case in a so-called "free-market." Medicare publishes a list of maximally allowable charges that every provider who participates in the Medicare Program must abide by. Not only may "health care providers" not charge whatever they wish for their services, Medicare only reimburses a percentage of the Medicare maximum allowable charge.
For purposes of illustration; if a health care provider (in this example, a surgeon) charges a usual and customary fee of $2000.00 for a given procedure including all post-operative care, and a private insurance company through a negotiated (discount) care contract pays $1500.00 for the same procedure (a 25% discount), Medicare may set the maximum allowable fee--that the provider is allowed to charge--at $1000.00. From that number, Medicare will actually pay only a percentage of $1000.00 for example 80% or $800.00 that is, 40% of the usual and customary fee or a 60% reduction. The only way the provider in question could be paid the $2000.00 is if the patient paid the entire fee personally. However, Medicare does not allow a Medicare patient to pay a non-Medicare approved rate and therefore the patient would have to drop Medicare entirely if he wished to do so. This is extremely uncommon of course. Most patients of Medicare age are enrolled in the Medicare program and would not be willing to drop that coverage in order to pay a health care provider their usual and customary fee.
If on the other hand, such a patient had a supplemental insurance policy to help make up the difference between the Medicare allowed reimbursement of $800.00 and the allowable charge of $1000.00 the supplemental policy would pay a maximum of $200.00 which means the physician would receive a total of $1000.00 or 50% of their usual and customary fee rather than the 40% that Medicare alone would pay. In either case, the amounts are significantly lower than the so-called usual and customary fee which the surgical provider would charge for the same procedure on a non-Medicare patient with full indemnity insurance coverage. However, the supplemental option does not apply if the provider accepts Medicare assignment meaning that the Medicare approved amount of $800.00 must be accepted as payment in full. Should a physician/surgeon, who accepts Medicare assignment attempt to collect the remaining $200.00 from the patient, the consequence could be the physician’s permanent expulsion from the Medicare program. The Medicare system of reimbursement clearly disadvantages the providers who perform complicated lengthy procedures which are quite costly. They have no legitimate way of compensating for the steep reductions in reimbursements. To my knowledge none of the bills pending in Congress attempt to rectify this problem. Certainly none call for increasing long frozen or severely reduced fees for medical and surgical sub-specialists who for over 2 decades have been discriminated against unfairly. Primary care providers have been the primary beneficiaries of any Medicare fee increases.
The situation is even more drastic with respect to Medicaid reimbursement which is so low as to be incompatible with the financial viability of providers who treat a significant percentage of such patients.
Private insurance companies have largely adopted Medicare reimbursement rates as well over the past 2 decades such that very few if any remaining “for-profit” companies/policies pay the so-called "usual and customary" fees which 20 years ago were significantly higher than Medicare allowable rates. Through a variety of discount vehicles including HMO's, PPO's, and various other kinds of negotiated care contracts, the private health care system no longer operates according to free market principles. In fact, as Mr. Cockburn indicated in his piece, private medical practice ceased following a "free-market" model over 40 years ago when third party payers (insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid) entered the medical market place. The Health Care "product" from that point on instead of involving only medical providers and patients, thereafter became heavily influenced by the wishes, concerns, goals etc. of third party payers. Their goal was to pay as little as possible to providers through heavy discounting of fees while limiting costly treatments and procedures. This was accomplished by eliminating undesirable insured’s and avoiding those with pre-existing conditions all the while continuing to increase insurance premiums at a much greater rate than the annual rise in cost of living. In the private sector these increasing premiums were utilized to help build profits, increase stock price and pay exorbitant salary, bonus and benefits packages to management rather than being used to pay for needed medical care. This has been unconscionable.
It is a complete ruse to argue that health care reform would mean the end of "free-market" economics in medical care. It ended a long time ago. The only question remaining is whether insurance and pharmaceutical companies will be allowed to continue stealing an unconscionable percentage of the total health care dollars available or whether some significant change is to occur whereby the available monies will be spent directly for the benefit of patients. In other words, will the unjust and immoral monopoly that private health care mega-companies currently enjoy be allowed to continue?
In his article Mr. Cockburn was certainly correct in asserting that the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry are too powerful at present in their ability to exercise complete control over private health care policy. They of course have been unwilling to release their strangle-hold over the health care system. Unfortunately President Obama has been unwilling to “take-on” these two industries and has essentially folded his cards and admitted defeat without even trying to reign in their power. The Huffington Post reported that in his secret negotiations, Mr. Obama guaranteed the insurance and pharmaceutical industries that any potential health care reform plan would not allow negotiation over drug prices nor prescription drugs to be imported from other countries, essentially insuring that the currently excessive insurance and pharmaceutical corporations’ profits will be maintained. The President gave away the store before even trying to regulate the worst offenders.
Furthermore, it is ludicrous to blame physician health care providers for the enormous rise in health care costs when their reimbursements on an actual and relative basis have dropped year over year for over 2 decades as compared with the cost of living. Their only recourse has been to make up in volume what they have lost in per-case reimbursement. While some physicians have tried to do so, it is neither morally acceptable nor medically safe beyond a minimal degree. There is only a finite amount of time available and beyond a minor increase in volume of patients or procedures complications, errors and adverse outcomes must result at least in part by attempting to rush too many patients through the system per unit time.
Hospitals have largely experienced the same reimbursement reductions which were effected as part of the diagnosis related group (DRG) legislation 2 decades ago. Insurance and pharmaceutical companies on the other hand continued to raise their rates at an incredible double digit percentage year over year. It is obvious that the major problem with regard to the rising cost of health care is the unregulated nature of the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries which through incredibly effective lobbying efforts have managed to avoid necessary regulation. Unfortunately, the actual providers of medical care i.e. doctors, nurses and hospitals have all experienced drastic cuts.
The second most frequently false health care claim is that reform will lead to rationing of care and bureaucratic control of medical decision making. That is already the case and it is insurance companies and hospitals that are primarily responsible for doing it and to a lesser extent Medicare. Patients and physicians are still united in seeking to provide needed care in most instances while insurance companies and hospitals have a vested interest in not allowing costly, complicated and high-risk procedures and treatments to be done—in the interest of increasing profits. Sadly, this is even true of so-called “not for profit” hospitals.
Stories abound of patients who have had their insurance company deny payment for various reasons despite their procedures having been determined to be medically indicated by multiple medical providers/experts. Most people are aware that they can be dropped by their insurance company at any time and they must absorb the expense of hiring an attorney to contest the suspension of care when they are least able to do so both from a health and economic standpoint. Insurance companies realize this and take full advantage of it in an almost predatory fashion. Moreover, the insurance companies are not in business to provide their insured’s with health care but unfortunately to make as much money in profits as they can by finding reasons to avoid paying for needed care. It is commonplace for patients to receive a denial of benefits letter from the insurance company for reasons which often are totally spurious.
A third false health care claim is that to provide for the entire nation’s health care would simply be too costly. This is a completely phony excuse as it is obvious that the Federal government is willing to spend virtually any amount of money on making war, bailing out the so-called banks “too big to fail” and in artificially propping up certain industries. In all of these, anything but “market forces” are involved. The amount of corporate welfare (monies provided at taxpayer expense for the benefit of favored corporations) that is given out to certain entities is simply astounding (trillions of dollars so far).
To date the combined actual cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has approached one trillion dollars and the long terms costs associate with them is conservatively estimated at a minimum of another trillion dollars. This is an unconscionable sum of money spent for wars which were unwise, immoral and illegal under US and international law. Imagine how much health care could have been provided with 2 trillion dollars! The annual “Defense Budget” of the United States exceeds a trillion dollars if all the hidden costs are added. Moreover, the two Middle East wars have been financed by the continued passing of war supplemental authorization bills above and beyond the Defense Department’s annual budget to which must be added another almost 200 billion dollars annually in war supplemental’s since 2003. That adds up to another 1.2 trillion dollars through 2009.
The truth is that there is more than enough money to provide health care for the entire nation if our priorities are properly ordered. We should end our empire of foreign bases, our presence in Iraq/Afghanistan and re-regulate the finance industry . All “3” represent ongoing financial drains which we are simply incapable of sustaining. They only benefit a minuscule fraction of Americans—those who have managed through over-utilization of our corrupt campaign finance system to buy the US Congress and the Executive branch in order to insure their own personal self interest and ill-gotten gains.
In conclusion, the following is a summary of the major features which must be included in any serious attempt at health care reform.
1.) In order to be meaningful it must address the issue of corrupt insurance and pharmaceutical company practices. If the current system is allowed to persist, the number of Americans without insurance will continue to grow from the current almost 50 million to who knows what number as more and more Americans become incapable of affording their health care premiums.
2.) If the cost of prescription drugs is not drastically lowered in the United States, increasing numbers of patients will be forced to do without them either partially or completely which over time will only increase the cost of medical care.
3.) Equally important is the need to make it illegal to exclude patients from coverage because of pre-existing conditions or because they required costly medical treatments and or procedures both of which are examples of discriminating against patients who have a history significant illness.
4.) The uninsured must be brought into the system if we are to eliminate the high cost of treating them in emergency room settings after they have already become seriously ill. (author's emphasis throughout) This is particularly crucial if the “risk-pool” is to be made large enough to be able to reduce premium rates for groups and individuals.
The two most important problems which must be definitively corrected are the almost 50 million Americans without health care coverage of any kind and the monopoly exercised currently by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. A failure to resolve these 2 problems will result in higher heath care costs, reduced care and higher taxes that is, a situation worse than the one we face now.
Based on what has transpired to date, I fear that President Obama will allow the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to continue making obscene profits the way the banking industry has--which to date he has been unwilling to re-regulate.
I hope I am wrong. It increasingly appears that the US Congress and Executive branch are controlled by big Pharma, big Banking and the big health insurance companies.
To be continued…
It’s Official: Healthcare Reform is Dead
by Shamus Cooke
Global Research, August 18, 2009
The “transparent government” that President Obama guaranteed during his electoral campaign has become yet another broken promise. On August 14th, the Huffington Post revealed a memo containing details of “the deal” that Obama cut with health care mega-corporations in secret White House meetings. And although the White House denies the authenticity of the memo, the details are consistent with earlier reports from other national media outlets.
The White House deal essentially reduces some of the more egregious health care corporation swindling — estimated to save $80 billion over ten years — while Obama shamelessly promised that other irrational vehicles for health care mega-profits will remain untouched: any congressional health care plan will not attempt to negotiate for cheaper drugs, nor import them from other countries, Medicare will not be altered in a way that affects health care corporations’ profits.
Creating new laws by backroom dealing with giant corporations is of course bad for democracy. Unfortunately, Obama had few other options, since he refused beforehand to directly confront the health care industry’s power. He was thus reduced to bargaining with these entities, leaving any leverage at the door. The health care companies fully understood this and exploited the situation to the fullest.
The competing health care bills in Congress reflect this dynamic, since Congressmen have been similarly awed — and bought — by the health care industry. The different health care bills all agree that health care should be “mandated” — like the car insurance you’re required to buy (if you can afford it). All the bills also agree that Medicare payments to hospitals and other providers — many directly affecting the most vulnerable — will be cut drastically, leading to “…savings [that] would pay nearly 40 percent of the [health care] bills’ cost.” (The New York Times, August 9, 2009). They’re giving health care with the left hand and taking it with the right.
One disagreement between the competing plans was the highly controversial “public option.” This was what the health care corporations hated most, since it was a way to directly take power out of their hands. Again, the White House backed off, “signal[ing] Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate.” (New York Times, August 16, 2009). The “cooperative” idea is widely considered by health care advocates to be useless.
Such sellouts were the inevitable result of intensified health care industry bribery (so-called “lobbying”), which Business Week claims to be “… a record $133 million…in the second quarter of 2009 alone…” (August 6, 2009). The same article — appropriately named The Health Insurers Have Already Won — examines the health care lobby’s successes and notes that no matter what health care bill emerges from Congress, the “insurance industry will emerge more profitable.”
The same article also reveals — unsurprisingly — that health care corporations were responsible for destroying the public health care option, while “also achieving a secondary aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured. That will make the new customers more lucrative to the industry.” This simply means that the taxpayer money that will be used to subsidize any health care plan will go straight towards health care company profits, while providing the same shoddy care they’ve always provided.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
The health care industry is so pleased with the deal they’ve struck with Obama, they’re willing to put up $150 million toward an advertising campaign to insure the deal’s passage.
This servitude to the health care corporations has strongly emboldened the rightwing, who are using the Democrat’s obvious corruption to stir up hysteria and fanaticism through media and town halls. The rightwing attacks have driven many liberals to defend the Democrats, who deserve zero pity, let alone support.
The Republicans are placing safe bets that the Democrats will achieve absolutely nothing progressive in health care — a gamble that will payoff tremendously in the next elections. The Republicans are also using the situation to massively propagandize against “socialism,” a word wrongly attributed to any health care bill in Congress. The purpose, however, is to steer people away from any substitute to capitalism, a system that millions of Americans rightfully see as broken as health care.
The rightwing is also using the health care crisis to again focus its guns on immigrants. Instead of the giant health care corporations being responsible for the health care crisis, society’s most vulnerable are painted as the culprits. The Wall Street journal complained that health care costs are being driven up due to “half of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. don't have health insurance”. (August 15, 2009)
Of course the 6 million undocumented immigrants who lack health insurance have plenty of company: there are at least 47 million U.S. citizens without health insurance, a number that is growing drastically as unemployment skyrockets.
The same Wall Street journal article implies that anyone seeking emergency room help should be turned away unless they show proof of citizenship. Leaving aside the obvious moral issues of denying a human being emergency room medical treatment, another issue remains: millions of working and poor people do not have any “proof of citizenship,” and would also be denied lifesaving emergency health care.
The Wall Street Journal would never focus on the fact that a large number of African Americans likewise use the emergency room for their primary source of medical treatment, since such a statement would be obviously racist, while racism against immigrants is widely accepted. Whipping up racist hysteria, however, is a tactic that is being employed on a broader basis as people rightfully blame mega-corporations for the economic crisis.
Another issue blamed on immigrants is Medicare’s economic woes, while the real perpetrators — the health care corporations — escape responsibility. Every time Medicare is used to purchase overpriced medications, the pharmaceutical companies rake in huge profits. Medicare must also pay for over priced medical procedures, pricey hospital stays, etc. In fact, Medicare Part D was specially inserted by the Bush administration to drive up profits for the health care industry. In Part D’s first six months, profits for pharmaceutical companies went up $8 billion, according to the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform. Part of Obama’s deal with the health care industry says that Part D will remain untouched.
This fiscal ransacking of Medicare is being used as a reason to dump the program in its entirety, something that the Democrat’s “health care plan” will be the first step towards achieving. (The most profitable parts will likely remain intact.)
Medicare must not only be saved, but extended to everybody. This obvious solution to America’s health care disaster is “too radical” for Democrats and Republicans alike. Indeed, under the current system far too many of society’s resources are being used towards the profits of the health care industry, bank bailouts, and foreign wars for such truly universal health care to exist.
To create health care for all, the socially-precious health care industry must be completely taken out of the hands of the mega-corporations who’ve ruined the lives of millions of people — indeed directly responsible for the deaths of a staggering number of lives — while helping bankrupt federal and state governments.
In an earlier article we wrote: “If Obama’s health care plan leaves in place the same greedy shareholders and CEO’s of the health care mega-corporations, while funneling them billions of taxpayer money, very little is likely to change. Likewise, if every American has health insurance, but insurance companies benefit from not paying for expensive surgeries or medications, or drug companies continue to benefit from having monopolies over medications, millions of people will continue to suffer.” ( March, 9, 2009, The Emerging Health Care Sellout).
Obstacles to change must be removed, not bargained with or pandered to. The health care industry — like the big banks — is exerting a stranglehold over society that the Democrats and Republicans are unwilling to break, and indeed profit from. This cowardice will hopefully shed light on an old truth for millions of people: the Democrats — like the Republicans — are a party of big business and cannot be anything different. Workers must make a decisive break with the Democrats and politically organize themselves independently, so that another hope-wielding politician doesn’t waste our time with promises of change while delivering health care profits, bank bailouts and wars.
Global Research, August 18, 2009
The “transparent government” that President Obama guaranteed during his electoral campaign has become yet another broken promise. On August 14th, the Huffington Post revealed a memo containing details of “the deal” that Obama cut with health care mega-corporations in secret White House meetings. And although the White House denies the authenticity of the memo, the details are consistent with earlier reports from other national media outlets.
The White House deal essentially reduces some of the more egregious health care corporation swindling — estimated to save $80 billion over ten years — while Obama shamelessly promised that other irrational vehicles for health care mega-profits will remain untouched: any congressional health care plan will not attempt to negotiate for cheaper drugs, nor import them from other countries, Medicare will not be altered in a way that affects health care corporations’ profits.
Creating new laws by backroom dealing with giant corporations is of course bad for democracy. Unfortunately, Obama had few other options, since he refused beforehand to directly confront the health care industry’s power. He was thus reduced to bargaining with these entities, leaving any leverage at the door. The health care companies fully understood this and exploited the situation to the fullest.
The competing health care bills in Congress reflect this dynamic, since Congressmen have been similarly awed — and bought — by the health care industry. The different health care bills all agree that health care should be “mandated” — like the car insurance you’re required to buy (if you can afford it). All the bills also agree that Medicare payments to hospitals and other providers — many directly affecting the most vulnerable — will be cut drastically, leading to “…savings [that] would pay nearly 40 percent of the [health care] bills’ cost.” (The New York Times, August 9, 2009). They’re giving health care with the left hand and taking it with the right.
One disagreement between the competing plans was the highly controversial “public option.” This was what the health care corporations hated most, since it was a way to directly take power out of their hands. Again, the White House backed off, “signal[ing] Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate.” (New York Times, August 16, 2009). The “cooperative” idea is widely considered by health care advocates to be useless.
Such sellouts were the inevitable result of intensified health care industry bribery (so-called “lobbying”), which Business Week claims to be “… a record $133 million…in the second quarter of 2009 alone…” (August 6, 2009). The same article — appropriately named The Health Insurers Have Already Won — examines the health care lobby’s successes and notes that no matter what health care bill emerges from Congress, the “insurance industry will emerge more profitable.”
The same article also reveals — unsurprisingly — that health care corporations were responsible for destroying the public health care option, while “also achieving a secondary aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured. That will make the new customers more lucrative to the industry.” This simply means that the taxpayer money that will be used to subsidize any health care plan will go straight towards health care company profits, while providing the same shoddy care they’ve always provided.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
The health care industry is so pleased with the deal they’ve struck with Obama, they’re willing to put up $150 million toward an advertising campaign to insure the deal’s passage.
This servitude to the health care corporations has strongly emboldened the rightwing, who are using the Democrat’s obvious corruption to stir up hysteria and fanaticism through media and town halls. The rightwing attacks have driven many liberals to defend the Democrats, who deserve zero pity, let alone support.
The Republicans are placing safe bets that the Democrats will achieve absolutely nothing progressive in health care — a gamble that will payoff tremendously in the next elections. The Republicans are also using the situation to massively propagandize against “socialism,” a word wrongly attributed to any health care bill in Congress. The purpose, however, is to steer people away from any substitute to capitalism, a system that millions of Americans rightfully see as broken as health care.
The rightwing is also using the health care crisis to again focus its guns on immigrants. Instead of the giant health care corporations being responsible for the health care crisis, society’s most vulnerable are painted as the culprits. The Wall Street journal complained that health care costs are being driven up due to “half of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. don't have health insurance”. (August 15, 2009)
Of course the 6 million undocumented immigrants who lack health insurance have plenty of company: there are at least 47 million U.S. citizens without health insurance, a number that is growing drastically as unemployment skyrockets.
The same Wall Street journal article implies that anyone seeking emergency room help should be turned away unless they show proof of citizenship. Leaving aside the obvious moral issues of denying a human being emergency room medical treatment, another issue remains: millions of working and poor people do not have any “proof of citizenship,” and would also be denied lifesaving emergency health care.
The Wall Street Journal would never focus on the fact that a large number of African Americans likewise use the emergency room for their primary source of medical treatment, since such a statement would be obviously racist, while racism against immigrants is widely accepted. Whipping up racist hysteria, however, is a tactic that is being employed on a broader basis as people rightfully blame mega-corporations for the economic crisis.
Another issue blamed on immigrants is Medicare’s economic woes, while the real perpetrators — the health care corporations — escape responsibility. Every time Medicare is used to purchase overpriced medications, the pharmaceutical companies rake in huge profits. Medicare must also pay for over priced medical procedures, pricey hospital stays, etc. In fact, Medicare Part D was specially inserted by the Bush administration to drive up profits for the health care industry. In Part D’s first six months, profits for pharmaceutical companies went up $8 billion, according to the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform. Part of Obama’s deal with the health care industry says that Part D will remain untouched.
This fiscal ransacking of Medicare is being used as a reason to dump the program in its entirety, something that the Democrat’s “health care plan” will be the first step towards achieving. (The most profitable parts will likely remain intact.)
Medicare must not only be saved, but extended to everybody. This obvious solution to America’s health care disaster is “too radical” for Democrats and Republicans alike. Indeed, under the current system far too many of society’s resources are being used towards the profits of the health care industry, bank bailouts, and foreign wars for such truly universal health care to exist.
To create health care for all, the socially-precious health care industry must be completely taken out of the hands of the mega-corporations who’ve ruined the lives of millions of people — indeed directly responsible for the deaths of a staggering number of lives — while helping bankrupt federal and state governments.
In an earlier article we wrote: “If Obama’s health care plan leaves in place the same greedy shareholders and CEO’s of the health care mega-corporations, while funneling them billions of taxpayer money, very little is likely to change. Likewise, if every American has health insurance, but insurance companies benefit from not paying for expensive surgeries or medications, or drug companies continue to benefit from having monopolies over medications, millions of people will continue to suffer.” ( March, 9, 2009, The Emerging Health Care Sellout).
Obstacles to change must be removed, not bargained with or pandered to. The health care industry — like the big banks — is exerting a stranglehold over society that the Democrats and Republicans are unwilling to break, and indeed profit from. This cowardice will hopefully shed light on an old truth for millions of people: the Democrats — like the Republicans — are a party of big business and cannot be anything different. Workers must make a decisive break with the Democrats and politically organize themselves independently, so that another hope-wielding politician doesn’t waste our time with promises of change while delivering health care profits, bank bailouts and wars.
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