Health care costs for the public sector are going to keep rising and it likely will mean service cuts, tax increases, layoffs and labor disagreements at both the local and state levels of government. The micro read on this is that the various government entities have been too generous — which is way too simple an analysis. The reality is that we should be discussing this as part of the national health care debate and not focusing so narrowly on public employees and turnining to the rhetoric of resentment (i.e., “I work in the private sector and get shafted on health care, so public employees should get shafted, too). Fix health care and health insurance and this should take care of itself.
Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
Scare tactics on health care
I hope Nicholas D. Kristof is right about this, that we are wiser about the failings of our own health system and won’t be scared off by the kind of “swiftboating” that targeted John Kerry and that helped doom the Clinton-era health reforms.
In a fine column discussing the Canadian-style single-payer plan, he demonstrates that most of the arguments against single-payer are, well, hogwash. Focusing on the story of an American attorney living in Vancouver, BC, and paying “the equivalent of just $49 a month for health care,” he knocks the legs out from under the arguments against the Canadian plan.
Diane Tucker, 59, the subject of his column, suffered a stroke at work and was transported to an emergency room where she was met by a doctor who immediately took her for a CT scan. She was released after a week in a hospital in which “conditions weren’t as opulent as at some American hospitals.”
Then again, the price was right. “They never spoke to me about money,” she said. “Not when I checked in, and not when I left.”
Scheduling an appointment with a specialist after her hospital stay wasn’t exactly easy, but she did get an appointment and “underwent three months of rehabilitation, including physical therapy several times a week.”
Again there was no charge, no co-payment.
See a pattern?
Let’s consider her American experience — which occurred last year while on a visit to San Francisco. She had fainted and was rushed to a hospital, where “the person meeting her at the emergency room door wasn’t a doctor.”
“The first person I saw was a lady with a computer,” she said, “asking me how I intended to pay the bill.” Ms. Tucker did, in fact, have insurance, but she was told she would have to pay herself and seek reimbursement.
Nothing was seriously wrong, and the hospital discharged her after five hours. The bill came to $8,789.29.
The two experiences, Kristof writes, have settled it for Tucker:
Ms. Tucker has since lost her job in the recession, but she says she’s stuck in Canada — because if she goes back to the United States, she will pay a fortune for private health insurance because of her history of a stroke. “I’m trying to find another job here,” she said. “I want to stay here because of medical insurance.”
Of course, single-payer is not on the table at the moment — a travesty. Rather, we are arguing over the merits of creating a public insurance option that would compete with the private insurers, with lawmakers fearful that private insurers would not be competitive with the public plan. You read that correctly: Lawmakers are more concerned with inefficient private insurance companies than with providing lower-cost insurance and expanding coverage.
Given the way this debate is playing out, I doubt anyone would be surprised to learn that the health and insurance industries have given in excess of $3 million to Congressional candidates during the 2010 election cycle — which started in January.
Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, one of the committees reviewing health care legislation, is a major recipient of health care and insurance money, as are many members of the relevant committees.on
The reality is that this is a fight about money — providing access to health care to everyone in the United States will cost the insurance industry, the HMOs and many in the health care industry money. That’s why they’re spending money to control what reform ultimately will look like.
As much as this is a discussion about health care, it also is evidence of the need for a clean elections program — voluntary public financing of campaigns — at the federal level. Take the private money out of the system and we stand a fighting chance to make the kind of changes we need.
Runner’s diary, Thursday
I am a slug, a big, fat slug who has gotten lazy and should be ashamed of himself. Why, you ask, would I use such harsh language to describe myself? Well, I’ve been a lazy slug who has managed to get the running shoes on only sporadically.
For instance, today is Thursday. I ran three miles on the treadmill and lifted. but I haven’t run since last Thursday, meaning I went six days without running.
See what I mean? I’m a slug.
Enough about bipartisanship — Give us healthcare reform
Chris Bowers at OpenLeft reminds us that bipartisanship is not about doing what’s right, but about doing what makes sense politically:
Actually, the goal of health care legislation is to reduce the cost of health care and increase access to health care. By contrast, the goal of bipartisanship is to get Democrats and Republicans to agree with each other. Those are different goals with no inherent connections.
Given the numbers — i.e., that the Democrats have significant majorities in both houses — you’d think they could dispense with this false comity. Nope. Their commitment to it has political purpose:
The purpose of bipartisanship is so that, in the event that you pass legislation that is unpopular and / or does not end up working, then it is impossible to take all of the blame for it.
In some ways, this makes the Republicans seem more principled (they aren’t, by any stretch of the imagination) — they had no interest in bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake.
Don’t ask: Obama’s Bill Clinton moment
President Barack Obama has called himself a “fierce advocate” for gays and lesbians, but he has done little to advocate for gay rights since taking office in January. In fact, his choice of the Rev. Rick Warren, the evangelical and anti-gay pastor, to offer the invocation at his inauguration can be seen as a slap in the face to the gay community.
On two of the most publicized issues — gay marriage and gays in teh military — he has remained remarkably silent. His promise to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Clinton-era compromise that The New York Times says has “caused its own kind of damage to military readiness.”
Thousands of service members have been discharged from duty at a time when the military is stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The loss of highly skilled interpreters and intelligence analysts has been especially damaging.
He has gone so far as to have his adminstration argue on behalf of a policy he has publicly denounced — a manuever that would make Bill Clinton blush.
The best hope for overturning the policy, therefore, is Congress, where there is legislation pending.
Here is Rush Holt, D-NJ, the Congressman who represents much of Central Jersey and is cosponsoring the bill, on Rachel Maddow the other night, talking about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:
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Holt can be cautious and I think he held his tongue some in this interview, but he also made it clear that we can no longer wait. It’s 2009, after all, and the fact that there are public institutions off-limits to gays and lesbians is morally indefensible.
