Retired Teachers Chapter News
Help us work to fix health care
Oct 18, 2007 3:51 PM
Health-care reform may be the defining domestic issue for the majority of Americans, but there’s no chance there will be any serious improvement in our badly broken system until after the next election.
All we can hope for is that Congress will pass a few mini improvements. But even that doesn’t appear likely with the president’s veto of the widely supported, bipartisan backed State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that would have provided coverage for an additional 4 million uninsured children.
The Senate approved the bill with enough votes to override a veto but the House fell 24 votes short of a veto-proof majority. Despite strong congressional backing and widespread support across the country, the president is determined to hold uninsured children hostage rather than give any ground on his ideological obsession that such legislation is “an incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American.”
But opposition to his veto is building, including Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s announcement that, together with six other states, New York will file suit against the Bush administration’s stand.
It’s clear that nothing but a rout of conservative ideology in the next election will pave the way for a chance to fix all that’s been broken by this administration. The philosophical/ideological divide is clear.
Only the Democratic candidates have pledged to tackle the health-care problem and all of them have issued significant proposals aimed at achieving universal health insurance coverage. In stark contrast, Republican candidates continue to insist instead on their same old free-market solutions — a stand that will do nothing for America’s 50 million uninsured and the growing millions of underinsured.
Karl Rove, Bush’s former deputy chief of staff, even added his two cents. In a Wall Street Journal commentary he suggested people should be encouraged to eat better to lower health-care costs and increase access.
What are the Democrats proposing? Not a single-payer health-care system funded by tax dollars in which the government pays for all health-care costs and makes important care decisions. Republicans are raising a hue and cry, their usual fear mongering, that that is the Democratic position.
What Democrats are proposing — and each candidate has a variation — is some form of universal health care, a system under which all citizens have access to some form of coverage providing choice and including a mix of private and government plans. If you’re happy with what you’ve got, you can stay where you are.
Unions have been fighting for universal health-care coverage for decades. When the nation adopted an employer-based system after World War II, unions fought in contract after contract to improve benefits and raise the standards for the whole country. And we are prepared to continue that fight.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney answered Republican charges that unions are trying to impose “socialized medicine” on the country with an unequivocal “no!”
“We believe,” he said, “that government, employers and individuals all have a role to play in a system that provides real health security, choice and high-quality health care for all. With American ingenuity and input from all Americans, we believe it’s possible, even necessary, to craft a uniquely American plan for health-care reform.”
We support that position and will do all we can to encourage our retirees to make the 2008 election a mandate on real health-care reform.
In the meantime we can help legislators as they try to make small improvements by letting them know where we stand. The narrow margins enjoyed by Democrats are just too small to get much done. The House passed a bill requiring the administration to negotiate with insurance companies to bring down the cost of Medicare drug prices, but the Senate was not as successful and it’s not clear if they will try again. The Senate did try to OK importation of prescription drugs from Canada and several other countries, but an amendment requiring that imported drugs be approved by the administration effectively killed any chance of cheaper drugs.
House Democrats are also working on legislation that would scale back federal subsidies to Medicare Advantage plans — saving $50 billion over five years and $157 billion over 10 years — thus adding three years to the life of the trust fund. The bill would also reduce Medicare beneficiary premiums by the two dollars that pay for the added cost of the advantage plans, improve access to preventive care including waiver of the deductible for colorectal screening tests, protect beneficiaries in Medicare Advantage plans from higher out-of-pocket costs and increase regulation and oversight of private-plan marketing practices.
While we would all applaud these few improvements, the basic overhaul of health care will not have a chance without a full sweep in the next election: conservatives out and a secure majority of Democrats in the Congress and a Democrat in the White House.
We will be calling on you in the months ahead to help us make that happen. Please be ready.
