Bill Scher: Big Business' Healthcare Solution Ignores Those Who Need It Most

[marmar]

from TomPaine.com, via AlterNet:


Big Business' Healthcare Solution Ignores Those Who Need It Most

By Bill Scher, TomPaine.com. Posted May 10, 2007.



Business leaders want a break from mounting healthcare costs, but their policy fix would be nothing more than a dressing up of the same failed healthcare system.

Business leaders jumped into the universal healthcare pool this week, as 36 companies formed the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform and called for a system where all individuals are required to carry health insurance. The announcement further shifts the center of gravity of the healthcare debate, where opposing health insurance for every American is understood as unreasonable. But that doesn't make the Coalition's emergence an unequivocally healthy development.

The crucial debate now is over what role our government should play to secure affordable, quality coverage for all. The coalition, which includes some insurance and pharmaceutical companies, appears to favor continued restrictions on our government's ability to keep insurance companies honest and serve all the public.

The coalition is not backing a specific plan yet, but it has "core principles" that were laid out by the group's founder, Safeway CEO Steve Burd, in a column for the conservative Washington Times. Their first principle? "Because market forces are largely absent in today's healthcare system, costs are spiraling out of control," writes Burd. "Market forces, if properly introduced, can fix this problem."

Uh, come again? He doesn't see that it's market forces that entice insurance companies to cherry-pick the young and healthy as customers to score an easy profit, leaving millions behind without insurance, leading to higher costs for everybody? This complete misreading of the problem doesn't bode well for any future policy proposal.

The emphasis on "market forces" sends a signal that the coalition wants universal coverage in name only, where our government mandates individuals to get private coverage but does little to reign in the detrimental practices of the insurance industry. Everyone might be covered, so to speak, but for too many, it would be paltry coverage at high cost.

The nominally universal system that the coalition proposes would, of course, be a great deal for the insurance companies. They would get millions of new customers in one fell swoop without having to comply with much new regulation. But for the rest of us, it would be nothing more than a dressing up of the same failed healthcare system. Costs would continue to be squeezed where they shouldn't, leading to a continued rationing of care, and allowed to run rampant elsewhere. The coalition principles give a nod to assistance for low-income families, but that won't necessarily protect them from getting squeezed along with the middle class. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/51654/

[watrwefitinfor]

1. And the working poor would be able to afford this, exactly how? n/t