HARD CASH FOR HEALTH BUT NOT HEALTH-CARE

Never has the public been more effectively misled, ill-informed, and blatantly deceived than during the supposed health care debate over the past few months. We all have a naive belief that somehow debate between opposing arguments will yield truth and enlighten us as to the facts. This is rubbish!

There has been a televised debate between President Obama, Senators and Congressman who have more in common on the health care issue than differences. Most of them have accepted campaign financing from the health care lobby and are not seriously concerned about the soaring costs of prescription drugs nor the least bit troubled about leaving questions concerning our health up to the wisdom of insurance companies. Big Pharma and the five largest medical insurance companies have caused the health care crisis by their unrestrained thirst for outrageous profits. Yet, there has been no serious discussion in Congress about placing controls on these vultures or replacing them with a public-financed single payer system, as is the common practice in almost all industrialized countries in the world. President Obama began private negotiations with Big Pharma and the insurance thieves many months ago, assuring them they need not fear price controls nor a federally-managed health care system similar to Medicare. He never meet with the many associations of health care professionals such as the Nurses Association, Doctors for Universal Health Care, the American Medical Association or others who have advocated a single payer system.

LET THE LOBBY RULE – IT'S THE AMERICAN WAY
Congress has been besieged by well-paid agents for the insurance and drug industries, who now admit to having 13,739 paid lobbyists. Imagine – that's 25 for every member of Congress! Between 1999 and 2009, the medical industry budget for lobbying Congress has grown from $1.44 billion to $3.47 billion. Also, according to Health Care for America Now, premiums for family insurance grew more than twice as fast as the actual cost of medical care between 2000 and 2008. Notwithstanding these facts, the Heath Care industry’s trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), has consistently pointed to sky-rocketing health costs as the reason for all the growth in their premiums. (Washington Post 02/28/10).
Upon passage of the Health Care Reform bill in the House of Representatives last Sunday night, March 21st, the New York Times (David Sanger 03/22/10) assured us that “Obama will go down in history as one of the handful of presidents who found a way to reshape the nation's social welfare system”. Obama's methodology was actually quite simple: let the insurance thieves craft a piece of legislation that would make sure that they had captured the entire health care market without any restraints upon the prices they charge, and then tell the Democrats it was the best he could work out. If Obama had wanted to reduce health care costs, he would have worked vigorously for a single-payer system or at the very least placed some restraints upon the insurance and drug companies lust for profit. The fact that he negotiated privately with the drug and insurance industry from the start was an acknowledgment that they held the necessary political and financial power over both the White House and the Congress.

Obama assured the health care industry that their monopoly would not be endangered by any federally -run single payer option. He then acted out a series of phony populist rants against the insurance giants to make an already badly informed public think he was really on their side. A lot of people believed until the very end that their guy Obama was really intent upon serving their interests! WSWS reports (03/22/10) that: “Details of the legislation have been kept deliberately vague. The public presentation by the administration and congressional Democrats is designed to conceal far more than what it reveals. People are largely left in the dark as to the bill's provisions. There has been no honest public discussion”. In actuality, the bill promises cuts in Medicare, requires that families obtain insurance from private firms or pay a fine, and delivers a huge number of new premium payers to the private for-profit insurance companies. Employers will be under no obligation to provide health insurance to their workers and can avoid this responsibility with a minimum fine.

AN HISTORIC MOMENT INDEED
The New York Times editorial (03/23/10) in lauding what it calls Health Care 'Reform' argues: ”Over time the reforms could bring about sweeping changes in the way medical care is delivered and paid for. They could ultimately rival Social Security and Medicare in historic importance”. This is complete nonsense: Social Security and Medicare were actually wrested from the ruling establishment as the result of great social struggles by working men and women, whereas Obama's health care plan has been written by the insurance thieves themselves with no input by working class people, by labor unions, or by health care professionals. It bears no relation to genuine reform. The NYTimes suggests that the Obama plan would provide a brake on skyrocketing insurance premiums through the proposed Health Insurance Rate Authority. Unfortunately, this early proposal was eliminated during Congressional negotiations and no mechanism to control a rise in premiums any longer exists in the bill the President has signed. No one bothered to tell the NYTimes apparently.

The United States already spends twice as much as other industrialized countries on health care - $7,129 per person. If the system is not changed, soon one dollar out of every five spent by our citizens will be for health care alone, while the amazingly inefficient and costly insurance industry wastes 31 cents of every health care dollar on paperwork, corporate bonuses and profit. A total of 80% of registered Democrats favor universal single-payer health care. Yet Obama, with a rock solid majority in both Houses of Congress, has just imposed a health care plan that ignores the public will. Popular support was not considered important and could always be manipulated once you've banked the lobby's campaign contributions and gotten the media safely on your side. He discovered that it was a slam-dunk to get people like Denis Kucinich, John Conyers and Howard Dean to abandon their principles once he raised the promise of future campaign assistance and access to his good ear. With the promise of a few dams, bridges and roads to nowhere, he might have even bought himself some errant Republican votes, in the lubricious tradition of LBJ.

A TRIUMPH FOR HARD-WORKING AMERICANS, A OPEN DOOR FOR THIEVERY
The NYTimes called the Obama plan “a triumph for hard-working Americans by reigning in the worst practices of the insurance companies”. Yet this same newspaper's Business Section in that very same edition called it “a boon for hospitals, drug makers and private health insurance companies”. The share prices of Merck, Pfizer, Cigna and Aetna surged merrily. Health care is the most profitable sector of the American economy and, with the financial sector, the largest contributor to our politicians' re-election campaigns. There is a growing disillusionment with Obama, with the Democratic-led Congress that has given the banksters a trillion dollar social welfare program, and provided no further jobs program to counter increasing unemployment and increased reliance upon food stamps everywhere across the country. How was it that, after finally realizing that he would not get a single Republican to vote for real Health Care Reform, Obama even further weakened the bill by dropping even his watered-down public option clause? Didn't he have even a modicum of belief in reform?