The House passed its watered down Health Insurance Profit Enhancement Bill (masquerading as Healthcare Reform), receiving accolades from dyed in the wool Democrats over the howls of conservative ideologues, who, comfortably insured themselves, are quite content with the status quo. Having spent most of my professional life in healthcare, it is clear to me that true healthcare reform in America is now dead. The Democratic Party has shown itself , once again, to be cowardly and incompetent, the President, who I strongly supported in word, dollar and deed , has failed to lead, while the Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industries, with their Conservative and Republican supporters, have carved out nothing short of victory.
I hearken to the words of Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson who wrote:
The House passed its watered down Health Insurance Profit Enhancement Bill (masquerading as Healthcare Reform), receiving accolades from dyed in the wool Democrats over the howls of conservative ideologues, who, comfortably insured themselves, are quite content with the status quo. Having spent most of my professional life in healthcare, it is clear to me that true healthcare reform in America is now dead. The Democratic Party has shown itself , once again, to be cowardly and incompetent, the President, who I strongly supported in word, dollar and deed , has failed to lead, while the Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industries, with their Conservative and Republican supporters, have carved out nothing short of victory.
I hearken to the words of Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson who wrote:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
While there are individual elements of the House plan that make it marketable to the general public, like an end to pre-existing condition exemptions, a more careful review exposes a flawed plan that overlooks the ineffective and unsustainable way that healthcare is delivered in this country. The insurance industry itself could not have written a more self serving plan, one that will expand their customer base by over 30 million, while creating a "public" option doomed by design to fail, thus ending the single payer debate forever. One need look no further than the stock prices of health insurance companies which have rallied multiples faster than all other market sectors combined as "reform" Bills in both Houses have been relentlessly disassembled.
I applaud Dennis Kucinich for showing the insight and principled courage to vote against the House Bill! Dennis Kucinich Explains Why He Voted No On Affordable Health Care for America Act
Not convinced? Let's look at the specifics. The bill dilutes the "public option" from covering over 100 million people, to just under 6 million. It is unlikely to survive the Senate at all. It increases Medicaid and Medicare benefits, while using Medicaid and Medicare savings to pay for about half of the program??? It forces the lowest paid Americans to purchase insurance from the very industry this bill protects. It forces tiny companies ($500,000 in annual payrolls interprets to roughly a 10 employee company) to provide health insurance benefits that they may be unable to afford. (Yes, they may get a tax credit, but what good is a tax credit if you are not making any income to be taxed?) They have excluded so called "undocumented" aliens from participation. You know those people. They are the ones we allow to remain in the country to do the work we don't want to do, for wages we find inadequate if not illegal. The people we pretend aren't here when it suits us. The same ones who will continue to have acute conditions treated in emergency rooms while they watch their loved ones die unnecessarily of untreated chronic disease in the richest country on earth. By the way, how does this reconcile with a Christian tradition?
Do unto others, but check their papers first.
Looking deeper, the vast majority of healthcare expense results from lifestyle diseases. Whether you want to admit it or not, most heart disease, most diabetes, and many cancers are caused by what you eat and how you live. This is no longer speculation. It is fact. Yet, where are the incentives for wellness, and the disincentives for lazy, unhealthy lifestyles? Why is the pharmaceutical industry, whose stated goal is to provide drugs to every person, sick or not, allowed to become a substitute for good health. Why do we pay for Viagra, Cholesterol and acid reflux reducing drugs instead of attacking the root causes. Why do we allow the pharmaceutical industry to buy FDA approvals? Where is the accountability for 40,000 deaths by Vioxx? Where do we address the fact that healthcare itself has become the leading cause of death in the country? This from a study discussed in Life Extension Magazine:
This fully referenced report shows the number of people having in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be 2.2 million annually. The number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed for viral infections is 20 million per year. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed is 7.5 million per year. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization is 8.9 million per year.
The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is nearly 800,000 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the number of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.
Still not convinced? Here (edited for brevity) are a few statistics related to some lifestyle enhanced (and in some cases induced) chronic diseases from the CDC website.
In 2005, 133 million people, almost half of all Americans lived with at least one chronic condition.
- The medical care costs of people with chronic diseases account for more than 75% of the nation’s $2 trillion medical care costs.
- The direct and indirect costs of diabetes is $174 billion a year.
- Each year, arthritis results in estimated medical care costs of nearly $81 billion, and estimated total costs (medical care and lost productivity) of $128 billion.
- The estimated direct and indirect costs associated with smoking exceed $193 billion annually.
- In 2008, the cost of heart disease and stroke in the U.S. is projected to be $448 billion.
- The estimated total costs of obesity was nearly $117 billion in 2000.
- Cancer costs the nation an estimated $89 billion annually in direct medical costs.
When will healthcare focus on cures to disease rather than pharmaceutical facilitators of unhealthy lifestyles?
Without fundamental change to the system, without dismantling the insurance industry, which provides absolutely no benefit to health care, without a serious discussion of both wellness and end of life "care", without pharmaceutical industry controls, we cannot have an economically sustainable, effective healthcare system. Why?
Because the Federal government is broke. Most States are broke. Pension plans are broke. Yes, the United States of America is broke, and our standard of living now serves at the pleasure of not-so-friendly powers overseas.
So the "Affordable Healthcare for America Act" is doomed to fail. The Republicans know this. The blue dogs know this. The Democrats know this. Even Obama knows. They just hope you don't notice.
Yes, celebrate your Pyrrhic victory while you can, but remember that this is the day that the good guys lost. Everybody knows.