Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write at Salon.com:
Way, way back in the 1970's Americans were riled up over the rising costs of health care. As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter started talking about the government clamping down. When he got to the White House, drug makers, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors -- the very people who only a decade earlier had done everything they could to strangle Medicare in the cradle -- seemed uncharacteristically humble and cooperative. "You don't have to make us cut costs," they promised. "We'll do it voluntarily."
So Uncle Sam backed down, and you guessed it. Pretty soon medical costs were soaring higher than ever.
By the early '90s, the public was once again hurting in the pocketbook. Feeling our pain, Bill and Hillary Clinton tried again, coming up with a plan only slightly more complicated than the schematics for an F-18 fighter jet.
This time the health industry acted more like Tony Soprano than Mother Teresa. It bludgeoned the Clinton reforms with one of the most expensive and deceitful public relations and advertising campaigns ever conceived -- paid for, of course, from the industry's swollen profits.
As the drug and insurance companies, hospitals and doctors dumped the mangled carcass of reform into the Potomac, securely encased in concrete, once again they said don't worry; they would cut costs voluntarily.
If you believed that, we've got a toll-free bridge to the Mayo Clinic we'd like to sell you.
So anyone with any memory left could be excused for raising their eyebrows at the healthcare industry's latest promises. As if on cue, hardly had their pledge of volunteerism rung out across the land than Jay Gellert, chief executive of Health Net Inc. and chair of the lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans, assured his pals not to worry about the voluntary reductions.
Same as it ever was. When it comes to reforming the health-care "industry," our leaders continue to employ all carrot and no stick. Until that equation changes, tens of millions of Americans are going to keep getting a screwjob. Just because it's delivered with a smile and a dab of KY won't change that basic fact.