We Already Have a Public-Private Healthcare System That Doesn't Work

Adding an option to purchase a private plan through an insurance exchange doesn’t make coverage affordable. Under Massachusetts’ 2006 reform, the health exchange adds a 4% administrative surcharge to every policy it brokers (on top of private insurers’ already high overhead). For a 58-year-old, the cheapest coverage available costs more than $4,872 annually, with a $2,000 deductible, and steep co-payments after that. Under the widely touted federal employees health benefit exchange (FEHBP), government picks up 75% of the cost of coverage, yet 230,000 federal workers remain uninsured because costs are so high. Adding the option to purchase a public plan like Medicare will merely replay the disastrous Medicare HMO experience. For the past 20 years Medicare patients have been allowed to opt for the traditional Medicare program or enrollment in a private plan paid for by Medicare. This option was supposed to stimulate competition and lead to improved efficiency. Instead, the private plans have used every trick in the book to undermine real competition and drive up costs – e.g. selectively recruiting healthy, profitable patients while leaving the sick and expensive ones to Medicare; and successfully lobbying Congress to add extra payments to prop up the private plans. The GAO estimates that private plans cost Medicare an extra $8.5 billion in 2008, raising premiums for all Medicare recipients (not just those enrolled in private plans) and depleting the Medicare Trust Fund. For-profit health corporation-friendly bills, which put private profits over public health, will not and cannot solve our healthcare crisis. HR 676, if implemented, would be a sustainable, fair, and cost-efficient solution to the healthcare crisis.

Health Care Not a Private Consumption Good

HR 676 is only economical & efficient and real consumer-driven solution that will get costs under control, provide access to all and bring back true doctor-patient autonomy. No other developed country has left for-profit at the core of its health care system and made it work. American people are being foisted by a powerful policy-making elite that knows how to manipulate public “preferences” through skillfully structured information and misinformation. Culture change in this country needs to include ethical principles driving health policy; health care is a human right not a private consumption good!