The Impact of Federal Legislation

Unfortunately, Congressional leaders and the Obama administration, from the very beginning of the 2009 federal legislative process, declared that single payer was “off the table.” Instead, the Democratic leadership started with the idea of a meager “public option,” which would have covered only 2 percent of non-Medicare beneficiaries by the year 2019, leaving the rest of us to the mercy of the private insurance market [Source: Congressional Budget Office].

Having started from a severely compromised position, the Democrat-controlled Congress then proceeded to make major concessions—to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and to the Republican minority, which wanted no reform plan at all. An individual insurance mandate—without a public option—was the insurance industry's top priority, and the Congress delivered it. The mandate will give insurance companies millions of new customers by forcing the uninsured to buy private policies or be subject to fines. At the same time, the Congress failed to control the price gouging and predatory claims denial practices of the insurance industry, meaning that too many people, even with government subsidies, will face impossibly expensive out-of-pocket health care expenses.

Health care “reform” that strengthens the worst aspects of a dysfunctional and inhumane system, and that pours taxpayer money into the coffers of private industry, while ignoring the opportunities for cost control through direct public financing of health care delivery, is no reform at all. Although the federal legislation by 2013 or 2014 may help some Americans buy insurance through “purchasing exchanges,” it also will also force millions of Americans to buy insurance products that are inadequate and over-priced. Hundreds of billions of dollars will be channeled into notoriously inefficient and wasteful private companies, rather than into health care for people.

Bottom line:

• The federal legislation forces more people to buy private insurance, which doesn’t ensure health care.
• The federal legislation leaves the current method of paying for health care intact. Waste and profiteering will continue to take precedence over human health.
• The federal legislation guarantees that health care costs will continue to rise at unsustainable rates.

For more information on why the "public option" won't work, check out Not Change we Can Believe In or Meet the New Health Care Reform or Health Care Reform 2009: No Bill is Better Than a Bad Bill.