By Cliff Montgomery – Jan. 12th, 2009
As the U.S. Congress works to finalize its health care reform legislation, it must be pointed out that the House and Senate bills fail to provide the comprehensive care needed to keep down current spiraling costs.
This can only be achieved through a strong public option–a tactic used by every other wealthy industrialized nation to control prices and to make health care a right for all, not just a privilege for a few.
And it works. The United States is the only wealthy country that does not insure all of its citizens through a government-run health care system. And on Jan. 7th, the American Spark showed that the average U.S. citizen spends more than double what an ordinary citizen of most other rich nations has to pay for basic health care needs.
So what are the most basic flaws in the legislation now being considered?
At this point both the House and Senate bills are pretty bad – but the Senate bill is worse. The House legislation originally had a fairly basic public option, which has been whittled down to almost nothing. The Senate bill doesn’t even possess that.
So what, in our estimation, are the single greatest problems with the legislation apparently being hammered out by Congress? It now appears that the final bill will:
#1—Not fix America’s out-of-control health care costs. In fact, health insurance will continue to be far too expensive for a fair number of lower income people.
Both bills will force virtually every American to purchase insurance. Some minor subsidies apparently will be provided. But poorer families may be forced to surrender up to 20% of their annual income–one out of every five dollars they make–to buy health insurance.
And for all that pain, the House and Senate bills still will leave millions un-insured. Only a public option would certainly insure every American, and slash prices to boot.
#2—Insurance companies almost surely will remain exempt from U.S. anti-trust laws. As current law now stands, insurance companies are exempt from laws which prevent price-gouging and business monopolies.
A new Congressional Research Service report, released in November 2009, sheds light on the role this anti-trust exemption plays in generating many of our out-of-control health care costs.
“The health insurance market has many features that can hinder markets, lead to concentrated markets, and produce inefficient outcomes,” flatly stated the Nov. 2009 report.
“The exercise of market power by firms in concentrated markets generally leads to higher prices and reduced output—high premiums and limited access to health insurance—combined with high profits” for the monopolies, declares the November report.
The House legislation would end the anti-trust exemption, while the Senate bill lets the insurance monopolies continue.
#3—Tax U.S. workers’ health coverage as a principal means of paying for the current health reform effort. The Senate plans to tax the benefits packages of hard-working Americans.
The Senate apparently believes that the wealthy should get the bailouts, but we should should get the taxes.
The initial House bill, by contrast, pays for health care reform with a basic surcharge on the wealthiest Americans. Since we bailed them out, it seems the least they can do is help everyone else for a change.
As we said above, the legislation now being hammered out will fail to provide the comprehensive health care reform needed to keep down out-of-control costs. That’s why the current beast deserves to die.
