|
 Campaign
for America's Future's Five Key Health Care
Questions for Democratic candidates
WASHINGTON, March 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With more and more
Americans believing that health care should be a top priority for
our nation, tomorrow's health care forum in Las Vegas, Nev. provides
leading Democratic presidential candidates the opportunity to stake
out positions to deal with this looming crisis, according to
Campaign for America's Future co-director Roger Hickey.
"Americans want bold and comprehensive solutions to what most now
regard as a health care crisis," said Hickey. "The big question in
the debate is about the future of the American health care system
and how specific candidates will show their commitment to providing
affordable health care coverage for all Americans."
Using
the "Health Care for America" proposal, developed by Yale University
professor Dr. Jacob Hacker, as the benchmark for creating a simple,
easy to understand, comprehensive and affordable health care plan,
Hickey today posed 5 questions that should be asked of every
presidential candidates' health care plan in an editorial published
on TomPaine.com.
1. Will the candidate's plan really
cover everyone with a decent guaranteed level of
coverage at an affordable cost?
2.
Would the candidate offer a public plan, like Medicare, that has a
predictable, guaranteed level of benefits that "cannot be taken
away"?
3.
Has the candidate thought through how his or her plan will be
financed?
4.
Will the candidate's health plan control spiraling health care
costs?
5.
Finally, is the candidate's health plan simple and clear enough that
they can explain it -- and get us to describe it to someone else?
The Health Care Answers We Need
Roger Hickey
March 23, 2007
Roger Hickey is the co-chair of Campaign for America's Future.
http://www.ourfuture.org
The presidential candidates are feeling the pressure from voters to
tackle the escalating health care crisis with bold and comprehensive
solutions. So when the Center for American Progress and the Service
Employees International Union invited all the candidates to Las
Vegas on Saturday morning to debate health care, nearly all the
Democratic candidates agreed to participate. (Alas, all the
Republican candidates will be taking a pass.)
At the onset of the debate, former Senator John Edwards is likely to
be the center of attention, and not only because of the wrenching
news of his wife's recurrent cancer. Edwards has been driving the
health care debate with a very detailed plan to assure health
coverage for everyone in America. Now the other candidates are
determined to match him, though most have yet to offer specifics at
this early stage of the race.
(http://johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20070206-universal-health-care/)
Of the other leading candidates, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has
rejected "tinkering and half-way measures." He declared in January
that he plans "in the next few months" to lay out a health care plan
that will cover everyone "by the end of the next president's term"
-- meaning his first term. And Senator Hillary Clinton, who as head
of Bill Clinton's health care task force, tried and failed to move
an ambitious health care program, is somewhat more cautious, saying
she won't lay out a plan until she "listens to what the people
want." As reported by Bloomberg News, on January 28, she said, "This
time, we're going to build a consensus first."
(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aVuXKoFUgXAE&refer=hom
Congressman Dennis Kucinich doesn't have the poll numbers to be
treated as a leading candidate, but he will come with a clear and
detailed plan for health care for all. He is a co-sponsor of H.R.
676, a "single-payer" plan covering all Americans in a public
system.
Kucinich can be expected to be a provocative challenger to the other
candidates -- especially those who feel the need to subsidize, and
try to regulate, the private health insurance companies to get them
to go beyond "cherry picking" -- insuring only healthier Americans
who bring in more profit -- with more subsidies to private insurance
companies.
We at Campaign for America's Future are promoting an important new
"benchmark" health care plan written by Yale professor Jacob Hacker.
The Health Care for America plan would start with choice – allowing
individuals and companies to continue with their current health care
arrangements if they are happy with them.
All
employers would be required to provide their workers private
insurance of good quality, or pay five percent of payroll to have
their employees covered through a Medicare-style public plan. Hacker
sees this approach as essential to providing guaranteed coverage
while controlling costs in the entire health care system.]
(http://home.ourfuture.org/healthcareforall/)
As we watch the debate on Saturday, how will we tell if the other
candidates are as committed as Edwards and Kucinich to fundamentally
solving the health care crisis? And how will we tell if Edwards or
Kucinich has the plan and presentation that can get the job done?
What
follows are some questions for every candidate, to help judge
whether each is really serious about health care for all:
1.
Will the candidate's plan really cover everyone -- with a decent
guaranteed level of coverage -- at an affordable cost? Calling a
plan "universal" is not enough. Massachusetts' new "universal" plan
requires everyone to purchase health insurance, but the legislature
has still not shown that it will devote the resources necessary (or
exert the regulatory control over private insurance companies) to
assure that everyone has a good health plan at an affordable
premium.
2.
Does the candidate offer a public plan, like Medicare, that has a
predictable, guaranteed level of benefits that "cannot be taken
away?" Or, will the candidate rely on private insurance companies,
using a combination of subsidies and heavy regulations to get
private companies to do what their business model does not now allow
them to: provide good health insurance at a decent price for all
Americans. Does it include people with pre-existing conditions, the
poor, older Americans not yet eligible for Medicare, and people with
dangerous occupations?
Note: Edwards tries to do both, mandating regional buying pools that
would heavily regulate private insurers and offering a public plan,
like Medicare, that, if enough people chose it, might become the
dominant health care plan for the nation.
3.
Has the candidate thought through how his or her plan will be
financed? Edwards has bitten the bullet, calling for all employers
to either provide health insurance to their employees or pay into a
fund to finance his public plan. And he's honest enough to know that
additional progressive tax revenues will be necessary -- he says
forthrightly about
$100
billion per year -- which he would cover by rolling back the Bush
tax cuts for the rich. It is true that after a successful health
care reform, the whole country would end up paying less money for
better and more comprehensive health care. But beware the candidate
that tells you that there won't be any up-front costs.
4.
Will the candidate's health plan control spiraling health care
costs? We pay much more per person for health care than any other
developed nation -- and all those other nations guarantee health
care for all. A big part of the problem is the private health
insurance system, which spends billions on advertising,
administration and gaming the system to avoid paying claims.
As a result, doctors and hospitals have to spend fortunes on
paperwork to satisfy the different billing arrangements of hundreds
of different reimbursement systems. By comparison, Medicare is a
model of efficiency with a much better record of controlling costs
than the private insurance industry, even while covering an
expensive elderly population.
Jacob Hacker, and other advocates of Medicare-style plans,
emphasizes a system that can share risk through broad pooling
arrangements and control costs over much of the health care economy.
If a candidate doesn't go in that direction -- if he or she depends
entirely on the private health insurance system -- we need to know
how they ever expect to get a handle on rapidly growing health care
costs.
5. Is
the candidate's health plan simple and clear enough that they can
explain it -- and get us to describe it to someone else? Does anyone
remember the 2004 John Kerry health care plan? It was a complicated
system of subsidies and catastrophic insurance -- best described
with the boxes and arrows of complex flow charts -- and completely
incomprehensible to even a quite educated citizen. If a future
president is going to overcome the rabid opposition of the special
interests, he or she must offer a plan that is bold but simple,
comprehensive yet understandable. And it had better resonate with
important American values, including choice, fairness, compassion
and efficiency.
We're
having a presidential debate about health care because the public
demand for solutions is so strong. Leadership at the presidential
level is crucial, but so is continued grassroots engagement. The
Campaign for America's Future will be working with national
organizations and grassroots groups to stimulate a public debate led
by citizens demanding straight talk about health care.
With
grassroots pressure, we can force all the
candidates -- for the House, the Senate and the White House -- to
respond in detail to the five questions posed here, as well as to
the concerns and values of the new progressive majority that is
putting health care on the agenda for 2008 and beyond. |
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