>From Jerry Policoff: With Max Baucus riding herd over healthcare reform in the Senate it is becoming pretty clear that anything he approves will leave the health insurance companies with a major gatekeeper role.
The healthcare reform floated by Barack Obama during the campaign revealed a vivid understanding of just how predatory these companies are. We need to remind Obama of these words. Clearly Obama understood during the campaign that insurance companies cannot be trusted. While President Obama did not campaign on single-payer (though he did say that he would go that way if he was building a healthcare system from scratch), we all know that the only way to rein in the insurance companies is to replace them with a government financed, privately delivered single-payer healthcare system. Max Baucus's hearing the other day not only had no single-payer representatives present, it was in fact dominated by the health insurance industry, its corporate allies, and its lobbyists. Such a panel is inconsistent with the message candidate Obama delivered during the campaign: BARACK OBAMA'S PLAN FOR A HEALTHY AMERICA: Lowering health care costs and ensuring affordable, high-quality health care for all ŠLOWERING COSTS BY INCREASING COMPETITION IN THE INSURANCE AND DRUG MARKETS. It is not right that Americans families are paying skyrocketing premiums while drug and insurance industries are enjoying record profits. These companies benefit most from the status quo, and in many cases are the greatest obstacles to reform. Š ŠThe insurance business today is dominated by a small group of large companies that has been gobbling up their rivals. In recent years, for-profit companies have bought up not-for-profit insurers around the country. Other not-for-profits found business so lucrative, they converted to for-profit companies. There have been over 400 health care mergers in the last 10 years, and just two companies dominate a full third of the national market. The American Medical Association reports that 95% of insurance markets in the United States are highly concentrated and the number of insurers has fallen by just under 20% since 2000. These changes were supposed to make the industry more efficient, but instead premiums have skyrocketed, increasing over 87 percent over the past six years. Over the same time period, insurance administrative overhead has been the fastest-growing component of health spending. The 2007 Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System reported that between 2000 and 2005, administrative overhead - including both administrative expenses and insurance industry profits - increased 12.0 percent per year, 3.4 percentage points faster than the average health expenditure growth of 8.6 percent. And while health care costs continue to rise for families, CEOs of these insurance companies have received multi-million dollar bonuses. Barack Obama will prevent companies from abusing their monopoly power through unjustified price increases. Š Jerry Policoff 1115 Wheatland Avenue/ G-3 Lancaster, Pa. 17603 Home phone/fax: 717-295-0237 Cell: 717-682-4434 www.progressives4pennsylvania.com www.healthcare4ALLPA.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to [email protected] OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
