House and Senate health bills a TURKEY!!
They’re stuffed with a massive bailout for the health industries.
Patients will receive little protection or affordability of health care. It will waste billions of dollars and delay the process of creating truly effective health reform. Similar legislation has already been tried and failed in many states.
Make Congress start from scratch improving and expanding Medicare for all. It would save over $400 billion annually on insurance overhead and bureaucracy, enough to cover all 47 million uninsured Americans. It’s simple, quick, and uniquely American for providing universal and financially sustainable health care.
10 additional reasons why the draft legislation is not the reform America needs
1. By the time it takes effect in 2013/2014 tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans will already have died due to uninsurance.
2. Then, unacceptably, 17-24 million people will still be uninsured. The actual number of uninsured is likely to be higher and we know that people without insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have insurance.
3. Medical bankruptcies will continue due to out-of-pocket costs on covered services up to $10,000 in addition to the cost of premiums and the cost of uncovered services. The average medical debt causing insured family bankruptcies is $18,000.
4. Uninsured will be forced to pay a fine as high as 2.5 percent of their income even when they can’t afford the plans with subsidies.
5. The underinsured will increase. There is no guarantee of affordability even for those who qualify for subsidies. Health insurers already say premiums will rise because they can’t exclude pre-existing conditions or rescind care. The weak public option is estimated to be more expensive than private insurance plans because it will have sicker people enrolled and it must be self sufficient. In the similar Massachusetts model patients forgo care because of high co-pays and deductibles even after paying their premiums.
6. Care will still be based on ability to pay. Instead of standardized and comprehensive necessary care, there will be a tiered set of plans. The least expensive will cover only 60 percent of necessary care and patients pay the balance.
7. The legislation will increase the waste in health care spending. The usual weak insurance regulation is predicted to fail again a noted by industry whistleblowers. It will be expensive to enforce and the "exchanges" will add another level of bureaucracy and cost to each insurance premium. It does nothing to reclaim the $400 billion currently wasted on administration, paperwork and marketing for the 1,500 health plans in existence.
8. Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars will be transferred to private insurance companies via mandates to purchase health insurance. They get millions of new enrollees along with $447-$605 billion in public dollars (Senate vs. House) in the form of subsidies for their defective products.
9. It’s also a give away to the drug companies. Most Americans will not see lower cost drugs. This year costs have increased already on brand name prescriptions by 9 percent. Biotech firms will receive a windfall 12-year patent on new pharmaceuticals.
10. The bills still allow discrimination based on age and immigration status. The older can be charged twice as much as the younger. Non-citizens will bear the full cost of purchasing insurance. If it’s a densely populated immigrant community and they can’t afford the insurance or the care, facilities and providers will have to pass on the cost to the insured taxpayer or else face insolvency.
Call your senators and urge support for Senator Bernie Sanders' single-payer, Medicare-for-All bill, S. 703, to replace the seriously flawed Senate bill. If you want real health care reform and not just a bailout for the health industry, then please, join us in this urgent human rights movement. Your generous donations of time or money will support Idahoans and all