The First Draft: Go time for financial regulations, healthcare
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The debate on two crucial legs of President Barack Obama’s reform agenda – healthcare and financial regulations – heats up at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue on Wednesday.
At the White House, Obama will unveil a plan for revamping regulation of the U.S. financial industry in hopes of avoiding the sort of systemwide failure that culminated in a recent banking and market crisis.
The proposal, which will face rigorous debate in the U.S. Congress, is expected to call for closing the Office of Thrift Supervision, a Treasury Department unit, streamline the supervision of savings and loans and establish an independent consumer financial products watchdog agency.
The Federal Reserve would have new duties to monitor risks to the financial system, but the plan does not call for a complete revamp of financial oversight, which the administration decided was political unachievable.
“The status quo is not an option,” Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers, said of the proposals on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
On Capitol Hill, Senator Edward Kennedy’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee will begin at least three days of debate on its healthcare reform proposal. The Senate Finance Committee will unveil its plan this week as well as Congress kicks off a six-week sprint toward initial approval of a bill to revamp the sprawling healthcare system.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will address the Democratic Leadership Conference on the issue this morning, and speak to journalists later in the day at the White House as the administration ramps up its drive for passage of a healthcare bill.
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We have 48 million un-insured Americans and another 73 million under-insured. That’s over 40% of Americans with limited or no access to medical care. Claims that the overwhelming majority of Americans are satisfied with their current healthcare delivery systems are patently false, according to many polls. In an extensive ABCNEWS/Washington Post poll (this year), Americans by a 2-1 margin, 62-32 percent, prefer a universal health insurance program over the current employer-based system.
The average private policy for a family costs $12,700 annually. A proposed tax credit of $5,000 with which to buy private insurance would cover only 39% of this cost. Taxing employees who utilize a group benefit plan won’t help, as employees pay approximately 1/3 of their employer-sponsored group benefits out-of-pocket already. Eliminating tax credits (deductions) for employers who sponsor group benefits, along with the other proposals will exacerbate the issue of un-insured or under-insured further.
The CBO cites the $1.2 trillion projected costs for providing universal or public healthcare options will intensify the deficit and strain the federal budget. A CNN report last week cited that U.S. employers pay over 134% more for employee benefits than do their foreign counterparts, making American businesses less competitive. This reduced profits to corporations and small businesses, who must then either outsource work, or move operations off-shore to remain competitive and profitable, exacerbating the soaring unemployment and lost revenues (business, personal, payroll taxes), while increasing demands while services (unemployment, welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc.), which could cost as much, if not more.
According to the World Health Organization and other statistics compiled by independent research, the U.S. spends the most per capita for healthcare, ranks 2nd highest in percentage of GDP, 42nd in life-expectancy, 77th in performance and accessibility, 2nd highest in infant mortality world-wide. Those same reports cite statistics that countries with universal-national healthcare systems spend the least, yet have much better rates of quality, care and overall performance. It’s clear we’re not getting our money’s worth.
Insurers (several who received TARP funds) donated $48 million to our representatives last year. For-profit private healthcare providers donated another $167 million. The average compensation of CEO’s of for-profit healthcare providers is $8.5 million annually. This gives them little incentive to reform a system by which they obscenely profit, and are lavishly-compensated.
Lawmakers in Congress (both parties, both houses) have personal financial investments in the healthcare industry exceeding $11 million, according to their own financial disclosures. With such huge sums at stake, many of our representatives are not objective, and won’t put, common-sense, fair-minded economic interests of this nation or their constituents first.
Those calling for “reform” that does not include a public or single-payer option cite “free market,” competition principles will lower costs, yet fear the competition that public plan would provide, enabling them to keep their collusion and price-fixing. They say the government will take over, run, and deny, ration, delay or restrict access to medical care.
The facts are that insurers for years have been and are currently rationing, denying, and restricting access to healthcare. It is the insurers, not physicians, determining who gets treatment, opt for the least costly treatment (if any), routinely deny claims, refuse coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, or a propensity (based upon family history) to any illness, provide incentives to doctors to delay or avoid costly medical care, and then either drop coverage or inflate the premiums to those who’ve suffered a major illness or injury.
Our representatives enjoy taxpayer-subsidized quality healthcare which they chose to deny those of us (who pay for and provide it to them). If a government healthcare plan is so bad why do lawmakers use it, instead of private, for-profit ones they promote?
Dear Katerina, your article would sound believable if not couple of statements, something like ” America is 2nd highest in infant mortality world-wide…’ That is so not true…
To: All Honorable Seantors & Congressman.
1) I want tO have the same excess & Cost provided to you by my hard earned tax dollars.[I CALL IT SOCIALIZED MEDICAL COVERAGE IF IT IS I WANTED.]
2)My Question to all of you is.
How can you live on $990.00 soc. security and pay a limited health insurance which cost $ 334.00 per month.
you do the math. where is the money coming from for food , shelter etc.
3) TO: ALL TAXPAYERS:
IF YOU AGREE WITH ME SEND E-MAIL or CALL YOUR REPRESENATIVE.
I completely agree with Katerina Andreou and Michael Kovacs. It is scare tactics and influence by big interests to prevent decent health care for us!! Also, regulation of the financial sector is a long time overdue. Those who run have “away with” that sector put us in the situation we are in now and they deserve more than regulation..they deserve jail time! No wonder they are fighting this…they dont want us to keep tabs on them! We are experiencing the painful result of no one watching out for our interests! Go get em Obama!!
In reference to the comment by Olga Charlat here is an article about the US Infant Mortality Rate in the developed world…but this was written in 2006…not so long go really…
world…http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/par enting/05/08/mothers.index/
It is awfully nice of insurance industry executives to help demonstrate why a public option is so necessary as part of the broader reform effort.
Executives of three of the nation’s largest health insurers told federal lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday that they would continue canceling medical coverage for sick policyholders, despite withering criticism from Republican and Democratic members of Congress who decried the practice as unfair and abusive.
An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.
It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews and awarded bonuses for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.
The insurance industry — the one conservative lawmakers and the AMA are so desperate to protect at all costs — has a cost control strategy called “rescission.” Customers have insurance, and they pay their premiums, but once they get sick and require expensive medical treatment, the companies drop their coverage.
And in testifying before Congress, executives of these insurers not only confirmed the rescission practice, but said they had no plans to change the money-saving tactic.
One executive said rescission is about “stopping fraud and material misrepresentations that contribute to spiraling healthcare costs.” So, for example, when a woman in Texas was diagnosed with breast cancer, her insurer dropped her coverage because the company found an instance in which she visited a dermatologist for acne, and didn’t tell the insurance company about it. This, the insurer said, was an example of “fraud and material misrepresentation.”
Late in the hearing, Rep. Bart Stupak, the committee chairman, put the executives on the spot. Stupak asked each of them, one by one, whether he would at least commit his company to immediately stop rescissions except where they could show “intentional fraud.”
The answer from all three executives: “No.”
This is precisely why we need a public option.
it looks like the UAW dictating to obama again,fueled by the rumours that health care insurance will be taxed,they have informed him it is not going to happen to their members.so we can expect obama will fold again and unlike the rest they will be exempt.