Obamacare can’t be fixed
by its namesake. It’s up to us to make it happen.
 |
| By Barry Deutsch |
That is the dirty little
secret many liberals have avoided saying out loud for fear of aiding the
president’s enemies, at a time when the ideal of universal health care needed
all the support it could get.
Unfortunately, this meant that instead of blaming companies like Novartis, which charges leukemia patients $90,000 annually for the drug Gleevec, or health insurance chief executives like Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group, who made nearly $102 million in 2009, for the sky-high price of American health care, the president’s Democratic supporters bought into the myth that it was all those people going to get free colonoscopies and chemotherapy for the fun of it.
I believe Obamacare’s
rocky start — clueless planning, a lousy website, insurance companies raising
rates, and the president’s telling people they could keep their coverage when,
in fact, not all could — is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act
is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his
heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go.
When
right-wing critics “expose” the fact that President Obama endorsed a
single-payer system before 2004, they’re actually telling the truth.
What we now call
Obamacare was conceived at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank,
and birthed in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney, then the governor. The president
took Romneycare, a program designed to keep the private insurance industry
intact, and just improved some of its provisions. In effect, the president was
simply trying to put lipstick on the dog in the carrier on top of Mitt Romney’s
car. And we knew it.
By 2017, we will be
funneling over $100 billion annually to private insurance companies. You can be
sure they’ll use some of that to try to privatize Medicare.
For many people, the
“affordable” part of the Affordable Care Act risks being a cruel joke. The cheapest
plan available to a 60-year-old couple making $65,000 a year in Hartford,
Conn., will cost $11,800 in annual premiums. And their deductible will be
$12,600. If both become seriously ill, they might have to pay almost $25,000 in
a single year. (Pre-Obamacare, they could have bought insurance that was
cheaper but much worse, potentially with unlimited out-of-pocket costs.)
And yet — I would be
remiss if I didn’t say this — Obamacare is a godsend. My friend Donna Smith,
who was forced to move into her daughter’s spare room at age 52 because health
problems bankrupted her and her husband, Larry, now has cancer again. As she
undergoes treatment, at least she won’t be in terror of losing coverage and
becoming uninsurable. Under Obamacare, her premium has been cut in half, to
$456 per month.
Let’s not take a victory
lap yet, but build on what there is to get what we deserve: universal quality
health care.
Those who live in red
states need the benefit of Medicaid expansion. It may have seemed like smart
politics in the short term for Republican governors to grab the opportunity
offered by the Supreme Court rulings that made Medicaid expansion optional for
states, but it was long-term stupid: If those 20 states hold out, they will
eventually lose an estimated
total of $20 billion in federal funds per year — money that would be going to hospitals
and treatment.
In blue states, let’s
lobby for a public option on the insurance exchange — a health plan run by the
state government, rather than a private insurer. In Massachusetts, State
Senator James B. Eldridge is trying to pass a law that would set one up. Some
counties in California are also trying it.
Montana came up with another
creative solution. Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat who just completed two
terms, set up several
health clinics to treat state workers,
with no co-pays and no deductibles. The doctors there are salaried employees of
the state of Montana; their only goal is their patients’ health. (If this
sounds too much like big government to you, you might like to know that Google,
Cisco and Pepsi do exactly the
same.)
All eyes are on
Vermont’s plan for a single-payer system, starting in 2017. If it flies, it
will change everything, with many states sure to follow suit by setting up
their own versions. That’s why corporate money will soon flood into Vermont to
crush it. The legislators who’ll go to the mat for this will need all the
support they can get: If you live east of the Mississippi, look up the bus
schedule to Montpelier.
So let’s get started.
Obamacare can’t be fixed by its namesake. It’s up to us to make it happen.
Michael Moore is an
Academy-Award winning filmmaker and best-selling author.
