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 Posted November 12th, 2009 at 1:17PM
He told the media from his Saratoga Springs office on Monday that he believes health care reform is critical, but it’s coming at too high a cost to cornerstone businesses in the North Country. That is why he voted “no” on the bill.
Murphy says the bill makes a number of important reforms which he supported, however, such as lifetime caps on insurance benefits as well as the pre-existing condition exclusion – meaning an insurance company can refuse you if you have a preexisting medical condition.
But during Saturday’s vote in Washington, Murphy sided with 39 other Democrats who also voted with Republicans, saying the plan would put affordable health care out of reach of many small businesses and that it unfairly targets some Capital Region industries, like Finch Paper in Glens Falls.
I was surprised to see Smurphy vote against the healthcare bill in the house after being a supporter of the stimulus plan – and really the overall Dem agenda coming from Washington – since being elected. A talking head on the news the other night suggested that certain house Dems from conservative districts (Murphy included) may have very well been given the OK to dissent, political self-preservation in mind.
Was the vote orchestrated as such? If so, I feel the danger is that political calculation playing out too well. Because the real question is whether anyone interested in substantial reform should have supported the bill in the first place. In his public statement, Murphy faults the measure for affordability and putting an additional burden on area businesses.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, co-author of H.R. 676 (the single-payer bill that should have been included in this debate) was another ‘no’ Democratic vote. In part:
“We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.”
“Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.”
“But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care.
The final tally on H.R. 3962?
- A mandate to at least 21 million to buy into the broken system – resulting in an estimated $70 billion in new revenue to the health insurance industry
- A crippled public option, potentially enrolling only 6 million – available only to those people deemed unprofitable to insure privately
- Little to nothing in the way of cost containment or prevention
- A provision to allow states to implement their own single-payer (read: effective) systems was stripped from the final bill
- A four year period until the bill goes into effect, after the 2013 presidential elections. Seen the banking industry’s reaction to the grace period for new credit regulations? Enjoy watching healthcare costs balloon these next four years, and keep in mind the Journal of Public Health‘s recently published study estimating that 45,000 Americans die annually due to unaffordable, unobtainable treatment. What happened to the immediacy of reform?
It appears then that this is substantial reform in name only. Nader’s take:
Still Waiting for Health Care
…
During this overall debate on the bill, Republicans stood up one by one, as prevaricatory dittoheads, to often scream and howl (like coyotes) that this is “a government takeover of one sixth of the economy,” “would destroy the economy,” “put 5.5 million people out of work,” “destroy the doctor-patient relationship,” “be a steamroller of socialism,” “force millions of seniors to lose their current health coverage” (meaning, Medicare?) and, in a passionate appeal to the Almighty, Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) declared “God help us as the government takes over your day-to-day life.”
Never mind that this bill is just an expansion, however misdirected, of government health insurance designed to increase corporate profits and increase the corporate grip over the day-to-day decisions regarding who, when and how people get their health care or get their bills paid.
So whether Murphy’s vote was political calculation or not, I can hardly fault it.
UPDATE: More, from today’s Healthcare-NOW! newsletter:
So is the House bill better than nothing?
“I don’t think so,” writes Marcia Angell, M.D., former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. “It simply throws more money into a dysfunctional and unsustainable system, with only a few improvements at the edges, and it augments the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry. The danger is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we’ve tried health reform and it didn’t work. But the real problem will be that we didn’t really try it. I would rather see us do nothing now, and have a better chance of trying again later and then doing it right.”
Given that the bill does nothing to contain or reduce rising costs or end the private health insurance industry’s dominance, we hoped that the Progressive Caucus would stand strong. But they did not. All but two of H.R. 676′s cosponsors voted for H.R. 3962 — Rep. Eric Massa [D-NY] and Rep. Kucinich [D-OH].
Rep. Massa stated, “At the highest level, this bill will enshrine in law the monopolistic powers of the private health insurance industry, period. There’s really no other way to look at it.”
Posted September 6th, 2009 at 12:21PM
Looking at the main news stories of the day can make your head spin. Obama’s planned televised pep talk has been churned into a massive indoctrination plot. His adviser on green jobs, Van Jones, resigns for signing a petition, with Congressman Mike Pence saying that, “His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.” Cheney, meanwhile, continues to pardon each new brutality revealed to have occurred during his watch. (Power drills? Condonable? Really?) And on the healthcare front, all indications are to expect major concessionary overtones the next time Obama comes on air.
As the guy on Meet The Press said today: at some point, you just look at some of the headlines of the day and think, “That’s flat out stupid.”
I’d say it’s bizarre, and we’ve been here for awhile. Recent news cycles have been on a rightward spiral since the perceived stall in healthcare reform. It’s the hard right segment of the public that’s framing every debate right now.
On healthcare, I’m feeling more and more ambivalent about said efforts. I had enough concerns about a “robust” public option. But for it to be crippled or completely axed? Expanded Medicare for people deemed unprofitable to insure, operating under the current rules of the game, will result in huge, unsustainable government bloat. So OK – go the incremental route. But make sure to drop the ‘substantial’ from before the Health Insurance Reform banners.
For certain, there would be a much smaller cost of implementing reforms absent any direct gov’t effort to insure more people. Incremental reform for incremental results. The public option fails mostly because it’s an additional cost to the taxpayer, above and beyond their current exorbitant insurance premiums. Place the burden only on the $250k+’ers? Fine, “tax the rich,” but it’s disingenuous way to fund reform. And no plan currently being floated in the mainstream ensures access to everyone. I’ll go ahead and beat the dead horse: a single-payer system paid equitably (based on ability, allowing a progressive curve) would be healthcare paid for by the people using it.
Why can’t we have an honest discussion about the way we already spend our healthcare dollars? Serious reform efforts may mean increased government spending, but hysterically delineating between private and public sidesteps the real issue of out-of-control costs.
Canada’s healthcare expenses under their single-payer system are similarly outpacing inflation – but that’s a worldwide trend, and their’s is to a lesser extent than our private insurance boondoggle. Their government is doing a better job of reigning in costs than our market system. If Americans are so lousy at self-governance that we can’t insure our own citizens, who are we to be dictating terms to Afghans? Hell, we oppose their sole source of real income, poppies. 
Posted August 24th, 2009 at 1:07PM
This Modern World for August 18th:
What if Democrats behaved more like Republicans?
Yup. Tom Tomorrow is a genius and, coincidentally, my hero. Guy creates a comic strip that is on the money, day after day after day.
Posted August 12th, 2009 at 12:52PM
Michael Moore in the latest Rolling Stone:
If a true public option is enacted – and Obama knows this – it will eventually bring about a single-payer system, because the profit-making insurance companies won’t be able to compete with a government plan and make the profits that they want to make.
Mikey gives Obama too much credit throughout the article. Everything coming out of the White House and Congress indicates that the ‘public option’ will be a severely handicapped one – you can thank bipartisan compromise and that $1.4 million a day in insurance company lobbying for that. Significantly, Obama’s recent mention of the US Postal Service during a town meeting on healthcare portends a far more likely future for the ‘public option’ than leading to single-payer.
The option to purchase a public plan within a market of private health insurance plans would merely provide one more player in our inefficient, dysfunctional, fragmented, multi-payer system of financing health care, that is if the public option even survives the political process. It would leave in place the deficiencies that have resulted in very high costs with the poorest health care value of all nations (i.e., overpriced mediocrity in health care).
Those who believe that the people of this nation would have the wisdom to drop their private plans and join the government program are ignoring history. When Congress authorized private plans to compete with our existing public program, Medicare, many enrollees did just the opposite. One-fifth have left the traditional Medicare program and joined the private plans.
So why should we care? Why shouldn’t they have the right to choose private plans if they want them? We know that those private plans are wasting money, both in their own costs and the administrative burden they place on the delivery system, but what all too many don’t realize is that we are all paying for that waste because of the inherent structural deficiencies in our financing system. Plus we are being deprived of the reforms needed in our health care delivery system that our own single payer monopsony would bring us.
Further reading: Comparing single-payer with the ‘public option’
And for those confused between single-payer and OMFGOSH SOCIALISM…
Martin Feldstein, Harvard professor, talking about stuff he doesn’t understand
Obama has said that he would favor a British-style “single payer” system in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are salaried but that he recognizes that such a shift would be too disruptive to the health-care industry. The Obama plan to have a government insurance provider that can undercut the premiums charged by private insurers would undoubtedly speed the arrival of such a single-payer plan.
FiveThirtyEight >> Not All Socialist Countries are Alike
Posted August 11th, 2009 at 12:29PM
Last Sunday on Meet The Press, I thought David Brooks was at moments unintentionally both humorous and insightful. At multiple points, Brooks resorted to using “crazy” or “insane” – in responding to a Limbaugh clip, Palin’s ‘death panel’ post on Facebook, and the regime in Iran. Simple, straightforward. Yup, I couldn’t have put it better. There are some real nutjobs making news these days.
The Chicken Littles are already decrying the end of Hope, as public support starts to slip for both healthcare reform and the White House itself. Let’s put it in perspective. Despite falling poll numbers, there is no alternative party to the Democrats. The mainstream media is doing their part to paint the loony fringe as the voice of the GOP, but their sensationalizing hits way too close to home. Scarily, the only rational Republicans left seem to be party cast outs, independents (Bloomberg), or those not seeking re-election (the majority of Repubs who broke ranks to support Sotomayor). Minority Leader John Boehner has made it abundantly, explicitly clear that Congressional Republicans will not be in the business of legislating over the next four years. (Maybe this shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering that Bush decided to not lead the country for eight years.) The disheartening part is not asinine GOP leadership, but the way in which elected officials follow that leadership lockstep, heedless of the effect to their constituents or the country as a whole.
With Obama actually wielding power and under the constraints of political realities, it’s no surprise that a certain amount of “re-disillusionment” is kicking in. For the people prepared to take a rational look at things, I need only point to the bizarre alternate reality where McCain and Palin were in charge over the past seven months. (Add four points to unemployment, half the Dow Jones, and throw in a few launched nuclear ICBMs, and you’re almost there.)
With the Republican opposition’s infantile refusal to do their jobs, ostensibly denying each Dem-sponsored bill to come along, the White House needs to take a firmer role in directing Congress and focusing the debate. Bipartisanship comes second to constructive lawmaking, and the two become mutually exclusive when one side decides to play the dunce.
Posted July 28th, 2009 at 1:30PM
Overhauling our healthcare system has been part of my agenda for ages now. I’ve never been too optimistic about its chances. As Obama came in and started to say all the right things, I began to have hope. But after flipping through the alternative press, those hopes are again dashed…
My main fear is of severely compromised reform, destined for failure. Getting everyone’s “OK” will mean flawed legislation. Make no mistake about it – single-payer systems are working the best in other countries, and Americans are not as unique as we’d all like to think. Single payer has already been introduced, by Rep. John Conyers. It’s H.R. 676, The United States National Health Care Act. Spread the word – like to the lawmakers supposed to be working for you.
Unconvinced single-payer is the way to go? The case for single-payer, made ad nauseum:
Comment by Dr. Don McCanne, PNHP Senior Health Policy Fellow:
Once again, fiscal analysis shows that the models of reform that build on our highly flawed, fragmented system of financing health care actually increase health care spending while falling far short on the goals of reform. In contrast, the single payer model would provide truly comprehensive care for absolutely everyone while significantly reducing health care spending.
The thing that got me excited and optimistic in the first place is the change in public opinion concerning healthcare. One thing Obama has done well is to make the case for reform in financial terms. Will he follow through with garbage reform when there’s the opportunity for so much more? Say it ain’t so.
The Selling of Single-Payer Features, by Helen Redmond, Counterpunch.org
The sea change in the public’s attitude toward government financed health care, however, has gotten press. A New York Times poll in June found that 72 percent supported a government-administered insurance plan – like Medicare for everyone under the age of 65. That poll also reported 64 percent believed the federal government should guarantee coverage to the entire population, i.e. health care should be a human right. Another interesting number: 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt. This is in stark contrast to President Obama’s position of tepid, incremental reform.
Posted May 20th, 2009 at 10:11AM
One week after the nation’s health insurance lobby pledged to President Obama to do what it can to constrain rising health costs, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina is putting the finishing touches on a public message campaign aimed at killing a key plank in Obama’s reform platform.
As part of what it calls an “informational website,” the company has hired an outside PR company to make a series of videos sounding the alarm about a government-sponsored health insurance option, known as the public plan. Obama has consistently maintained that a government-run plan, absent high-paid executives and the need for profits, could be a more affordable option for Americans who have trouble purchasing private insurance. The industry argues that creating a public insurance program will undermine the marketplace and eventually lead to a single-payer style system.
In three 30-second videos, the insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can’t choose their own doctors, according to storyboards of the videos obtained by the Washington Post.
One video titled “Waiting” shows a receptionist fielding a request from a patient enrolled in the new program.
“The government plan. Okay hold on…let me see what’s available,” the woman says into the telephone. On the screen, with the caller on hold, the receptionist rearranges items on her desk, looks at a wide- open calendar and then fibs: “It looks like the first time we can fit you in is in two-and-a-half months.”
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