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Any time you give your money to a group that consists of people with <br>
myriad variant principles differing from those that you hold personally,<br>
there is high likelihood that your money will be used for purposes that<br>
you personally oppose.<br>
<br>
There ain't much point in telling Obot that his healthcare program is a
scam.<br>
He knows that better than anyone.<br>
<br>
I like the that lady Kathy _____ who withdrew her material support for <br>
the war machine. The same principle applies to supporting the<br>
medical-industrial scam.<br>
<br>
And by the way, it will still be a scam even in the government pays for
it.<br>
<br>
Perhaps even more so.<br>
<br>
On 3/30/2014 10:34 PM, David Johnson wrote:
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<h1>Tell Obama: ACA's A Scam, We Need Medicare For All</h1>
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<span class="cat-date-line4">By Margaret Flowers, <a
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March 28th, 2014</span><br>
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<p><strong>Please see my article below and if you are choosing not to
purchase private health insurance, you can join me in sending a message
to President Obama by sending him an email with this petition.</strong></p>
<p><strong></strong> </p>
<h2><b>Why I Am A Conscientious Objector To The ACA</b></h2>
<p>I have been an outspoken advocate for a Medicare for all health
system. During the health reform process, I did all that I could to
push for single payer, including being arrested three times for civil
disobedience. I was one of fifty doctors who filed a brief in the
Supreme Court which expressed opposition to forcing people to buy
private health insurance, a defective product. It pains me to see that
the Affordable Care Act (ACA) siphons billions of public dollars to
create more bureaucracy and transfers hundreds of billions of public
dollars directly to the private insurance industry when I know that
those dollars should be paying for the health care that so many in our
country desperately need.</p>
<p>I am currently uninsured, so I have to make a choice. I don’t
qualify for Medicaid and I’m too young for Medicare. By law, I am
required to buy private insurance or pay a penalty. But I find myself
in the position of not being able to do either. I can’t in good
conscience give money to the health insurance industry that I am
fighting to eliminate. And I can’t in good conscience pay a tax penalty
that will be given to that industry. So, I am going to be a
Conscientious Objector to the ACA.</p>
<p>I suspect that there are others who feel as I do. If you are
planning to object to purchasing insurance and you support Medicare for
all, you might like to join me in sending a letter to President Obama.
See the petition above.</p>
<p><b>The Issue is Access to Care, Not the Number Who Buy Insurance</b></p>
<p>As the March 31 deadline to purchase health insurance or face a
penalty approaches, the public debate is focused solely on enrollment
numbers. Great efforts are being expended to compel people to buy
insurance. The “Young Invincibles,” a term created to misrepresent
uninsured young adults, are being marketed heavily. And Enroll America,
a coalition of advocates and health industry executives, is working
overtime to encourage volunteers to be creative in the ways they locate
and convince people to purchase insurance.</p>
<p>The mass media and politicians are constantly talking about the
health care marketplace. We are being indoctrinated with market
rhetoric. Patients are called consumers and health insurance plans are
called products. The problem with this is that health care doesn’t
belong in the marketplace whose logic dictates that care should be
denied if a profit cannot be made. Health care is a public good and
something that everyone needs throughout their lifetime.</p>
<p>Focusing solely on the number of people who are insured is what
the private health insurance industry wants the public to believe is
most important. The industry spent tremendous amounts of money and time
to get a law that would force people to buy insurance in order to
protect and enhance their assets. They want everyone to buy their
products and to make people feel reckless or irresponsible if they
don’t. This is a massive campaign to distract people from asking the
questions that really matter, such as whether people with insurance
will be able to afford health care, whether bankruptcies from medical
debt will continue and whether overall health outcomes will improve.</p>
<p>In the United States, having health insurance does not guarantee
access to necessary health care. In fact, rather than creating health
security, the ACA is degrading health care coverage in the US. It is
also creating the largest transfer of public dollars to a private
industry ever, as <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/march/unite-here-report-on-aca-and-worsening-inequality">UNITE
HERE</a> reports “most of the ACA’s $965 billion in subsidies will go
directly to commercial insurance companies.”</p>
<p><b>The Insurance Scam</b></p>
<p>As Kevin Zeese and I wrote last fall, the ACA is one of the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19692-obamacare-the-biggest-insurance-scam-in-history">biggest
insurance scams in history</a>. It has made the already complex
American health system, which spends over a third of health care
dollars on insurance-created bureaucracy rather than care, much more
complicated. It is based on principles that are the opposite of what
are proven to be effective. Instead of being universal, everybody
automatically enrolled as we did for seniors when Medicare started in
1965 and as most other industrialized nations do, we created a
conservative, means-tested system that depends on individual income.</p>
<p>And instead of creating a single standard of care, so that
everyone has access to the health care they need, the ACA locked into
law a tiered system of coverage based on different metals: platinum,
gold, silver and bronze. Though they may sound good, it turns out that
the upper tier plans are not any better than the lower tier plans in
terms of what services are covered or where patients can go for care.
The major difference is whether a person chooses to pay more up front
in higher premiums and pay less when they need health care (upper tier
plans) or chooses to gamble on staying healthy and pay less up front,
risking higher out-of-pocket costs if they need care (lower tier
plans). This is essentially a <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/march/buying-platinum-and-getting-bronze">pay-now-or-pay-later
scheme</a>.</p>
<p>And it is a scheme, because there are no guarantees that people
who have insurance will be protected from financial ruin if they have a
serious health problem. It is essential to remember that nothing about
the basic business model of insurance companies has changed. They exist
to make a profit and they are very good at it. While they complain
about the ACA, because its regulations require more work on their end
to find ways around them, it has been very lucrative for them. Health
insurance stock values have doubled since the law passed in 2010.</p>
<p>One of their major work-arounds is the use of <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/march/stuck-out-of-network-and-vulnerable">narrow
and ultra-narrow provider networks</a> to discourage patients with
pre-existing conditions from buying their plans and leave patients
footing more of the bill. Narrow networks exclude at least 30% of local
hospitals and ultra-narrow networks exclude at least 70%. This means
that if the local cancer center isn’t included in a plan, then people
with cancer are unlikely to buy that plan. To make it worse, it’s
difficult for patients to determine what providers are included in
different plans because the information on the insurance exchange
websites has been found to be wrong half the time.</p>
<p>The reason for the narrow networks is that when patients don’t go
to an approved health provider, they bear most or all of the costs. The
limit on how much money people can be required to spend in addition to
premiums doesn’t apply when patients go out of network (and the limit
was removed for 2014 anyway). In practice, if someone develops a
serious health condition and the hospital or health professional that
treats the condition is not in their network, they will have to go
without care or find a way to pay for it. And if a person has a serious
accident and is taken to a hospital that is out of network, the patient
will again bear the total cost. Buying insurance is a health care crap
shoot.</p>
<p><b>The Race to the Bottom in Health Care Benefits</b></p>
<p>Medical bankruptcy and self-rationing, foregoing necessary care
due to cost, are two products of our market-based health system and we
can expect them to continue under the ACA, even as more people become
insured. Supporters of the ACA often quote the slowed rise of health
care spending that has been happening since the financial crash in
2008. They claim it is a sign of the law’s positive effect; however,
the slowing is actually due to fewer people using health services. In <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.commonwealthfund.org/%7E/media/Files/News/News%20Releases/2013/Apr/Biennial%20Release%2042613%20FINAL%20rev%202.pdf">2012</a>,
80 million people went without necessary care because of cost.</p>
<p>Self-rationing will continue because there has not been an
economic recovery for most of us. More than 80% of people are <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/february/which-metal-tier-plans-are-people-selecting-and-why">buying
lower tier health plans</a> that require high up-front payments for
care at a time when most families are living paycheck to paycheck. The
number of people who are considered poor or low income is rising. And,
as <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.alternet.org/economy/overwhelming-evidence-half-america-or-near-poverty?paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark">Paul
Bucheit writes</a>, if we updated our standards for measuring poverty
to reflect the current economic realities (the costs of food, housing,
health care, education, etc), the poverty threshold would be over three
times higher than it is now. He adds that half of the US population
owns zero wealth because of debt. It is a sad irony that people are
being forced to pay monthly premiums for health insurance that will
leave them without money for actual care.</p>
<p>And now that lower coverage plans are legal, they are accelerating
the race to the bottom in <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/march/progressive-deterioration-in-health-plans-offered-by-major-employers">employer
health benefits</a>. Employers are shifting more of the cost of health
care onto employees, reducing coverage for dependents, moving employees
into private insurance exchanges (which do not qualify for subsidies)
and penalizing employees for poor health habits, which places the blame
for health problems on the individual without acknowledging that many
drivers of poor health are out of the individual’s control. While tying
health care to employment is not ideal, in the US at least the
employer-based plans used to provide better benefits than those on the
individual market.</p>
<p><b>The Practical Solution </b></p>
<p>The solution to the ongoing health care crisis is obvious. We need
to reverse direction completely and move to a national publicly-funded
health insurance for everyone. Some call this a single payer or
‘Medicare for all’ plan. We are already spending enough on health care
in the US to provide high quality care to everyone. It is just wrong
from a standpoint of what works to continue shifting more of our health
care dollars to bureaucracy instead of to care and to the private
insurance industry which is designed to keep as much for itself as it
can get away with. It is immoral to protect insurance company profits
instead of protecting the health and well-being of our people.</p>
<p>Putting our money into the insurance industry is a step in the
wrong direction. The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.pnhp.org/news/2011/february/summary-hr-676-the-expanded-improved-medicare-for-all-act">HR
676</a>, in Congress, would eliminate the insurance industry and create
lifelong comprehensive coverage for everyone. No matter what you choose
to do about insurance, tell your Congress member to support HR 676. And
if you are one of the millions who do not plan to buy insurance, join
me in telling Obama why. See the petition above.</p>
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