[Peace-discuss] Fw: The public option is NOT dead

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From an unimpeachable source. The Obama administration has sold out health 
care. We'll be lucky if Medicare is saved.]

	This Is Reform?
	By BOB HERBERT
	The New York Times
	August 18, 2009

It’s never a contest when the interests of big business are pitted against the 
public interest. So if we manage to get health care “reform” this time around it 
will be the kind of reform that benefits the very people who have given us a 
failed system, and thus made reform so necessary.

Forget about a crackdown on price-gouging drug companies and predatory insurance 
firms. That’s not happening. With the public pretty well confused about what is 
going on, we’re headed — at best — toward changes that will result in a lot more 
people getting covered, but that will not control exploding health care costs 
and will leave industry leaders feeling like they’ve hit the jackpot.

The hope of a government-run insurance option is all but gone. So there will be 
no effective alternative for consumers in the market for health coverage, which 
means no competitive pressure for private insurers to rein in premiums and other 
charges. (Forget about the nonprofit cooperatives. That’s like sending peewee 
footballers up against the Super Bowl champs.)

Insurance companies are delighted with the way “reform” is unfolding. Think of 
it: The government is planning to require most uninsured Americans to buy health 
coverage. Millions of young and healthy individuals will be herded into the 
industry’s welcoming arms. This is the population the insurers drool over.

This additional business — a gold mine — will more than offset the cost of 
important new regulations that, among other things, will prevent insurers from 
denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions or imposing lifetime 
limits on benefits. Poor people will either be funneled into Medicaid, which 
will have its eligibility ceiling raised, or will receive a government subsidy 
to help with the purchase of private insurance.

If the oldest and sickest are on Medicare, and the poorest are on Medicaid, and 
the young and the healthy are required to purchase private insurance without the 
option of a competing government-run plan — well, that’s reform the insurance 
companies can believe in.

And then there are the drug companies. A couple of months ago the Obama 
administration made a secret and extremely troubling deal with the drug 
industry’s lobbying arm, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of 
America. The lobby agreed to contribute $80 billion in savings over 10 years and 
to sponsor a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in support of health care reform.

The White House, for its part, agreed not to seek additional savings from the 
drug companies over those 10 years. This resulted in big grins and high fives at 
the drug lobby. The White House was rolled. The deal meant that the government’s 
ability to use its enormous purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices was 
off the table.

The $80 billion in savings (in the form of discounts) would apply only to a 
certain category of Medicare recipients — those who fall into a gap in their 
drug coverage known as the doughnut hole — and only to brand-name drugs. (Drug 
industry lobbyists probably chuckled, knowing that some patients would switch 
from generic drugs to the more expensive brand names in order to get the 
industry-sponsored discounts.)

To get a sense of how sweet a deal this is for the drug industry, compare its 
offer of $8 billion in savings a year over 10 years with its annual profits of 
$300 billion a year. Robert Reich, who served as labor secretary in the Clinton 
administration, wrote that the deal struck by the Obama White House was very 
similar to the “deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, 
and it’s proven a bonanza for the drug industry.”

The bonanza to come would be even larger, he said, “given all the Boomers who 
will be enrolling in Medicare over the next decade.”

While it is undoubtedly important to bring as many people as possible under the 
umbrella of health coverage, the way it is being done now does not address what 
President Obama and so many other advocates have said is a crucial component of 
reform — bringing the ever-spiraling costs of health care under control. Those 
costs, we’re told, are hamstringing the U.S. economy, making us less competitive 
globally and driving up the budget deficit.

Giving consumers the choice of an efficient, nonprofit, government-run insurance 
plan would have moved us toward real cost control, but that option has gone 
a-glimmering. The public deserves better. The drug companies, the insurance 
industry and the rest of the corporate high-rollers have their tentacles all 
over this so-called reform effort, squeezing it for all it’s worth.

Meanwhile, the public — struggling with the worst economic downturn since the 
1930s — is looking on with great anxiety and confusion. If the drug companies 
and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public 
interest is being left behind.

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