A Prescription For True Reform

If you are like me, you have become both very bored and hugely disgusted with the current health care debate. Day after day we witness newscasters interviewing our leaders in Washington who continue to lie through their teeth about how hard they are working to bring health care reform to millions of uninsured and underinsured people.

The truth is that their agenda is totally political and not designed to fix the broken health care system. The Republicans just want Obama to fail and by stonewalling him on health care reform they think they can do that. They have used deliberate lies and misinformation to create doubts and fears about what will happen if health care reform passes. However, even with all their attempts to spread confusion and fear, they haven’t fooled a majority of the American people who still want meaningful health care reform that includes a public option.

Then there are members of both parties who are heavily subsidized by the insurance, pharmaceutical and health care industries and get their marching orders from lobbyists who are spending over $1.4 million a day to keep any meaningful reform from happening. They also use deliberate misinformation to shoot down even compromise suggestions such as a public option, saying it will force hospitals to close and the insurance industry to go bankrupt. Again, for what it is worth, a majority of the American people doesn’t seem to be buying these lies and half-truths, even though our representatives continue to mouth them.

The Betrayal of The American People

We elected a President whose mandate was to change Washington “politics as usual.” However, even before the debate began, Obama declared that the single payer plan was “off the table” for discussion. What? This is arguably the best way to fix the broken health care system and we can’t even discuss it? I thought he came to Washington to bring us “Change We Can Believe In.”  The only change these people are interested in seems to be the large chunk of change they are receiving from lobbyists and special interest groups that lines their pockets.           

How much money did health care lobbyists have to contribute to Obama’s election campaign and have to continue to offer him to get him to nix arguably the best solution to the problem?  As a result, Obama continues to give just lip service to compromises such as the public option and when pressed on the issue says that the public option isn’t even essential to health care reform. Without the single payer or the public option, whatever reform bill passes Congress and Obama signs will amount to just a huge give-away to the insurance, health care and pharmaceutical industries. 

It won’t be health care reform for the people who need it. It will be all about profits and very little about the promised reform. Sure they can point to eliminating pre-existing conditions, but no one mentions how much your insurance will cost you if you have a pre-existing condition.

The media outlets all owned by corporate America have conspired to spin this issue to drive up profits and ratings. Instead of doing the honest investigative reporting needed to expose the lies that are being told, they are busy creating an “us vs. them” drama between the various factions.

The Failed Grass-Roots Strategy

The grass-roots strategy has been to appeal to the consciences of our leaders by showing them how broken our health care system is and how it is creating endless personal and economic hardships for million of American people. People are sending our elected officials millions of letters telling of horrible personal tragedies that they have suffered because of either being denied coverage or not being able to afford to pay for health insurance and health care. To make sure they understand the seriousness of the problem we also present them with sobering statistics such as these:

• Over 46 million people are without health insurance. And millions more are underinsured.
• 62 percent of all bankruptcy filings are due to medical debts. In 2009 alone this amounts to roughly 2.4 million people. (No other country in the world that has a national health insurance system in place has ever heard of a medical bankruptcy)
• Almost 45,000 people die this year because they cannot afford the necessary medical treatment they needed.

Then to make sure they get it, we do studies that show the economic impact over the next ten years if they fail to act. A recent study by the Urban Institute shows what is likely to happen by 2019:

• A 30 percent increase of number of uninsured people.
• A 60 to 100 percent increase in premium costs for businesses.
• The number of people getting health insurance through their work would decrease by more than 10 percent.
• A 75 percent rise in the cost to states of the current SCHIP program for children.
• A 100 percent increase in uncompensated health care due to emergency room visits, etc.

The lead researcher on this study concluded: “ …if comprehensive health reform that reduces the rate of health care cost growth and provides affordable coverage options is not enacted, there will be serious economic strain on individual, businesses and governments in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”

You would think with all this personal testimony, statistics and projections of the cost of doing nothing being thrown at them to get them to “vote their conscience,” would have the desired effect. How much more do they need to know in order to do what is morally the right thing to do?

Well folks, you and I both know that isn’t happening. Actually, everybody I know with a conscience is convinced, so why are they not convinced? Is it that these leaders don’t even have a conscience? It sure looks that way. How else could these elected officials who have pledged to work for the welfare of their constituents continue to ignore all these personal tragedies and appalling statistics and predictions?

The Political System Is Broken

This all points to a horribly broken system. However, this time I am not talking about the broken health care system, but the broken political system of greed, power, money and special interests in Washington and elsewhere. Until that system is reformed, there will not be any true health care reform enacted or actually any reform at all that would threaten the status quo.

By focusing all our energies on trying to fix the broken health care system, we actually have gotten a closer look at how broken our political system is and how it operates. Do we need to see any more? All we have to do is connect the dots between the amount of contribution money these elected officials are receiving from lobbyists and special interest groups and the words that come out of their mouths.

How To Fix A Broken System

Unless someone writes a prescription for members of Congress and the President to all receive a “conscience transplant,” our efforts need to be focused on the only true reform that is possible in Washington: Campaign Finance Reform. Let’s stop fooling ourselves into thinking that just because one political party controls the White House and both Houses of Congress we can have true reform that fixes what ails this country.

No matter what they tell us in order to get elected, it ain’t going to happen. In addition to not being able to pass true health care reform legislation, they will not be able to pass energy legislation that protects the environment and stops global warming or fixes our broken educational system or does any of the other things we need to do to take back this country from the money and power brokers. It will take radical action by all of us to prevent those highly invested in maintaining ‘business as usual” from continuing to call the shots in Washington.

If we all mobilized and brought our collective will to the task of reforming the sick and broken political system, this could be accomplished. In the next election cycle, we must demand practical proposals on implementing public financing for all elections from every candidate that is running either for election or re-election. Then we have to make sure they follow through. As Michael Moore suggests in his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, we have to replace capitalism, as it exists in this country, with democracy. In order to do that, we all have to be committed to making it happen.