"Public Option" doesn't guarantee healthcare for all
Cherie Mortice, CCI Action Fund Board President. Originally appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
What’s our biggest health careissue? Cost.
Many of us worry whether we canafford to go to the doctor we like or get the care we need. And there’snumerous proposals by current Democratic candidates for President aimed ataddressing that concern, but only one that truly gets to the heart of theproblem.
Proposed solutions like John Delaney’s “BetterCare,” or Pete Buttigieg’s “Medicare for All Who Want It,” or introducing a new public insurance plan alongside the for-profit insurers (the “public option”) may sound nice, but do not control costs. And it leaves open the door for private insurers to game the system by offering bare-bones plans to healthy individuals, further burdening our public system. Only an all-in system will truly control costs and address the insecurity we feel within our current system.
In the name of political expediency,these plans rely upon false choices that maintain the fragmentation, waste andbureaucracy of the present health care industry.
Hundreds of insurance companies, andthousands of rules and protocols established by those companies and corporatehospital systems, require a massive billing and payment collection bureaucracythat generates billions of profits while restricting care.
That’s not a caregiving system, it’sa moneymaking industry based on corporate greed. They restrict what doctors wecan see, which hospitals we can go to, what treatments our doctors can do, andwhich prescriptions are covered.
It’s clear that “access” is nothealth care. There is a fundamental difference between guaranteed health care,and universal access. Just ask those 57 million Americans with insurance planswhose deductible is so high they cannot use it.
And by the way, what are “basichealth care needs” and who decides? Under Medicare for All medicalprofessionals are in charge, and patients do not have to know and navigate alandscape that is confusing: whether to opt out of “BetterCare” or keep theiremployer plan, or accept a tax subsidy, or sign up for a plan with a limitedprovider network, or just throw up our hands and hang on.
The health care industry gives usvery few choices. And the choices they do provide are designed to enhance theirbottom line. Yes, like now, seniors could “choose” a Medicare Advantage planbut those plans restrict choice of providers, and the expanded benefits underthose plans cost taxpayers 14% more than traditional Medicare.
Is it a surprise that very fewMedicare beneficiaries with serious health conditions use these plans? No,because they are marketed to people who have routine, relatively inexpensivecare needs. No wonder those private Medicare Advantage plans are the mostprofitable products the insurance industry sells. How is it reform to continueto divert resources from health services to profits?
The answer to the cost issue is notmore taxpayer dollars going to for-profit insurance companies and confusingpatients with false choices. To lower costs requires we eliminate thefragmentation, waste and profits of the health care industry.
Only Medicare for All does that. And at least Sen. Bernie Sanders wholeheartedly, and honestly, acknowledges that fact.
More links:
Business for Medicare for All
The Medicare for All Act of 2019
National Improved Medicare for All Bills