By Brian M. Boyce
TERRE HAUTE — Activists and organizers agreed, federally-mandated health insurance without a public option is “just a windfall for the insurance industry.”
About 50 area citizens gathered in the Vigo County Annex on Tuesday evening for a health care forum sponsored by Democracy for America, where a six-member panel argued that health care legislation which recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives is insufficient, at best, without a public option, and does not resemble the promises made by candidates in the 2008 presidential campaign.
“If we mandate health insurance without a public option, it’s just a windfall for the insurance industry,” panel member Richard Wahlman, vice president of the Indiana Farmers Union and retired dairy farmer said near the beginning of the 11⁄2-hour discussion. That theme was reiterated throughout the talks, and Walhman repeated it toward the end, adding, “You don’t have to be too smart to figure that out.”
Mega-corporations in the pharmaceutical and health insurance industry collectively have trillions of dollars at stake, and those organizations, from top executives to “foot soldiers” are steering the topic of national health care into their profit margin, speakers said.
Panel member James Turner, M.D., medical director of Terre Haute’s St. Ann Clinic and a family physician in Marshall, Ill., offered a story to illustrate “big pharma’s” power, as he recounted President George Bush’s much-hailed legislation which directed U.S. money to purchase HIV drugs for African countries. Supported by humanitarians, he said, people didn’t realize that the legislation required the medication to be “name brand” as opposed to allowing the use of generics. The cost difference between the two was so great that 100 patients could have been treated with generics to the one with “name brand.” And, he added, many African companies, as opposed to “big pharma,” make the generic drugs there on the continent, which would have driven down costs while increasing jobs there.
But big money talks, and as Robert Stone, M.D., an emergency department physician and spokesman for Hoosiers for a Common Sense Health Care Plan said, those companies see lost profit margins in what others call efficiency and cost control.
Panel member Ruth Fairbanks emotionally detailed the history of proposed health care reform in America, dating its earliest efforts back to 1910. The Social Security legislation passed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt actually contained a nationalized health care plan which was scrapped, she said, because southern Democrats were afraid it would desegregate hospitals. Almost every president from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton attempted to produce a national health care plan. In fact, the current Canadian plan was modeled after proposals launched in America, she added.
“Nixon’s plan was better than this!” she railed in regards to the bill passed in the House. “Nixon!”
The current debate which pits “private sector” versus “public sector” is full of misnomers, she said, arguing that America’s health care system has always been a hybrid of both. Private sector health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers are all heavily subsidized by government funds, grants and donations from nonprofit groups, she said. And private insurers could not generate the profits they do without the government covering the poorest and sickest in society, she added.
But that interlocking network of politicians, lobbyists, industrialists, their employees and everyone with their stock all adds up to 100 years of related stakeholders, making for “powerful opponents.”
Stone recounted New York Times articles describing the “medical/industrial complex” which has no concern for political philosophy and is willing to spend money on either side of party lines to maintain its existence.
Stone described himself as a “single payor” purist who wants to see all Americans covered under one expanded Medicare system. Current laws require the treatment of anyone who walks into an emergency room anyway, regardless of income, coverage or even citizenship, he pointed out. A universal payor is the only system that makes sense and is efficient, he said, describing its only downside as the loss of profits to private insurers and pharmaceutical companies.
Speakers explained that the legislation currently in the House is now in the Senate, and that body has two plans of its own. What might emerge from the coming politicking could in fact be worse than what is in place if Americans are forced by law to buy insurance plans they can’t afford, and employers drop their own coverage without a government-provided plan on which to fall back.
Phone numbers and contact information for elected officials were distributed and those in attendance were encouraged to call congressional representatives and voice their concerns.
Democracy for American is a nonprofit organization founded by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a physician currently serving as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.
