PNHP leaders, including the organization’s national coordinator, Dr. Quentin Young asked to be included in the Blair House session. (And this White House knows Young. The Chicago physician whose office once cared for Obama and his family and whose friendship with the future president was forged more than a decade ago.)
So, too, did congressional backers of Medicare-for-All proposals, including Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Anthony Weiner, D- New York, and Peter Welch, D-Vermont, all made similar requests.
What might have been added to the discourse.
Consider Dr. Quentin Young’s Young’s assessment of the president’s plan.
“Regrettably, the president’s proposal is built on some of the worst aspects of the Senate bill,” Young said, in an accurate assessment of Obama’s approach. “For example, the president’s proposal would ship hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies. And to help finance this, it would impose a new tax on health benefits of workers, especially those in high-cost states.
Added Young:
( Obama’s proposal for an) individual mandate would force millions of middle-income uninsured Americans to buy insurers’ skimpy products – insurance policies full of gaps like ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums. Such policies already leave middle-class American families vulnerable to economic hardship and medical bankruptcy in the event of a serious illness like cancer,” continued Young, citing a recent study.
Even so, at least 23 million people would remain uninsured,” he said. “We know that being uninsured raises your chance of dying by about 40 percent,” he continued, citing another recent study. “That translates into about 23,000 unnecessary deaths each year. As physicians, we find this completely unacceptable.
“In short,” added Young, “this proposal is an insurance company bonanza, not good, evidence-based health reform. The president would do better by abandoning the insurance and drug companies and instead taking up the single-payer approach.”
Young and his allies are not another “party of ‘no'” — they actually propose a viable alternative that could save hundreds of billions of dollars annually by simplifying health administration.
“By building on and improving the already popular Medicare program, we could put our patients’ interests first,” says Dr. Young. “Were President Obama to do so, he would meet with strong public support, including from the medical community.”
Dr. Young is right, and there are plenty of members of the House and Senate who agree with him.
Unfortunately, Medicare-for-All advocates weren’t invited to the table.
The resulting health-care summit suffered for their absence — as does the broader debate about how to do health-care reform right. (Posted by (Bulatlat.com)
John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. A co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again andTragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. Nichols is also author of Dick: The Man Who is President and The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism.
