[Iowa-dx] Fwd: Corporate Dems escalate attack on single-payer (Corporate Crime Reporter)

[hhart@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu]

Corporate Democrats Escalate Attack on Single
Payer

Corporate Crime Reporter
May 9, 2007
http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/corporatedems050807.htm


The Corporate Democratic Party is into snuff
politics. The target this month ? single payer,
Medicare for all.

The motive ? protect the corporate health
insurance industry.

Democratic snuff politics was on display
yesterday on Capitol Hill.

Senator Ron Wyden was on the Hill surrounded by
his corporate supporters ? Steve Burd, CEO,
Safeway Inc., Art Collins, CEO of Medtronic, Inc,
H. Edward Hanaway, CEO, CIGNA, Steve Sanger, CEO,
General Mills, and Ronald Williams, CEO, Aetna,
Inc.

Wyden has introduced legislation that is similar
to that introduced by Republican Massachusetts
Governor Mitt Romney and Republican California
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

All claim to create universal health care.

None can, do or will.

What?s the common denominator between Wyden-care,
and Romney-care and Schwarzenegger-care?

Individual mandates.

The individual must get health insurance or the
individual is violating the law.

As opposed to single payer.

Which says to the health insurance companies ?
get out.

We will take care of our people.

If you sell basic health insurance, you are
violating the law.

Everyone is in one insurance pool.

Nobody is out.

All are covered.

No bills, no co-pays, no deductibles.

No losing your health insurance when you change
jobs.

No escalating premiums when you get sick.

Cheaper than the current system.

With better outcomes.

One approach sets up a system that outlaws
individual wrongdoing.

The other sets up a system that outlaws corporate
wrongdoing.

The corporate executives were at the press
conference to support Wyden?s plan and to push
their own newly created Coalition to Advance
Healthcare Reform.

The key element focused on by the CEOs ? a
market-based health care system.

The goal ? derail publically funded single payer
legislation that will cut administrative waste.

The single payer bill has 70 sponsors in the
House of Representatives and is supported by 52
percent of the American people.

When asked why he doesn?t support single payer
when 52 percent of the American people do, Wyden
didn?t blush.

?The people of my state, not a poll, but at the
ballot box in 2002, they voted by about 3-1
against a single payer proposal,? Wyden said.

Well yeah, after the insurance industry dumped
millions to scare people into believing the
government was going to take over their lives.

?If you go to a community meeting and take a poll
in my state, what people want is coverage like
their member of Congress gets,? Wyden said. ?They
want benefits like their members of Congress.
They want the quality of care that their members
of Congress get.?

But can?t single payer deliver exactly that?

Mildly irritated by this question, Wyden reminds
reporters in the room that single payer is not
the topic of this press conference.

(No, the topic is snuffing out single payer.)

?My guess is that single payer is more government
than Americans want, number one,? he says. (The
CEOs nod their heads in approval.)

?And number two ? how do you get there from
here?? he asks.

How do you get there from here?

Pass single payer.

Wyden actually means ? how do you get there from
here if you anger the CEOs of Aetna and CIGNA and
all of the other CEOs standing behind him at the
press conference by supporting single payer?

Well, one way you get there from here is by
building political support for single payer.

Hold a press conference with ordinary Americans
and announce an attack on the corporate health
care system that results in 31 percent of health
care spending on administrative costs, that
triggers half of all personal bankruptcies, that
leaves 45 million uninsured and 16 million
underinsured.

None of this by the way was a surprise to
long-time Wyden watchers.

Greg Kafoury is a public interest lawyer based in
Portland.

?That Wyden would host a health care news
conference surrounded by corporate CEOs is
typical of his career in politics,? Kafoury told
Corporate Crime Reporter. ?Most of his public
life has been dedicated to serving big money.
With his constituency in Oregon, he could be a
hero of the people and support single payer. The
tragedy is that there is no need for him to serve
power rather than confront it.?

So that?s one tragedy ? the corporate Democrats.

The other tragedy is the so-called progressive
Democrats.

They held a one day conference in Washington,
D.C. last week ? titled ? The Big Con ? The
Failure of American Conservatism.

It was sponsored by the Campaign for America?s
Future ? the outfit directed by Robert Borosage
and Roger Hickey ? and The American Prospect
magazine.

The day-long event featured a debate between
American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner and
neocon William Kristol.

The title ? Can Conservatives be Trusted to
Govern?

Everyone in the room understood the answer to be
no.

The unanswered question, only touched on by
Kuttner, was whether Democrats could be trusted
to govern.

Kuttner grazed by it when he said the $64,000
question was whether the Democratic Party could
throw off its corporate funders.

?As the income distribution becomes more
concentrated, so does the distribution of
political power,? Kuttner said. ?For the
Republicans, that?s not a contradiction. Wealthy
Republicans pay Republicans to be Republicans and
to carry out conservative ideology. Wealthy
Democrats for the most part, except on social
issues, pay Democrats to be less like Democrats.
So, one party starts out with one hand tied
behind its back. The cure for that is
leadership.?

Which was severely lacking at the conference.

Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg told the
conference that one recent poll of likely voters
showed that 52 percent want a Canadian-style
single payer system. And fully 70 percent of
Democratic primary voters want such a system.

If that?s true, how come even the progressive
leaders at the conference who work on health
care, like Hickey and Yale University Professor
Jacob Hacker, don?t support single payer?

?The problem is that you can?t just tell people ?
you are going to have to change all of your
arrangements overnight,? Hickey told Corporate
Crime Reporter. ?The problem is telling people
that have good health insurance ? you have to
shift to something else.?

The other problem with single payer, Hickey says,
is that the insurance companies would fight it
tooth and nail.

Hickey says that if you take a pro-single payer
stance, ?you will be relegated to the sidelines
and you won?t have any leverage over the
political debate that goes on this year.?

?The question people have to ask is ? are we
going to get the political debate heading in a
single payer direction, or do we abdicate the
field and let Hillary and Edwards and the best of
them end up with something like Schwarzenegger?s
plan, which is all private insurance, or Romney?s
plan.?

But if Edwards had come out for single payer, he
would have energized the 70 percent of Democratic
Party primary voters who want it, right?

?And if elephants could fly, you would have a
flying circus,? Hickey says dismissively.

Hacker is the progressive Dems academic guru on
health care.

At the conference, we asked him ? why not single
payer?

?I am someone who is quite appreciative of single
payer,? Hacker said. ?But countervailing that
political story, which is certainly a true story,
are the political risks of displacing the private
insurance of highly paid workers and the fiscal
costs of creating the system in one fell swoop.?

?The seventy House Democrats who support single
payer are a powerful force for major reform,?
Hacker says. ?They should keep pressing for bold
action. They only should be willing to talk about
compromise at a point in which they think
something could really happen and be valuable. My
role as a policy analyst is to try and craft
something that could be that compromise,
something that could be Medicare for many. Keep
in mind, nearly 60 percent of all Americans would
be in this Health Care for America plan. And
projections show at least ten more percent within
a decade. So, we are talking about 70 percent of
Americans.?

Hacker says that insurers and employers will
initially resist anything that reduces their role
entirely.

?But once you get the system in place, both
actors will see incentives to work with it
instead of against it,? Hacker said.

?With insurers, it?s a little more iffy.?

So, the political reality of health care in
America can be summed up as a tale of Two Big
Cons.

Big Con One ? the conservatives offering
prosperity for all and delivering cronyism and
favoritism for the rich.

And Big Con Two ? the progressive Democrats,
promising universal health care, and then joining
with corporate Democrats and corporate America to
snuff out single payer.

=A9 2007 The Corporate Crime Reporter