healthcare reform – Memphis Flyer

The Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission are 13-member bodies that meet with regularity, both in full session and in committee meetings. The way in which they both have come to operate might constitute a lesson of sorts to other legislative bodies supposedly higher up the chain of government. By that, of course, we mean the Tennessee General Assembly and the Congress of the United States.

The most direct contrast to those more rarefied legislative entities can probably be supplied by the county commission, because it, like the Tennessee legislature and the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, is elected according to the dictates of the two-party system, which pits Democrats against Republicans in electoral contests and thereafter requires the representatives of either party to sit in common assembly.

Increasingly, the commission provides a textbook example of how the two-party system is supposed to work. There are conflicts, sometimes ferocious ones, but these develop more often according to personality than to party lines. Differences that arise from the ideological divide of the two parties occur, of course, but they are usually resolved by the simple arithmetic of a vote-count (abetted in no few cases by some artful vote-trading).

Mitt Romney, father of Obamacare

After a stutter or two a few years back, the commission has resumed its “gentlemen’s agreement” tradition of rotating its chairmanship back and forth by party. This year’s chair, elected on Monday, is a Republican, Heidi Shafer, who succeeded Democrat Melvin Burgess.

During this past year, the members of the commission concurred across party lines on matters ranging from minority contracting to taxing philosophy to the essentials of a long-term “strategic agenda.” It is hard to make direct comparisons to the General Assembly, where the ratio of majority Republicans to minority Democrats is wildly disproportional, but the two houses of Congress are balanced enough between the two parties to allow for instructive contrasts. Rather infamously, the two-party system there is totally dysfunctional, and “gridlock” is too kind a name for it.

The nation has just witnessed the spectacle of one party in the Senate trying to abolish the nation’s prevailing health-care insurance system — and recklessly, without a real alternative. The scheme failed only because three members of the majority party were conscientious enough to scuttle it, calling instead for bipartisan action and consultative reform efforts.

What made the shabby repeal effort doubly ironic was that the Affordable Care Act, so tenuously rescued from Republicans acting in near-total lockstep, had been inspired by a Republican think tank and a Republican governor, Massachusett’s Mitt Romney, in the first place. The congressional GOP’s fanatic resistance to the act had been based on nothing more, ultimately, than a nakedly partisan pledge made eight years ago to oppose anything and everything offered by Democratic President, Barack Obama.

Now that Obama is out of office, that sordid motive is obsolete. Going forward, two parties, like two heads, can be better than one. But only if they genuinely take heed of each other.

Now that the farce called Trumpcare has imploded into finger pointing and recriminations, you can bet the insurance companies, aided by the GOP congress, will do everything in their power to assure the final destruction of Obamacare. Since the health-care industry is in turmoil, may I ask a basic question? What in God’s name is the insurance business doing in the heart of health care in the first place? Why should anyone profit from the misery of others?

I roughly understand the basics of life insurance. People come together as a group and pay continual premiums into a general account. Miss a payment, and they keep your money. Just ask me. Everybody’s premiums are invested, making the insurance companies grandly prosperous, so they can afford to pay death benefits to the beneficiaries of the dearly departed who had the courtesy to die within the allotted time frame. In other words, you’re making a bet on when you’ll buy the farm. The insurers even have mortality tables that provide odds on your death, sort of like a human expiration date. Should you win your bet, your family gets paid, only you’re dead. If you live past the 20 or 30 years usually proscribed in an insurance contract, you lose and get squat. And they keep your money — all of it.

[content-1]

The whole thing is purposely vague so that you need to hire an agent, or one will surely find you. The same principles apply to other insurance instruments, like car, home, travel, or personal accident. The difference is that not everyone will be involved in a car wreck, or have their travelers’ checks stolen, or their house burn down, but sooner or later, everybody is going to get sick.

The purpose of Obamacare was to spread the risks of health-care costs among a large group of people in order to pay the extortion rates of the medical and pharmaceutical industries. For instance, a bottle of Excedrin at Walgreen’s costs six dollars, but in the hospital, it’s six bucks a tablet. It’s all a scam assembled by the institutions that stand to reap the profits from the treatment of the sick and elderly. That’s why Obama asked for the mandate, so that younger people who tend to be healthier join the pool of the insured. Just as everyone is required to buy auto insurance, even if you never use it, everyone’s purchase of health insurance would pay the costs of colossal, backbreaking hospital bills and prescription medications.

The plan faltered because young people weren’t interested in another monthly note, and the bill had Barack Obama’s name on it. Still, 20 million people were able to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act, even if many didn’t know it was Obamacare by another name. The mistake was allowing the insurance companies to remain in place to continue fleecing the populace, but that would require a public option, and you know how those free marketeers love their capitalism. It’s well known that the United States is the only country in the civilized world that doesn’t offer health care to its citizens as a right and not a privilege. A study by the Commonwealth Fund of the health-care systems in 11 developed countries found America dead last, despite our health care being the world’s most expensive.

[content-2]

By contrast, just across the river from Detroit is the nation of Canada — less than half a mile away, but light years away in the care of its citizens. Health care in Canada works like Medicare for everyone, advocated by Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign. All medical expenses are free except dental and prescription drugs. The government keeps drugs cheap by negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies on a federal level. Bringing that model to this country would bring peace of mind to patients, free doctors from endless paperwork, and since the profit motive would be removed, there would be no need for fraud or superfluous hospital tests to run up Medicare bills that benefit someone’s bottom line. Of course, that would require that hospitals be funded by the public as part of the national budget. Now that the Jolly Orange Giant has turned his back on the health-care issue, he has focused his gaze on tax cuts for the wealthy. So there will be no universal health care during Trump’s tenure — however long that may be.

The reactionary Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare more than 60 times. They had seven years to come up with a replacement, and they couldn’t do it. Speaker Paul Ryan’s hastily constructed American Health Care Act couldn’t pass muster with the GOP Freedom Caucus, the group formerly known as the Tea Party. Although health-insurance lobbyists helped shape the bill that slashed funding for Medicaid so the poor would suffer first, it still wasn’t cruel enough for the hard-right zealots. Last-minute revisions intended to throw raw meat to the jackals included turning the funding of Medicare over to the states, giving “health-care tax credits” to the elderly, the immediate repeal of Obama’s taxes on the rich, and the instituting of a test for all “able-bodied adults” to pass a work requirement before being enrolled in Medicaid.

Americanspirit | Dreamstime.com

Donald Trump

Herr Trump blamed the Democrats for not voting to destroy President Obama’s signature achievement. Trumpcare went up in flames because of the activism of millions of people who opposed it and transformed town hall meetings into episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show. As it turns out, the public seems to like their Obamacare, which was formulated by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s and enacted into law by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. The Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land and a bruising defeat for the “Art of the Spiel.” Donald Trump rose to prominence by appearing in a reality TV show called The Apprentice. He should return to a career in reality television, only this time, Trump could be the host of The Biggest Loser.
Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.