President Obama and Congress: If You Missed Wise County, Join Me in L.A.
Posted on July 30th, 2009 by Wendell Potter - Center for Media and Democracy in Profits Before People
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During my recent interview with Bill Moyers, I explained that the sight of Americans being forced to wait in line for charity health care was one of the experiences that inspired me to leave my job as an insurance industry public relations executive.
The insurance industry, its business allies and its shills in Congress are doing their best once again to scare us away from real health care reform, just as they did 15 years ago. Using the same tactics and language they did then, insurers and their cronies are warning us that America will be sliding down a slippery slope toward socialism if the federal government creates a public insurance option to compete with the cartel of huge for-profit companies that now dominate the health insurance industry.
One of the false images they try to create in our minds is of long waits for needed care if our reformed health care system resembles in any way the systems of other developed countries in the world–systems that don't deny a single citizen access to affordable care, much less 50 million of them.
Here is a real image, and a very scary one, that I wish those overpaid insurance executives and members of Congress could have witnessed before dawn a few days ago: a thousand men, women and children standing for hours, in the dark, in a line that seemed to be endless, waiting patiently for a chance — a chance because the need is so great many are turned away — to get much-needed care from a volunteer doctor.
The most important part of health care reform is winning - without giving away the store, the farm, the house, the goat, and three of the four kids. And with a strong public plan option.
We just did it in Connecticut. So it can be done.
On July 20th, our state House and Senate successfully overrode Republican Governor Rell's veto of the SustiNet health care reform plan - one of the most ambitious plans for universal health care anywhere. The SustiNet law mandates the creation of a nine member committee to be known as the SustiNet Board. The board, co-chaired by the State Comptroller and the State Healthcare Advocate, will lay out the steps for implementing a plan to provide health insurance to the state's 325,000 uninsured and to broaden the range of insurance options available to employers.
The centerpiece of SustiNet involves making the state employees plan self-insured, then opening it up (with quality care and affordable rates) to: the uninsured; Medicaid recipients; small business employees; nonprofit employees; municipalities; and individuals who have unaffordable or inadequate employee–sponsored plans.
According to health economists Jonathan Gruber of MIT and Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute, SustiNet will return at least $2.50 to employers and employees for every dollar invested by the state.
In the insurance capital of the country, with a Republican governor, a broad-based coalition of small business owners, providers, faith leaders, union leaders, health care advocates and other stake holders beat the odds.
If we can do it here, you can do it there.
More about SustiNet is at: http://www.healthcare4every1.org.