New Democrat Update - October 2009
THE HIGH STAKES OF HEALTH CARE REFORM
America’s health care system does not just need a tune-up, it requires an overhaul. Congress must not merely cement the present system in place because that will only add more people into the mess we already have. Fixing the system has literally become a matter of life and death, a matter of families making ends meet or households sinking into financial ruin.
Thankfully, getting everyone covered at an affordable price does not have to mean shelling out more money than the $2.2 trillion already annually expended. We just need to spend the dollars much more wisely in the right places.
Rapidly rising health care costs have simply become unsustainable for the economy and overwhelming to families. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2009 Employer Benefits Survey, it now costs $13,375 to pay for the average coverage of the typical family. As alarming as that is, if premiums increase at the same rate that they did for the last 10 years, the annual price tag will rise to $30,083 by 2019!
The last 30 years have taken a terrible toll on the middle class and working families. Health-care premiums have tripled while corporate profits per employee have doubled. The consequence has been a tight squeeze on the hourly earnings of workers. What would have been welcome pay raises have been erased by skyrocketing health care costs.
Higher costs are making even those who usually have insurance more insecure. According to Third Way, a Washington-based progressive think tank, 88 million Americans between the ages of 18-64 and their families - half of all working-age Americans - faced major obstacles to decent care. They experienced at least one of the following - a serious pre-existing condition, a gap in insurance during the last year, premiums that consumed more than one out of every eight dollars earned or high out-of-pocket expenses, or skipped doctor visits because of high costs.
More and more folks cannot even get insurance. The U.S. Treasury Department reports that from 1997 to 2006, 41 percent of people under the age of 65 did not have it for at least six months and 36 percent were out of the system for a year or more. One out of six Coloradans is uninsured.
As dire as the data may be, statistics alone cannot convey the depth of this crisis. Citing former Washington Post correspondent T.R. Reid’s important new book, "The Healing of America," New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tells the sad - but unfortunately all too common - case of Nikki White:
“Nikki was a slim and athletic college graduate who had health insurance, had worked in health care and knew the system. But she had systemic lupus erythematosus, a chronic inflammatory disease that was diagnosed when she was 21 and gradually left her too sick to work. And once she lost her job, she lost her health insurance.
In any other rich country, Nikki probably would have been fine . . . Some 80 percent of lupus patients in the United States live a normal life span. Under a doctor’s care, lupus should be manageable. Indeed, if Nikki had been a felon, the problem could have been averted, because courts have ruled that prisoners are entitled to medical care.
As Mr. Reid recounts, Nikki tried everything to get medical care, but no insurance company would accept someone with her pre-existing condition. She spent months painfully writing letters to anyone she thought might be able to help. She fought tenaciously for her life.
Finally, Nikki collapsed at her home in Tennessee and was rushed to a hospital emergency room, which was then required to treat her without payment until her condition stabilized. Since money was no longer an issue, the hospital performed 25 emergency surgeries on Nikki, and she spent six months in critical care.
‘When Nikki showed up at the emergency room, she received the best of care, and the hospital spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on her,’ her step-father, Tony Deal, told me. ‘But that’s not when she needed the care.’
By then it was too late. In 2006, Nikki White died at age 32. ‘Nikki didn’t die from lupus,’ her doctor, Amylyn Crawford, told Mr. Reid. ‘Nikki died from complications of the failing American health care system.’ ”
Nikki White is not alone. More than 22,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care. Annually, another 700,000 people in this country have to declare bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills. Dying or going broke, as a result of inadequate coverage, should not happen in the richest nation on earth.
Unfortunately, Republicans have shamefully decided to take a pass on being part of the solution. Consequently, Democrats must be up to the challenge of curbing rising costs and covering everyone.
The top priority, of course, must be saving lives and preventing families from financial disaster. Nonetheless, progressives have something else very important to prove - that government can, once again, become a positive force to make people’s lives better.
Maybe unexpectedly, the health care debate has become the proving ground for progressive leaders who believe that the role of public policy is to solve problems faced by ordinary Americans. Too much is at stake - even beyond the health-care crisis - to let the poisonous politics of Washington get in the way of a desperately-needed solution.
President Barack Obama said it well in his address to Congress last month:
“Concern and regard for the plight of others - is not a partisan feeling. It's not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character - our ability to stand in other people's shoes; a recognition that we are all in this together, and when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand; a belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgment that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise."
Author and commentator Fareed Zakaria has written in his must-read book, “The Post-American World,” “The problem today is that the American political system seems to have lost its ability to create broad coalitions that solve complex issues . . . (It) has lost the ability for large-scale compromise, and it has lost the ability to accept some pain now for much gain later on.”
As the majority governing party in a hyper-polarized time, the president and his fellow Democrats have no choice but to take responsibility and bear the burden of proving Zakaria wrong. America is watching and waiting.
”WHAT IT TAKES”
The DLC has released a new report that outlines the three issues critical to successful health reform - overhauling insurance rules while requiring all individuals to be part of the system, assuring health care is affordable, and creating a competitive marketplace through effective insurance exchanges.
"When it comes to health care, we have to make sure we get the underlying reforms right," said DLC Chairman Harold Ford, Jr. "Guaranteeing Americans access to care, ensuring that coverage is affordable, and setting up a marketplace that keeps premiums competitive are key to successful reform."
For a copy, please click here.