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Stones & Bones / health care / volume 11 number 10, October 2009 DOSE OF REALITY Now, at end of September 2009, the final status of health care reform legislation coming out of Congress is still up in the air, but we can see the way things are going. One thing is clear: no substantive, money-saving reform to our health care system is going to occur this year. Congress lost that opportunity early on when it refused to consider the only way to make major inroads on cost control, namely, establishment of a single-payer system. Putting such a system into effect would cut costs by one-third while simultaneously giving improved health care to all Americans. Of course, a minority of members in both the House and Senate valiantly tried by introducing HB 676 and S 703, both calling for establishment of a single-payer system. So if single-payer is such a good idea, why has it not received serious consideration in Congress? The answer is fairly simple: Congress is largely controlled not by the American public, but rather by the health insurance, pharmaceutical, and related industries. Single-payer would destroy the obscene profitability of these industries. They do not want single-payer, and so, by god, there shall be no single-payer legislation coming out of Congress this year. The for-profit health care industries would prefer that nothing at all happen, that we retain the status quo. However, realizing that some change is coming, their goal this year has been to guide that change along avenues that will cause minimal damage to, or perhaps even improve the climate for their private industries. How have they gone about doing this? By applying sheer power, of which these industries have plenty. According to www.bloomberg.com (Aug. 14, 2009) 1,500 interested health care organizations have hired 3,300 lobbyists to guide our 535 Congressional representatives in the right directions. That is six lobbyists per Congressperson, and the average lobbying expenditure per Congressperson during the first half of 2009 exceeded $400,000. Of that amount, more than half—$250,000 per Congressperson—came from the pharmaceutical industry. The taxpayers paid each Congressperson only $87,000 for his or her work during that six-month period. It seems that when money talks, enough Congressmen listen to make the expenditure well worthwhile. They get the message that if they think and vote the right way their chances of keeping their jobs after their current terms end are much enhanced. In their efforts to avoid health care reform detrimental to their profits, the health care insurance and pharmaceutical industries have some natural allies. The current push for health care reform is a priority of the current Democratic administration, which also controls both the House and Senate. The Republicans would like to reverse the situation, and to do that they need to make the Obama administration look bad in the eyes of the public by defeating or defusing its priority programs, including health care reform. Priority Number One for the Republicans right now is not to serve the public by enacting meaningful health care reform, but rather to try to get back the control of the government. So the health care industry lobbyists don’t have to twist Republican arms very hard to keep them convinced that aligning with industry is the righteous way to go. The other natural ally of industry is that segment of the public which, for reasons it does not understand, feels disenfranchised from achieving the American Dream, the idea that in this land of opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement everyone should have a rich, full life. This group is fearful of losing what it has, angry about what it perceives it doesn’t have, and highly receptive to suggestion that since government is the enemy of the people its role in society should be minimized or even eliminated altogether. Through advertising and other means, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have been able to play on this fear of government to suggest that legislation regulating their industries or creating a government-run insurance option would be just steps toward a complete control by government of people’s lives. This is an easy group to manipulate because its members are basically less prone to accept logical arguments than emotional ones. Meaningful health care reform has logic on its side, but logical argument can’t compete with emotional argument playing on pre-existing fears, regardless of any factual basis the argument might have. Facts simply don’t matter, and that makes the anti-Obama, anti-government disciples of the nation’s Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, and Sarah Palins such great allies of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries in their efforts to defeat serious health care reform. So as the falling snow signals the end of a summer of hot debate on health care, it looks like some useful tweaking of our dysfunctional and overly-expensive health care system might actually occur. That is by no means certain, but it is clear that the primary winners of the battle are the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Very likely, they will escape any increased government regulation. Their profits and the overall cost of the nation’s health care will continue to rise unabated, and the American taxpayer will continue to pick up the tab. Neil Davis is a retired geophysicist and author of several fiction and nonfiction books. His most recent book is Mired in the Health Care Morass. More on health care issues can be found at his blog, http://healthcaremorass.blogspot.com. Neil can be contacted at neildavs@mosquitonet.com. | ||
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