Embedded in the healthcare war.
Embedded in the healthcare war.
Health care, or the lack of it, will be the top domestic issue in the 2008 elections. To be taken seriously, every Presidential candidate – even Duncan Hunter --has staff devising some sort of a convoluted health plan. (Hunter’s will probably be financed by defense contractors). Most proposals are retreads of flawed legislation passed last year in Massachusetts. Former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney runs around the country telling folks he brought universal health care to the state, but he left office before ever having to implement it or explain how it will be funded or contain soaring costs.
Rare it is that the left coast picks up on the east coast but in California Gov. Schwartzenegger added a couple asterisks to Mitt Romney’s plan and says it will now provide health care for everyone in America’s largest state. Arnold’s proposal must have something going for it since it has been roundly condemned by all sides, from right and left. The issue is so important that pundits say if Arnold actually produces universal health care for California, people will forget he was ever an actor. Which most of us already have.
For years the Congress has been ducking this problem, but with 47 million uninsured and healthcare costs rising five times faster than wages, people are fed up and demanding action. No one got the message clearer than the trillion-dollar health insurance industry, the cause of our misery. They see reform coming and-- just like that-- embeds itself with the reformers.
On successive days recently, press conferences heralded the creation of two national coalitions for “universal health care”. And a leading participant of both is American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the powerful lobby whose “Harry and Louise” television ads in 1994 dug a grave for the Clinton health care bill before it ever got out of committee. What made the Clinton plan so ripe for ridicule was its complexity, and if AHIP has its way with its two new national coalition partners, “murk” and “maze” will be the Harry & Louise of 2008.
There is a lesson here for John Edwards, who long has championed the need for genuine universal health care. (Yes, John Edwards is running for President, though some of you may have missed it since he announced his candidacy during the Christmas holidays, thinking that would be a slow news period and he’d capture lots of headlines and TV interviews. As we now know, Gerald Ford died that same week and a dead president makes more news than an aspiring one. There also was a plethora of football bowl games that same week which is why you might also have missed Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) who announced for President on the afternoon the Central Michigan Chippewas were defeating Middle Tennessee State in the Motor City Bowl).
Anyway, here’s what Edwards must do to be a shoo-in for President in ’08: make health care, not poverty, the overriding issue of his campaign and keep it simple. That means a plan that makes sense and everyone understands, such as those government-financed health care systems enjoyed by every other country in the industrialized world where they spend less than we do and cover everyone.
If Edwards wants a state universal healthcare model to emulate, he’ll want to look at Vermont, not Massachusetts. Last year Democratic legislators in Vermont passed, and public pressure forced a reluctant Republican governor to sign, the most far-reaching healthcare reform legislation enacted by any state in over 30 years. All the state’s uninsured will have access to affordable healthcare, regardless of income, and insurance premiums for all Vermonters will be the lowest in the country.
Seems to me there once was a political slogan “as Vermont goes, so goes the nation”. Let that be true in the fight for universal healthcare.
Health care, or the lack of it, will be the top domestic issue in the 2008 elections. To be taken seriously, every Presidential candidate – even Duncan Hunter --has staff devising some sort of a convoluted health plan. (Hunter’s will probably be financed by defense contractors). Most proposals are retreads of flawed legislation passed last year in Massachusetts. Former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney runs around the country telling folks he brought universal health care to the state, but he left office before ever having to implement it or explain how it will be funded or contain soaring costs.
Rare it is that the left coast picks up on the east coast but in California Gov. Schwartzenegger added a couple asterisks to Mitt Romney’s plan and says it will now provide health care for everyone in America’s largest state. Arnold’s proposal must have something going for it since it has been roundly condemned by all sides, from right and left. The issue is so important that pundits say if Arnold actually produces universal health care for California, people will forget he was ever an actor. Which most of us already have.
For years the Congress has been ducking this problem, but with 47 million uninsured and healthcare costs rising five times faster than wages, people are fed up and demanding action. No one got the message clearer than the trillion-dollar health insurance industry, the cause of our misery. They see reform coming and-- just like that-- embeds itself with the reformers.
On successive days recently, press conferences heralded the creation of two national coalitions for “universal health care”. And a leading participant of both is American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the powerful lobby whose “Harry and Louise” television ads in 1994 dug a grave for the Clinton health care bill before it ever got out of committee. What made the Clinton plan so ripe for ridicule was its complexity, and if AHIP has its way with its two new national coalition partners, “murk” and “maze” will be the Harry & Louise of 2008.
There is a lesson here for John Edwards, who long has championed the need for genuine universal health care. (Yes, John Edwards is running for President, though some of you may have missed it since he announced his candidacy during the Christmas holidays, thinking that would be a slow news period and he’d capture lots of headlines and TV interviews. As we now know, Gerald Ford died that same week and a dead president makes more news than an aspiring one. There also was a plethora of football bowl games that same week which is why you might also have missed Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) who announced for President on the afternoon the Central Michigan Chippewas were defeating Middle Tennessee State in the Motor City Bowl).
Anyway, here’s what Edwards must do to be a shoo-in for President in ’08: make health care, not poverty, the overriding issue of his campaign and keep it simple. That means a plan that makes sense and everyone understands, such as those government-financed health care systems enjoyed by every other country in the industrialized world where they spend less than we do and cover everyone.
If Edwards wants a state universal healthcare model to emulate, he’ll want to look at Vermont, not Massachusetts. Last year Democratic legislators in Vermont passed, and public pressure forced a reluctant Republican governor to sign, the most far-reaching healthcare reform legislation enacted by any state in over 30 years. All the state’s uninsured will have access to affordable healthcare, regardless of income, and insurance premiums for all Vermonters will be the lowest in the country.
Seems to me there once was a political slogan “as Vermont goes, so goes the nation”. Let that be true in the fight for universal healthcare.
posted by Victor Kamber | 9:20 AM
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