Legislative Blog Post # 9
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40 members of the public attend meeting of
I haven't paid as much attention to Health Care in these posts as I intended, so I will focus on it in this one.
A public hearing for LD 386 was held on February 13. An Act To Establish Universal Health Care for Maine proposed "to establish a single-payor, universal health care system in the State." I attended that hearing prepared to testify in support of the bill, but the sponsor, first thing, withdrew the bill in favor of the The Legislative Task Force on Health Care Coverage for All of Maine. I expressed my dismay when the Chair was about to close the meeting without hearing testimony, and they let me read mine :
Senator Brakey, Representative Hymanson, members of the Human Services Committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify in support of LD
386.
In the early 1960s, my oldest son suffered a near-fatal
illness that lasted for several years and involved several lengthy
hospitalizations. We were a working-class, one-income family, and we survived
this crisis without medical debt with health insurance from a non-profit Blue
Cross/Blue Shield. Most working-class families had high-quality affordable
health insurance at that time.
Since then, corporate profit, corporate advertising, and
corporate influence over legislators have entered the health-care business and
created a system too expensive, too complex, too inefficient, too unaffordable,
and too inaccessible to be sustainable.
Profit, not consumer health, is now the major concern of the health-care
industrial complex.
Last year, my son-in-law had heart surgery. Without the ACA,
they would have been paying medical bills for that for the rest of their lives.
Even with the ACA they are saddled with medical debt they have trouble paying
from this procedure as well as other medical issues. The ACA has not and cannot
solve problems created by profit-driven market forces.
My brother was diagnosed with cancer in Maine
and received his early treatment here.
When it came time to retire, he and his wife, a Canadian citizen, moved
to Canada where they could get much better quality health care at much less
out-of-pocket expense. Instead of
worrying about threats to his assets by high premiums, deductions, co-pays, and
possible long-term care, he could focus his final years on quality of life—time
with his 4 generational family, gardening, fishing, practicing his craft of
making beautiful jewelry.
Martin Luther King said, “Of
all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and
inhumane.” Pope Francis says, “It is vital that government leaders and
financial leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that
all citizens have dignified work, education and healthcare” Worldwide wisdom supports that
universal single-payer healthcare is morally the right thing to do.
Comparisons of health costs as a percentage of GDP
demonstrate that the United States spends nearly twice as much on Health Care
as Canada and other industrialized countries.
Worldwide economies show that universal single-payer healthcare is
economically the right thing to do.
A PBS News Hour report shows that
the United States lags behind other OECD [Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development] nations in number of physicians per person,
number of hospital beds per capita, life expectancy, and other indicators of
health-care quality. Worldwide
experience shows that universal single-payer health care is the right thing to
do for better outcomes and quality of care.
Single payer
universal health care is the right thing to do, morally and economically, and
it produces better quality of care and better outcomes. You have a chance here to do the right
thing. Please vote ought to pass.
There is only one other testimony about this bill posted at the Maine.gov site. This one, written by a spokes person for the Maine Heritage Policy Center, spoke in opposition to the Bill. I have been researching and testifying about Health Care problems and solutions for 7 years. Like all the other arguments opposed to any kind of single payer plan that I know about, this testimony claimed all such plans are too expensive. And it failed to consider the overwhelming evidence that single payer plans at home (such as Medicare) and abroad are less expensive than our current system and produce better outcomes.
My big worry about this Task Force, based on what I know now, is the make up of the membership:
A. Four members of the Senate, appointed by the President of the Senate, including 2 members of the party holding the largest number of seats in the Senate and 2 members of the party holding the 2nd largest number of seats in the Senate, of whom at least one member is a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Insurance and Financial Services and at least one member is a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Health and Human Services;
B. Four members of the House of Representatives, appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, including 2 members of the party holding the largest number of seats in the House of Representatives and 2 members of the party holding the 2nd largest number of seats in the House of Representatives, of whom at least 3 members are members of the Joint Standing Committee on Insurance and Financial Services or the Joint Standing Committee on Health and Human Services;
C. One member representing the interests of hospitals, appointed by the President of the Senate;
D. One member representing the interests of health care providers, appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives;
E. Two members representing the interests of health insurance carriers, one appointed by the President of the Senate and one appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives;
F. Two members representing the interests of consumers, one appointed by the President of the Senate and one appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives;
G. One member representing the interests of employers with fewer than 50 employees, appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives; and
H. One member representing the interests of the employers with 50 or more employees, appointed by the President of the Senate.
Of 16 members only 2 represent the interest of consumers. 8 are legislators, and all other members are appointed by legislative leadership. Health-insurance industry's influence extends far beyond its 2 members on the Task Force. Legislators are all vulnerable to their influence, not only by lobbying, but also by campaign contributions. We saw with the Affordable Care Act how the insurance lobby controlled the outcome of the proposed public option that was scrapped, how Medicaid was not expanded in Maine and many other states, how taxpayers are still facing the burden of paying for all the people who still cannot afford health care, and other issues in the Affordable Care act that make it problematic for consumers and taxpayers. I fear the outcome of this Task Force for consumers will meet a similar fate.
- [Of the] the survey results from the Task Force members; only seven (out of 16) were submitted to date, and five of those said “yes” (2 said “no”) to whether ‘all Mainers should be required to have health care coverage’.
- CEO of Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company [. . . .] gave the impression that if only these people [workers who miss work because of ill health] controlled their weight, diet, exercise, sugar, etc., they wouldn’t get sick (even cancer was mentioned). Absent was the idea that regular medical attention, such as annual physicals and comprehensive care are crucial to good health.
- "Options for a Public Model" . . . . envisions the use of a unique and hybrid public-private collaboration. [Based on what I have observed about public-private collaboration, this leads to corporate welfare in which the public provides tax incentives and subsidies resulting in huge profits and CEO salaries for major private corporations.]
- Public comments were the highlight of the afternoon session. Of the 15 speakers 10 people were representing Maine AllCare.
- Retired business person Joe Lendvai urged the Task Force to recommend immediate action by the Legislature on two modest but important initiatives as a first step toward universal healthcare in Maine. First, implement universal primary care to cover every child in Maine; and secondly, expand school food programs to include breakfast, lunch and snacks free to all students. Both these actions would have immediate positive results in improving the health of Maine’s children at a relatively small cost to the state.
- Dr. Phil Caper [. . .] summarized the proposed solution advocated by Maine AllCare: We need “publicly funded healthcare coverage for all Maine residents. The system must be efficient, financially sound, politically sustainable and must provide benefits fairly distributed to all.”
On that positive note I will leave this health-care issue to be continued.
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