The real agenda behind Obama ’s health car e “reform”

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The real agenda behind Obama’s health care “reform”
By Jerry White
11 September 2009

Major presidential addresses in the United States are generally
characterized by a certain political schizophrenia, as the chief
executive provides one message for popular consumption and another
message to the ruling elite. This was certainly the case with the
speech Obama gave Wednesday night on health care.

To an increasingly skeptical public, including large numbers of senior
citizens concerned that their Medicare coverage will be reduced, Obama
presented his proposal as a “progressive” measure aimed at expanding
care to the uninsured and checking the antisocial practices of big
insurers concerned with nothing but profit.

To the people who really count in Washington—the American ruling elite
and their political representatives in both parties—Obama got down to
business. Rising health care costs, including Medicare and Medicaid,
were draining the national budget and making US corporations
uncompetitive. Hundreds of billions would have to be wrung out of
health care spending by reducing “waste and abuse” and introducing
efficiencies, such as placing caps on what tests and treatments
doctors could provide their patients.

Far from a “government takeover” that would undermine the operations
of the capitalist market and the principle of for-profit medicine,
Obama assured the ruling elite that his plan would not interfere with
the operations of the giant health care monopolies.

Obama explicitly rejected a “single-payer system like Canada’s,” while
declaring, “Health care represents one-sixth of our economy” and it
“makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather
than try to build a entirely new system from scratch.” He also made
clear that he was willing to drop support for the so-called “public
option,” which is opposed by private insurers.

Wall Street and the big insurers got the message. The day after the
speech, share prices for health insurers surged: UnitedHealth by 17
cents to $28.57; WellPoint by 96 cents to $53.80; Aetna by 59 cents to
$29.84; and Humana by $1.12 to $39.19. The Dow Jones Industrial
Average extended its five-day rally, closing at its highest level
since October.

“Managed-care stocks fell last spring on their decline in
profitability and Obama’s election,” the investors’ web site
Smartmoney.com noted. “But each company has seen double-digit gains in
the last three months as the prospects for a large government
insurance program diminished. Obama’s address Wednesday didn’t change
investor’s sentiment.”

Obama began his remarks by insisting that the long-term interests of
American capitalism had to prevail over political maneuvering between
Democrats and Republicans. He noted that the last time he had spoken
before Congress, “this nation was facing the worst economic crisis
since the Great Depression” and “our financial system was on the verge
of collapse.”

Under those conditions, partisan differences had largely been put
aside and both parties closed ranks to vote for a further bailout of
the banks, despite widespread popular opposition. “I want to thank the
members of this body for your efforts and your support in these last
several months, and especially those who have taken the difficult
votes that have put us on the path to recovery.”

Reining in health care costs is no less crucial for the American
ruling elite, he insisted, chiding the Republicans for using the
debate “as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even
if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge.”

Obama spent a few moments referring to the genuine crisis facing tens
of millions of families without health insurance or those who are
being bankrupted by skyrocketing insurance premiums. He shifted
quickly to the main theme: rising health care costs were undermining
US corporations and threatening the solvency of the US government.

“Insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages,” he
complained, adding, “American businesses that compete
internationally—like our automakers—are at a huge disadvantage.”

This has long been a major complaint of corporate America. Between
1974 and 2008, real manufacturing wages fell by 5.38 percent, but big
business has been unable to fully benefit from the attack on workers’
wages because of rising medical costs, particularly for workers who
were living longer after retirement.

In 2005, Steve Miller, then CEO of auto parts giant Delphi, lamented
that workers were no longer retiring at 65 and dying at 70, but were
living and collecting health care benefits decades after they stopped
making profits for corporations. (Miller, who helped lead the attack
on wages and benefits of auto workers, is quoted on the front cover of
a recent book on health care by Ezekiel Emanuel, one of Obama’s chief
health care advisers.)

The real agenda of the Obama administration can be seen in the forced
bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler, where hundreds of
thousands of retirees and their families were stripped of their dental
and optical care and forced to pay increased premiums and co-pays. The
restructured corporations will be largely relieved of their “legacy”
costs, i.e., the health care obligations owed to workers who labored
their entire lives for these companies.

In his speech, Obama said he would impose a fee or tax on health
insurance companies for “their most expensive policies,” in order to
help pay for his plan. He presented this as a means by which the
public could recoup some of the vast profits these companies would
receive from the wave of new customers who would be compelled to buy
insurance under the plan. In reality, the measure is actually an
incentive for corporations to drop employer-paid benefits or sharply
curtail them because the cost of the fee will be passed on to
corporations in the form of higher premiums.

According to the New York Times, the proposal, originally introduced
by Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry, “would encourage
employers to buy cheaper, less generous coverage for employees,
thereby reducing excessive use of medical services.”

Moreover, under the terms of the bill being worked out by Montana
Democrat Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate finance committee,
employers would not be required to cover their workers at all. Those
that do not will have to pay a fee for each employee who received a
tax credit for coverage bought through a health insurance exchange.
The maximum assessment on employers would be equal to $400 for each
employee—far below the current costs employers pay to maintain health
care coverage for their workers.

Workers who choose not to (or cannot) buy insurance would be punished
at a far higher rate. Under the Baucus plan, those with incomes
between 100 percent and 300 percent of the poverty level—$10,830 for
an individual and $22,050 for a family of four—the penalty for not
having coverage would be $750 a year per person, with a maximum
penalty of $1,500 for a family.

Continuing on this central theme of cost-cutting, Obama blamed federal
health care programs for bringing the country to the brink of
financial collapse. “If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing
costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid
than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health
care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else comes close.”

This lie was specifically endorsed by the New York Times, whose lead
editorial Thursday stated, “Mr. Obama was absolutely right when he
said that the relentless rise in the cost of Medicare and Medicaid is
crippling the nation’s economy.”

In fact, the cost of the federal health care programs pales in
comparison to the massive bailout of the banks—which the inspector
general of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) estimates could
cost $23 trillion—the defense budget, including the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, the interest paid out to the banks profiting
from the financing of the federal deficit, and the tax cuts handed
over to the wealthy over the last three decades.

The president claimed that suggestions that senior citizens would see
their Medicare coverage slashed were only “scare tactics” by his
Republican critics. In fact, such reductions in services are at the
center of the president’s plan.

Obama said he would “eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in
waste and fraud” from Medicare and Medicaid, without providing details
of what would be cut. He made it clear, however, that a commission of
“medical experts” would determine what the most efficient and
cost-effective treatments were. This, in turn, would “usher in changes
in the way we deliver health care that can reduce costs for everybody.”

The president also endorsed a so-called “deficit trigger,” which,
according to the Times, would “automatically reduce the growth of
Medicare spending if health care overhaul does not produce the savings
that the administration and many health care experts expect.”

The details of the plan remain largely hidden from working people,
while furious negotiations are being conducted behind the scenes
between health care lobbyists and their bought-and-paid-for
representatives in Congress.

Obama’s speech has done nothing to clarify the content of the
proposals in the minds of millions of people, nor to alleviate the
growing unease over health care “reform.” In contrast to the push for
Social Security and Medicare in an earlier period, the supposed
beneficiaries of Obama’s plan have little idea what to expect. The
explanation for this lies in the fact that the Obama administration is
seeking to conceal its real agenda from the American population.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/obhc-s11.shtml

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