Health care summit promotes Obama ’s pro-busine ss agenda

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Health care summit promotes Obama’s pro-business agenda
By Kate Randall
26 February 2010

A daylong televised summit Thursday ended with no agreement between
Congressional Democrats and Republicans on advancing Barack Obama’s
health care agenda. The president had convened the meeting in an
effort to promote the Democrats’ health care overhaul, embodied most
recently in a plan put forward Monday by Obama modeled largely on the
health care legislation passed by the Senate. (See “Obama unveils
health plan ahead of bipartisan summit” )

There was no agreement to back any form of the Democratic-sponsored
legislation by the Republicans present, who reiterated that it should
be junked and the process be started anew. These disagreements aside,
however, the event served to expose the reality that any “reform” of
the US health care system being discussed by those in attendance is a
million miles away from the needs of the vast majority of ordinary
Americans.

The summit came the day after Obama’s appearance at the Business
Roundtable, in which he assured the assembled corporate CEOs that he
was an “ardent believer in the free market” and that his health care
overhaul was the antithesis of a “big government takeover.” It also
followed by only a few days Obama’s establishment by presidential
order of a bipartisan commission tasked with slashing spending on
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

At Thursday’s meeting, the president and well-heeled Congressional
attendees were at pains to conceal their disinterest in the real
plight of the uninsured, the underinsured, the jobless, the poor—those
ravaged by the effects of the recessionary crisis. Several Democrats
read letters they had received from constituents who had been dumped
by their insurer, or who could no longer afford coverage because their
premiums had been hiked to obscene levels. These remarks were
interspersed with joking exchanges about bipartisanship between the
president and his Republican rivals, and cynical posturing by
Democrats about the urgent necessity for enacting legislation.

The massive profits of the giant insurers and pharmaceuticals were
hardly given mention. Rather, Obama emphasized his commitment to
defend the capitalist, for-profit insurance market and sought to
rebuff any notion to the contrary. “The exchange? That’s a
market-based approach, not a government-run approach,” he stated. He
boasted that his plan did not include an employer mandate to provide
insurance coverage for workers, and that the consumer tax credits to
subsidize insurance “were consistent with a market-based approach.”

Obama went out of his way to stress that his main priorities were
controlling government spending and reducing the deficit, aims that
can only be achieved by drastic reductions and rationing of care,
particularly in the government-run Medicare program for the elderly
and the disabled. Republicans seized on the opportunity to pose as
defenders of the elderly, referring numerous times to the
“half-trillion-dollar cuts” to Medicare, an issue that was avoided by
the Democratic speakers.

The plan presented Monday by Obama is in fact devoid of even the fig
leafs of reform contained in earlier versions of the legislation.
There is no government-run public option. Even the “exchange” where
people would be able to purchase insurance has been watered down to
markets run individually by the states.

People would be mandated to purchase insurance or pay a penalty. As
Obama pointed out in his remarks to the Business Roundtable, this
feature would deliver “more customers” to the insurance companies,
boosting their profits.

One of the new elements included in Obama’s plan was the creation of a
Health Insurance Rate Authority, to reportedly “provide Federal
assistance and oversight to States in conducting reviews of
unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices of insurance
plans.” This weak measure was not mentioned at the summit. In all
likelihood, it was included in his proposal as window dressing.

In an effort to court Republican support, a large proportion of the
plan was devoted to a section entitled “Policies to Crack Down on
Waste, Fraud and Abuse,” many of whose features were drawn from health
care legislation introduced by the Republicans. At the summit, Obama
also indicated he would be willing to incorporate other
Republican-backed measures, including medical malpractice reform and
opening up interstate purchase of insurance.

These overtures did little to sway the Republicans, and the meeting
ended with no indication on their part that they would back the
Democrats’ initiative. Obama concluded the summit on a cynical note,
stating, “Politically speaking, there may not be any reason for
Republicans to want to do anything. But I thought it was worthwhile
for us to make this effort.”

Despite the media hype surrounding the event, the summit’s proceedings
were not directed at the American public, who were not likely to have
tuned with keen interest. There is growing skepticism and hostility to
the Obama health care overhaul among the general population, who fear
cuts to Medicare and other government-run programs, and see nothing
being done to challenge the profits and skyrocketing premiums of the
insurance companies.

Rather, the heavily promoted event was aimed first of all at shoring
up support in the Democratic Congress for the health care bill. With
their loss to the Republicans in the recent special election for the
Senate in Massachusetts, the Democrats no longer have a
filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate to pass the legislation.

White House spokesman have indicated—as did Obama at the summit’s
conclusion—that the Democrats may move to pass the legislation through
a legislative procedure called reconciliation, which requires only a
majority vote. But even a simply majority may be hard to muster, with
opposition to the legislation among some Democrats, particularly from
antiabortion forces who claim that the legislation does not go far
enough in restricting access to federal funds for abortion.

Another audience for the summit was the nation’s financial elite.
Obama utilized the event to present the Democrats’ campaign for health
care reform as the beacon of “fiscal responsibility” and austerity.
Stripped down to its basic cost-cutting features, the legislation is
exposed for what is really is: an unprecedented assault on the basic
right to health care and an unabashed defense of the profits of the
insurance industry.

Indeed, the top insurance companies—UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint,
Aetna, Humana, and Cigna Corp, which raked in $12.2 billion in profits
last year—were well represented at Thursday’s summit table, having
spent multimillions to lobby both Democratic and Republican members of
Congress for business-friendly legislation.

The Democrats have set a new deadline of March 25 to pass some version
of health care legislation, after which Democratic leaders say they
must move on to more “pressing” issues. Failure to do so would be an
embarrassment for the Obama administration, which has devoted the last
year campaigning for its passage. Obama’s future agenda—whether or not
some version of health care passes—will invariably include further
attacks on social programs, in the form of budget cuts, and attacks on
public education and other basic services.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/summ-f26.shtml

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