Obama ’s cynical pursuit of health care “reform”

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Obama’s cynical pursuit of health care “reform”
17 March 2010

For the third time in a week, Barack Obama took to the stage to stump
for his health care overhaul, this time in Strongsville, Ohio on
Monday. His remarks reeked of cynicism and hypocrisy, as he engaged in
a last-ditch effort to win popular support and garner sufficient votes
in Congress to push through the legislation.

For his own purposes, the president drew attention to the hardships
faced by individuals and families under the present health care setup,
arguing the proposals he is advancing would remedy the situation.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Obama related the story of Natoma Canfield at the Strongsville rally.
Ms. Canfield is a 50-year-old Ohio resident and cancer survivor,
forced to drop her health coverage after her insurer jacked up the
premiums. She was recently diagnosed with leukemia. Obama has alluded
to this woman’s struggles on a number of occasions; his exploitation
of her dilemma this time around was especially distasteful.

“So you want to know why I’m here, Ohio?” Obama asked. “I’m here
because of Natoma. I’m here because of the countless others who have
been forced to face the most terrifying challenges in their lives with
the added burden of medical bills they can’t pay. I don’t think that’s
right.”

Obama’s claim that the problems confronting Ms. Canfield and others
like her—skyrocketing premiums, massive out-of-pocket expenses—would
be addressed by his health care plan is a lie. He knows perfectly well
that the proposed legislation would have no real power to rein in
insurance premium costs.

In fact, a survey released last week by the National Business Group on
Health found that with or without Obama’s health care plan two-thirds
of big employers plan to shift more insurance costs to their workers,
in the form of significantly higher premiums, deductibles and copayments.

While Obama is aware of these facts, it didn’t stop him from making
the claim that his health care plan “would end the worst practices of
the insurance companies.” He told his Ohio audience, “This is like a
patient’s bill of rights on steroids.” What nonsense!

The true character of his health care agenda became clearer later in
his remarks, however, when he said “there were some who had wanted to
scrap the system of private insurance and replace it with
government-run care … but I did not see that being practical to help
right away for people who really need it.”

Obama’s defense of private health insurers has nothing to do with
helping the “people who really need it,” “right away” or any other
time, and everything to do with defending the insurance giants’
profits. The insurance industry has spent hundreds of millions
lobbying Congress to shape the health care legislation in its
interest, focusing in particular on keeping a government-run public
option out of any bill that emerges.

Over the course of the last year most of the lobbying effort has gone
towards defeating Obama’s health care plan. However, in the final
phase, Pharma—a drug makers’ association—kicked in $12 million for the
campaign in favor of Obama’s “reform,” an indication that a
substantial proportion of health care industry CEOs grasp that the
legislation will have a favorable impact on their bottom lines.

As he has over the past year, Obama mendaciously contended that a plan
that slashes costs and doesn’t expand the federal deficit will result
in additional coverage and reduced costs for working class families
and seniors. “Our proposal is paid for,” he gloated Monday. “We go
after waste and abuse in the system, especially in Medicare. Our
cost-cutting measures would reduce most people’s premiums and bring
down our deficit by up to a trillion dollars over the next two decades.”

The president added that money saved in the crackdown on waste in
Medicare “should be spent on care for seniors, not on the care and
feeding of the insurance companies through sweetheart deals. And every
senior should know there is no cutting of your guaranteed Medicare
benefits.”

Whether the reference to “guaranteed Medicare benefits” indicates that
some bare-bones level of care has been agreed to for the program, or
the statement is false on its face, Obama conveniently neglected to
mention that his plan would cut about $500 billion from Medicare.
These cutbacks are aimed at gutting the federally run program for the
elderly, eliminating “unnecessary” services and treatments. The
legislation will also establish a Medicare task force, utilizing
comparative effectiveness research to recommend sweeping reductions in
care for seniors.

But Obama ignores all this, characterizing his plan as a sort of
populist panacea. “It’s been such a long time since we made government
on the side of ordinary working folks,” he said, “where we did
something for them that relieved some of their struggles; that made
folks who work hard every day and are doing the right thing and who
are looking out for the families and contributing to their
communities, that just gave them a little bit of a better chance to
live out their American Dream.” What hypocrisy!

It should be remembered that the same Obama that now feigns deep
sympathies for “ordinary working folk” was responsible for engineering
the government takeover of General Motors and Chrysler that resulted
in the savaging of wages, health care and other benefits for thousands
of autoworkers.

In general, Obama’s efforts to be a “man of the people” inevitably
ring false and hollow, although he and his handlers recognize their
necessity on occasions such as the Strongsville meeting. The
president’s essential lack of interest in and indifference toward the
problems of working people come across in everything he says and does.

Obama’s proposed legislation is the first step in a radical
restructuring of the health care system in the US, directed first at
Medicare, the government financed and administered program for the
elderly put in place almost a half-century ago. A fully class-based
system will take its place, in which care and services are reduced and
rationed for the vast majority, while the wealthy continue to have
access to the best care money can buy.

One of the main features of Obama’s plan is the so-called individual
mandate, which would require individuals and families to purchase
insurance coverage or pay a penalty. With no enforceable restrictions
on what the insurance companies can charge for premiums, or what is
covered under these policies, these millions of new cash-paying
customers will be at the mercy of the insurance industry.

The Obama administration claims that 31 million of the close to 50
million people in the US currently without insurance will be covered
under the new legislation. About half of these people would be covered
by Medicaid, the health care program for the poor jointly administered
by the federal government and the states.

States across the country are already operating with huge budget
deficits, and will be hard-pressed to accommodate a new influx into
the Medicaid program. States have begun significantly cutting back on
their already reduced payments to physicians and other Medicaid
providers, prompting some doctors to stop accepting Medicaid patients
altogether. Hence this group of newly insured under Obama’s plan could
have coverage in name but drastically reduced services in practice, or
none at all.

The Obama administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership
are frantically working to line up the votes to secure passage of the
legislation through a process called reconciliation, requiring only a
simple majority vote. With the loss of a Senate seat to the
Republicans in the Massachusetts special election in January, they no
longer have the votes to override a Republican filibuster.

Much of the opposition to the plan is coming from some House Democrats
who feel that the Senate version of the health care plan does not go
far enough in restricting federal funds for abortion. In fact, the
Senate bill bans the use of federal subsidies to pay for abortion
services and lays out a complex scheme to ensure this, the result of
which would likely be to discourage insurers from offering any plans
that cover abortions.

Through many election cycles, working people have been prodded into
voting for the Democrats in no small measure because the party claimed
to support the right to abortion, upheld by the 1973 Supreme Court
decision in Roe v. Wade. It is notable that the signature legislation
of the Obama administration, if passed, would have the effect of
rendering the legal right to abortion basically unattainable for wide
layers of working and poor women.

This miserably regressive and undemocratic result sums up the Obama
and Democratic Party “solution” to the health care crisis.

Kate Randall

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pers-m17.shtml

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