Despite Obstacles in the Senate, Public Health Insurance Will Happen This Year

Last Friday, the Roosevelt Institution convened the Rx Summit, focusing on health care and young Americans. At this event I made my first attempt at live-tweeting (thanks to Sarah for compiling my tweets for FM), which you should check out for quotes and some mind-blowing statistics from a number of great speakers including, Sara Rosenbaum, Director of GWU Health Policy Department, Joshua Ulibarri, Lake Research Partners, and Lauren Aronson, Policy Director for the White House Office for Healthcare Reform. I also had a chance to sit down with Melinda Gibson of Health Care for America Now, who was a presenter at the Rx Summit, to ask, 'what's wrong and how do we fix it'? In short, Melinda argues that it's all about consumer choice and that choice is coming this year with or without 60 votes from the Senate. She expects legislation to be introduced this month - yes, April.

FutureMajority: What's wrong with the current health insurance options?

Melinda Gibson, Health Care for America Now: The insurance industry over-bills by 300%. So, we know that insurance companies are fleecing the American government (i.e. MEDICARE Advantage). They have created a system where they’ve watered down [basic] Medicare plans to force people to buy supplemental insurance plans to make up for the deficient basic plans--this is how the insurance industry is over billing the government for billions of dollars.

It's like a la carte health options, which will force struggling families and individuals to make some tough, tough decisions when it comes to their health. (To wit: folks get sick and have to miss work, making it difficult to keep up with mounting health care costs. Repeat until PHIP is passed.)

FM: How are you communicating PHIP to the public, will they see it as socialized medicine like in 2007?

MG: In SCHIP [State's Children's Health Insurance Plan], in 2007, the house bill created a medicare advantage reform, to pay for the [budget] increase. They claimed it was 'socialized medicine'. The notion of 'socialized medicine' doesn’t even resonate with the American people anymore. Now, think about the public health insurance plan. The first thing we need to understand is that this [the private health insurance industry] is not a free market. The insurance companies compete on terms that they have deemed acceptable to them. Their first priority is to make as much money as possible. Americans want a true choice; they want their choice of plans and doctors. We want access to quality baseline benefits, and allow people to choose between public and private plans.

FM: What is reconciliation and why is it important to pass PHIP?

MG: I think 60 votes is possible [the minimum number of votes required to pass PHIP], but at this point in the game it’s very hard. The likelihood of coming out of the Senate with legislation that is truly progressive and affordable…with 60 votes will be very, very difficult. We cannot let this minority of Republican Senators prevent those who are struggling from choosing a health care plan that fits their needs. So, without 60 votes, this is where reconciliation comes in. We want the option of a straight up or down vote on health care this year. Keep in mind that 80 percent of President Obama's ads during the campaign included health care, because he and his staff knew that health care is the issue. Americans are completely uninsured. Every 30 seconds, 1 American goes bankrupt from medical insurance costs.

FM: Will PHIP pass this year?

MG: This is gonna happen; it's coming this year. We talk about how hard it’s gonna be, but this is it. In speaking about health care legislation, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said, "There's never been a better moment." So it’s not just the President, but leaders of Congress are also behind this legislation."

If you're looking for more nuts and bolts on PHIP, check out Jacob Hacker's new report detailing the idea of the public plan choice. Below is an excerpt from the executive summary.

The debate over health care reform has increasingly centered on the issue of “public plan choice”—whether Americans younger than 65 who lack employment-based coverage should have the choice of enrolling in a new public health insurance plan modeled after Medicare. The central argument for public plan choice is that such a plan, offered as a choice within a new national insurance “exchange,” provides an essential set of security guarantees, ensuring that Americans without insurance from their place of work can find a plan that offers them quality, affordable health care through a broad choice of providers in all parts of the country.
[...]
Public plan choice is rooted in existing precedents that have shown themselves to work, rather than speculative convictions about how a delicately balanced new system will operate. It must be part of any successful reform package. Without public plan choice, Americans without workplace insurance will be put in jeopardy, private insurers will lack an effective check on their actions, and the opportunity to place our crumbling framework of health financing on a secure foundation will be lost.