In an effort to have something to talk about over the Memorial Day recess, so-called Republican party moderates Reps. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Charlie Dent (R-PA) have unveiled legislation protecting Americans from the deficiencies of foreign health care systems:

By enacting the Medical Rights Act, Congress will ensure Americans keep the choice, quality and access currently denied citizens of the U.K. and Canada (Canadian law actually bans patients from paying for care themselves, even if denied care).

This is the consequence of taking Frank Luntz’s memo too seriously. Luntz uses straw-man arguments against British and Canadian health care to attack the Democrats’ proposal and Kirk and Dent are targeting their legislation against a non-existent proposal. Consider some of this language:

- In addition, this section prevents the federal government from regulating the hiring practices of organizations that provide health care, such as hospitals, clinics, and the like.

- This section prohibits the federal government from regulating privately supported medicine, legally protecting the doctor-patient relationship against federal controls or rationing for care not paid for by the federal government.

- This section also protects the rights of patients to buy health insurance, or make any other arrangements to pay for their own health care.

Luntz writes that “it’s not enough to just say what you’re against. You have to tell them what you’re for.” If your only goal is to stay ‘on message’ and to convince your constituents that you are in fact an advocate of (or against) something (even if that something isn’t real), then this is what you produce. Of course, if your constituents are literate they’ll just laugh at you.

An America without health care reform is an America where families face spiraling health insurance premiums, businesses drop coverage and trim benefits, doctors are denied objective information about the treatments they provide, and millions of Americans live just one medical emergency away from bankruptcy.

Those who oppose health reform are choosing to maintain this status quo.

A new paper from the Center for American Progress, “America Without Health Reform,” points out that, absent reform, average premiums (the cost of health insurance to families and businesses) are projected to rise more than 70 percent from 2010-2018, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Read it here.

This cost growth will have cascading effects across the economy as businesses trim benefits and workers lose their coverage.

According to researchers at Harvard University, a mere 20 percent increase in premiums costs 3.5 million workers their jobs, causes millions more to move from full-time to part-time work, and cuts the average income by approximately $1,700. CBO predicts that this 20 percent increase will occur over the next four years.

Read more

Last night, CAPAF Senior Fellow Elizabeth Edwards appeared on The Daily Show with John Stewart to discuss her new book Resilience and health care reform. Edwards stressed the importance of restoring competition in health insurance markets noting that at one point, “the President of UnitedHealth made so much money, that one of every $700 that was spent in this country on health care went to pay him”:

It’s really important, and this is the part I’m afraid will get negotiated away. We have to have a public provider. That is, instead of buying your insurance from United Health Care, or from Blue Cross. You could actually pick a government provider. The insurance companies are against it because they don’t want that competition. And because they’re afraid of the threat of the competition they’re already saying we’re going to cut prices, we’re going to make this so much easier to get. Just the threat, so imagine what the reality will do. We will actually have health costs that could work.

Watch it:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M – Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Edwards
thedailyshow.com

Indeed, as a new report by Health Care for America NOW points out, “profits at 10 of the country’s largest publicly-traded health insurance companies in 2007, rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007, from $2.4 billion to $12.9 billion.” In 2007, the chief executive officers at these companies collected combined total compensation of $118.6 million — an average of $11.9 million each.”

Competition from a new public health care plan would require private insurers to negotiate prices on behalf of their enrollees and not just pass along ever-growing health care costs to beneficiaries in the form of higher premiums. Insurer opposition to the public health option is an attempt to protect industry profits, plain and simple and in the coming health care debate, policy makers will have a choice to make: design a system that promotes the general welfare, by providing Americans the choice of a public option, or protect the monopoly of private insurers and continue redistributing as much income as possible to private industry.