Gainesville, Fl. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Sixty years ago, July 30, 1965, at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, former President Harry S. Truman and his wife, former First Lady Bess Truman, became the first recipients of the new Medicare health insurance program. President Lyndon Johnson and the U.S. Congress enacted Medicare under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide health insurance to people age 65 and older, regardless of income or medical history and Medicaid for those whose incomes were below specific levels.
Medicare was a momentous act because it provided new health insurance for people ages 65 and older and the disabled regardless of income or medical history. In the sixty years since, Medicare has become living proof that public, universal health insurance is superior to private insurance in every way. Medicare is more efficient than private health insurance and is administered at a cost of 3 percent to 4 percent, as opposed to private, for-profit health insurance, which has administrative costs above 15 percent.
Following the successful 1965 grassroots campaign to enact Medicare, many also believed that the dream of a full national, single-payer health insurance system that included all age groups, “Medicare for All”, was right around the corner. Unfortunately decades later, Medicare still has not been expanded. Most of the changes have been contractions with higher out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries and repeated attempts at privatization by Big Pharma, Big health insurance industry companies/oligarchs/profiteers and their champions in the White House and Congress.
Big insurance and Big Pharma continue opposing legislation for the new, improved Medicare for All because these resistant, self-serving industries have the most to lose if their huge profits are redirected to direct patient care for all. Individual and corporate predators regard democracy, government and community as obstacles to their greed and avarice, always placing profits over individual patients, families and public health. It’s no wonder so many beholden members of Congress want to protect the interests of Big Insurance and Big Pharma, industries who spent $371 million on lobbying in 2017 alone.
THE BIG HEALTH INSURANCE/BIG PHARMA/CONGRESSIONAL PROFITEERING COMPLEX:
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, framed by former Trump administration staffers and secretly endorsed by Trump himself, proposes changes in Medicare benefits that could destroy Medicare as we know it. Instead, we must fight back and expand Medicare. Although health insurance affordability for the majority of US citizens still remains elusive, President Trump’s health insurance plan still wants to shift many more dollars into private, Wall Street insurance industry hands. The takeover of public health insurance, as with Medicare Advantage plans and others, by private Wall Street entities continues apace as Republicans/Trump propose to increase taxes and give it to the private profit insurance industry—the basic source of our profound administrative waste, along with the costly administrative burdens they place on the delivery system that requires large profits. Profiteering continues unabated as private insurance sells us services we don’t need/want , such as deductibles and other cost sharing, maintenance of narrow networks, requiring prior authorization with increased administrative costs, excessive ongoing paperwork/documentation requirements, all while avoiding paying for surprise bills and other denied benefits.
Dealing with Covid-19 could have been more life-saving if Medicare for All had been in place. A New York Times editorial , ‘Health Care for Some is a Recipe for Disaster’, stresses the importance of covering everyone. Even before Covid-19 was known to humans, Northeastern University professor of public health, Wendy Parmet, presciently warned that the push to exclude immigrants from access to health care services would be both dangerous and quixotic. “None of us can be self-sufficient in the face of a widespread epidemic,” she wrote in 2018. “That is just as true for noncitizen immigrants as everyone.” In any pandemic, self-sufficiency can be self-deluding; everyone’s health, citizens, immigrants, etc. alike is only as good as our most vulnerable neighbor’s.
Truly a recipe for disaster, vested interests reject the science of public health epidemiology by asserting that only an incremental approach to health insurance reform is possible or acceptable. So, what are we willing to settle for, should we just settle for what we can get? Lower the expectations, turn down the public heat and keep waiting?. Gradualism, baby-steps, extending health insurance coverage to some, but not all, is the mantra of the day; ‘Medicare for Some’, but not ‘Medicare for All’, is fawned over by politicians, profiteers and advocacy groups alike while reducing communities resources to deal with dangerous epidemics and other health problems.
Virtually all the risky gradual reforms being touted would reinforce a dysfunctional health insurance system with as many standards of insurance as there are dollars to purchase them. It would further lock us into an obsolete private insurance-based model that holds everyones health hostage to profiteering HMOs and unaccountable big insurance companies for years to come. For these proponents of political expediency, the question remains, who will be left behind while we wait? Every year many unnecessary deaths are linked to lack of health insurance coverage. Pandemics can quickly increase these numbers.
Big Insurance and Big Pharma dominate our government and public health takes a back seat to the need for private profit. Many government leaders from both political parties share the same ‘profits over public health’ ideology, even though the Covid-19 pandemic clearly showed how our economic system failed to serve our citizens by allowing these groups to privatize, sabotage, fragment and cripple our health, public health and other social services. Mzny of the changes in traditional Medicare have been contractions with higher out of pocket costs for beneficiaries and repeated attempts at privatization by big pharma, and big health insurance. No greater disconnect exists between the public good and private interests than in the voracious U.S. system of for-profit Big Insurance/Big Pharma and their inherent tendency to invent new needs, disregard all boundaries and turn everything into an object for sale and big profit.
MEDICARE FOR ALL 2025 MEETS EIGHT HIGH STANDARDS: Medicare for All Act-2025 is best solution because it meets eight basic standards:
1). Health insurance coverage should be stable and permanent throughout life. M4A-2025 would be a single program—permanent throughout life.
2). Employer-sponsored insurance can create problems such as job lock, which many conservatives and progressives believe should be terminated. M4A-2025 would end employer-sponsored insurance, and, for most, M4A-2025 would be better.
3). Medicaid carries the stigma of being a welfare program which results in legislative underfunding and neglect. M4A-2025 would fully terminate the Medicaid program and move everyone into a universal, comprehensive and equitable program.
4). We need a program that is affordable for each individual and for society as a whole. M4A-2025 would achieve all goals of financing reform without significantly increasing spending.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
5). Patients should have free choice of their professionals and health care institutions. M4A-2025 allows choices within the entire health care system.
6). The privatization of public programs such as Medicare through Medicare Advantage and Medicaid through private managed care programs have proven to provide poor value for the taxpayer (obscured by cherry picking and lemon dropping) and should be eliminated. M4A-2025 would eliminate them.
7). Fragmentation results in dysfunctional financing of health care; M4A-2023 would bring an end to it.
8). M4A-2025 is specifically designed to greatly reduce fragmentation and its associated costs; health insurance industry profiteering is ended.
SUMMARY
The major reason private health insurers are more expensive than government health programs in the U.S. is due to profiteering and administrative costs. Those extra taxpayer funds going to private insurers include costs such as advertising/ marketing of their plans, costs of contracting for restrictive provider networks, administering prior authorization requirements, complex systems of processing claims including denial of benefits, simple administrative costs of operating large corporate entities, and distributing generous profits to their executives and passive high profiteering by Wall Street investors.
The Medicare for All Act-2025, now filed in Congress, would much better fill our health care financing needs without wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on superfluous administrative costs and end immense profiteering by private insurers and big pharma. The USA is a country where health insurance for medical and mental health care is a function of socio-economic status. Everyone knows that this inhumane system should have been corrected long ago.
The Medicare for All Act of 2025 would provide health coverage to every U.S. resident—including comprehensive medical, dental, vision, mental health, and reproductive care—with no out-of-pocket costs, copays, or deductibles. By eliminating waste and corporate profiteering in health care, the bill would save hundreds of billions annually that could be invested in actual health care, resulting in better, more equitable health outcomes. Please tell your legislators that it’s time to end inadequate and dangerous health insurance programs. Insist on real health insurance reform essential for individuals and families. American history is filled with examples of fundamental, democratic change brought about by successful mass action and public pressure against the counseling of the go slow, vested interest crowd. No more waiting!
Please contact your legislators asking them to fully support Medicare For All 2025
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