Health Care Reform, Now Just an Industry Bailout (and they're not even under water)

Firedog lake posted about health care reform on Saturday. Apparently, the sole cost savings touted by the Obama Administration, HCAN and MoveOn is now in the dust bin along with the public option. There will be no federal standard for insurance products sold on the exchanges. The states will be able to legislate standards or not. Many Republican state governors are planning to refuse the federal grants give to create the exchanges and will not be setting up any exchanges at all--just like they did with high speed rail. So, it pretty much looks like Obama has decided to cave into red state's governor's rights to harm their constituents for political fodder.

Word on the street about the Illinois is that the exchanges will be split up, separate exchanges for small groups and individuals. This is contrary to the notion folks were sold on back in 2009, that one large pool will make everyone's costs go down. Individual purchasers will still be charged a premium for being outside of a group and all this happening at a time when more and more people are being put out of insurance groups.

The latest word from Illinois is that the insurance companies are wrestling control of the exchanges away from the state. At best, the Illinois exchange will be one of a few state exchanges and pretty much just an aggregating website than a free marketplace for health insurance.

Many are trying to downplay the failure of the Affordable Health Care Act with anecdotal success stories.** They use anecdotal evidence of success because there is no statistically significant success to tout. A few people have been helped, but there will be no general help for the masses, and health care costs are likely to continue to skyrocket.

The false congratulations on health care will continue because of the upcoming elections.

On a call last week with Bold Progressives, IL-10 candidate Ilya Sheyman touted his work on health care through MoveOn. I had given him the benefit of the doubt in my last post which described how Sheyman's MoveOn worked locally against real health care reform, perhaps he was not a central figure in the bullying and silencing of single payer advocates, but now he's taking full credit for MoveOn's health care "reform" effort. 

On the Bold Progressives call, I asked Sheyman what he proposes to do for people like me who are self employeed and paying ever increasing premiums for ever shrinking coverage. Ironically, he answered that he supports Medicare for All. The Bold Progressives salivated at Sheyman's use of the right buzzwords, promised to make thousands of calls into our district from out-of-state and pledged out-of-state cash to him, but I found his answer hollow and their memories short. When he had the chance to work for health care reform, he opted to support anything the Obama Administration wanted to do, and refused to listen to very real concerns which have pretty much all become reality.

Unless something changes drastically, and this is unlikely, the cost controlling exchanges of health care reform will be reduced to state funded websites run by the insurance industry. Insurers will be able to offer plans that cover what they feel like covering with high deductibles going along with high premiums. We got virtually no reform, and for all their fights against the law, insurers have managed to wangle federal grants for website advertising. It's a bail out for an industry that's not failing, for an industry seeing record profits.

If you're going to run as the one progressive savior, it seems to me you need to do progressive things. That is why I have a real hard time taking the Ilya Sheyman campaign seriously. His "proven progressive leadership" only proved that reform would not happen and added to the argument that reform cannot happen. The health care debacle has given those against any reform plenty of ammunition against progressives and against reform. The saddest part of all of it is that the program itself, the shining example of progressive reform failure, is neither progressive nor reform and was never intended to be either. It was a solely political move for solely political benefits and has set back the cause of health care reform indefinitely.

**Note that the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan touted in the link is a temporary plan. Also note that the temporary Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan touted in the link is more on the model of a single payer system than the permanent exchange model plan.