Moyers show highlights progressive
dilemma on Obama healthcare plan
The question of how to approach Obama’s health plan is one of the most vexing progressives.
On the one hand, it largely represents a total capitulation to for-profit insurers and drug companies, giving them some 30 million new customers with no effective cost controls.
On the other, defeat of the bill might revitalize the Right. Further, it will at least provide health insurance for 30 million of the 50 million now uninsured.
To address this dilemma, the Friday, March 5 Bill Moyers show featured ex-Cigna exec Wendell Potter arguing for passsage, despite the proposal’s ‘s major deficiencies. (see my blog at https://znetwork.org/ex-insurance-exec-sees-backlash-by-roger-bybee)for an interview with him where he outlines the problems with the Democratic approach, covering House, Senate, and Obama proposals, and warns of a public backlash against the individual mandate.)
Dr. Marcia Angell of Harvard Medical School (my interviews with her are scattered through many articles and blog postings on this site) asserts that the Obama package will alienate the public with ia punitive individual mandate and vastly increase power of insurers. She asserts iargues that the Obama approach is not a half-way step toward reform, but a major step in the wrong direction toward consolidating the power of the for-profit insurance industry. She maintains the at the Obama/Democratic approach will inevitably permit huge premium increases. The best part of the Obama plan is increased Medicaid coverage of the poor, but the major subsidizing of the insurance industry’s power makes it unworthy of support.
In particular, Dr. Angell points out that having health insurance is not equivalent to having healthcare, as health insurers have a powerful motive to maximize profits by minimizing care.
Dr. Angell instead recommends a system that replaces the for-profit insurnce industry as the "linchpin" of US healthcare, proposing a single-payer or "Medicare for all" system like those in Canada, Taiwan, and many other advanced nations.
The show is can’t-miss viewing. It’s at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2010/03/is_the_presidents_health_bill.html.
I'm teaching in Labor Studies at Penn State and the University of Illinois in on-line classes. I've been continuing with my work as freelance writer, with my immediate aim to complete a book on corporate media coverage of globalization (tentatively titled The Giant Sucking Sound: How Corporate Media Swallowed the Myth of Free Trade.) I write frequently for Z, The Progressive Magazine's on-line site, The Progressive Populist, Madison's Isthmus alternative weekly, and a variety of publications including Yes!, The Progressive, Foreign Policy in Focus, and several websites. I've been writing a blog on labor issues for workinginthesetimes.com, turning out over 300 pieces in the past four years.My work specializes in corporate globalization, labor, and healthcare reform... I've been a progressive activist since the age of about 17, when I became deeply affected by the anti-war and civil rights movements. I entered college at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee just days after watching the Chicago police brutalize anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic Convention of 1968. I was active in a variety of "student power" and anti-war activities, highlighted by the May, 1970 strike after the Nixon's invastion of Cambodia and the massacres at Kent State and Jackson State. My senior year was capped by Nixon's bombing of Haiphong Harbor and the occupation of a university building, all in the same week I needed to finish 5-6 term papers to graduate, which I managed somehow. My wife Carolyn Winter, whom I met in the Wisconsin Alliance, and I have been together since 1975, getting officially married 10/11/81. Carolyn, a native New Yorker, has also been active for social justice since her youth (she attended the famous 1963 Civil Rights march where Dr. King gave his "I have a dream speech"). We have two grown children, Lane (with wife Elaine and 11-year-old grandson Zachary, who introduced poker to his classmates during recess) living in Chicago and Rachel (who with her husband Michael have the amazing Talia Ruth,5, who can define "surreptitious" for you) living in Asbury Park, NJ. My sister Francie lives down the block from me. I'm a native of the once-heavily unionized industrial city of Racine, Wis. (which right-wingers sneeringly labeled "Little Moscow" during the upheavals of the 1930's), and both my grandfathers were industrial workers and Socialists. On my father's side, my grandfather was fired three times for Socialist or union activity. His family lost their home at one point during the Depression. My mom's father was a long-time member of UAW Local 72 at American Motors, where he worked for more than 30 years. Coming from impoverished families, my parents met through a very low-cost form of recreation: Racine's Hiking Club.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate
