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The NHDP had a conference call yesterday with two well-known New Hampshire residents and health care activists, Laura Mick and AnnMarie Morse. Their stories highlighted one thing that has become painfully clear in the ongoing health care debate - if we listen to GOP senate candidate Kelly Ayotte and let insurance companies run our health care system and chose who and what they want to cover, the people who most need affordable, quality care will not get it.
Laura was diagnosed with a condition called hydrocephalus or "water on the brain" when she was one-month old. It was caught early on, and after three childhood surgeries, Laura has had a completely clean bill of health for 21 years. But she has been denied individual insurance by every single health insurer in New Hampshire because of her "pre-existing" condition, putting her in a dangerous position should she ever require another extensive surgery.
AnnMarie Morse, many of you know, is the incredible mother behind Michelle's Law - a bill she championed in honor of her daughter Michelle, who was diagnosed with colon cancer and told that in order to continue receiving health insurance under her parents' plan, she had to keep up a full course load. Against the advice of her doctors she remained a full-time student until she passed away in 2005. AnnMarie fought successfully to pass Michelle's Law both in New Hampshire and nationally so no insurance company could put another family in the position the Morse's found themselves in.
AnnMarie and Laura learned first-hand that where there is a loophole, insurance companies will find it. Where there is a lack of regulation, they will use it to protect, or enhance, their own profits.
"KellyCare" Will Empower Insurance Giants and Leave 53 Million Uninsured Americans in the Dust
CONCORD - Tonight, House Republican Leader John Boehner, one of Kelly Ayotte's DC establishment friends, will be attending an NHGOP fundraiser in Concord. Both Ayotte and Boehner support a risky healthcare plan that would eliminate protections for New Hampshire families and empower big insurance companies.
"KellyCare" - Ayotte's plan to take control over healthcare away from Granite Staters and put it squarely in the hands of insurance giants - was manufactured by Boehner and the Republican establishment in Washington. By eliminating essential state-level protections that require insurance companies to remain accountable to the consumers they serve, "KellyCare" lets insurance bureaucracies decide what they will or will not cover. Without these crucial safeguards, insurance companies are free to cover only the most profitable services for themselves, leaving women, children and those with pre-existing medical conditions particularly at risk.
"Kelly is calling in her establishment friends to do the dirty work she keeps avoiding - defending and discussing her disastrous plan," said Emily Browne, Press Secretary for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. "New Hampshire has created rock-solid consumer protections to ensure that no insurance bureaucracy can choose not to cover something just to protect its own profit. To do away with these would not only threaten the ability of Granite Staters to keep their families healthy, but would allow insurance bureaucrats to deny New Hampshire its right to decide how to care for its residents. 'KellyCare' lets insurance companies call the shots - and leaves New Hampshire families in the dust."
Earlier this month, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that "KellyCare" would leave 53 million Americans without healthcare. When pushed about this massive shortfall, Boehner said: "What we do is try to make the current system work better...We do not attempt to cover 46 million more Americans" [Roll Call, 11/2/09, CNN, 11/1/09; CBO Analysis, 11/4/09].
The New York Times said that the Ayotte-Boehner plan would "do almost nothing to reduce the scandalously high number of Americans who have no insurance...and isn't health care reform." (New York Times 11/6/09)
Villifying pharmaceutical and insurance companies may make us feel good, but it does little to address fundamental truths. The first truth is that we - we being the American people and our elected representatives - have allowed a health care system to evolve that includes for-profit insurance companies and for-profit pharmaceutical companies as major players in the system. The second truth is that the job of management in for-profit companies is to maximize profits and to the extent they don't, they are abrogating their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. The third truth is that limits can be placed on how for-profit companies operate through strong and enforceable legislation and regulation.
Everyone hates the current health care system. All realistic proposals to 'fix' health care propose to keep for-profit pharma and insurance companies in the system. Barack Obama seems to recognize all of the truths above and appears to have concluded that any successful effort to change the system has to involve the major players who currently are doing exactly what they are supposed to under current rules, namely, maximizing their profits. His approach seeks to change the rules so as to put limits on how they operate and find a way to make the companies become at least a part of the solution, rather than insisting they are the problem.
If you believe with regard to international matters (think Iran) you have to talk to your enemies, we should adopt the same framework with regard to domestic issues. Providing a seat at the negotiating table for the people we don't like or trust is the only thing short of total warfare that provides a way forward. We have to do this from a position of strength, not expecting that our 'enemies' will voluntarily give up anything. Rather than being naive as some of the other candidates have alleged, Obama is once more being realistic about what needs to be done and how to do it.
