> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Marta Russell
> Bradley plans to get rid of Medicaid and replace the public system with
> private vouchers, i.e., turn over health care most entirely to private
> insurance...I may have to vote against Bradley to say I have at least
contributed to
>stopping this awful "solution" he has come up with for health care, even
>though I don't want to vote at all.
Which is far better than not providing health insurance at all for most of the poor. Hell, I'd love to have single-payer health care but Medicaid is not even that-- it's benefits are often weak and many doctors will not even take it. For most people with Medicaid, decent private insurance would be a great improvement. For those without any health care, any insurance would be better than none.
What kind of weird argument is it that makes people oppose a plan that would subsidize universal coverage to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year in additional health care funding. It is not the ideal plan but it would do one dramatic thing-- the poor would have the same health care program as middle class folks, thereby eliminating the two-tier medical care system in our society.
If we could achieve that, then we could fight for all the issues of medical regulation and even nationalization without all the racial and class divides that have continued to prevent it.
The fact is that fighting for both universal coverage and the elimination of private insurance at the same time is extremely hard. Medicaid does not prevent the private insurance system from functioning -- there are ways in which it helps it thrive by taking high-risk individuals out of the pool of the insured. So eliminating it and integrating the poor into a universal system might not only increase medical coverage for folks, but also force an overall accounting of costs in the system that might help push for single-payer as the next step.
Folks complain on the list about spending caps and failures to expand social service spending, yet here we have a proposed massive increase in health care spending aimed primarily at the poor and lower-income working folks, and people want to oppose it!?
With the Right fighting health care reform in any form and some in the Left fighting anything other than perfect socialized medicine, no wonder the private insurers run our system.
-- Nathan Newman