Our Response to the Supreme Court Health Care Decision
The question now is what comes next.
JWJ - SCt position paper 6-28-12.pdf
With today’s Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, the beneficial changes already in effect, which have changed the heath care landscape, are secured.
Young people may continue to stay on their parents' policies until age 26. Insurers are still prohibited from turning away patients with pre-existing conditions and from cancelling the policies of people whose sickness makes their care unprofitably expensive. Those of us who fell into the infamous "doughnut hole" in the prescription coverage before ACA still have at least partial relief, saving us from huge holes in our Social Security checks.
The question now is what comes next.
We have seen over the past two years that the ACA contains no adequate cost controls. Since they can no longer refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, insurers have rushed to raise their premiums as quickly as possible. The act does not contain drug prices. And, as the controversial individual mandate for insurance kicks in, we will see more and more insurance policies with skimpy coverage, convoluted rules, and high deductibles, which may comply with the letter of the law, but offer no meaningful health protection.
Even with the incentives offered in the ACA, fewer and fewer businesses will be able to afford real, useable health care benefits for their employees. Medical bills will continue to be the number one cause of bankruptcy.
Poll after poll has shown that a large majority of the American people and an increasing number of doctors and care providers want the same kind of security that every other industrialized country in the world provides. Yet on the first day of Congressional deliberation of the Affordable Care Act, any discussion of a national Single Payer health care for all plan was taken off the table.
Instead of bending to the will of the people, time and again politicians have bent to the will of the for-profit insurers and pharmaceutical corporations whose political pressure has given us the worst health care plan of any industrialized country in the world. The ACA has good features, but it still leaves us at the mercy of those same forces. Thirty-three percent of our premiums goes for lobbying, advertising, billing, shareholders profits and huge CEO salaries. In contrast, Medicare has less than 3% overhead, and other countries' administrative costs are less than that. Our premiums should be used for health care.
Health care should not be treated as a commodity bought and sold for profit. Patients should not be viewed as consumers. Health care is a human right. We should join other modern nations and replace the patchwork, profit-driven system we have now with a true universal health care system that leaves nobody out and is paid for by everyone.
