Guest Comment: Insurance won't solve health care crisis

By Rose Ann DeMoro
East Oregonian
February 8, 2008

As Oregon voters near the opportunity to weigh in on the Presidential race, voters may wonder how to distinguish among the contenders on the critical health care issue.

All of the top-tier candidates favor selling more private insurance, which misses the crisis faced by millions. Just ask Tom Wenning of Portland.

Last April, Wenning was involved in a high-impact motorcycle accident. "I was life-flighted to the local trauma hospital. I spent two weeks in ICU, three weeks in TRACU (trauma recovery and acute care unit) and five weeks in a rehabilitation hospital.

"I now have an amputated left leg (above the knee) and a 'frozen' left shoulder and was in a rehabilitation hospital until July.

"During May and June, those two hospitals, various surgeons, radiologists, anesthesiologists, etc., placed 17 liens against my and my wife's home, totaling $280,469. All these liens were placed on my home before I was released from the hospital and before I'd seen a bill.

"The strange part of all this is that I have complete medical insurance coverage and all my medical providers knew it. As of last week, 15 of those liens still exist, even though the bills have been paid by my HMO. My accident not only has cost me thousands of dollars out of my own pocket (co-pays, deductibles, etc.) It has cost me grief over our home and possible mistaken credit repercussions."

Tom is one of hundreds who responded to a California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee ad describing the disparity of care available to Vice President Dick Cheney and members of Congress and the rest of us (www.cheneycare.org).

His story is not unique. One in six insured adults have substantial problems paying their medical bills, one report noted last year, and 42 percent told Zogby-UPI pollsters their insurer had refused to pay a medical bill.

Health care proposals that focus on more insurance - without ending insurance industry price gouging or the all-too-routine denials of care - don't help patients like Tom.

The top Republicans, including Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney, endorse tax incentives to enable the uninsured to buy insurance and more deregulation to limit rising costs.

While tax credits will help some, in a declining economy many still will be unable to afford policies that now average more than $12,000 per family just for the premiums, not including skyrocketing deductibles, co-pays and other costs that have made medical bills the leading cause of personal bankruptcy.

There's also no evidence deregulation will constrain costs. Premiums alone have jumped 87 percent over the past decade, far outpacing inflation and wage increase rates, despite increased deregulation by many states and the last two administrations in Washington.

The leading Democrats favor a more comprehensive approach with expanded public programs for children and the poor. Sen. Hillary Clinton pushes an "individual mandate," the requirement for everyone to buy insurance. Sen. Barack Obama disagrees, saying those who don't have insurance want it, but can't afford it.

Clinton's argument that Obama is thus "leaving out" people and is not "universal health care" is disingenuous. "Having" insurance is not the same as being able to use it. You're only being mandated to purchase the premiums; they're not mandating the insurance companies to make sure you get the care you need.

Clinton has criticized Obama for his past comments endorsing a "single-payer, universal health care coverage ... everybody in, nobody out" - an expanded and improved Medicare for all.

It's a system that eliminates the costly and wasteful role of the insurance industry and its built-in incentive to limit care to increase revenues, it's essentially in place in every other Western country, and it works.

A January 2008 study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, for example, found the U.S. ranked worst among 19 industrial nations in preventable deaths.

Obama says he'd be for single-payer today "if I were designing a system from scratch."

We are starting from scratch. Our present system has hit rock bottom, as Tom Wenning and so many others could attest. As the candidates ask for our vote, let's ask them to support the only health care reform that can finally end our national nightmare.

Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the 80,000-member California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and a national vice president of the AFL-CIO.