Political pork, political disease

11-07-09
Rep. Dennis Cardoza
Congressman Dennis Cardoza
18th Congressional District of California
Congressman Cardoza supports health care reform legislation 
Commitments for UC Merced Medical School funding will ease Valley physician shortage 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:  Mike Jensen
(202) 225-6131 
 http://www.house.gov/list/press/ca18_cardoza/PRHEALTHVOTE.html [1]

 WASHINGTON, DC –  This evening, I voted for H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. This bill is a historic and positive national step forward and offers the greatest improvement to the quality of health care for all Americans since the creation of Medicare. It will provide health insurance to 96 percent of our citizens. It stops the obscene insurance industry practice of denying people health care coverage due to “pre-existing” medical conditions. In the 18th  Congressional District, an estimated 107,000 more residents will qualify for affordable health care insurance. 

Throughout the legislative process, I was able to advocate for – and successfully secure – $500 million in funding for medical schools in rural areas, including UC Merced. As you likely know, for years I have fought to address our region’s shortage of doctors by creating a first-rate medical school that would train doctors in the Valley and provide an incentive for them to remain in our community. I worked with the House Leadership and President Obama’s Administration. I was able to secure their commitments that they would support funding for the UC Merced Medical School and its establishment would be a high priority for both the President and House leaders.
                                                                       
The costs of care of the underinsured or uninsured that our taxpayers have picked up through publicly-funded hospitals and increased medical insurance premiums will now be shared more equally. H.R. 3962 will direct $167 million to hospitals in the 18th district alone, where in some areas 30 percent of the residents are currently on Medicaid.

Relieving pressure on our county governments, the bill will increase Medicaidreimbursements to Medicare levels by 2012, making it more affordable for doctors to treat Medicaid beneficiaries. Additionally, the legislation provides increased funding for community health care centers such as those in our district.

The cost of caring for those without insurance in our community is paid by the hospitals, the counties, the cities, the taxpayers and those who already have insurance. This legislation marks a dramatic shift in helping to alleviate those costs, in addition to making insurance available to thousands of Valley residents. 

Before I decided to vote for the health care reform bill, I weighed all the arguments, both pro and con. Would our country and our community be better off with this measure than without it? Does this measure offer the promise of significantly improving our nation’s health care? Is it likely to be better than the status quo?

In making my decision, I relied heavily on the comments of people from the Valley, many of whom made strong cases for, and against, components of the bill. In the months leading up to the vote on health care reform, I met with doctors and other health care professionals throughout our community. I also met with business owners, retirees, public officials and veterans. In addition to discussions at civic presentations, I received thousands of emails, letters and calls. The information, questions and comments from those people helped shape my decision today.

Our nation is much better off with this bill than we would be without it. Of that, there is little doubt. That is why H.R. 3962 earned my vote.

We do need to make parts of this bill better. I am concerned with the cost of the bill while our nation’s debt continues to rise. I am also concerned with limiting the impact on small businesses. I have shared both of these concerns with the Administration.

I will continue to work to address these concerns in conference committee when the differences between the Senate and House bills are worked out before sending a final bill to the President. Yet we cannot overlook the multitude of needs in our nation – especially in our region – and the benefits this bill will have for families throughout America and the Valley.

This legislation is not perfect; no bill in Congress ever is. But it offers significant improvement in our current health care system, and it will provide enormous benefits for those I was elected to represent. It is a major step forward toward affordable insurance, more access and thanks to funding for the UC Merced Medical School, more doctors in our region that will help residents of the Valley lead the healthy lives that they deserve.

What Cardoza actually did on healthcare reform was saddle up on the political fence, stick his hands out to both sides and judiciously weighed the size of the barrels of pork he was offered. It is what he has always called "balance." It's the same-old, same-old pattern. Environmental supporters were never able to offer the bribes developers could, so Cardoza became, after the tragic loss to Congress of former Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy, the lead Blue Attack Dog against the Endangered Species Act in Congress.

The San Joaquin Valley has the highest teen pregnancy rate in California, which has more teenage mothers than any state in the nation. By making abortion effectively illegal, how is the House bill addressing this major issue in "his" district? Cardoza sold his vote for some funding for a medical school at UC Merced. The "Valley physician shortage" is the latest version of the terrible "housing shortage" that threatened our well-being a decade ago.

Here is another view, from inside the hospitals beside the beds. -- ed.

11-10-09
Physicians for a National Health Program
Statement by California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro on the House bill on healthcare
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/november/statement_by_cnanno.php [2]

Of all the torrent of words that followed House passage of its version of healthcare reform legislation in early November, perhaps the most misleading were those comparing it to enactment of Social Security and Medicare.

Sadly no. Social Security and Medicare were both federal programs guaranteeing respectively pensions and health care for our nation’s seniors, paid for and administered by the federal government with public oversight and public accountability.

While the House bill, and its Senate counterpart, do have several important reform components, along with many weaknesses, neither one comes close to the guarantees and the expansion of health and income security provided by Social Security or Medicare.

By contrast, if the central premise of Social Security and Medicare was a federal guarantee of health and retirement security, the main provision of the bills in Congress is a mandate requiring most Americans without health coverage to buy private insurance. In other words, the principle beneficiary is not Americans’ health, but the bottom line of the insurance industry which stands to harvest tens of billions of dollars in additional profits ordered by the federal government. Or as Rep. Eric Massa of New York put it on the eve of the House vote, “at the highest level, this bill will enshrine in law the monopolistic powers of the private health insurance industry, period.”

Further, while Social Security and Medicare, two of the most important reforms in American history, were both significant expansions of public protection, the House bill actually reduces public protection for a substantial segment of the population, women, with its unconscionable rollback of reproductive rights in the anti-abortion amendment.

Why then so much cheerleading by many progressive and liberal legislators, columnists, and activists?

1- Passage of the bill was a clear defeat for the Republican opposition and those on the right who have so mischaracterized what boils down to modest reform that looks more like a “robust” version of the Medicare prescription drug benefit or the state children’s health initiative.

2- Proponents of the bill, starting in the White House and running through the Democratic leadership in Congress, with the assistance and support of many in labor and liberal and progressive constituency groups, have so lowered expectations on healthcare reform that with eyes wide shut they can call this a sweeping victory.

To be sure there are commendable provisions in the House bill that bear note. Among the most important are:

•Expansion of Medicaid to millions of low income adults.

•Reduction of the “doughnut hole” in the Medicare drug coverage law making drug costs more affordable for many seniors.

•Increased federal funding for community health programs, such as home visits for nurses and social workers to low income families.

•Additional regulation of the insurance industry, mostly targeted to people who are presently without coverage rather than those with existing health plans. Those include limits on insurers ability to drop sick enrollees or refuse to sell policies to people with prior health problems, extending the age that dependent children can be on their parents’ plan, and repeal of the anti-trust exemption for insurers.

•Extending the same health benefit tax benefits available to married couples to domestic partners.

•A progressive tax to help pay the bill through a surcharge on wealthy earners and required contributions from large employers, in sharp contrast with the Senate proposal to tax health benefits on misnamed “Cadillac” plans, comprehensive coverage available to many union members, for example.
 

But the acclaim now flowing from some quarters would have been better deserved had these provisions been enacted on their own — not accompanied by the many shortcomings of the legislation. To cite a few:

•Healthcare will remain unaffordable for many Americans. The bill does not do nearly enough to control skyrocketing insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital costs. Indeed, by various estimates, with no effective limits on the insurance industry’s price gouging, out-of-pocket costs for premiums, deductibles and other fees by some estimates with eat up from 15 to 19 percent of family incomes by several accounts.

•No meaningful reform of the rampant insurance denials of medical treatment the insurers don’t want to pay for.

•Little assistance for individuals and families who presently have employer-sponsored health plans and face frequent erosion of their coverage and health security. No help for the healthcare cost-shifting from employers to employees.

•Minimal expansion of consumer choice. The much debated public plan option will be available only to about 2 percent of people under age 65, mostly those now not covered who buy insurance on their own (it may or may not be expanded in 2015). Further, no additional plan options for those in the many markets dominated by one or two private plans, and no additional choice of doctor or hospital within existing plans.

•The new limits on abortion extended to poor women.
Ultimately, the combination of the mandate to buy insurance, federal subsidies to low income families to purchase private plans, failure to adequately control insurance prices or crack down on the abuse of insurance denials make the House bill — and its Senate counterpart — look a lot like a massive bailout for the private insurance industry.

Don’t be misled by the howling from insurance industry which has been spending some $1.4 million a day to steer the direction of legislation. They would have preferred the status quo, but will be more than happy to count the increased revenues coming their way.

As Rep. Dennis Kucinich said on the House floor, “we cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem.”

While some people will have improved access, the final accounting will be an even firmer private insurance grip on our healthcare system, with the U.S. remaining the only industrialized nation which barters our health for private profit.

Months ago, the Obama administration pre-determined this outcome by ruling out the most comprehensive, most cost effective, most humane reform, single payer, or an expanded and improved Medicare for all. Single payer proponents were shut out of White House forums, blocked from most hearings in the Senate, and single payer amendments stripped from the final House bill. Yet, through grassroots pressure, single-payer advocates forced consideration by the House of an improved Medicare for all until the very end.

But nurses and other single payer proponents who have heroically fought for this reform for years will continue the campaign, next in the Senate, where single payer amendments are expected to be introduced. The scene will also shift to state capitols, where vibrant single payer movements remain active and will escalate.

Proponents of comprehensive reform will never be silent, and never stop working for the real change we most desperately need.