Vox on single payer: Kos triple-talk as usual

THOSE OF US

who used to play on a Certain Other Blog have grown accustomed to reading reams of what I now refer to as "Moulitsian Triple-Speak": lip service to progressive ideals used as a light coating over a heavy core of true loyalty to the Koch brothers and the billionaire class.

Please permit your humble scribe to submit the following article for your consideration. It appeared on the vox.com website, of which Markos Moulitsas is a founder. As I noted in this Comment, it may as well have been written by Markos himself.

The article: Medicare for all: company health insurance at risk under single payer

A few quotes to get my readers in the right mood:

Half of all Americans get health insurance through their jobs. That’s by design. Doctors and hospitals in the mid-20th century saw a rash of government-run systems being set up in Europe and they lobbied hard to avoid one of their own, vastly preferring private coverage. Employee benefits were exempted from wartime price controls during World War II, giving employers an incentive to offer them at a time when it was nearly impossible to offer raises. Labor unions got on board too, sensing an opportunity to expand the safety net for workers without needing to pass another massive piece of social reform so soon after the New Deal.

The other argument made in favor of employer-based insurance is that it’s a constant experiment in how to better structure benefits and deliver health care. Hundreds of private companies are (the argument goes) constantly working to figure out how to offer insurance at a lower cost while still providing quality health care to their workers.

“A debate we’re constantly having is what’s the right way to cover the services we cover?” Paul Fronstin, who oversees the health insurance program at the Employee Benefits Research Institute, tells me. “My concern about moving away from the employer system is you lose that. Where does the innovation come from?”

Salfia noted that the West Virginia school system tried to set up a wellness program at the same time as it was shrinking doctor networks and increasing copays. Teachers would be rewarded if they exercised or ate healthy or went to the doctor. They just had to wear a tracking device and upload the data to an online platform — in a state where many people still lack access to broadband Internet or cellphone service.

“The whole thing was crazy,” she says. The program was eventually dropped.

So go and read the whole article; comment on what you think. But my advice? Keep a barf bag handy!

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earthling1's picture

another barf bag out of the drawer I'll just go over to Breitbart.
Thanks for the excerpt though.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

SnappleBC's picture

He, apparently, was uncertain and asks this question:

“My concern about moving away from the employer system is you lose that. Where does the innovation come from?”

Dear Mr Fronstin:

I can only assume you mean innovation in terms of ways to extract money from the sick and dying because there is little innovation to be seen anywhere else. You cannot seriously think of the American system, which underperforms dramatically, as evincing any sort of positive innovation in terms of actually keeping people healthy at a reasonable price. But what of the innovation in Vampiric profit taking? Have no fear. Great minds on Wall Street continue to come up with new solutions to extract blood from the poor at an ever increasing pace.

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

mimi's picture

and thinking consequently is 'out of order'.
Why do you read a triple- talking oligarch's BS utterances?

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thanatokephaloides's picture

@mimi

Why do you read a triple- talking oligarch's BS utterances?

It's actually many oligarchs' BS utterances, recommended to me as "intelligent" discussion (NOT!) of health care in the USA.

Bad

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

gulfgal98's picture

“Our system is a policy disaster. If there weren’t some strong locked-in features of our system, nobody would accept it,” says Jacob Hacker, who studies health policy at Yale University. “It’s a great system when people had something closer to lifetime employment and employers were providing good benefits, but it’s a really crappy system when that’s not true.”

We're not living in the fifties or even sixties any more when a family could live comfortably on a single, stable income and be assured that medical issues would be covered by the person earning the pay check's employer through the company health insurance plan. This is not true for most middle and low income workers who have been forced by our system of greed to often work more than one part-time job just to make ends meet.

For all but a very few, the concept of lifetime employment is a myth from the past, even in areas of government and education. The asset stripping of American has destroyed employment security and its attendant benefits. With the outsourcing of the once stable middle class manufacturing jobs and the ever growing privatization of public jobs, the first casualty is worker security and benefits.

Workers are no longer considered valued employees, but have become part time employees without any benefits including health insurance and leave benefits. When a part time worker becomes sick and unable to work for any length of time, he or she often loses their job. Most of these part time jobs are on the lower end of the pay scale, so these workers are already in a very precarious position as far as keeping their heads above water without the worry of an illness or accident leaving them both destitute and without any income.

For many middle class and professional workers, there is another class of worker that has become very commonplace and that is the independent contractor. Many of these people once had jobs working for an employer, but companies began to realize that by doing away with their positions and hiring them back as independent contractors, the company would no longer be responsible for health insurance, leave or Social Security or pension benefits. While independent contractors may still be earning a decent wage, their out of pocket expenses rise considerably, especially in regard to finding decent single coverage health insurance.

One last point because it cannot be emphasized enough. Health insurance is NOT health care. This is something that most people in this country fail to realize when they say they are happy with their current insurance. Health insurance is simply having a middle man skimming money off the top of the costs and that same middle man making decisions on whether or not treatment will be covered based upon their actuarial calculations. In other words, the middle man insurance company is playing god with what we can receive from our health care.

I think if most people understood this concept better, they would not be afraid to embrace a national health care (not insurance like ACA) plan.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

thanatokephaloides's picture

@gulfgal98

Way to smack that ball out of the park, gulfgal!

One last point because it cannot be emphasized enough. Health insurance is NOT health care. This is something that most people in this country fail to realize when they say they are happy with their current insurance. Health insurance is simply having a middle man skimming money off the top of the costs and that same middle man making decisions on whether or not treatment will be covered based upon their actuarial calculations. In other words, the middle man insurance company is playing god with what we can receive from our health care.

I think if most people understood this concept better, they would not be afraid to embrace a national health care (not insurance like ACA) plan.

The remark in the Vox article stating that a demonstrator, protesting for single payer health care, was advocating the ACA, made my skin crawl. It is the most important reason I brought the article up here at all. Obamacare (really Romneycare) is most emphatically not single payer and it sure as F isn't health care! It's mega-welfare for the mega-rich and the private insurance companies they own and control.

And we need health care in this country. Not insurance, health care.

Diablo

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

gulfgal98's picture

@thanatokephaloides my hand-eye coordination sucked. It's nice to know I could hit a homer, if only figuratively. Biggrin

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Why should I care?!?
"Innovation" in health insurance is generally something I would like to avoid.

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longtalldrink's picture

"expand the safety net for workers without needing to pass another massive piece of social reform so soon after the New Deal."

And yet we are meant to swallow this line of thinking. "Oh me oh my, we JUST gave them the New Deal...wtf more do they want? I tell ya, the masses just want everything! NOW they want universal health care...never, never are they just satisfied. Do you really know how much hard work is involved with passing legislation that is actually good for people? Better they should think that they are better off without all those pesky benefits."

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Well done is better than well said-Ben Franklin

thanatokephaloides's picture

@longtalldrink

"expand the safety net for workers without needing to pass another massive piece of social reform so soon after the New Deal."

And yet we are meant to swallow this line of thinking. "Oh me oh my, we JUST gave them the New Deal...wtf more do they want? I tell ya, the masses just want everything! NOW they want universal health care...never, never are they just satisfied. Do you really know how much hard work is involved with passing legislation that is actually good for people? Better they should think that they are better off without all those pesky benefits."

My quote from the IWW website answers this pretty well:

"What we, the workers, need and want is in absolute and diametric opposition to what the employers want and think they need. We want more pay for our time, shorter hours, less boring and repetitive work, less dangerous and unhealthy work, and most importantly, control of how we spend the hours and days and years of our short lives. More control over what goods we produce and what service we provide, and how these things are done. More control over the effects of this production on our health, on the health and safety of our neighborhoods and our homes, on this beautiful planet earth. We want a safe and healthy place for the children to grow up (all the children, theirs as well as ours), and the possibility of a good, fulfilling life for them to lead. We, in short, want everything the employers need us not to have. Our needs and wishes are simply bad for their business.

The employers, as a class, need us to work longer, harder, faster, cheaper, with less safety rules, less pollution controls and less say in the decision making process. What they really need is a vast army of slaves that don't have to be fed and taken care of.
Super duper robots with all of our skills and knowledge, that can do all the work in the world, like we do, but require less maintenance and hassle. These units of labor need to be interchangeable and disposable.

What we want and need is to be truly free and in control of our own lives, the resources, the machines, the decision making process, in short, the whole ball of wax."

source

Yeah, what he said!

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides