Obama Adminstration Makes The Devil's Deal With The Insurance Industry

In her recent article:

Revived Focus on Health Care, Revival of Tort “Reform” Rhetoric

Kia Franklin shines a light on the willingness of President Obama to shed his lofty campaign rhetoric about people and his mother’s battles with health insurance and make a deal with the insurance industry to get any national health care plan passed. I am a liberal. I am a progressive. Like Kos I am not ashamed of it. And I terribly disappointed in President Obama. Is winning everything? Are collateral losses acceptable? Once the Fois Gras hits the table at the White House, the politics becomes everything. I had hoped that this guy could actually be The President. He has chosen to be the history of Harvard Law. Only Ralph Nader ever did that venerable institution proud. Here is what my President Obama i s going to do:

In the coming weeks and months Congress will be engaged in the difficult issue of how best to reform health care in America. I’m committed to building a transparent process where all views are welcome, but I’m also committed to ensuring that whatever plan we design upholds three basic principles: first, the rising costs of health care must be brought down; second, Americans must have the freedom to keep whatever doctor and health care plan they have or to choose a new doctor and health care plan if they want it; and third, all Americans must have quality, affordable, health care.

Ms. Franklin’s article shines the light on an administration as hungry for success as any ever in the white house:

The Obama Administration’s renewed focus on meaningful health care reform—an issue that Obama has always been committed to—has sparked a fire of excitement and debate about what this means and who should be involved in the conversation.

This has especially been the case since Monday, when we learned that folks from the insurance industry will have an influential seat at the table in this discussion, news that brought much anxiety and dismay to patients’ rights advocates, who are left feeling like the loser in a game of musical chairs. On the flip side, the industry side seemed to be more than happy to fill up the circle with its reps, perhaps in hope that the agenda for tort “reforms” might finally be accomplished.

Kia will be following this issue but tells us up front that

Before I delve too deeply into it, though, I have to start by saying that the tort “reform” movement is really seizing the moment here to shove its agenda onto the table. If we’re going to talk about medical malpractice, we shouldn’t just be talking about liability (in fact, this is such a small aspect of what’s going on), we should be talking about standards of care, how to improve safety, and questions that impact the quality of a person’s experience and health outcomes in the system. The starting point should not be, how can we reduce the amount of money injured patients receive; it should be, how can we reduce the amount of injured patients out there and increase the number of patients who have positive, empowering experiences in the system?

That said, the issue of tort “reform” is here, it has a presence, and so it’s important that the right questions be asked and answered. Some useful questions to consider when engaging in the tort “reform” debate: 1) Who are the real and perceived beneficiaries and 2) what are the real and perceived economic benefits, of tort “reform” in the medical malpractice context? To flesh these questions out means asking things like: will tort “reform” benefit innocent patients and hard working doctors? Will it save doctors’ jobs and protect them from exorbitant malpractice insurance premiums? Will it protect patients from negligent medical care? Will it allow more patients to be covered for quality health care? Will it cut health care costs in a positive way? Or, will it simply transfer costs from those who can afford it but want to increase their profits, onto those who simply cannot afford it and merely want to live a healthy, harm-free life?

President Obama should realize that the public knows the facts:

Read the facts. Tort “reform” will not reduce costs in a meaningful way. The costs reduction it does achieve will be done at the expense of innocent people seeking to uphold their right not to receive negligent, sub-par medical care. Tort “reform” will not keep insurance companies from finding a way to bilk doctors, and it will not improve the quality of the health care we receive. In other words, so called medical tort “reform”, is not (reform, def.: the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory). Real health care reform should focus on patient safety through initiatives like improved technology and record keeping, not medical malpractice caps.

The best resource for President Obama and his team of inside the beltway henchmen to see what the public is going to know is for them to go to the top source for insurance: Americans for Insurance Reform, affiliated with the Center for Justice and Democracy. They just released 14 informative fact sheets about medical liability and health care. Read them here.

Barbara O’Brien, also known as Mahabarbara, has begun a truly insightful series of blog posts about the health care system and tort “reform” over at the Mesothelioma Law & Politics blog. She gets deep into the history of the tort “reform” movement, it’s place in the health care debate, who’s behind it, and what the impact of tort “reform” really is on the health care system. Seriously, just go and read them now. The third of her series of posts will be up soon.

Regarding costs, on Sunday Eric Turkewitz offered helpful insight about the complaint about premiums—namely, that the complaint is made out of context.

My focus on the sellout of patients rights and insurance abuse by President Obama can be seen in Tort Reform Reality: Obama May Throw Patients Under the Bus

I have also recently posted on the Myths about single payer from Public Citizen, Physicians for a National Health Program, part of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care in:

Myths About Single Payer National Health Insurance

Often with Blogs in the groundswell the Comments add important insights as does Throckmorton to Kia Franklin’s article:

Zeke Emanuel who is spearheading healthcare reform for the Obama Administration recently met with delegates from the Health Insurance industry and the AMA. This is the reported agreement meeting that was related in the press. In this meeting, Emanuel made it clear that the Obama Administration plans to decrease health care costs by limiting end of life care. That is to say, to limit life prolonging care for the aged and those with severe medical problems. This is based on the fact that the majority of healthcare costs occur in the last 6 months of life. By limiting care in this period, they hope to decrease costs. To do this, they want to mandate what they consider "futile care". Since what is "futile" is a matter of opinion and since there is always the chance that some patients would have been saved, the Obama Administration realized that there is huge tort liability in any action of this type. As a result, they have promised Federal tort reform where medical damages will be payed at the Medicare Rate for all medical bills and a cap of $250,000 on all other damages. Since the Administration expects that there will still be private insurance providers and since they want the private insurers to tow the line of the same Federally Mandated Limits of care, they have agreed that private insurance companies will have immunity from tort liability if they deny care in the same manner.

Posted by: throckmorton | May 13, 2009 08:52 PM

The fix is in. Obama has become what he campaigned against. Shame.