The Green Party responds to Obama's speech:

[irishbobcat]

The Green Party responds to Obama's speech: Mr. President, make health
care a right for all Americans

• America needs Medicare For All/Single-Payer, not a life-support
system for insurance companies and HMOs

• Whether Obamacare passes or the GOP blocks health care reform,
insurance companies will win and American people will lose

• Attention paid to Obamacare vs. town hall hecklers eclipses the fact
that most Americans want national health care, according to polls


WASHINGTON, DC -- The Green Party of the United States has released
its rebuttal to President Obama's speech before Congress on September
9, 2009, in which he encouraged US Representatives and Senators to
support his health care reform plan.

There are no Green members of the US Congress, although dozens of
Greens have run for the US House and Senate in the past and more will
run in 2010. The Green Party's response to Mr. Obama's speech
represents what a Green member of Congress might have said Wednesday
evening, if the media gave the Green Party the same air time as they
give Democrats and Republicans.


Text of Green Party rebuttal

President Obama was correct when he said, quoting the late Sen. Ted
Kennedy, that health care was fundamentally a moral issue and a matter
of "social justice and the character of our country." President Obama
understands that we're in a national crisis -- that's why he wants to
lead on health care reform.

But the President stopped short of asserting that health care should
be made a right for all Americans. He said he has "no interest in
putting insurance companies out of business." He did not admit the
fact that the insurance industry's very existence depends on the power
to restrict coverage, deny claims to those with coverage, cancel
coverage for people when they need medical care most, and reject
people who are high-risk because of low income, age, and prior medical
condition. (President Obama related several accounts of such outrages
in his speech.) The insurance business plays a middle-man role,
exacting huge fees for its profits, administrative costs, overhead,
and high CEO salaries, while providing no medical services.

As long as for-profit insurance continues to exist, access to health
care remains secondary to corporate middle-man profits. Replacing
private insurance and HMO coverage with a plan to make Medicare
universal is the only solution.

Since Medicare doesn't function to make a profit, its administrative
costs are about three percent. For-profit insurance takes about a 30
percent bite out of health care spending and imposes unwieldy
administrative costs and paperwork on doctors, hospitals, and other
medical providers. That's why health care eats up over 15 percent of
domestic spending in the US, compared to about 9 percent in Canada,
which has a Single-Payer system.

What do we get for all this extra spending, under the for-profit
insurance status quo? Nearly 47 million Americans have no coverage at
all. Even people with coverage are at risk. Most personal
bankruptcies are caused by medical costs, and 7 out of 10 Americans
bankrupted by medical costs have insurance. Infant mortality rates
are higher in the US than in Canada and the UK, and life expectancies
are lower, according to the World Health Organization.

America already has death panels -- they're called HMOs and insurance
companies. (See
[www.reuters.com]
and
[www.usatoday.com])

This is a terrible waste of human lives, and a waste of money, too.
President Obama knows that the Medicare For All / Single-Payer plan is
the best solution. He has said so in the past, admitting that if one
wanted to provide health care to all Americans, the only solution was
Single-Payer
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE&feature=player_embedded
/ [www.nytimes.com]).
But now that he is President, he won't challenge the power and
profits of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

The President proposes a solution that would heavily regulate HMOs and
insurance firms yet compensate them with huge payoffs. He would
improve access to health insurance and reduce the number of uninsured,
but at a cost of $1 trillion over ten years, according to preliminary
estimates by the Congressional Budget Office
(http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/15/news/economy/health_care_reform/index.htm).
This $1 trillion includes subsidies to businesses to cover their
employees. Since Obamacare would exempt 95% of small businesses from
the employer insurance mandate, small business employees (many of whom
are low-income) will have to be covered elsewhere -- an added expense.
President Obama is simply wrong when he says he would not increase
the federal deficit to pay for health care expansion.

Obamacare would also impose 'mandates.' The President made this
clear when he said "under my plan, individuals will be required to
carry basic health insurance -- just as most states require you to
carry auto insurance." The mandate plan would subsidize people who
can't afford to purchase health insurance under this new law.

The Massachusetts mandate plan, passed three years ago, has not
provided universal health care. The state's individual-mandate health
reform law, which President Obama seeks to replicate on a national
scale, has failed to cover at least 352,000 uninsured residents
(http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/september/uninsured_figures_sh.php).

And Obamacare will protect drug company profits by maintaining the
Bush ban on bulk purchasing of prescription drugs.

In his speech, President Obama urged inclusion of the public option.
But he noted that the public option would not ever cover more than 5%
of the American people. That's not a sufficient public option. We
cannot drive down insurance premiums with a program that only covers
10 million people (a number likely to include millions of Americans
who are either high-risk or suffer existing health problems). In the
end, the President said that the public option is negotiable -- it
might be no more than a bargaining chip in talks with Republicans and
blue-dog Democrats.

In the end, Obamacare means a giant taxpayer-funded life-support
system for private for-profit corporations, while Americans spend more
money for less access. Is this necessary?

Insurance, pharmaceutical, and other big-business lobbies pumped
millions of dollars into both Democratic and Republican campaigns in
the last election to buy influence ($46,002,881 in insurance industry
contributions in 2008; see
[www.opensecrets.org]). Now they're
seeing their investment pay off -- just as Goldman Sachs and other
financial institutions reaped campaign contribution rewards when the
White House and Congress bailed out Wall Street earlier this year.

Media commentators are asking if President Obama can succeed in his
bold effort to win bipartisan support. But for those of us excluded
from the national debate, including the Green Party and other
advocates of universal health care, bipartisanship too often means
that Democrats and Republicans alike are serving the demands of
corporate lobbyists instead of the public interest.

Whether Obamacare passes or Republicans, town-hall hecklers, and radio
ranters succeed in blocking health care reform, the result will be a
victory for insurance companies and other powerful corporations and a
defeat for the American people.

The Green Party says: We can either protect insurance and drug
companies and their profits, or we can save American lives and dollars
by enacting Medicare For All / Single-Payer national health care. We
demand Single-Payer.

What would we get if Single-Payer legislation were passed?

• Single-Payer covers every American regardless of employment, income,
ability to pay, age, or prior medical condition. Everyone is
guaranteed quality health care, including prescriptions: Everybody in,
nobody out. Under Single-Payer, no American will face financial ruin
because of illness or injury.

• Single-Payer is less bureaucratic than private insurance. Health
care decisions are made solely by patient and physician. Single-Payer
allows us to choose our physician, health care provider, and health
care facility, without needing an approval from a government or
insurance company bureaucrat.

• Single-Payer will cut health care costs by as much as a third and
reduce what we pay for coverage. Health care will be funded at the
federal level and administered at the state level. Working Americans
will pay far less than what we now pay for private health coverage,
because Single-Payer eliminates the profit-making insurance and HMO
middle-men. By pooling risk among all of us, everyone would pay the
same percent of their income -- replacing the current system, in which
sick and poor Americans pay proportionally more.

• Single-payer will reduce paperwork for physicians and hospitals, one
reason why thousands of MDs, other health care professionals, and
medical students have endorsed single-payer. Physicians, hospitals,
and other health care providers will compete to serve the public in a
Single-Payer system, raising the quality of health care.

• Health care rationing? With private insurance, medical treatment is
rationed according to your ability to pay for coverage. With
Single-Payer, insurance company profits are abolished and health care
is rationed according to need, with medical emergencies and serious
illnesses receiving top priority.

• People of color (with or without coverage) and poor Americans have
suffered the worst treatment under the status quo, and thus have the
most to gain from Single-Payer. (See Cynthia McKinney's article "How
Did We Get From There to Here? (100,000 Unnecessary Black Deaths Per
Year)." [www.gp.org])

• Single-Payer will boost our ailing economy and provide relief for
businesses large and small, because it cancels the high expense and
administrative burden of employer-based health benefits. Single-Payer
will relieve cities, towns, and school boards from the cost of
providing health insurance to employees, allowing responsible
officials to reduce their budgets and lower local property taxes.

• Single-Payer gives government and citizens a common stake in
preventive, holistic medicine and sound food policies to keep costs
down while promoting greater public health. Greens support
reorienting health care from expensive technology and
pharmaceutical-based disease management to an integrative promotion of
healthy lifestyles and alternative therapies, including therapies that
have been used effectively for thousands of years as well as new ones
that come from our increasing understanding of mind-body interactions.
And we need to look at the incentives the US government currently
provides. As Dr. Andrew Weil said in a recent interview with Larry
King, "You can't have the government telling us to eat more fruits and
vegetables and at the same time, through its subsidy program, ensuring
that fruits and vegetables are the most expensive things in grocery
stores and all the unhealthy stuff is the cheapest." (Larry King
Live, CNN, September 10, 2009,
[transcripts.cnn.com])

• Single-Payer is not socialized medicine. It is social insurance for
health care. Under Single-Payer, private physicians and hospitals
remain private. After treating a patient, instead of sending a bill
to one of several hundred insurers, HMOs, or agencies (each with its
own different and complex requirements), they send the bill to a
single agency (hence 'Single-Payer') and then get paid. Calling
Single-Payer socialism is like calling the defense industry socialism
because Lockheed-Martin gets 96% of its revenue from government
contracts.

For all the reasons, the Green Party supports Single-Payer/Medicare
For All. It has always been in our national platform -- and Green
candidates and elected public officials are firmly behind the demand
for passage of HR 676, Rep. John Conyers' bill to expand Medicare to
cover everyone. Greens take no corporate contributions and we don't
take orders from any insurance, drug, or other corporate lobby.

We demand that Democrats make good on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's
pledge to bring HR 676 to the House floor for a debate and full vote
up or down after Congress's August recess. Such a vote will require
new studies by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) and
Congressional Budget Office on the cost of Single-Payer. Earlier GAO,
CBO, and Office of Management and Budget (OM studies revealed that
moving to a Medicare For All system would not increase federal
spending but would save about $400 billion annually, or $4 trillion
over ten years -- enough to cover nearly 47 million Americans
uninsured and eliminate co-pays and deductibles for everyone.

We demand a televised national debate between advocates and opponents
of Single-Payer, so Americans can hear the truth about universal
health care.

We demand that the White House and Congress -- and the media --
acknowledge that a majority of the American people, according to
numerous polls, want a plan to provide national health insurance.
Recent polls show 59% in favor
(http://www.healthcare-now.org/another-poll-shows-majority-support-for-single-payer/
/ [www.consumerwatchdog.org]). The
majority of physicians favor such a plan
(http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/march/most_doctors_support.php), and so
do America's mayors
(http://www.pnhp.org/campaign/materials/MayorsResolution.pdf).

Despite these numbers, media coverage of 'Tea Party' protesters at
town hall meetings has eclipsed the fact that most Americans support
national health care.

In a 2004 CBC poll, citizens of Canada identified Tommy Douglas as the
"greatest Canadian of all time." Tommy Douglas, a Baptist
minister-turned-politician, led the effort to enact Single-Payer
health care in Canada.

If Barack Obama led America as Tommy Douglas led Canada, he would
leave a legacy of real change. By making health care a right for all,
Mr. Obama would go down in history as one of America's greatest
presidents, with the stature of Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.


MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States [www.gp.org]
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193