Left In Lowell

Tsongas Nosedives on at Least One Huge Issue

by Lynne at 11:41 am.

Here’s where I start to get primary-partisan. I always knew, at some point, there would be disagreements between the candidates, and some of them would be deal-breakers for me, and that I couldn’t be shy in voicing them. There are other concerns I have about Tsongas as a candidate, on issues of trade, and on substance in general. The most clear issue, however, has become very apparent. That would be her position on universal heath care.

I attended the GLAD (Greater Lowell Area Democrats) breakfast today, where candidates Niki Tsongas, David O’Brien, Barry Finegold, and Jamie Eldridge all stopped by before their Methuen campaign stop (another…breakfast?). Tsongas and O’Brien had never attended a GLAD meeting as candidates before, so they got to take more time to speak, then answer questions.

Although there have been indicators in the past that Tsongas is not for true single-payer universal health care, and that she has mentioned her time on the Board of (I think) Fallon, it became perfectly clear to me today that she is completely wrong, wrong, wrong on how to fix our health care system.

One statement she made was that we underestimate the power of the market for keeping costs down. What the heck planet is she from?

Last I checked, we had double-digit increases on a regular basis. I’ve heard of cost increases as high as 15-18% some years. There are numerous studies like this one citing that administrative overhead accounts for somewhere around 30% of private US health care versus half or less that in other industrialized countries where they have universal health care. Private companies are hiring people to deny you care, along with increasing their advertising and red tape. All along, our quality of care has diminished. I am not getting better service for my increased premiums, thanks very much. (As someone who was off of health care for 6 years because we were contract/self employed, I can tell you that the quality of care has certainly gone down since I was last insured. It’s like having a baby nephew in another state that you only see once a year - you can see how much he’s grown even if his mother doesn’t realize it.)

What Niki Tsongas doesn’t get is that if you want to deliver health care to a population, it is an inherent conflict of interest for a private system to be the vehicle. Why? Because for a private corporation, their bottom line is more important than the right of every person to have quality health care. This is borne out by the experiences of millions of Americans, who understand they are getting less for their hard-earned money. Critics of a universal health care plan say that it will lead to rationing. It’s not rationed now? How long does it take to get a doctor’s appointment these days? This last time, I had to make an appointment about 5 months ahead. How much time did we get with the doctor, despite the need we had? We were lucky to get 20 minutes.

That’s not to say private companies have no place in health care. I would be happy to see their role shrunk down to supplying the market with supplimental plans that richer people can add to their basic government health care if they so choose. You know why health care companies are so scared of the universal health care debate? Because if they were forced to compete even in a limited capacity with the government, whose administrative overhead percentage on Medicare/Medicaid is a tiny fraction of the private insurers, they would be shown to be the money-hogging buffoons that they are. They couldn’t compete, because the free market has not worked for bringing better quality care for less cost. Instead, we have skyrocketing premiums and nothing to show for it.

I don’t know where Niki Tsongas gets the idea that the market has been successful at bringing down costs. But I do know even if it has gotten cost effective in any area, that has been far outstripped by increasing costs of their own making elsewhere.

This is a deal breaker for me in this race. My husband and I, as I mentioned, were uninsured for six years. In that time, my husband’s and my health deteriorated for want of preventative care. Private companies don’t want to (affordably) insure the self-employed or the poor or the old or the sick; the more they externalize that cost the more money they make. It’s time to externalize the entire system and offer fair, quality, universal single-payer health care like every other first world democracy in the world. If you want that too, then Tsongas is not the candidate who will deliver.

[Filed under Health Care, MA-05] [link]

30 Responses to “Tsongas Nosedives on at Least One Huge Issue”

anonymous Says:
April 21st, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Maybe she feels this way because she is on the Board of an HMO.

Page 9:
http://www.fchp.org/NR/rdonlyres/BEEAEBC5-596B-4DD3-9B50-E712C5F96754/0/2005FCHPannualreportsmaller.pdf
waittilnextyr Says:
April 21st, 2007 at 12:59 pm
One person (Ezra Klein) writes in his assessment of the health plan offered by John Edwards:

“Where the Edwards’ plan takes a big step forward is in mandating, along with the private options, that HMs offer “at least one plan [that] would be a public program based upon Medicare.” And the intent is explicit: “Health Markets will offer a choice between private insurers and a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare, but separate and apart from it. Families and individuals will choose the plan that works best for them. This American solution will reward the sector that offers the best care at the best price. Over time, the system may evolve toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan.”"

Isn’t this the best of both (single payer and competition) worlds?
Ryan Says:
April 21st, 2007 at 3:00 pm
ugh.
Winston Smith Says:
April 21st, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I was there this morning and dumbfounded by Niki’s statement. Totally absurd. I appreciated Jamie Eldridge’s discussion of the issue. He asked the audience (not positive if this was his exact wording): “who here thinks the market will solve our health care crisis?” Not a single hand went up. You could hear crickets chirping.

Jamie has long been a strong supporter of providing universal healthcare, and I think he makes a good argument on his webpage:

http://www.jamieforcongress.com/Labor_and_Working_Families.asp

This is another reason I am supporting Jamie, and why I really can’t get behind Niki. She’s the establishment candidate, and this position makes that even more clear.
ATS Says:
April 21st, 2007 at 4:33 pm
What you miss here is that “market competition” and “privatized healthcare” are not the same thing. In fact, state-run systems that encourage regulated, but competitive markets, have been successful at controlling costs, while ensuring high standards of quality and levels of access.

Wisconsin’s Medicaid program is a great example of this. Enrollees are able to choose from a number of managed care providers that the state closely regulates. The result has been a high quality, low cost system.

Sure, private healthcare delivery has its problems, but you shouldn’t be so quick to give up on the market as an efficiency increasing device.
Josh Says:
April 21st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Did you ever think that government is the reason healthcare oosts are much higher than they would be in an otherwise free market.

1.) The tax system encourages employment-based insurance, so individuals who switch jobs or lose their jobs lose their insurance.

2.) The government mandates so many useless options for insurance providers. Personally, I don’t need birth control but the government makes my insurance company pay for it if people want it anyways. This makes my costs higher.

3.) You need to be licensed (a government enforced barrier to entry) to do just about anything nowadays. It’d be alot cheaper if I could go to someone who is not a doctor but could perform certain procedures.

Let’s compare.

This is what you get when government provides healthcare:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8896683
This is what you get when you stop meddling and let the market work it’s magic:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=53633

Also, I recently made a doctor’s appointment and it the wait was 2 days. I think you need to find a new doctor.
tim Says:
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:33 am
Josh -

1) yes, this is a problem - but this would be corrected by universal healthcare.

2) seriously?

3) Cheaper, yeah, but what procedures are you talking exactly? I can’t think of one at even a regular checkup (turn and cough? I don’t think I want someone who can just walk in off the street asking me to drop my trousers), never mind at a specialist’s.
Lynne Says:
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:53 am
Josh, you are so off the mark.

Half of human beings are female. You’re saying requiring birth control to be covered is a bad thing? Last I checked, males aren’t the only people covered by insurance. That was the most crazy thing I’ve ever seen you write. Even if you had a point, which you don’t, that line of thinking totally ruins the credibility of your argument.

ATS is right. Either you need a HIGHLY regulated system (ie, lots of rules that say an insurance company can’t kick someone off of care because they get too expensive or that they can’t electively decide to deny 1/3 of cases of cancer arbitrarily) or basic health care needs to be 100% government run. Given the fact that currently-run government health insurance is exponentially cheaper to run (Medicare/Medicaid) than our chunky, low-quality private care, I do NOT trust the health insurance industry to be able to lower their costs even if they are forced to by regulation.

The government started Medicare/Medicaid because private insurers were NOT insuring those populations, at least not affordably, and seniors were chosing between eating and their meds. I say expand that system (after you fix that Plan D big-pharma giveaway debacle) to anyone who wants to switch. If I as a businessperson could buy into a shared Medicare plan, I’d seriously think about eventually expanding my business and creating jobs. Til then, I guarentee you I will not be able to afford to. That’s bad for our economy, bad for businesses, and worst of all, bad for our society’s health.

I’m fine with being taxed as an individual and a business, if that was fairly spread around evenly, in order to make sure every individual has quality health care. It’s the least I can do as a citizen of the (once) richest country in the world. (I say once, because I’m not sure how long we have before we aren’t…)
Shawn Says:
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Medicare/Medicaid pay pennies on the dollar, and the rest of us subsidize it.

If health care was all one system.. that rate would go up considerably.

And I think it would be great for us not to be “the richest country in the world.” Let the UN and all the third world countries look to someone else for subsidies for once.
waittilnextyr Says:
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
“Given the fact that currently-run government health insurance is exponentially cheaper to run (Medicare/Medicaid) than our chunky, low-quality private care, I do NOT trust the health insurance industry to be able to lower their costs even if they are forced to by regulation.”

Don’t be so sure of that! It only appears cheaper because it is operating as a giant Ponzi scheme, and the time of reckoning is approaching.

From the Concord Coalition website a 2004 article quantifies the problem, and that was written before the Prescription Drug benefit was added to the program:

“For the first time ever in 2004, the annual reports of the Social Security and Medicare Trustees contained a complete accounting of the programs’ unfunded benefit liabilities. In addition to the usual calculations of Social Security’s and Medicare’s “actuarial deficit” ($4.0 trillion and $8.5 trillion, respectively), the reports included measures of the programs’ “closed group” liabilities ($12.7 trillion and $29.5 trillion) and “infinite horizon” liabilities ($11.9 trillion and $61.7 trillion). The OMB and Treasury have also published similar liability estimates.”
anonymous Says:
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:12 pm
What are the odds…

http://www.concordcoalition.org/board/
Jay Booth Says:
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Hey waittilnext year - those numbers, while bad and part of the reason Bush is a horrible president for running up such deficits, have nothing to do with medicare/aid’s costs. The costs of the system are still lower than private alternatives, even though they have massive future liabilities (liabilities to provide service to those who are paying into the system but so far ineligible to collect). Those liabilities would be even larger if the costs were higher.

Josh: Please fax those talking points on birth control to the RNC, pronto.
Beyond 495 » GLAD Meeting Wrap-up Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:17 am
[…] ast to the party, but wanted to add my .02 about the GLAD meeting this weekend. Lynne has a beef with Niki Tsongas and her comments regarding […]
waittilnextyr Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:46 am
Jay, I agree Bush is a horrible president. Each year he uses any surplus in the Medicare and Social Security trust funds to pay for his escapades, and effectively transfer that wealth to his corporate supporters and rich friends through tax breaks. These trust funds now contain IOUs from the federal government to repay those debts when the time comes. But, where will those funds to repay come from?

Notwithstanding his management of the country and the Medicare funds in particular, we are approaching the tipping point where Medicare expenses will exceed payroll taxes for that purpose. Ignoring that is being done at our peril. The “cost-effectiveness” of Medicare based on a scheme wherein accumulated liabilities are ignored is a ruse.

However, I suspect you are right in that the Administration of a single payer system is more cost-effective than multiple systems, especially when profit is removed from the equation.
Jay Booth Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:29 am
I don’t think we’ll get to single-payer overnight although I am supporting Jamie Eldridge because I think he’s the only person capable of effecting real change. Everybody else seems too willing to “go along” with a broken system. That’s not a strong enough voice for 1/435 members of congress. Jamie at the very least is bent on shaking things up, whether we wind up with a fully single-payer system at the end or not.

I do seem to remember once upon a time Gore was talking about a “lockbox” and everyone just yelled “Dweeeeeeeeeeeb!” at him while Bush was the fun guy who was gonna give you tax cuts. Then we wind up with tax cuts for the rich that barely helped the working family, followed by healthcare costs, fuel costs, local & state govt costs (those tax cuts had to come from somewhere), etc etc etc and pretty soon SS and Medicare funding crises.
Mr. Lynne Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I do think that the transition is the tricky question. But the first step is electing people willing to look at that problem in order to solve it and get us to where we need.
Josh Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
“I’m fine with being taxed as an individual and a business, if that was fairly spread around evenly, in order to make sure every individual has quality health care.”

What about those of us who aren’t fine with being taxed (even more than we already are)? Don’t you see how illiberal that really is? My policy requires nothing of you, but your policy forces me to participate in something that I want nothing to do with.
Jay Booth Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Josh, you are being billed to pay for others, it’s just by an insurance company instead of the government.

And if you don’t have insurance? Then you’re free-riding off of me, statistically. My insurance is .X dollars higher because of the probability that you get hit by a bus tomorrow and can’t afford 300k of out-of-pocket bills. So thanks.

I don’t get why people will line up to get slapped by private business but god forbid the government try to fix things that are clearly broken.

In the past month I’ve dealt with my wireless company, my insurance company and the DMV. The DMV was the most modern, easiest to deal with, and had the least “oh sorry i’m just a rep, these are the rules” BS. Seriously. I don’t see how you can defend the market as it exists right now. I certainly don’t see how you can do it behind the “government screws everything up” mantra, given how well the HMOs are handling things.
Mr. Lynne Says:
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:22 pm
“What about those of us who aren’t fine with being taxed (even more than we already are)? Don’t you see how illiberal that really is? My policy requires nothing of you, but your policy forces me to participate in something that I want nothing to do with.”

Thats the point of insurance… everyone in the pool pays so that you can spread risk.
Josh Says:
April 24th, 2007 at 10:50 am
The difference is that private enterprise gives me the CHOICE to opt out if I so choose. If one company sucks then I can switch to another.

If Cingular sucks then I can switch to Verizon without asking 51% of the population if I can do so. Government forces conformity and forbids alternatives.

Another example would be my college education. My alma mater (Emmanuel College) really pissed me off when it fired that professor for expressing his pro-gun views in class. I called them up and told them that they would never be getting a dime from me because I didn’t appreciate their lack of respect for academic freedom. What if some action at UMASS Lowell pisses me off in the same manner? I’m still stuck paying for something to which I am morally opposed.
Mr. Lynne Says:
April 24th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Don’t forget also that insurance companies get to choose their customers. If the mechanism that makes the whole thing able to keep prices down is the ability to spread risk then choice can elevate prices. You shouldn’t be able to ‘opt out’ of national health care any more than you should be able to ‘opt out’ of paying your share of the national highway system or the US military.
tim Says:
April 24th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Josh, at least you’re now being honest. You’re against universal healthcare not because you feel the free market would be better for everyone, but because it would be better for you and screw the rest of us.

In other words, your standard libertarian viewpoint.
Jay Booth Says:
April 24th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I wasn’t saying that we should nationalize cell phone service. It’s a natural monopoly so it should be regulated (switching away from Verizon isn’t a realistic option for me becasue of coverage) but it should be private.

However, with healthcare you really don’t have a choice. If you are injured or severely ill, you need healthcare. The current “market” solution leads to one set of prices offered to insurance companies who buy in bulk and one set offered to consumers. Very competitive. So if you don’t carry insurance and get severely ill, you’re going to rack up more bill than you can afford to pay and default on them. Driving up the rest of our insurance.

What part of the scenario I described above sounded even close to fair, competitive or effective?
Jay Booth Says:
April 24th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Scrap my last comment. I was drunk.
Will Says:
April 24th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
A Jamie Trap

If you had trouble raising money and a one phrase mantra (what does progressive really mean?), sure you’d set a trap for the frontrunner. What Niki said was honest. Is there one magic bullet to solve health care and pay for it? Its dishonest to say yes. Single payer will be controversial because it is a giant entitlement program that throws the baby out with the bathwater. Can it really be passed in this divided Congress and with a President like GWB? Can Jamie Eldridge suit up on his white horse and prevail in Congress? Doubtful.

Is the Massachusetts plan that Deval supports a payback to the insurance companies or perhaps a model for the nation to follow to get a consensus plan?

Yes, single payer has a lot of potential advanatages, but ask someone who’s watched this work in Canada. What was once a model is overtaxed, often unresponsive, slow and has resulted in what they call up north, ‘hallway care’.

So whoever said Jamie is looking for a wedge issue is right. And Lynne, let’s let the candidates honestly discuss and explore the issue before you pronounce them a villian. Would you condemn the new Massachusetts plan the same way? That’s what Niki supports.

Finally, you have to understand a little about the Tsongas formula which made a difference in cities like Lowell and Niki Tsongas’ experiences. Senator Tsongas believed in partnerships. He was criticized for saying that business had a place at the table. He was criticized for saying that we should wish for businesses to succeed because they provide jobs and can be incented to give back to the community. This didn’t mean he hesitated to tell businesses HOW to give back and expect responsible behavior. For one, I’m sick about all this standing up to this, and not backing down. We need idealism but also practical experience and solutions. No one’s running for class president here. Jamie, get real. Lynne, put a brace on that jerking knee.

Will
MSM Joins MA-05 Health Care Debate | richardhowe.com Says:
April 30th, 2007 at 7:30 am
[…] l Area Democrats. I wrote about it here. Lynne from Left-in-Lowell posted her thoughts here. Blue Mass Group picked up the debate […]
AnferTuto Says:
July 29th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Hola faretaste
mekodinosad
admin@winesonline.biz Says:
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:28 am
I came across your blog while I did a search on Google for low cost insurance and your article on Tsongas Nosedives on at Least One Huge Issue was informative.
Corrina Eudora Says:
September 19th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
oh lord my baby your driving me craz. Corrina Eudora.
Mihangel Caiaphas Says:
October 21st, 2007 at 6:58 pm
oh lord my baby your driving me craz. Mihangel Caiaphas.

April 21, 2007

Tsongas Nosedives on at Least One Huge Issue

30 Responses to “Tsongas Nosedives on at Least One Huge Issue”

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