Health Insurance Should Be A Right
The boom has been quietly lowered on the latest attempt at health care reform. The target is a modest proposal in the U.S. Senate, to preserve medical coverage for people who are laid off or change jobs. The Senate bill would require insurance companies to continue selling policies to workers who leave a company-sponsored group plan.
This piece of legislation, which has bipartisan support, should not be very controversial. Nevertheless, several senators have put secret “holds” on the bill. This stops it from coming to the floor for debate.
Placing a “hold” is a time-honored way to strangle popular legislation without leaving any fingerprints. Although the identities of the henchmen remain hidden, a perusal of insurance industry contributions to senatorial candidates may offer some clues.
It is easy to find families that this bill would help. There are two in my extended clan. One relative was a state worker who lost her job (and insurance coverage) when her department underwent “downsizing.” Her husband is self-employed, and her plan had covered the entire family. Fortunately, they can afford expensive outside coverage, and because no one in the family is seriously ill, an insurance company will sell it to them.
Another relation recently gave birth to a second child while her first was still in diapers. She simply could not manage returning to her full-time secretarial job after a brief maternity leave. However, her company provides insurance for the families of employees. Her husband’s workshop does not. They are now struggling to find the cheapest - and least comprehensive coverage - on the market. Their family is healthy, too, knock on wood.
Insurance companies object to the Senate bill for the following reason: Workers whose families suffer from costly medical problems - cancer, heart disease, and so forth - would continue to buy coverage. The healthy ones might go without.
Insurers make money on customers who use few medical services. And Congress has thus far preserved for them a right to cover only the healthiest specimens.
Insurers do not want any alteration in rules that have allowed them to virtually print money and transform their chief executives into instant tycoons. The Senate legislation might cramp their style a bit, but no one in the insurance industry would go hungry as a result.
Yes, we are back to the “portability” issue. The ability to take insurance coverage from job to job was one thing that conservatives, liberals and those in between could agree on. This bill to expand portability was drafted by Sens. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Supporters include such exemplary conservatives as Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Orrin Hatch of Utah.
As the legislation heads for oblivion, thousands of Americans are becoming health refugees every week. Layoffs in both the private and public sectors are stripping them of medical insurance. Need we add that in the rest of the civilized world, health coverage is a right of citizenship?
The uncertainties of health coverage have forced Americans to twist around their lives in a quest for medical security. Some cling to jobs they detest. Others put off starting their own businesses because they would lose membership in their company group plans.
Mothers feel unable to stay at home with their young children because the family depends on their employers’ health plan. It has become common for one spouse, usually the wife, to remain in a low-paying job for the sole reason that it provides insurance.
Advocates of family values might note that health coverage becomes a right when the father runs off, the mother goes on welfare, and the family qualifies for Medicaid. Otherwise, uninsured workers can only pray they don’t become seriously ill before they reach age 65 and can join Medicare.
And so it has come down to this: The richest nation on earth is unable to provide working families with the crudest shelter against the vagaries of a profit-obsessed health care system.
Let us harken back to the 1994 health reform debate. Politicians opposing federally mandated coverage argued that less-sweeping reforms would bring insurance to most Americans. A Senate bill aiming to accomplish just that is being anonymously smothered.
Where are the politicians now?
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