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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 18, 2009)
Sept.21, 2009:NWLP 9/15/09 10:34 AM Page 7 A nyone who has read a newspaper, seen a tele- vision report or attended a health care reform event has to be amazed at some of the outrageous, bizarre and just off-the-charts lies being spouted about health care reform. Health care reform, according to the ranters and ragers, will make private insurance illegal, so- cialize medicine, convene death panels to kill grandma and give undocumented aliens Mayo Clinic quality care. And those are just a few of the delusional claims. The group Media Matters identified some of the most cited health care reform myths and lies that opponents are spreading. Here are a few: O BAMA , D EMS PUSHING “S OCIALIZED M EDICINE ” H EALTH C ARE R EFORM W ILL I MPOSE R ATIONING CLAIM: Progressive health care reform pro- posals will introduce a system of “rationing” into American medicine. REALITY: Insurance companies already ra- tion care. Insurance companies acknowledge that they ration care, restricting coverage of proce- dures and tests like MRIs and CAT scans and denying coverage for pre-existing medical condi- tions. Insurance companies also ration care by re- scinding coverage. As former senior executive at CIGNA health insurance company Wendell Pot- ter explained in June 24 Senate testimony, insur- ance companies restrict or deny coverage by re- scinding health insurance policies on the grounds that people had undisclosed pre-existing condi- tions. Myths About Health Care Reform CLAIM: Health care reform proposals are so- cialist and will lead to socialized medicine. REALITY: Conservatives have trotted out “so- cialized medicine” smear for 75 years — and it’s never been true. Numerous conservative media figures have revived the “socialized medicine” smear to undermine the efforts of Obama and congressional Democrats, most recently by pro- moting Ronald Reagan’s 1961 attacks on a leg- islative precursor to Medicare. But as the Urban Institute wrote in an April 2008 analysis, “social- ized medicine involves government financing and direct provision of health care services,” and therefore, recent progressive health-care reform proposals do not “fit this description.” The analy- sis also noted: “Similar rhetoric was used to de- feat national health care reform proposals in the 1990s and, with less success, to argue against the creation of Medicare in the 1960s.” Indeed, a Me- dia Matters for America analysis found that dating as far back as the 1930s -- with respect to at least 16 different reform initiatives including President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s consideration of govern- ment health insurance when crafting the 1935 So- cial Security bill; President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 legislation establishing Medicare; and the health-care initiative by President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton in 1993 and 1994 — conservatives have attempted to smear those pro- posals by calling them “socialized medicine” or a step toward that purportedly inevitable result. G OVERNMENT CAN ’ T RUN A H EALTH C ARE R EFORM P ROVIDES F OR E UTHANASIA , “D EATH P ANEL ” CLAIM: House health care reform bill man- dates end-of-life counseling that will pressure seniors to end their lives. REALITY: Advance care planning is not mandatory in the House health care bill. Section 1233 of America’s Affordable Health ChoicesAct of 2009 — which includes “Page 425” — amends the Social Security Act to ensure that advance care planning will be covered if a patient requests it from a qualified care provider. According to an analysis of the bill produced by the three relevant House committees, the section “[p]rovides cov- erage for consultation between enrollees and practitioners to discuss orders for life-sustaining treatment. Instructs CMS to modify ‘Medicare & You’ handbook to incorporate information on end-of-life planning resources and to incorporate measures on advance care planning into the physician’s quality reporting initiative.” H EALTH C ARE R EFORM L EGISLATION W ILL C OVER U NDOCUMENTED I MMIGRANTS CLAIM: Under health care reform, you will be denied care, and it will be given to undocu- mented immigrants instead. REALITY: House bill stipulates that those “not lawfully present” may not receive subsidies to purchase insurance. And the Senate bill ex- cludes those “not lawfully present” from federal funding. H EALTH C ARE R EFORM W ILL R AISE Y OUR T AXES CLAIM: Health care reform would be funded by broad-based tax increases. REALITY: The surtax in House bill applies only to income exceeding $350,000 per year for joint filers. The House health care legislation would establish a 1 percent tax on joint income exceeding $350,000 but not greater than $500,000 per year; a 1.5 percent tax on joint income ex- ceeding $500,000 but not greater than $1 million per year; and a 5.4 percent tax on joint income ex ceeding $1 million per year. Single filers would be subject to the surtax starting at income exceeding $280,000 per year. H EALTH CARE REFORM WOULD TAX ALL SMALL BUSINESSES CLAIM: House Democrats’bill would subject all small businesses to an 8 percent payroll tax as a penalty for not providing insurance to employ- ees. REALITY: Companies with annual payrolls of less than $250,000 would pay no penalty under the House bill. The House bill would establish a 2 percent payroll penalty for employers with com- bined payroll between $250,000 to $300,000 that don’t offer health insurance to employees; a 4 per- cent penalty for employers with $300,000 to $350,000 in payroll; a 6 percent penalty for em- ployers with $350,000 to $400,000 in payroll; and an 8 percent penalty for companies with annual payrolls exceeding $400,000. Additionally, the bill establishes tax credits for small-business em- ployers that do provide health care. For job with State of Oregon SEIU’s Crider leaves organized labor Lynn-Marie Crider, policy director for Portland-headquartered Service Em- ployees International Union (SEIU) Lo- cal 49, has left organized labor to work as policy analyst for Office for Oregon Health Policy and Research (OHPR). OHPR is a state agency that is develop- ing a plan for comprehensive health cov- erage. The new job began Sept. 1. “I made a decision that I wanted to be working full-time on health care re- form,” Crider told the Labor Press. “The Legislature has said we want to provide SEPTEMBER 18, 2009 affordable high-quality health care to all Oregonians, and that’s something I to- tally believe in.” Budget reductions at Local 49 were also a factor in Crider’s decision to apply for the job. Crider, 56, has spent most of the last 27 years working for the labor move- ment as a lawyer, researcher, organizer, and negotiator. “It would be nice if labor relations was not as legalistic as it is, but it is, so there’s no way that a trade union can function without having legal expertise.” Crider said. “I was usually the legal ex- pertise part of the team.” With a bachelor’s degree from Uni- versity of Oregon and a law degree from Yale University Law School, Crider was first hired in 1982 as staff attorney for the Western Region of the International Woodworkers of America, which later merged into the Machinists Union. She later worked a year for a legislative labor committee, and five years at the Workers Compensation Board, before joining NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS HEALTH CARE PROGRAM CLAIM: Medicare has failed, and so the gov- ernment can’t be trusted to “run health care.” REALITY: Medicare costs have risen more slowly than private insurance. As Nobel Prize- winning economist Paul Krugman noted, “since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8 percent — but insurance pre- miums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9 percent. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the over- all rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen ‘only’as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.” Medicare is extremely popular. A May 2009 Commonwealth Fund study concluded that “el- derly Medicare beneficiaries reported greater overall satisfaction with their health coverage, better access to care, and fewer problems paying medical bills than people covered by employer- sponsored plans.” — from blog.aflcio.org and MediaMatters.org SEIU Local 503 (Oregon Public Employ- ees Union) as legal counsel in 1995, and SEIU 1199 in Washington in 1998 as a or- ganizer. She next joined then-president Tim Nesbitt at the Oregon AFL-CIO as re- search and education director in 2000. Crider says some of the work she’s most proud of was at the state labor federa- tion — educating affiliates about the harm done by NAFTA-style trade treaties and the World Trade Organiza- tion. “We figured out how to speak more coherently about really complex trade issues and explain what difference it made for working people, and why we should care,” Crider said. She went to work for SEIU Local 49 in 2004. Local 49 represents over 4,000 hospital workers, and there, Crider au- thored reports on hospital pricing prac- tices, overbuilding, and market domina- tion. She testified before state and local government bodies, and in general helped keep the pressure on hospitals to live up to their charitable mission. And she served as a labor representative on the Finance Committee of the Oregon Health Fund Board. “We don’t think of [Crider’s depar- ture] as a loss to us,” said Local 49 Po- litical Director Felisa Hagins. “We think of it as a gift to the State of Oregon.” PAGE 7
