By Lisa Girion and Noam Levey
A wide array of forum participants, including hospital and insurance company executives and the mother of a teenager who died from a preventable hospital-acquired infection, gave voice to the growing desire for change. But the presentation was light on details.
Universal coverage -- health insurance for all Americans -- was widely touted, but there was no discussion of how to achieve that goal.
The forum, the fifth in a series the White House organized around the country over the last month, comes as senior Democrats on Capitol Hill move ahead on drafting legislation to be introduced later this spring to overhaul the nation's healthcare system.
The president and his congressional allies have pledged that the bill will expand coverage to some 46 million uninsured people, rein in costs and improve the quality of care.
The White House billed the five forums as a way to get public input. But the invitation-only event in Los Angeles was clearly programmed to showcase the broad goals Obama has said he wants included in the legislation, including an emphasis on prevention, as well as secure and affordable coverage for everyone, regardless of age or preexisting conditions. Outside the forum, the California Nurses Assn., Physicians for a National Health Program and other groups drew hundreds to a rally in support of the so-called single-payer option, which would put government in charge of organizing and purchasing healthcare and leave the private insurance market in tatters.
Deborah Burger, co-president of the California-based nurses union, a Schwarzenegger foe, said she feared that the single-payer approach would not be considered in Washington because of heavy lobbying by the insurance industry. She said the forum, where no single-payer proponent spoke, was just more "window dressing."
With the forums concluded, the action now shifts to Washington, where members of Congress also are working toward universal coverage through legislation that would modify the current private insurance market rather than replace it.
by paradocs2:
The [sic] is a disappointing report from the last White House Forum on Health Reform held in Los Angeles on April 6. My general impression is that the attendees are being used as window dressing to preserve the power of the insurance companies.
I am a family doctor who has practiced in San Diego for almost thirty years. Five per cent of my patients are uninsured, 10 per cent are on welfare (MediCal) and many are under-insured or loosing their insurance. Today April 6, 2009, by personal invitation of the Governor of California, I attended the last of the five regional White House fora on health care reform. I was in San Diego along with about 100 other folks, participating in a live satellite feed from the main meeting in Los Angeles. Governor Schwarzegger with the ease of Hollywood hogged the microphone extolling his long lived interest in health reform and healthy lifestyles without mentioning his twice vetoing our state’s single payer legislation (SB 840.)
His attitude was seconded by SEIU representatives and the AARP invitee (who neglected to reveal she worked for an insurance broker not a patient advocacy organization.)The whole tenor of the meetings revolved, in truth, around using the memes of technology and prevention to avoid any substantive discussion about social justice, the uninsured, the poor performance of our medical system, the role of private insurance companies, or the current constrained discussions in Congress.
Rarely was any distinction made between guaranteed and subsidized access to private health insurance and guaranteed access to universal medical care. No mention was made of the excessive inefficiencies, costs, and profits of the insurance companies. Early on in the program the health reform activist Anthony Wright representing HEALTH ACCESS was personally called out of the audience to give his reflections. Remarkably he was uncritical of the process and content of the meeting. He made no mention of the single payer option but did sneak in the sole mention of support for a public plan along side the commercial ones.
The single exception to all this obfuscation was the great Marion Wright Edleman who gave many embarrassing international comparisons in health care outcomes for women and children, comparing the USA to third world statistics, in her impassioned plea for real change. Nonetheless, it was apparent to me that everything is not on the table and the Obama Administration and Congress, along with state and local officials are using these fora to obscure the true causes of the failures of our contemporary medicinal care system and protect the politically potent lobbies.
April 6 in LA - Tell the White House, Congress, and the Insurers We Need Real Reform
LA Single Payer Supporters - meet up at 9:00 a.m. on Monday outside the California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda St., Los Angeles
With the final White House Forum on healthcare scheduled Monday, April 6 in downtown Los Angeles, advocates of single payer/guaranteed healthcare have one more opportunity to shake up what has become a dreary conventional wisdom about the presumed acceptable parameters of the debate.
Reuters: DES MOINES, Iowa - The latest White House regional forum on healthcare drew protests and complaints on Monday along with a promise that government-run insurance was at least on the table for discussion.
"Why are we having this shameful event?" said Mona Shaw, a political activist, at the start of the session. "People are dying," she said, because of what she termed a callous insurance industry.
Iowa Governor Chet Culver who chaired the event cued up a video message from President Barack Obama as security personnel escorted Shaw from the room.
It was the third of five regional meetings which Obama hopes would help Congress figure out how to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system, which is the most expensive in the world even though some 46 million Americans have no health insurance.
Obama plans to make sweeping changes to the system this year to try to cut the number of uninsured while improving the quality of care and controlling costs that are forecast to reach $2.5 trillion dollars this year.
About 20 protesters at the meeting waved signs and chanted "Everybody in, nobody out" -- a demand for universal coverage.
Dr. Jess Fiedorowicz, a psychiatrist at the University of Iowa Hospitals who was with the protest group, told the meeting a majority of Americans support a "single payer" or government-run national health insurance program.
"Can we put it on the table for discussion?" Fiedorowicz asked Nancy-Ann De Parle, director of the White House Office on Health Reform.
"Can we study costing? Can we study feasibility of this truly universal, socially just and fiscally responsible alternate to our currently unjust and woefully inefficient system?" Fiedorowicz asked. Many in the crowd applauded.
Vashti Winterburg, 61, co-chair of Kansas Health Care for All, said she opposes any plan that keeps health insurance companies in business.
She said the Kansas nonprofit board she serves on is finding it more and more difficult to pay the premiums of workers who provide in-home care to the elderly.
Chris Peterson, 53, who farms near Clear Lake, Iowa, said he cannot buy private health insurance for his wife or himself two years after his insurance carrier dropped them. They now have $14,000 in medical debt.
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