[NYTr] "Big 3" Dems' Health Insurance Unfriendly to Women

Thu Sep 27 03:26:02 EDT 2007

[Only Kucinich's plan offers what women really need, says Feiner --None
of the "Big 3" (the millionaires Hillary or Edwards, or the Opportunist
in Chief, Barack Obama) avoid "out of pocket" costs -- because
naturally they are in the pockets of others (corporate medicine, big
pharma, the insurance industry. Feiner does not talk about any other
candidate, like Dodd or Ron Paul, Alas. It's all mainstream Dem Pawty,
as usual. And she calls Michael Moore's "Sicko" a "diatribe." Too bad
she didn't include Cuba in some of her research. She might have changed
her mind. She actually calls Edwards a "progressive!" Anyway, she's
pretty middle-of-the-road herself, and even she can't stomach Hillary.
-NYTr]

Womens eNews - Sep 26, 2007
http://www.womensenews.org

COMMENTARY 

Big 3 Dems' Health Insurance Unfriendly to Women

By Susan Feiner
WeNews commentator

(WOMENSENEWS)--So who's got the most women-friendly health care plan?

Is it Hillary, Obama or Edwards?

Answer: none of the above.

Only Dennis Kucinich offers what women really need: single-payer,
universal health care.

To the others I have one question: Why are you ignoring over 50 years
of experience in our peer nations, which show that the public provision
of health care delivers far better results at far lower costs?

The national disparities in women's deaths between the United States
and countries such as Canada, France and Germany are horrendous.

In the United States there are 77 female deaths from heart disease per
100,000 women, according to current World Health Organization data. In
Germany that first key number is 68; in Canada 54; in France 21. For
pulmonary disease the U.S. performance is even worse. The rate per
100,000 in the United States is 33; in Canada 13. In France and Germany
it's 7.

But universal health insurance does more than fight the diseases that
afflict women. By extending better coverage and care to everyone it
goes to the heart of women's major inequity: our lower work-force
participation due to the time we spend taking care of the preschoolers,
sick kids, elderly parents and disabled spouses.

Women's wages are often reported to be about 80 percent of men's. But
that figure seriously understates the actual loss of earnings due to
gender and caretaking. The 2004 report "Still a Man's Labor Market" by
the Women's Institute for Policy Research puts the gap closer to 60
percent.

But the proposals by the Big 3 will not stop women from being the ones
to leave work--or not even attempt it at all--when the health care
system breaks down.

Nice Features

All three plans have some nice features. All call for a ban on the
insurer practice of "adverse risk selection," which means enrolling
healthy people and rejecting those more likely to require doctors,
hospitals and medicine. All allow Medicare to negotiate for lower
prescription drug prices.

But each plan shortchanges women in some similar ways.

For starters, each relies on tax credits to help people buy health
insurance--the purchase of which will be mandatory--from existing
private, mostly for-profit, insurers.

Do tax credits really help women, given that women earn considerably
less than men? No. The value of tax credits decline as income falls so
the more generous the tax credit the greater the benefit to the highest
earners: men.

The trio of plans by Hillary, Obama and Edwards are also equally hard
on women by requiring some level of out-of-pocket payments.

Even when women have insurance coverage their economic insecurity means
they are more likely than men to economize on their medications and
minimize follow-up treatment. All of this was first reported by the
Kaiser Family Foundation and confirmed earlier this year by a study
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Caretakers Need a Real Break

The three private insurer-based plans are also identically stingy
toward caretakers.

Some plans--Hillary's and Edwards'--would cover respite care to help
caregivers. Edwards offers up flextime, longer leave periods and paid
leaves to help "parents" balance work and family.

Although well intentioned these policies reinforce the social
expectation that women will be able to meet the daily needs of those
who cannot help themselves.

If, for example, federal legislation required employers to grant
flextime to help care for the elderly, our social expectations of women
would mean that any one of them who didn't use this option--who didn't
toss aside her paying job to assume this role--would be subject to
criticism.

And the news media wouldn't shy from broadcasting every report--however
marginal or questionable its methodology--that showed how much better
it is for the elderly to be in the care of a daughter than a
professional attendant.

The U.S. health care crisis--which left 47 million uninsured in
2006--is driven by escalating costs, high co-payments, skyrocketing
drug prices, minimal preventive care and over-hospitalization
(combined, ironically, with such short stays that the families of
discharged patients must learn advanced nursing skills overnight).

None of the Big 3 addresses the fundamental cause of this crisis, which
is not consumer behavior, employer stinginess or insufficient
competition.

Instead, the high costs are traceable to the for-profit organization of
the medical-industrial complex.

One need not have an MBA--or even to have viewed Michael Moore's
diatribe against the U.S. system in "Sicko"--to know that insurance
company profits rise with every claim that is denied, or delayed,
delayed again and then processed incorrectly.

Eventually some customers give up thinking, "It's only $25," "It's only
$50" and "It's only $1,000."

Table 1:
------------------------------------------------------------------
MAJOR HEALTH CARE INDICES COMPARED IN 6 OECD NATIONS

Some interesting statistics, but nothing our readers don't already
know. The USA looks mighty poor, as can be expected. The table is
unreadable as supplied in plain text and not worth the 
painstaking reformatting it would take, but it's in an html table
at the website: http://tinyurl.com/2fkbe3

The chart compares OECD nations Canada, France, Germany, the UK and
Denmark and the US. The US and the Brits seem to come out worst in
the indices she has chosen. Naturally, a really eye-opening comparison
(like Cuba) isn't included. "Sicko" is a "diatribe," after all. 
And there's no link to her OECD Health Data source.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: OECD Health Data 2007 - Version July 07. - 
All data for 2005 except as noted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Keeping Industry CEOs Happy

Multiply all those amounts by the millions currently covered by
for-profit plans--and adding on the millions more who will be required
to buy them if the Big 3 have their way--helps explain why CEOs in the
medical-industrial complex should be pleased by the so-called reforms
offered by our so-called leading progressive candidates. In August,
Reuters reported that profits in the health care industry are expected
to be the strongest in the economy.

As long ago as 1991, the General Accounting Office pointed out that if
the United States adopted the Canadian model we could expect to save
enough--by eliminating the costs of insurance, duplication and the
insane nightmare of provider forms--to cover everyone who is uninsured.

A 2006 study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and conducted
by the Cambridge Medical Care Foundation found that administrative
costs per capita were $1,059 in the United States versus $307 in Canada.

All the candidates--even progressive John Edwards--are also in denial
about household purchasing power. The U.S. savings rate is negative
because households spend more than they earn. What are people supposed
to stop buying so they can pay for health insurance? Setting premiums
as a percent of income is no help when many paychecks are fully
committed.

The idea that people have a right to health care is hardly new, even in
the United States.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the point in 1944.

For women--who tend to need more health care and to use it longer, who
live longer and are poorer--it's an important right that goes to the
heart of our ability to close the gender wage gap.

The personal is still political. Tell the candidate of your choice that
your vote depends on their support for universal, single-payer health
care.

[Susan Feiner is professor of women's studies and economics at the
University of Southern Maine in Portland.]

For more information:

"Support for Caretakers Missing From Mother's Day": -
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3162/

Women's Institute for Policy Research, - "Still a Man's Labor Market:
the Long-Term Earnings Gap" - [Adobe PDF format]: -
http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/C355.pdf

Kaiser Family Foundation, Women's Health Policy: -
http://www.kff.org/womenshealth/index.cfm