Progressive docs diss health bill as ‘false promise of reform’

Not all liberals are giddy about passage of healthcare legislation. Physicians for a National Health Program, a leading voice among liberals for healthcare reform, issued an official statement to media on Monday.

“We take no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer,” said PNHP.

The group pledged to continue working for “single-payer national health insurance, and expanded and improved Medicare for all.”

That end goal is in conflict with conservative approaches to healthcare. However, the PNHP points out a number of negatives in the Senate healthcare bill and they are correct about these key failures the public and most Congressmen who voted for the bill are likely unaware of because they did not read the bill they voted for and supported:

“*Millions of middle-income people will be pressured to buy commercial health insurance policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering an average of only 70 percent of their medical expenses, potentially leaving them vulnerable to financial ruin if they become seriously ill. Many will find such policies too expensive to afford or, if they do buy them, too expensive to use because of the high co-pay and deductibles.

* Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of their shoddy products. This money will enhance their financial and political power, and with it their ability to block future reform.

* The bill will drain about $40 billion from Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals, threatening the care of the tens of millions who will remain uninsured.

* People with employer-based coverage will be locked into their plan's limited network of providers, face ever-rising costs and erosion of their health benefits. Many, even most, will eventually face steep taxes on their benefits as the cost of insurance grows.

* Health care costs will continue to skyrocket, as the experience with the Massachusetts plan (after which this bill is patterned) amply demonstrates.

* The much-vaunted insurance regulations - e.g. ending denials on the basis of pre-existing conditions - are riddled with loopholes, thanks to the central role that insurers played in crafting the legislation. Older people can be charged up to three times more than their younger counterparts, and large companies with a predominantly female workforce can be charged higher gender-based rates at least until 2017.”

As stated, PNHP lobbies for an end goal most conservatives would oppose. But the problems in this legislation and the burden that will fall on Main Street Americans are a given. The statement is slightly truncated here; the full version of PNHP's negative remarks about Obamacare is posted on the PNHP website.

And though conservatives’ socio-economic philosophy is sharply different than PNHP’s political positions, it’s likely supporters of both would agree when PNHP  says Obamacare is “a false promise of reform.”