Hightower Lowdown

Now is the time for boldness! Instead, we're getting Baucusness. Sen. Max Baucus, that is--Montana Democrat, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and frequent spear-carrier for the corporate agenda. He has now been tapped to handle Obama's promised rewrite of America's warped, ineffective, and exorbitantly expensive health-care system.

This should be a dream job for the Democratic leadership. Consumers despise today's corporatized medical structure. So do doctors, nurses, and other health-care workers. So do businesses that provide health-care coverage for their employees. The insurance-company-dominated system is so unpopular that swine flu enjoys a higher public-approval rating! A Pew Research Center poll taken in March 2009 shows that the American people don't merely want the current system fixed, they want it overhauled--76% say it must either be "fundamentally changed" or "completely rebuilt."

What an opportune moment this is for Obama to do something BIG for America--a rare, Rooseveltian moment in which the president and Congress have the chance (and duty) to rise above business as usual, to respond for once to the people's interest, to create a universal public service that would actually move our society a couple of strides closer to America's egalitarian ideals of fairness, justice, and opportunity for all.

Luckily, the "something big" is readily at hand. It's called a "single-payer" health-care system--a structural reform that has been successfully implemented in several countries, as well as in our own Medicare and veterans health programs. By expanding this system nationally, every person in our land would be assured good-quality care. No longer would profiteering insurance corporations control entry, dictating which doctors we can use (and what treatments they can provide), gouging us with ever-rising premiums and co-pays, and ripping off a third of our nation's health-care dollars for things that have nothing to do with either health or care--including ridiculous CEO pay packages, excess profits, massive billing bureaucracies, useless advertising hustles, posh headquarters, lobbying expenses, etc.

With the single-payer plan, we'd regain the right to go to the doctors and hospitals of our choosing, and doctors would regain authority over patient care. As the plan's name suggests, the difference is not in who delivers the care, but in how our health-care professionals get paid. Rather than the wasteful, autocratic middleman structure that now separates us patients from our providers (generating paperwork costs of some $350 billion a year), a no-frills, government-administered public fund would pay everyone's health-care bills directly--eliminating the interferences and overcharges of arrogant and avaricious insurance behemoths. Full coverage for all, less cost. Makes sense. [ read more ]

Harry Truman said, "No man should be allowed to be president who doesn't understand hogs." That's never been more true than it will be for the man or woman who walks into the White House on January 20, 2009.

If you've ever entered an enclosed, industrialized hog facility where hundreds of fattening porcines live out their short lives, you know that the smell of pig excrement completely redefines "stink." This stench will knock you to your knees, sear your lungs and brain, and make you scream for mercy. For nearly eight years, the White House has been a confined hog pen for corporate porkers, right-wing ideologues, imperialists, autocrats, and other swinish mess-makers. America's next president must not only set a new direction but will also have to clean up the mess and eradicate the stink left by the Bushites.

To help presidential contenders, congressional candidates and the rest of us get perspective on the odiferous legacy of the Bush-Cheney regime, the Lowdown is presenting a two-part factual accounting of the administration's achievements since 2001. This issue will feature Bush's domestic performance, and the May issue will highlight his international agenda. Hold your nose--and get out your scrubbers. [ read more ]

How messed up is America's health-care system? Consider the case of the Leavitts. Anne and her husband Dixie, both in their 70s, got frazzled trying to work their way through the maddening maze of George W's new prescription-drug program, which compels seniors to choose among 1,400 competing drug-insurance schemes offered by 80 corporations. Each plan in this baffling "marketplace" offers different coverage, is frustratingly complex, and is filled with fine print. The Leavitts had to call on their son to help them select a company to cover their meds.

But -- oops! -- even with hands-on help, Anne and Dixie made a bad choice that almost cost them their entire medical coverage. They rushed to drop that plan and were lucky to find another at the last minute to avert a family disaster. What makes the Leavitt's story unique among the millions of seniors who've been similarly discombobulated by Bush's convoluted prescription plan (including 15 million who've been left with no drug coverage) is that their helpful son is none other than Mike Leavitt. Yes, the head honcho of Bush's Health and Human Services Department! One more twist: Dixie Leavitt made his fortune in the insurance business.

If someone who's an insurance professional and is personally advised by the government's top health official still gets flummoxed -- that's a clue that the Powers That Be have saddled us with a truly lousy program.

The health-industrial complex

There's no legitimate excuse for this mess. A program to provide medicines for every single senior could and should be simpler and far less expensive than Bush's $1/2 trillion scam. Medicare, with its extremely low overhead and an efficient payment system already in place, is the logical conduit for such a program. It could negotiate with drug makers on behalf of every senior to get low prices on all medicines, then pay pharmacists directly for the total cost of prescriptions they fill.

Instead, Bush and Congress put the new drug benefit in the hands of the corporate bureaucracies that separate us patients from our medical professionals. All seniors are on their own to purchase one of the confusing myriad of drug cards from HMOs and insurance companies. These middlemen then bill Medicare for whatever medications the seniors get and put no lid on the prices of the drugs.

Thus, rather than being a straightforward benefit for people in need, Bush's program has become a boondoggle benefit for America's bureaucratic, wasteful, fraud-ridden health-industrial complex. Such giants as UnitedHealth, Humana, and WellPoint (which have already scarfed up more than half of the new drug program's market) are given both a new source of monthly premiums and a generous federal subsidy to provide prescription coverage.

Not to be left out of the financial fun, the drug barons have obtained a green light to bloat their profits (already the highest of any industry) with overpriced pills that ultimately are paid for by Medicare dollars taken out of all of our paychecks. WARNING: The following fact could make your eyeballs explode: Bush demanded and got a provision in his new program that specifically prohibits Medicare officials from negotiating with drug corporations to lower the prices they charge. If only this were a bad horror movie! Alas, it's the core reality of America's sick health-care system. Wait, you say. We've got the top technology and medical know-how in the whole freakin' world. America is Number One! We have the healthiest people and we get the best quality health care there is, bar none. USA! USA! USA!

Well, that's the rah-rah myth we're fed by the industry, the media, and most politicians, but it's not true. Still, if you insist that the USA simply must be Number One, it is true that ours is by far the most expensive health-care system on the globe. Go USA! In 2004, spending averaged $6,280 for each man, woman, and child in America -- more than double the average ($2,307 per capita) spent in all other industrial countries.

Over 16% of our economy ($1.9 trillion last year) goes into our corporatized system -- 50% more than Switzerland's universal system, which ranks second in spending per person. Not only does the U.S. drastically outspend everyone else, but it does so while leaving tens of millions of Americans outside the system. In contrast, Canada puts only 10% of its economy into healthcare, Australia 9%, and England 7%, and these countries manage to provide care for every one of their people. [ read more ]