Obama's Healthcare Reform Summit: A Show to Stiffen Democratic Spines
President Obama started off his summit conference on healthcare reform by saying there were significant points of agreement between the Republicans and the Democrats. Actually, as the daylong discussion showed, these areas of agreement are superficial and insufficient to bridge the deep divide between the parties. The real point of the meeting, in fact, was to convince wavering conservative Democrats in the House to pass reform legislation.
But the summit did accomplish something else: In a very public way, it highlighted the philosophical differences between the parties on healthcare. Republicans, for instance, continued to insist that the Democratic reforms would constitute a government takeover of healthcare. In contrast, Obama said, "This is about the role of government in consumer protection." Just as the FDA is needed to protect people against harmful drugs and foods, and just as state medical boards are needed to license physicians, he said, the government should protect consumers against rapacious insurance companies.
The president made that remark in reference to the Republican proposal that insurers be allowed to sell policies across state lines. The reform legislation includes a variation on this idea, but there's a key difference: While the Republicans want to allow people to buy any kind of insurance they desire, the Democrats would require that coverage sold across state lines meet a minimum national standard. From the Republican viewpoint, this would defeat the purpose of the plan, which is to lower insurance costs by increasing consumer choice. The Democrats, on the other hand, believe that if people could buy insurance in any state without federal standards, insurance companies would set up shop in the states with the least consumer protections and mandated benefits. So there's really no meeting of minds.
The same applies to the issue of prohibiting insurance companies from excluding patients on the basis of pre-existing conditions. Democrat after Democrat told stories about how such policies have hurt consumers. But no Republican attacked the health plans for excluding people. This is a crucial divide, because it hinges on the question of whether and how much to expand coverage. Unless most people are covered, banning the pre-existing condition exclusion would cause insurance premiums to rise. But the Republicans don't want universal coverage; they want cost control. As Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip, said in his criticism of the individual mandate to buy insurance, "we can't afford universal coverage."
Instead, the Republicans want to beef up state high-risk insurance pools. Again, there is a superficial resemblance to a provision in the Democratic bills that would use these pools as a stopgap to help seriously ill people buy coverage until the health insurance exchanges kick in. But the Democrats reject this as a long-range solution to the problem of sick people being unable to purchase insurance. As Obama patiently explained, the reason why insurance in high-risk pools costs so much is that they contain only sick people. Covering healthy and sick people together in a state insurance exchange would cost the healthy more, but the sick would pay less.
Of course, this is exactly what the Republicans don't want. What their talk about consumer choice and the free market really means is that they don't believe that people who are better off should be forced to help the less fortunate. But as Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) noted, there are millions of Americans who have no choices, because they're sick and can't afford healthcare.
The consensus on the news programs tonight was that the summit meeting had not given either side an advantage in the healthcare reform debate. ABC-TV's George Stephanopolous said he thought both parties had gained: President Obama proved he was willing to be bipartisan, and the Republicans demonstrated they had real ideas. But the bipartisanship was for show, and the Republican ideas were the same half-baked, disingenuous talking points that they have used to block reform for many years.
Image supplied courtesy of Politics Off The Grid.