Gekkonians' rear-guard actions - an update

It's getting tougher and tougher to be a Gekkonian.  Gekkonians find themselves fighting a series of desperate rear-guard actions to keep health care on the back burner until after the fall elections.  Meanwhile the Clintonians continue to press their growing advantage.

Consider the following items:

• Congressional Democrats, citing the intransigence of the Republicans, are threatening to walk out of negotiations aimed at reaching a House-Senate compromise on a Patients' Bill of Rights.  Democrats claim to have offered concessions regarding the proposed expanded rights of patients to sue HMOs, but Republicans have not been able to come up with counterproposals. A Republican Congressman, Rep. Charlie Norwood of Georgia, has accused Senate Republicans of colluding with the insurance industry in order to delay action on the Bill of Rights.

• Republicans, through some deft wee-hours-of-the-morning maneuvering, have delayed indefinitely a vote on a bill giving doctors the power to unionize in order to engage in collective bargaining with health plans. The insurance industry breathed a sigh of relief.

• A recent study released by the National Coalition on Health Care documents that employer-sponsored insurance premiums will rise by 9% to 12% this year, at least four times the rate of inflation. This increase is expected to add an additional 750,000 people to the rolls of the uninsured.

DrRich comments:

Neither the Clintonians nor the Gekkonians have an answer to the growing fiscal crisis in health care. But since the health care system has been in the hands of the Gekkonians for the past 5 years, the Clintonians have the upper hand in using the crisis to their advantage in November. Their clear strategy is to show the public how callously the Gekkonians have been siding with the rich and powerful corporate interests, and ignoring the little people.

 The Gekkonians are left with trying to look like they are doing something, and hoping against hope that health care stays below the radar until after the election.

But things are clearly heating up for the Gekkonians. They are soon going to be called, loudly and publicly, on their clear-cut efforts to stall the Patients' Bill of Rights (which they simply cannot allow to pass as long as it places health plans in jeopardy of more lawsuits.)  When Congressional Democrats walk out on negotiations, it is likely they will replay the scene they arranged outside Congress (Al Gore in tow) on the day the House voted to impeach President Clinton.  This action will no doubt be timed to occur on an otherwise slow news day.

The Gekkonians' submarining of the vote to permit doctors to unionize is another broad tribute to the insurance industry. (DrRich is appalled at the notion of doctors' unions, by the way, since unions will utterly destroy what is left of the doctor-patient relationship.)  This maneuver merely confirms what has been apparent for a long time.  When Gekkonians are forced to choose among their major corporate constituents - the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, or organized medicine - the insurance industry wins every time.  Since the health insurance industry is wildly unpopular among the voters, each time the Gekkonians are forced to publicly choose sides, they lose.

Meanwhile, insurance premiums are rising drastically.  There are many reasons for this, but basically, as we have seen, the savings provided by managed care are one-time savings and we have already "enjoyed" those. Now that for-profit HMOs are no longer very profitable, pressure from investors can only drive premiums higher.  

Rising health insurance premiums, we ought to recall, was the issue that brought the health care crisis to a head the last time (i.e., the early 1990s). Gekkonians have got to be sweating this one out.  Will corporate America keep their mouths shut and pay the higher premiums until after the election?   Or will they drop coverage for their employees as many predict, creating a new groundswell of crisis mentality?  One can understand why Gekkonians are desperate to avoid any legislation, at least until the fall elections, that will cause insurance premiums to rise even faster.

With the economy still growing and unemployment at an all-time low, one suspects that employers will bite the bullet and pay the higher premiums - they may have to do so to effectively compete for workers.  But when the economy slows and the labor market loosens, it's easy to see what will happen. Companies will drop inflated health insurance coverage, and the ranks of the uninsured will skyrocket.  That's when it really hits the fan for the Gekkonians.

They're betting that won't be until after the election; hence their brazen stalling tactics.  

But it should be an interesting summer.

05/27/2000

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