Roger Hickey

NEW REPORT: PUBLIC INSURANCE OPTION NEEDED TO PROVIDE AFFORDABLE, QUALITY HEALTH COVERAGE

Toby Chaudhuri — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:11:13 -0800

A new public health insurance plan that competes directly with private insurers is essential to controlling health care costs and improving the quality of care, according to a new report released today by the Institute for America’s Future and the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center on Health, Economic & Family Security. The report, by health care expert and UC Berkeley professor Jacob Hacker, says a public health insurance plan like Medicare offered together with private health plans could result in $1 trillion in national savings over ten years by driving down costs, improving efficiencies and fostering innovation.

President-elect Obama, his health care point person Tom Daschle, Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus and House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee chairman Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., have all embraced the idea of adding a public plan to help fix the ailing health care system, but the insurance industry opposes a public option. New data in today’s report provides fresh ammunition to this debate by showing how a public plan can maintain lower costs over time while providing broad, guaranteed and quality coverage.

Dr. Hacker released the report on a conference call with reporters today noting that the clearest evidence of the savings produced by a public plan is its premiums.

“Premiums with a public plan cost about three-quarters the amount private insurers charge for the same set of benefits,” said Hacker. “It’s an essential element to any national health care reform proposal.”

Hacker said that private plans operating without public insurance competition have been unable to contain spiraling health care costs and unwilling to cover at-risk patients. However, a public-private hybrid can provide an important check on both public and private sectors, ensuring flexibility, accountability and inclusiveness.

Rep. Stark agreed with Hacker on today’s call, declaring that it’s time we had an alternative plan that’s driven by cost-controls and quality care, not private profit.

“A public plan is an important component of any health care reform,” said Rep. Stark. “A public plan like Medicare would be more efficient and would provide greater choice. Without a public plan, insurance companies will have little incentive to control costs, reaping profits at the expense of beneficiaries.”

Institute for America’s Future co-director Roger Hickey joined Rep. Stark and Hacker on the call, noting that the national health care debate will center on the public insurance option.

“Public insurance as part of a comprehensive solution was fully debated in the 2008 elections,” said Hickey. “People across the country believe public insurance is a common-sense choice that will help control health inflation and assure quality.”

Hacker’s report, “The Case for Public Plan Choice,” clearly shows that public insurance has a better track record than private insurance at reining in costs while preserving access to quality services. A public plan is essential to set a standard against which private plans must compete. The report outlines how public insurance has pioneered new payment and quality-improvement methods that have often set the standard for private plans and how it has the potential to carry out these vital tasks even more effectively in the future, using information technology, large databases of practices and outcomes, and new payment approaches and care-coordination strategies.

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**A summary and copy of the full report, “The Case for Public Plan Choice,” is available at http://institute.ourfuture.org/hacker, or http://www.law.berkeley.edu/chefs.htm. A recording of the call is available at http://assets.ourfuture.org/audio/20081217-Hacker-Plan-Press-Conf.mp3.**

McCAIN WOULD DRIVE UP HEALTH CARE COSTS FOR FAMILIES, WHILE BENEFITING HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES

Toby Chaudhuri — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain’s health care plan would dismantle the employer-provided system that covers more than 60 percent of non-elderly Americans and drive up health care costs, according to experts responding to the announcement of his proposal today. An average family could see their health care costs as much as double under the McCain health care plan, according to an analysis by the Campaign for America’s Future.

Campaign for America’s Future co-director Roger Hickey, one of the leaders of a new coalition of groups working to fix the broken health care system, said that Sen. McCain’s plan would tax the health care premiums employers pay for their workers, encouraging most companies to stop providing any coverage. Hickey noted that instead of lowering costs, this would force millions of Americans to buy more expensive coverage with inadequate tax credits, greatly increasing the number of families who can’t afford quality care.

“John McCain’s plan must’ve been written by the insurance companies. It leaves them in more control of America’s health care system than ever before,” said Hickey. “John McCain wants us all to buy insurance not as part of a group – like an employee group or a co-op – that can negotiate for better coverage at lower premiums, but as individuals, at the mercy of the private insurance companies. It would leave millions of people with worse coverage, more chronic health problems and higher levels of health cost-driven bankruptcies.”

Most people, even those with good insurance, don’t get the health care they need, contributing to rising health costs. Sen. McCain, however, believes that the problem with health care is that Americans have too much insurance and that if consumers pay for it out of their own pockets, they will in turn force hospitals and insurance companies to become more efficient.

Dr. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale University and the author of the “Health Care for America” plan, which Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards used as the basis for their health care proposals, disagrees with McCain’s fundamental premise. Hacker said the real problem is rising health care costs and declining coverage.

“McCain’s proposal doesn’t address either of these problems in a serious way,” said Hacker. “The real problem for most Americans isn’t just less coverage. It’s that they risk losing coverage or they can’t get coverage when they’re unhealthy, particularly in the individual market. McCain’s proposal does nothing to provide that kind of broader health security.”

AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman joined Hickey and Hacker on a conference call with reporters today and announced details of a new campaign to explain the devastating effects of Sen. McCain’s health care plan to millions of voters nationwide. The AFL-CIO campaign will include a massive national canvass to 200,000 union households on Saturday, May 17.

“While those with pre-existing conditions simply will have an even harder time finding health care than they do now, insurance companies -- and John McCain’s friends who lobby for them -- stand to make a killing,” said Ackerman. “Working families need a fresh vision and new direction to turn around our country. So far, Sen. McCain has provided neither. We’re working hard to make sure Sen. McCain hears the voices of working families.”

In early March, the AFL-CIO launched a major effort to educate voters about Sen. McCain’s economic record and plans, pressuring him at every campaign event he holds, including this week’s health care events in Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio and Colorado. In the coming weeks, the AFL-CIO will focus on 13 million union voters in 23 battleground states, educating them on exactly who stands to benefit from Sen. McCain’s health care proposals, communicating with voters at the worksite, the doorstep, on the phone, through the mail and online.

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HEALTH CARE COSTS BACKGROUND

$11,765	Average premium cost of the most popular employer-based plan last year [Kaiser Family Foundation]
$5,000	Tax credit for a family under the McCain plan [johnmccain.com]
$6,765	Average additional yearly cost per family under the McCain plan [Campaign for America’s Future]
$3,226	Average amount per worker employers paid for premiums last year [Kaiser Family Foundation]

Hickey: McCain’s plan may actually drive up the cost of health care

Toby Chaudhuri — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:00:00 -0700

Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, says that in reality, Sen. John McCain’s plan for health care will “dismantle the employer provided system,” which will force “millions of us who now get decent health insurance on the job to instead buy whatever they can find on the individual market.” He says McCain’s plan will actually drive the cost of health care up. (0:41)

Lewin Findings on Hacker-EPI Health Plan: Good News for Obama and Clinton

Roger Hickey — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:33:01 -0800

Last week, the Economic Policy Institute released an important analysis of Jacob Hacker’s Health Care for America (HCFA) plan by the respected health economics team at the Lewin Group. As you can read in the EPI press release, Lewin found that HCFA would cover everyone in America, while saving the U.S. economy over a trillion dollars over the next decade. And the efficiencies achievable primarily through Hacker's public health insurance plan would save enough money that, after modest premiums from employers and individuals, the new system would cost the US government only $50 billion more than what we are paying now for a system that leaves millions uninsured or badly insured.

A year ago, just as EPI was publishing Hacker’s HCFA plan, CAF had already gone to work, engaging everyone who would listen in public and private educational discussions about the Hacker-EPI approach -- including Presidential candidates from both parties. After a year-long dialogue, we can see how Hacker’s work has become the template for both Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s health care plans. And just as importantly, our allies in the labor movement, public interest and community action networks are coming together around basic health care principles that are based on Hacker’s model for health care for all. More on this soon – here at this website and at the Take Back America conference.
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