NASRO Finds No Representatives Among the Health Care Industry Groups at the Table of Federal Health Care Reform

JUNE 11, 2009

NASRO Finds No Representatives Among the Health Care Industry Groups at the Table of Federal Health Care Reform

We are prepared to be deeply disappointed by the results of federal health care reform in 2009. When we look at all the groups at the table we see the latest version of the pigs eating at the trough of our income. Their end product is extremely poor for the money, really no different than corrupt major banks or incompetent auto companies.

Despite these favorable conditions for grassroots organizing, many of the liberal and groups from the left in the U.S. are absent from the struggle for single payer health care at this critical time. Worrying about the next campaign or some internal political question is escaping into romantic notions divorced from the economic reality that working Americans face.

NASRO in the weeks ahead will be redoubling its efforts to promote our health care reform education and action agenda. We see who is working at coalition building on the ground and who are busy building cottage industries of talk shops. To that end, we will be joining with Jobs with Justice, the organization that represents what is left of the workers movement in the U.S. to see that an alternative to the mainstream health insurance and health care big business is heard.

The Obama administration is working from a position of expediency to negotiate a deal that will please the interest groups that all pretend to want to control costs. Here is where these interest groups belong.

Health Insurance Companies deserve to be forced out of business for failing to control premium costs.

For Profit Health Care Corporations need to be transformed back into being and really functioning as non-profit organizations.

Doctors need to become professional employees of the federal government. For all its problems the federal government is less threatening than private industry or state government.

Prescription Drug Companies need to be subject to strict regulation and patent law reform, with their advertising to consumers made illegal.

Medical Supply Companies need to have their sales and marketing tightly controlled, with the participation of medical providers limited.

Whatever it takes to implement these changes is worth it. If they were made, we would wake up in the same country, but a much better one when it comes to affordable health care outcomes for all Americans.

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