By Jack E. Lohman
The assembly Republicans are absolutely wrong to oppose the senate’s Healthy Wisconsin plan, but I suspect they know it and would rather confuse the public to give them cover to kill the bill. Their insurance industry contributors will love them for that!
And we wonder why Wisconsin is the third highest cost state in the nation for health care? Thank the moneyed interests and the politicians who open their pockets.
The health care proposal by the Senate Democrats is a very reasonable plan. It will replace the 15 percent employers currently pay for premiums with a 10.5 percent tax on wages. And a 4 percent employee tax on wages will offset much of what they now pay and still leave them with a net 15 percent savings. Of course the Wal-Marts of the world will have to start paying their share, and sending their employees to our taxpayer funded BadgerCare will no longer be an option.
The public and most business leaders are behind this plan; the state’s Republicans and insurance industry are not. But some of the business associations oppose it because they both have insurance industry members and they sell insurance policies to their members. So much for an unbiased debate on that side.
The senate health care plan will decrease corporate costs and will attract companies and jobs to Wisconsin. Not the reverse as the Republicans erroneously claim. It leaves some services for the insurance industry to provide, but not at the same level of profit they are accustomed to, so their opposition is understandable.
This plan will eliminate the issues of changing jobs with pre-existing diseases, and paying for COBRA between jobs, so it’s a win-win for the state’s economy.
The Canadian horror stories the Republicans spew are simply not true. Over 80 percent of Canadians prefer their system to ours, and their medical outcomes are better than ours. It is admittedly underfunded and they have wait times for non-urgent procedures, but the senate proposal is not underfunded as the Republicans will quickly charge. In a survey of 18,000 Canadians only twenty — TWENTY — purposely traveled to the U.S. for care that was non-urgent.
We enjoy the best physicians, hospitals and technology, but our method of providing health care is the most inefficient in the world because 31 percent of our costs are total waste created by the insurance bureaucracy. This is money that should instead be spent on patient care, and the Democratic plan fixes that.
But we have politicians who receive massive campaign contributions from the insurance companies who want to retain the status quo. And some even want to switch to a high deductible system whose tax write-offs will benefit the wealthy but poorly provide for the mainstream Wisconsinite. Like the early HMO system that failed, health savings accounts will go down in flames when patients who deter care until it is untreatable start costing more rather than less.
All of this brings up a major problem in Wisconsin politics. And it is bipartisan. When these issues are being debated, wouldn’t it be nice to know that the politicians on the opposing side are not taking cash from the industry being affected? Campaign finance reform must be the legislature’s next agenda item, but that too, is not a Republican priority.
Perhaps killing the health care bill is what we need to guaranty a Democratic win in the assembly too. And while I am an old-version Republican, sometimes your own kids’ hands must be slapped before they learn.
The Republicans have simply not gotten the message yet. Maybe they will in 2008.
Jack Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate and a founding member of www.BusinessCoalition.net. He authored "Politicians – Owned and Operated by Corporate America" and can be reached at jlohman@execpc.com.
