How New Health Care Reforms Make Single Payer Less Likely

There are those who view the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care reform legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama, as the first step toward a complete government takeover of America’s health care system. While I don’t agree with their arguments, they do have a case to make. That is:

• because the reforms fail to restrain the out-of-control growth of medical costs, insurance premiums will continue to rise
• because the reforms place constraints on health insurance companies, the private sector will be squeezed between increases in the underlying cost of care and their ability to charge adequate premiums to cover those costs
• meanwhile the government-run health insurance exchanges, to be operational by 2014, which is also when Medicaid is set to dramatically expand, increases the percentage of health care coverage provided or made accessible by governments

Throw in a few other provisions (elements of the reform some say will undermine Medicare Advantage, the new taxes imposed on health insurance carriers and others), season to taste with paranoia and the belief that the recently passed health care reforms is merely the first steps down a path leading to a single payer system gains significant heft.

Given this scenario, one might expect folks on the left to be gleeful with the reforms. Many liberals publicly and fervently support a government-run health plan that would completely remove private health insurance companies from the marketplace. If they believed what emerged from Washington moved that goal closer, you’d expect them to celebrate, at least a little.

If so, the folks at Consumer Watchdog failed to get the memo. This group, led by Jerry Flanagan, considers health insurance companies to be the manifestation of evil in our plane of reality. OK, I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the idea. They are unabashed advocates of a single payer system for California and the nation.

On April 8th, wrote a letter to President Obama, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and members of Congress identifying what it calls loopholes in the newly enacted health care reform bill. (Consumer Watchdog Letter on Health Care Reform Loopholes). Among the group’s concerns is that the minimum benefit requirements to be proposed by HHS will preempt stronger minimum benefit standards at the state level, that its approach to Medicare Advantage could “push traditional Medicare into an economic death spiral,” that the law fails to attack recent price hikes by pharmaceutical companies, and that carriers will continue to be permitted to rescind coverage for intentional misrepresentation, without creating new regulatory oversight to ensure that exception is not abused by health plans.

Most interesting, however, is Consumer Watchdog’s fear that the new health care reform bill will prevent states from adopting a single payer system at least until 2017. Under the heading “States Rights to Innovate,” the letter states, “Under the current law, states must wait until 2017 for waivers from the federal government to use federal Medicaid, Medicare, tax subsidies
and other funds to support state alternatives to the private insurance market, whether that
be by adopting a state single-payer model or a state ‘public option.’”

Since states can’t divert funds from existing public programs to new government programs, the new health care reform law blocks initiatives to create single payer systems at the state level. In fact, the new reforms block states from creating a health plan to compete with private carriers (unless it can do so without federal funds, tax subsidies and the like).

I suppose what this proves is there is a balance in the universe. The same legislation some fear will inevitably lead to a single payer system is the same legislation that prevents states from creating a single payer system.

Of course some will argue that this simply delays the coming of a single payer system to 2017. However, think about the recent reform package. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It was passed by the slimmest of margins and only after intense debate and adroit legislative maneuvering. It’s passage was possible only because Democrats occupy the White House and have substantial majorities in both chambers of Congress. Yet the legislation has no public option and is built around private health insurance. Nonetheless it is criticized as “socialism” by some and a “government takeover” by others.

Does anyone realistically believe the country is going to move further to the left in future elections? That’s one of the reasons the Administration pushed so hard to pass health care reform in 2009. The party occupying the White House nearly always loses seats in mid-term elections. They knew the Democratic majorities resulting from the 2006 and 2008 elections were the high watermark for Democrats in Congress. Long before the tea party started brewing the Administration understood the 2010 elections would reduce their working majorities in Congress. Why would anyone think future Congresses would be even more liberal than this one?

That’s why Consumer Watchdog is concerned about the new health care reform package. It prevents them from moving forward with a state public option or single payer system until 2017. And by then, given the pendulum that is American politics, the odds of a government takeover of health care is likely to be slimmer than it is today.