While protesters have been occupying House Speaker Pelosi’s office, demanding a health care system that serves “Patients not Profit”, the House of Representatives is preparing to vote on the market-based health care bill introduced last week by Speaker Pelosi. It is not expected that the House leadership will allow a lengthy floor discussion, but the most recent news reports suggest that the promised vote on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) single payer amendment may be allowed. Meanwhile, Speaker Pelosi has presented the leadership’s additions to the bill in a so-called Manager’s Amendment, stating that this would strengthen provisions for “excluding insurers who put profits over patients from an affordable marketplace that will serve tens of millions of Americans.”

Does that mean the protesters demands have been met? Is this health care bill bringing us closer to realizing our human right to health care? Let’s recall that according to international legal standards, the human right to health requires that “health facilities, goods and services must be affordable for all. Payment for health-care services…has to be based on the principle of equity.”

The House bill aims to achieve affordability by subsidizing the purchase of an insurance policy for those earning between 150% and 400% of the federal poverty level, provided they don’t have employer-based insurance. In practice, this means someone with an income at the upper end of this scale would pay $5300 a year in premiums and up to $2000 a year in cost-sharing, amounting to around 17% of their income. At the bottom end of the scale, health care costs would be around 6-7% of a person’s income – which is still higher than a general income tax increase proposed by single payer health insurance bills.  Many immigrants would get no support at all, and anyone unable to afford such an insurance plan would be subject to a penalty payment, since everyone will be mandated to purchase insurance.   (more…)

A dramatic disconnect between principles and policies has hampered current U.S. health care reform efforts. This became obvious when candidate Obama declared health care to be a right and then proceeded to treat it as a commodity when negotiating with insurance companies a requirement for individuals to buy a commercial health insurance product.

Similarly, early on in the debate the president championed the principle of universality by promising some form of health coverage – if not necessarily health care – for 46 million uninsured people, only to lower the policy goal to 30 million American citizens in his speech before Congress, excluding many immigrants and low-income people. Since then, further policy provisions that restrict access to health coverage for immigrants – documented and undocumented – and reduce affordability for lower-income people have appeared in the health care bill adopted by the Senate Finance Committee. (more…)