On Monday we saw Governor Rendell stand with leaders in the Salvation Army and Democratic Legislators. While I'm always excited to find myself on the same side as the Democratic Appropriations Chairman, Sen. Vince Fumo, the real news Monday was that doctors are coming out in numbers saying that they support the Prescription for Pennsylvania. The Orthopedic Society came out and said that they could support using some of the tobacco tax money used to offset their medical malpractice liabilities for covering the uninsured. The Pennsylvania Osteopathic Medical Association took the same stance.
This is a great development, as the Pennsylvania Medical Society, a large, conservative lobby for doctors, has effectively opposed it. The Governor found a large pool of taxpayer money to help lower the cost of being a doctor in the state. We collected far too much, so he wants to use some of the excess to lower the cost of being a patient. The Medical Society wants to find a way for their members to take advantage of the leftover money, too, saying that funds for the Uninsured should come from the General Fund, which clearly cannot support it.
It's cufflinks against cough syrup, when you put it that way. The Governor has managed to stabilize the population of doctors in the state, so it must not cost too much to work here any more. If that's the case, it's probably better to put that money toward the people who need it more: sick folks without coverage.
Then, on Tuesday, PUP stood with the Governor and about 35 other Uninsured people from Erie, Pittsburgh, the Lehigh Valley and elsewhere, again calling for a chance to Cover the Uninsured. It was great to see 25 Democrats from the House and the Senate stand alongside these working people without coverage and support the Governor's call to find a way to cover them. As Sen. Hughes said, the money to cover them is there and "If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem."
In the end, even Speaker Dennis O'Brien stood alongside Rendell as he led the final chants for broader coverage.
Dave Fetter, the Democratic Caucus photographer, took this photo of supporters of expanded healthcare access from the Harrisburg area, alongside PUP board members, Ann Kirkpatrick and Andre Butler.
Cross posted at the PUP Blog.
good work!
Brady, it's great that some of the doctors are realizing that it's better for their patients to have healthcare coverage.
Insurers don't care
Always keep the following in mind when discussing health insurance reform: the profit motive drives out all else. Put bluntly, if insurers could make more money by letting everyone in the Commonwealth die than they could by ensuring some of them, then every single person in Pennsylvania would die. Sure, in a little while, the insurers would start to lose money b/c they wouldn't have any more customers. But, by then, the people who had decided to let everyone die would be out with their Golden Parachutes, enjoying the good life somewhere else.
Whenever profit is the driving motive, anything else which happens- good or bad- is a side effect. In other words, in our current profit-driven health insurance system, healthy people are a side effect of the pursuit of profit. That's what the Governor, and anyone else trying to make real changes to the US 'system,' (if it can even be called that) is fighting.
-Z