Conference Notes

Second Annual Universal Health Care Conference

Saturday, July 15, 2017

9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Pipefitters Union Hall

6350 Broadway Denver CO 80216

10:00 WELCOME T.R.REID, CHAIR (MC for the day)

  • Last year’s meeting: “We’re going to make history in this meeting because we’re going to show Coloradans there’s a better way to provide healthcare”
  • We lost, but we learned important lessons (don’t raise taxes by $25 billion dollars & don’t take on the insurance companies; everyone figured out our current system isn’t working)
  • “We have to get this done and that’s why we’re here today.”
  • “Will we get Medicare for all by the time Medicare gets Medicare?” (in 13 years)
  • Larimer County volunteers were fabulous- bumper sticker, “let’s try 69”

10:03 CONFERENCE DEDICATION TO ELIZA CARNEY, ELAINE BRANJORD

  • “What would Eliza do?” She would tell you to “show up!”

10:05 UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE IS FREEDOM JIM DAVIDSON, PEAKCHANGE PRESIDENT

  • What I want to talk about today is freedom
  • There is an increasing enthusiasm for universal health care, even Trump said so (praising the Australian health care system)
  • “Something that’s going on is really very deep.” Reagan: “Government is not a solution. Government is the problem.”
  • The American Health Care Act is delivering a very narrow conservative image of economic freedom
  • Neo-liberalism is essentially the chemo we developed to kill the cancer of communism, but it’s created many side effects & now we’re subject to ‘opportunistic infections’ (Martin Shkreli)
  • [Conservatives] have started the idea that socialism is a slippery slope to communism. They’re dividing us
  • Book: “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt – we are highly attuned to care; we wake up in the morning & feel empathy for folks who are harmed by our system, but the republicans have other moral concerns: loyalty, authority, & sanctity
  • Book: “Don’t Think of an Elephant!” by George Lakoff – it’s not an entitlement, it’s an investment
  • “Healthcare is a Human Right” – “I love this message, but ‘human right’ in the conservative mind often speaks to the U.N., etc. I suggest you look at this very carefully; is it triggering the types of actions we don’t want to see?” (Is it the wrong message?)
  • We can learn from the same-sex marriage movement; focus on values & emotion, focus on where people are, reach across the aisle
  • So, how do we get started? 1. Talk to our friends & listen to them, understand what they mean by loyalty & authority 2. Craft messaging (examples: “Freedom from sickness & financial misery.” “True liberty to choose work, to start a business, to hire the best.” “Markets which respect our authority are loyal to country & duty to serve 3. Stay on point (coordinate with partners)
  • “Who the hell let the conservatives own the definition of freedom?”
  • “I can pretend to choose my health insurance company & pretend like nothing else is going on under the covers.”
  • “Let’s look at freedom a little more: freedom to heal all patients (imagine a doctor who can’t take Medicaid patients)”
  • “Universal Health Care helps business start-ups” – we need to have a liberalized market
  • We, the public, provide the concession for the medical business to profit on our behalf
  • Ms. Bresch, Mylan Inc. – she wakes up in the morning thinking, “God, 99% of America hates me,” but operates under the idea that we gave up our freedom
  • We’ve got the right message, we just need to expand it to a broader range of Americans with broader moral concerns

10:20 CAN WE AFFORD UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE?

DR. JEFF HELTON, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS

DR. ANDERS FREMSTAD, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

  • Why is covering everybody going to save us money in the process?
  • Big picture: not easy; has risks; we have a lot of waste in the system caused by providers serving multiple insurers
  • Graph: Healthcare spending across countries; the exceptional country is the U.S.; Millions of people who don’t have coverage; Life expectancy is the lowest in the U.S.
  • 20% of expenses for health care providers are not for patient care!
  • $1.3 billion net cost for physicians/hospitals in CO by 2020 & another $2 billion for insurers
  • We can eliminate duplication of cost of services with single payer
  • “The healthcare market place is in no way competitive; it’s nothing more than a beauty contest in CO (i.e. my hospital is prettier than yours; my waiting room is more comfortable); we can take that away, although that is part of the resistance we hear from hospitals across the state”
  • We know you need to have revenue to run a business; the question is “how much is enough?”
  • We can make it work with a 10% payroll tax offered last year
  • Context from other states: CA: could save 18% of their spending by using the same metrics, but are stalled by sales tax (terrible). OR: three different alternatives (single payer, public option, expanded health insurance exchange)- single payer has a 22% average saving (the highest of the three)
  • What’s in it for CO? Savings = about $7.3 billion in 2020

10:30 UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PLANS FOR THE U.S. DONNA SMITH

  • Executive director of Progressive Democrats of America
  • “I’m going to take us back to human issues; there are human consequences that are going to unfold… it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
  • Movie: “Sicko” (Michael Moore)- “my husband and I were subjects in the film (which is not something to be desired)”
  • “Cancer & serious artery problems will bring you down quickly” (financially)- “we were almost bankrupt”
  • “The experts who know the most about what this system is doing to us are the patients!!”
  • “I’m a three-time cancer survivor, 62 years old & have COPD due to a MRSA infection… no insurance company wants to cover me!”
  • “I don’t want to damage things for the future of my family… I think you all know what that means. I don’t want my family to watch me die (not just of the disease); some people are going to choose to die rather than damage their families’ futures”
  • John Elway advertisement destroyed the Colorado Care campaign
  • Sen. Bernie Sanders will be introducing a Universal Health Care bill to the senate at the end of the month; “he gets it” (the strategy for introducing his bill to senate)
  • “Our work is to make sure we get more co-sponsors on 676 & support Sanders when his bill gets dropped; pressure on Gardner to pass it; we don’t want people to feel the need to take advantage of the ‘right to die’ law”
  • “You must get ahold of [Cory Gardner]. Call him every day.”
  • “How will we take care of the insurance companies? Sanders’ plan takes into account mergers & has a real strategic financial mechanism to buy them out.”

10:40 UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

EFFORTS IN OTHER STATES T.R. REID, CHAIR

  • “My prediction: If Donald Trump lasts four years, runs for re-election & is behind, then he will come out for Medicare for all. He’s a business man, he can see it’s the best way.”
  • “Same-sex marriage, marijuana, all of these started in one state…we’ll be the first to get to universal health care”
  • Romney: greatest achievement was Romney Care & then he ran away from it; tried to do it through private insurance
  • NY legislature: one house has passed CO-based single payer, but doesn’t look like it will get the final two votes needed
  • CA: state senate did pass universal health care plan, then the leader of state house pulled it off the agenda; but “it was just a gesture, never a real plan (the details didn’t add up)”
  • NV: passed a bill & the governor vetoed it; it would have allowed people to buy into Medicaid; would mean people of low-income who can’t afford health care might all get health care. Nobody’s done this before! “I tip my hat to them for giving it a try.”
  • Much more likely, 1-3 states will try to do what we tried to do, which is put something on the ballot that ensures everybody gets health care
  • I now feel that our proposal had too much detail (35-page booklet)
  • Many states are working on the broadest guarantee possible for universal health care (Oregon’s proposal = 2 sentences; still working on some kind of plan; keeping the wording simple)
  • WA state: strongly supports the campaign for universal health care
  • NM: passed in one leg of legislature; looking to pass it in the next year
  • Rally in Portland, OR promoting the 2020 plan: 10 states put the SAME initiative on the ballot in 2020; two reasons it’s a good idea: for the competition (“we don’t want to let Oregon beat us to this”) and it also forces insurance companies to “dissipate their political thought” (spread themselves out to combat the proposal in different states). “I like this idea.”
  • “Our leader, Dr. Lyn Gullette, working out of her living room in Louisville, CO got 160,000 signatures for the ballot measure.”

10:50 THE COLORADO HEATH CARE FOR LYN GULLETTE, CAMPAIGN COORDINATOR

EVERYONE CAMPAIGN

  • “I’m going to change the tone… we need a system change. I have had more than enough of this deadly political game they’re playing in Washington, fueled by corporate & special interests.”
  • “We need to stop bargaining over how many people is acceptable to not have health care.”
  • “We need to stop participating in this exploitation.”
  • History is a Weapon handout (in packet): “Public awareness was increasing like crazy, then the election reflected the absence of the public support for a change (our alternative); at stage 5 it looks like failure because we lost by a lot, but you can see by the 8 stages, that this is part of the progress! We need to keep going.”
  • “Stage 6 is where we need to be now & that’s why you’re here; it’s about the long-term grass-roots organizing.”
  • “Public opposition is growing like crazy!”
  • “We have a series of re-triggering events every day! We have a ripening opportunity to succeed.”
  • “We have organized around four goals: AHAL

A- Awareness

H- Hope

A- Activism

L- leadership (need to build it, identify it, & support it)

  • While we’re doing these, we need a focus (i.e. Sanders’ bill; a plan to have legislature in 2018)
  • “I’m going on sabbatical & will be back before the end of the year… if you could accomplish universal health care before then, I could live with that.”

11:00 UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE BILL 2018 SESSION SENATOR IRENE AGUILAR, M.D.

  • “One question I got a lot (during the campaign): ‘Why do we have to spend the next two years doing the fiscal analysis?’ Good question. So we thought, ‘why don’t we do the analysis during the legislature?’”
  • The plan: “we will introduce a bill in 2018 to request a fiscal analysis of essentially what Colorado Care was trying to do, but with one difference- it would model what would happen in specific situations. Then, we can come back with a specific suggestion based on the research that comes out of this.”
  • Most income now for Aetna comes from Medicare & Medicaid
  • “So many providers were concerned about how they would get paid, when in reality, so little of the costs of healthcare go to the providers.”
  • One concern is for the community of people with disabilities. “Medicaid is an ‘entitlement’ and Republicans right now are proposing to turn that into a ‘cap’ (once you spend the money given to you, you don’t get any more).”
  • “It’s important that whatever we create in CO, we need to keep Medicaid as an entitlement. Don’t do what we need to do at the expense of one community over another.”
  • “If the Republicans pass a new health care bill, insurance companies are playing a game they can’t win; they don’t know who’s going to buy their product.” (healthy people)

11:10 PANEL DISCUSSION OF UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE MODERATOR JOHN TOMASIC

  • “As a reporter who covered the capital over the last 10 months, I must say this is a very well-informed, evidence-based, articulate presentation today!”

COLORADO DEMOCRATIC PARTY DAVE SABADOS, VICE CHAIR OF THE COLORADO DEMOCRATIC PARTY

COLORADANS WITH DISABIITIES JULIE REISKIN, L.C.S.W. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE COLORADO CROSS DISABIITY COALITION

LATINO COMMUNITY RUDY GONZALES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SERVICIOS DE LA RAZA

RURAL COMMUNITIES RICH CIMINO, GRAND COUNTY COMMISSIONER

BUSINESS COMMUNITY RICHARD EIDLIN, CO-FOUNDER AMERICAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS COUNCIL

  • Eidlin: “Healthcare has become an important issue in the business economy. It’s sucking the life blood out of many small companies.” Films: “Fix It” & “Big Pharma.” “General Motors issued a statement saying that they had to jack up the price of the average vehicle by $1,500 because of increasing costs of health care.”
  • Cimino: “At the risk of getting escorted out of the building, full disclosure: I am the first Republican to serve my position in Grand County, and I was in opposition of Amendment 69. I am also a military veteran & I have Tricare.” The Western zone has a bigger subsidy, but you end up paying more out of pocket. Of the nine health care zones in CO, Boulder is the cheapest. “Dan Gibbs (Summit Country) & I are composing a letter to Senator Gardner asking him to not rush this; our goal is to reduce premiums & make them equal across the state. I am ‘county above party.’ I want to continue to work with you. A July 2016 report had some concerns about single payer, but I think they can be overcome & tried again in 2018.”
  • Reiskin: “I was really sad last year when we had to oppose 69… I’m talking about all types of disabilities today, and one thing that stops our heart is when we hear, ‘Medicare & Medicaid for all.’ Medicaid for all in CO is an excellent system. The biggest difference between Medicaid & Medicare is long-term services. A lot of money is in the long-term health system and we cannot afford to lose this. If someone works with you intimately (has a key to your house, knows all of your financial information, etc.), you should be able to choose who that is. Medicaid also provides transportation. Medicare has a homebound requirement. It also has an awful program of competitive bidding for disability equipment (?) How does SSI fit in? I kind of like the idea of having something really basic in the constitution, but having the detail in the state legislation.” (in reference to T.R. Reid’s discussion about having on less detail)
  • Sabados: “I had a close friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer. Possibly the hardest part was helping her sift through all of the medical bills. That’s when I become an Amendment 69 supporter. When I say ‘support,’ there are a few things I mean. Every year we have a discussion about language- do we call it ‘single payer,’ ‘universal health care,’ ‘Medicare for all’? Dems have almost always stood up and said ‘yes, we support single payer, etc.’ so then why aren’t all of our elected officials pushing for it? We don’t always elect people who support it, first of all. Unfortunately, Senator Aguilar is term-limited, so how do we get more elected officials in office who support universal health care? Ask the people running if they support your issues!”
  • Gonzales: “There are 1.3 million Latinos in this state. I grew up during the Chicano movement of the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s; I’m also 21st generation- I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed me. Put another ‘C’ for conservative in front of AHCA and you get ‘CAHCA.’ Our children are also a vulnerable population. They should be insured. I took my mother to the hospital, her blood sugar spiked; the nurse poked her finger to take a glucose reading & asked if she wanted a Band-Aid, she said ‘no, they’re too expensive.’”
  • Question 1: “How do we get around the deep pockets of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies?” Eidlin: “We need to work in coalitions; we can’t compete with them.”
  • Question 2: “As a person of color, when I hear the term ‘American,’ I hear ‘white, wealthy people.’ So when you talk about changing the message to appeal to their moral values, how are you taking care of us?” Reiskin: “I agree. Instead of trying to go toward conservative values, if we just focus more on a coalition & the beauty of diversity, then that messaging can get out & will resonate with more of us. There are more of us (lower-income people) than the super rich.” Gonzales: “Cultural organizations need to be reached out to and need to get involved.”
  • Participant: “In response to the question, ‘how do you compete against big pharma?’ Money can only go so far. Each of you has a voice. What is the most cost effective way to get the message out? SOCIAL MEDIA. It’s so cheap & yet the message is so powerful.”
  • Question 3: Financial implications to small businesses… Sabados: “It was very challenging to sit down with small businesses and look at what Amendment 69 would mean for them.” Eidlin: “It looked financially impossible for small businesses.”
  • Participant: “There nothing wrong with having a profit, that’s what businesses are supposed to do. The problem is that we have a smoke screen that they hide behind. We need to get the message out & share the actual facts.”
  • Question 4: “Nobody’s talking about root cause; nobody’s talking about the food that’s changed. Nobody’s talking about changes to our health; we’re treating symptoms. There’s no committee on education this afternoon.” Eidlin: “In the ACA, there’s a provision on innovative healthcare. It requires insurance programs to cover preventive care. Unfortunately, this was not a priority in the Obama administration, but it is currently part of the ACA.”