This is a meeting for all members interested in Health Issues, including, but not limited to:
General, Health Insurance, Reproductive Rights, and Gun Safety.
For meeting on March 18, 2024 -
Please review the shorter videos for possible use in healthcare presentation:
- Videos on Privatization of Health Care —
Q1. Why do we need a new position on privatization? Isn’t the LWVUS current position adequate?
A1. The issue is that the current position is open to more than one interpretation. For example, one might interpret it as not including “health care” (just “public health”) in the list of essential services that should not be privatized. Read more…
Q2. How many other program items, in addition to Making Democracy Work, can a League propose on the survey?
A2. There is room for as many as 5 additional program items, if they are succinctly worded. There are 2 questions (#11 and #16) where the survey provides response boxes for 300 words max. Read more...
Q3. Do you propose that the Vermont update replace the LWVUS position?
A3. No, the current position remains in force. We can’t eliminate a position, but we can add elements like those Vermont felt it needed to add. Read more…
Q4. Is the proposed update intended to add to the LWVUS Health Care position (under Social Policy)? or the Privatization position under “Representative Government?
A4. This proposed update is to the LWVUS Position on Privatization. It will not affect the Health Care Position. In fact, Vermont felt emphatically that the Health Care position would not be the appropriate location for the update.. Read more…
Q5. Is it your position that there should be no private options available at all?
A5. Not at all.
I would also like to remind you that Positions do not require action. If you don’t feel that profit motives and outcomes are a problem for public goods in your state, you would work on other concerns. This position only empowers League members to advocate invoking the name of the League, instead of just educating, where you feel there is a problem or potential for a problem. For health care, Read more…
Q6. Without definitions, and descriptions of the process for taking control of currently and historically private health services, would we be inadvertently manipulated into supporting a move that was unintended?
For example, couldn’t an administration (state or federal) that is unfriendly to women’s reproductive health services–which are currently delivered and have always been through the private sector–introduces a state or federal bill accusing such services of “failing to deliver” using bogus criteria–the waiting times for appointments are too long, it is not handicap accessible, etc. They could argue that the LWV agrees (!), due to the League’s new deprivatization concurrence
A6. In this regard, we might distinguish “historically private health services” from those turned over to private hands by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Sevices by contract. (Medicare and Medicaid are two of the most prominent examples.) Private corporations were given the contracts on the basis that they would save CMS (and taxpayers) money with no loss in quality or equity–and they haven’t lived up to their contracts, ie. they have failed to deliver. Read more…
Q7. What are the criteria for “failing to deliver”?
A7. Criteria that speak to this are found in the current LWVUS position; the VT position merely operationalizes what had been envisioned. It clearly provides consequences for failing to live up to the considerations–namely that “the services or assets will be returned to the government.”
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We are scheduled to present and lead discussions in April. To prepare for that, we have set the following time for a meeting to establish a work group to tackle the April Unit Meeting presentations. I sincerely hope most of you can attend!
Last week several of us participated in a meeting that the State Health Care Task Force organized. A representative of the Vermont LWV discussed a Concurrence Statement addressing the LWVUS position on privatization of healthcare. They would like LWV Colorado and its units to support this.
The Vermont statement stresses that health care should be a public good not a private business. Further, to provide efficient and effective services to the population a single payer system is necessary, e.g. Medicare for All. This concurrence statement would not replace the current LWVUS position but supplement it and address specifically stopping the privatization of healthcare services.
LWVCO has supported legislation over the last several decades to improve access and reduce costs. They are discussing concurrence with the Vermont position regarding privatization. LWVJeffco’s current statement on health care mainly focuses on children’s care and behavioral health.
If we, as LWVJeffco Health Interest group, move forward with this topic, we have a lot of work to do. I hope we can rise to the challenge and work together to that end.