Broadcasting live today from the Health Action 2010 conference put on by Families USA.

Thom Hartmann: Helping you win the water cooler wars, Thom Hartmann here with you broadcasting live coast to coast, border to border. Vincent DeMarco, Vinny DeMarco is with us. He’s the president of the Maryland Citizen’s Health Initiative, the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, adjunct assistant professor there. He’s a national coordinator of Faith United Against Tobacco, that’s quite a cv there Vinny. Welcome to the show.

Vincent DeMarco: Thanks for having me, it’s my pleasure.

Thom Hartmann: Maryland United, or Healthcare for All Coalition. You said that you, before we, when we were talking before we got on the air you said that you’d like to talk about some of the accomplishments that you’ve had in Maryland. Last time I looked Maryland doesn’t have single payer healthcare insurance or even any kind of a statewide health insurance program. What have you done?

Vincent DeMarco: Well Maryland over the last couple years, under the leadership of our new governor, Martin O’Malley has gone from 44th in the country in healthcare for adults to 16th.

Thom Hartmann: What’s the criteria?

Vincent DeMarco: 44th to 16th is the level at which people can be eligible for Medicaid in the state.

Thom Hartmann: So what you’ve done is you’ve raised Medicaid eligibility.

Vincent DeMarco: It used to be at an abysmal level. Imagine, Thom, a family of 4 making $10,000 a year. Two years ago the kids were certainly eligible under the Medicaid and Chip programs, but the parents weren’t eligible, they had to make less than $8,000 a year. Which someone called the average income in Botswana, it’s really abysmally low. We raised that to $25,000 a year for that family of 4 and as a result and this is the exciting part, over 52,000 uninsured people now have healthcare in Maryland who didn’t have it before. How did we fund that with this dramatic budget crisis going on everywhere? We funded it with a dollar increase in a cigarette tax and that dollar increase caused 74 million fewer packs of cigarettes to be sold but brought in 144 million dollars which helped fund this expansion. It was a huge victory for the state.

Thom Hartmann: Vinny, why doesn’t the state, I mean this is great, it’s a great step forward. Why not simply say, everybody in Maryland is eligible for Medicaid, period. Everybody in Maryland and, you know, we’re gonna fund it by increasing, frankly, the Maryland income tax by a certain percentage. Because now everybody is not, all the people who are working, they’re not going to have to pay 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 20 thousand dollars a year for health insurance and, you know, boom. I mean, why not instant single payer?

Vincent DeMarco: Well, the problem with that, and we looked at all different options for achieving healthcare for all, and we do have a plan that achieves healthcare for all in Maryland. But the problem with that single payer type of approach is that the vast majority of people who have healthcare now through their own insurance companies or through whatever process they have, want to keep that. They don’t want to be taken off it.

Thom Hartmann: Well, when you dig into those numbers what you find is that the people who have health insurance with their employers who have never used it for anything other than a routine doctor’s visit want to keep it. Those people who have actually ever gotten sick would much rather have a more comprehensive program because they got hit with 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 thousand dollars worth of copays and gotchas and we don’t cover thoses.

Vincent DeMarco: It’s beyond a doubt that that happens and I think a lot in the new federal healthcare law will prevent that but we have found in talking to people all across the state that people don’t want one system for everybody. What people want is to be able to choose the kind of health insurance they have. And we actually have a plan for health care for all in Maryland which achieves what you’re talking about in a way that doesn’t take away people’s health insurance that they have.

Thom Hartmann: How do you do that?

Vincent DeMarco: We’d have a system where everybody chips in through a payroll tax for catastrophic coverage for everyone, and we create an exchange like they’re talking about at the federal level which would dramatically reduce the premiums that people now pay. Here’s the problem, and you’ve heard this again from the President and from everybody else. If you’re a big company, and you can negotiate with the insurance companies and the amount of your premium that goes into overhead is like 8 or 9 percent. If you’re a small company it’s like 20 or 30%. An individual, it’s like 40%. That’s outrageous.

Thom Hartmann: If you can get the coverage.

Vincent DeMarco: If you can get the coverage. Under our plan, you would get the coverage and because everybody would be negotiating, everybody’s premiums would go down.

Thom Hartmann: Here’s the question. Your brochure, Maryland Healthcare For All Coalition. We’re talking with Vinny DeMarco who is the national, excuse me, the president of the Maryland Citizen’s Health Initiative. Requiring large companies to do their fair share.

Vincent DeMarco: Yes we believe very strongly in that.

Thom Hartmann: I’m assuming that you know that the United States is the only developed country in the world that does not make it a crime, a felony for which you can be put in prison, to run a for profit health insurance company for primary health care. In every other developed country in the world it is a crime to offer health insurance, primary health insurance. I mean you can offer a secondary program, you know, that covers things like plastic surgery or five star meals in private hotel, you know, in private hospital rooms, things like that. But basic health insurance is illegal on a for profit basis in every country in the world except the United States. This is a moral issue.

Why even kowtow to these criminals, frankly, who are nothing but banksters? They don’t look in a single kid's throat, they don’t give a single vaccine, they’re not doing a damn thing for anybody’s health, not one damn thing for anybody’s health, and you got these criminals like Steven J Hemsley who is the CEO of United Healthcare who over the last five years took 770 million dollars in personal compensation and his predecessor, Bill McGuire, took 1.78 billion dollars in personal compensation. These guys, not Bernie Madoff, well Bernie Madoff should be in jail too. These guys should be sharing a cell with him. I don’t understand how you can even want to get in bed with these guys.

Vincent DeMarco: Well, we certainly don’t want to get in bed with them. What we want to do is accomplish what we can under the status quo. What we want to do is accomplish what we can building on what we have in America and in Maryland, and going beyond that to the extent we can. That’s our goal.

Thom Hartmann: So the bottom line is that you think that rather than being a radical like me and saying…

Vincent DeMarco: We want to get healthcare for people.

Thom Hartmann: And saying you know let’s do like every other country in the world does, let’s instead, you know, work within the system and try to make it work.

Vincent DeMarco: Our goal, we’re happy that 52 thousand people got healthcare in Maryland and we’re trying to get 100s of thousands more people.

Thom Hartmann: It’s a good step, it’s a good step. I’m not being critical of you, I just…

Vincent DeMarco: I appreciate what you’re saying.

Thom Hartmann: I just think it’s really important that people in America understand that a bunch of gangsters. This is, you know, if it wasn’t for the anti trust exemption these guys would be in prison. They got Congress to pass an anti trust exemption specific to the health insurance industry and without that they’d be in jail right now.

Vincent DeMarco: We’re for removing that, we’re pushing to remove that.

Thom Hartmann: There you go, there you go. Vinny DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens Health Initiative, adjunct assistant professor, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and national coordinator of Faith United Against Tobacco. And I think it’s just great work that you’re doing, it’s God’s work, as they say.

Vincent DeMarco: Well, thank you.

Thom Hartmann: And it’s important to get out there and do more of it, and I’d like to see more states moving to expand. See expanding Medicaid and Medicare, this is the camel’s nose under the tent of single payer healthcare ultimately at the end of the day.

Vincent DeMarco: We’re working to get people healthcare. Thank you. If anybody wants to talk to us, HealthcareForAll.com, www.HealthcareForAll.com, thank you.

Thom Hartmann: There you go. You got it. Thank you very much, good talking with you Vinny.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.