Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
The Truth About Health Care Insurance Reform
Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White Houses Health Reform Office, addresses a story that makes it look like the President intends to eliminate private coverage.
Obama should kill private insurance and go for single-payer, (Expanded and Improved Medicare for All), but that is not what President Obama and most of the Democrats in Congress are advocating.
Mike Ross: Bush — not Obama — pioneered socialized medicine in U.S.
"It was George W. Bush that passed the largest socialized expansion of our government in my lifetime," Ross argued in an interview with a Fox affiliate in Arkansas. "It was called Medicare Part D prescription drug program. The 10 year period for it was well over a trillion dollars."
He said that program exceeds the cost of the healthcare reform bill now before the House.
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Olbermann: Legislators for sale
Special Comment on Health Care Reform in this country, and in particular, the "public insurance option":
Excerpt:
You get something done, at a doctor's, at a dentist's, at an emergency room and the bills are in your hands before the pain medication wears off. And if you're one of the lucky ones, and you have insurance, you submit the endless paperwork and no matter whether it's insurance through your company, or your union, or your non-profit, or on your own dime, you then get your turn… at the roulette wheel.
How much of it is the insurance company going to pay this time? How much of it is the insurance company — about which you have next to no choice, and against which you have virtually no appeal — how much is this giant corporation going to give you back? What small percentage of what they told you they were going to pay you, will they actually pay you?
You know the answer. And, you know the answer if you don't have insurance. But do you know why that's the answer?
Because the insurance industry owns the Republican Party. Not exclusively. Pharma owns part of it, too. Hospitals and HMO's, another part. Nursing homes — they have a share. You name a Republican, any Republican, and he is literally brought to you by... campaign donations from the Health Sector.
Source: MSNBC
Marilyn Clement - June 30, 1935 to August 3, 2009 - Healthcare-NOW!
Sad news for the single payer community:
Marilyn Clement, founder and National Coordinator of Healthcare-NOW!, passed away on Monday, August 3 surrounded by her children, Scott and Pam, her daughter-in-law Liz, and the caring thoughts of all of us who knew her, worked with her, and had come to love her.
Read more at Healthcare-NOW!
Marilyn and I exchange a good number of emails and a couple of phone calls over the years in our fight for Single-Payer health care. Marilyn, we will all miss you and I promise to continue the work. You are loved and I hold your family in my prayers. Peace and Blessings.
Monday, August 03, 2009
GOP Rx for Health Insurance Reform: TV Version
Americans United for Change, a group that supports President Obama's plans to overhaul the health care system, released a new television advertisement on Monday, lumping together Republicans and health insurance executives as allied forces trying to derail reform:
Can't Go Home
Americans living in Canada who can't return to the US because they're unable to get health coverage.
Chemotherapy by Colin Gawel
The surgeon puts his hand against your throat
That scalpel it gleams like a knife
As the nurse rifles through your credit cards
He says, “Boy it’s your money or your life”
That’s a hard decision to make
Even Jesus would surely agree
To make someone decide between their money or their life
That’s as tough as chemotherapy
Video
Baucus the "Power Broker" Breaking his Base?
Matthew Frank's profile of Max Baucus in the Missoula Independent goes a long way to explaining how this unlikeliest of small state Senators finds himself at the center of the most important public policy debate of a generation. The profile shows both how Baucus got to the point of perhaps securing his political legacy, but how he might also be the very person who dooms it to failure.
The Finance Committee has been replaced by the Baucus Committee, two other conservative Democrats (Kent Conrad, ND and Jeff Bingaman, NM) and three Republicans (Chuck Grassley, IA, Olympia Snowe, ME, and Mike Enzi, WY). These six have holed up for weeks, working out a plan that many Democrats will have a hard time supporting and 99.9 percent of Republicans will oppose because they have no interest in helping the Democrats pass this massive reform. From the outside, it's a fool's errand. Baucus is trading away the store, leaving the shell of a bill that could give us some needed insurance reforms, but will fall far short of actually reforming the system, in the vain hope that he can bring Republicans along.
His own Republican negotiators proved just how pointless this exercise in placating Republicans is this week, when Mike Enzi publically rejected the idea that he was negotiating at all on behalf of Republicans.
Five other Congressional committees and the White House, are supposed to leave completely intact the legislation negotiated in secret by six Senators who represent less than 3% of the nation's population. Legislative process be damned, the Mike Enzi healthcare reform bill has to be passed without question, without amendment by all the other committees. And, if recent key votes are any indicator, all of the Republicans in Congress are going to vote against it anyway. In case Senator Baucus hadn't noticed it yet, Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi just hijacked his bill.
Read it all at Daily Kos
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Why isn't single-payer "uniquely American"?
By Timothy Noah
On July 30, single-payer advocates staged a rally on Capitol Hill to demand why Congress wasn't even considering enacting a single-payer health system. The usual answer you hear from Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and others is that the United States requires a solution to its health care crisis that's "uniquely American."This smug cliché, as I have complained before, encapsulates the American political establishment's hubristic refusal to consider how other industrialized countries tackle the problem at the practical level. Health care reform, it is said, must reflect distinctly American values, and that's why Congress resolutely ignores the single-payer model favored in Canada; the Bismarckian nonprofit model favored in France, Germany, and Japan; and the socialized model favored in the U.K., Spain, and much of Scandinavia.
Under a single-payer system, the government doesn't care which doctor or hospital you use because none is going to be more expensive than the others. Granted, the government may deny choice in tests and treatments, but Brett judges that reality as no more restrictive than with market-based medicine; the only difference is whether the gatekeeper is public or private.
By definition, a single-payer system would deny consumers (or, more typically, their employers) the opportunity to choose a health insurer. But choosing an insurer, Brett says, is "not an end in itself." Rather, it's a means to "efficient, cost-effective health care." And single-payer has shown itself superior to private insurance in this respect as well, "[b]ecause administrative costs are consistently lower in single-payer systems than in private-based systems." (Brett might also have pointed out that a single-payer system can set hospital and doctor fees at whatever it deems reasonable.)
Why, then, is Congress so resistant not only to creating a single-payer system but even to creating a robust "public option" government health-insurance plan as one option among many? In the Aug. 3 New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg correctly identifies the obstacle not as culture but as the structure of U.S. government itself:
Other industrialized democracies typically favor a more streamlined parliamentary approach. Hertzberg goes on to point out that in one of our legislatures (the Senate), "one member may represent as little as one-seventieth as many people as the member in the next seat," and a minority of members may block any action through the filibuster. (These are two hobbyhorses I happen to share with Hertzberg. See "Abolish the Senate!" and "Abolish the Filibuster!") Harold Pollock, faculty chair of the University of Chicago's Center for Health Administration Studies, noted last month that the small, bipartisan "coalition of the willing" writing the Senate finance committee's health-reform bill while it munched on chocolate-covered potato chips represented a combined population of fewer than 11.2 million, which was less than that of greater Los Angeles. Since Pollock wrote, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has dropped out, reducing the coalition's membership from seven to six and lowering its collective constituency to 8.5 million souls, or less than that of the Chicago metropolitan area.
Read it all at Slate Magazine
PNHP's Case for Single Payer Health Insurance Slideshow
A tad out of date, but still great information.
Uploaded on authorSTREAM by pnhpnymetro
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Subsidizing Our Way To Affordable Health Insurance: A Futile And Unaffordable Quest
Although still very much under-recognized and fought against by the medical industrial complex and complicit corporate media, there is only one solution to cost containment of our runaway market-based health care system. H. R. 676, coupled with a private delivery system, is a paygo alternative that assures universal coverage of necessary health care for all Americans. It would save up to $400 billion a year and provide a structure within which to put in place other cost-saving efficiencies.
The private health insurance industry is an impediment to reform, not part of the solution. It has survived to this time only through generous subsidies from the government, whether in the employer-based or individual markets or privatized Medicare and Medicaid programs. Until we recognize this, all of our incremental approaches to build on our multi-payer system will be of no avail.
Read it all at PNHP’s official Blog
Health Bill Clears Hurdle and Hints at Consensus
As a final act before recessing until September, one crucial panel, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, approved landmark health legislation that could ultimately lead to coverage for about 95 percent of Americans and create a new government-run insurance program.
The 31-to-28 vote occurred at 9:05 p.m. Friday, at the end of a session that began at 10 a.m. Five Democrats joined all 23 Republicans on the panel in voting no.
Congress still has plenty of work to do in September to blend competing, sometimes contradictory health measures, but lawmakers have found a good deal of common ground on proposals that would profoundly change the health system.
Read it all at NYTimes.com
Dan Agin: Reality Check: National Health Care is National Security
A public health service is not just a convenience, it's a vital part of the national security of a country. What we call "public health" is just part of national health -- and national health will always also be part of national security.
How many lives would we save, and how much would our health and productivity improve, if we had at least the beginning of an efficient and accessible national health service?
We do not farm out our national security to private interests. The reason is simple: history demonstrates that private interests will usually give their bank accounts priority over any other concern.
Does anyone really believe executives in the health insurance industry and health care industries will ever sacrifice profits for the sake of national health? They will not do that. Their record is clear that they will not do that. They simply do not think in those terms. Private health care interests cannot be entrusted with our basic national security. We can use them as the equivalents of contractors for certain parts of the job but not for all of the job. We cannot keep all of our health care in the hands of mercenaries. Putting all of our national security in private hands is simply too dangerous. It's a reality -- and we do need reality in our lives.
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They Opposed Medicare Too
by Rep. Rush Holt:
Although Medicare now is widely seen as a successful program for helping Americans access health care, it was very controversial when it was passed. The same arguments against health care reform today were made then. Some leaders from Bob Dole to Gerald Ford fought the program and voted against its creation.
Before Medicare was enacted, 44 percent of seniors were uninsured and, of those that had insurance, most had coverage only for hospital care. Before Medicare, seniors had limited choices for their health care. They could deplete their savings, seek assistance from their children, look for charity care, or forgo the medical care they needed.
Within 11 months after President Johnson signed Medicare into law, almost 20 million Americans had enrolled in the program. Medicare has virtually eliminated uninsurance among older Americans, and today fewer than one percent of those age 65 or older lack health insurance.
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