"Rather than waste time on debating how much reform insurance companies will permit - - if any - - -it is time to change the debate" - Kucinich Kicks off Health Care Debate with Renewed Call for Single-Payer
It was expected that the Weiner Amendment would get a vote today, but Representative Weiner has withdrawn it:
Washington, DC – Today, Representative Anthony Weiner (D - Brooklyn and Queens), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, released the following statement on his decision to withdraw his single payer amendment to H.R. 3962, the House health care reform bill:
"I have decided not to offer a single payer alternative to the health reform bill at this time. Given how fluid the negotiations are on the final push to get comprehensive health care reform that covers millions of Americans and contains costs through a public option, I became concerned that my amendment might undermine that important goal."
"I am going to continue to press the case for health care reform in every venue I can. And I also will continue to press for a smarter, less-expensive, more-comprehensive alternative to the employer-based health insurance system we have today."
"I've discussed the issue with Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Waxman, and agree with them that the health reform bill is so close it deserves every chance to gain a majority."
Last Night, Representatives Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers, Sponsors of HR-676, the Single-Payer bill that Weiner's amendment was about, posted statements on several blogs and news sites warning about this vote because they feared it would not get the votes needed in the current political landscape and could harm future reform actions by setting a low benchmark.
Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is scheduled to consider a single payer bill. As the two principal co-authors of the Conyers single payer bill, we want to offer a strong note of caution about tomorrow's vote.
The bill presented tomorrow will not be HR676. While we are happy to relinquish authorship of a single payer bill to any member who can do better, we do not want a weak bill brought forward in a hostile climate to unwittingly accomplish what would be interpreted as a defeat for single payer.
Here are the facts: There has been no debate in Congress over HR676. There has not been a single mark-up of the bill. Single payer was "taken off the table" for the entire year by the White House and by congressional leaders. There has been no reasonable period of time to gather support in the Congress for single payer. Many members accepted a "robust public option" as the alternative to single payer and now that has disappeared. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has scored the bill scheduled for a vote tomorrow in a manner which is at odds with many credible assumptions, meaning that it will appear to cost way too much even though we know that true single payer saves money since one of every three dollars in the health care system goes to administrative costs caused by the insurance companies. Is this really the climate in which we want a test vote?
While state single payer movements are already strong, the national single payer movement is still growing. Many progressives in Congress, ourselves included, feel that calling for a vote tomorrow for single payer would be tantamount to driving the movement over a cliff. The thrill of the vote would disappear quickly when the result would be characterized not as a new beginning for single payer but as an end. Such a result would be seen as proof that Congress need not pay attention to efforts to restore in Conference Committee the right of states to pursue single payer without fear of legal attacks by insurance companies.
We are always grateful for your support. We are now asking you to join us in suggesting to congressional leaders that this is not the right time to call the roll on a stand-alone single payer bill. That time will come. And when it does there will not be any doubt of the outcome. This system of health care injustice will not be able to endure forever. We are pledged to make sure of that.
Sincerely,
Congressmen John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich
ACTION NEEDED TODAY: Democratic House leaders can insert what is called a "Manager’s Amendment" into legislation, even when it is closed to any other amendments. The managers are the majority and minority members who "manage" debate for the bill on each side.
Today, tomorrow, and beyond, we need to call these "managers" and insist that the Kucinich Amendment is restored into the healthcare bill.
The "gang" that holds our future in their hands - the people you need to call NOW - are:
NOTE: When talking to Waxman and Pelosi's offices be sure to also tell them you want the vote on the Weiner Amendment she and Waxman promised on July 31st - We also need and have a right to see the CBO scoring on the Weiner Amendment.
Seven Members of Congress have now signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting that Democratic Leadership restore the Kucinich Amendment to the health care reform bill before bringing the bill for a vote.
Added to H.R. 3200 in the Education and Labor Committee, the Kucinich Amendment removes an obstacle for states that seek to enact a statewide single payer health care system.
In addition to Congressman Kucinich (D-OH), Representatives John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Eric Massa (D-NY), Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Janice D. Schakowsky (D-IL) Lynn C. Woolsey (D-CA), Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) have signed the letter.
The full text of the letter follows:
October 30, 2009
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
H-232 The Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20515-0001
Dear Madam Speaker,
We write to request that the Kucinich amendment that would grant a waiver of the application of ERISA to a state single payer plan be included in the Manager’s amendment to H.R. 3962.
Like many other important reforms included in the underlying bill, the Kucinich amendment is the object of attack by the insurance industry. Unlike other reform measures, Leadership has chosen to strip the Kucinich amendment of the protection it deserves. In view of the power of the insurance industry to divide and conquer good ideas for reforming health insurance in this country, we believe that a simple vote on the floor would be a setback for the amendment and for single payer health care, because it would be exposed to the full brunt of the insurance industry’s attacks.
Progressives are firm and emphatic in their support for the single payer health care. A single payer, Medicare for All health system is the best way to control costs, drive up quality and extend care to all. Allowing states to opt for a single payer plan is a compromise. It is an incremental reform. But it allows the country to move incrementally in the direction that is needed.
The Kucinich amendment strikes a balance between where we need to go and where we can go in the next week. We urge you to include it in the Manager’s amendment.
Reid says he’s moving forward with a Senate bill that has a public option with an opt-out in it "with the support of the White House, and Senators Dodd and Baucus." He says that the Senate bill will also have co-ops included - which confuses me a bit. My hope is that he is not considering the co-ops a public option. And of course, just who will be allowed to participate in the Public Option is still fuzzy. So while we don't know just what the Public Option will look like, the best news is that we don't have the "trigger" deeply disappointing Olympia Snowe.
Fueling the push for a new government insurance plan, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said today that his chamber's healthcare bill would include a compromise that would create a nationwide public option but give states the right to opt out.
"The public option is not a silver bullet, [but] I believe it's an important way to ensure competition and to level the playing field for patients with the insurance industry," Reid said. "Under this concept, states will be able to decide what works for them."
Reid sent the proposal to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to be analyzed today, a key step before he can bring a bill to the floor for debate.
His decision does not settle the debate roiling Democratic ranks over how to create a government plan that would give consumers who don't get coverage through their employers an alternative to plans offered by commercial insurers.
The "opt-out" compromise is still two votes shy of the 60 Reid needs to overcome a Republican filibuster, according to a senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill who requested anonymity when discussing the plan.
Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- San Francisco) are advancing separate healthcare bills in the Senate and House, which would have to be reconciled later this year before they are sent to the White House for President Obama's signature.
But Pelosi indicated Friday that the opt-out alternative could be included in a reconciled bill.
For now, House Democrats are poised to pass a bill that would create a nationwide government plan, although there is still disagreement about how much such a plan should pay doctors, hospitals and other medical providers.
Liberals, including Pelosi, favor a proposal that would link those payments to the existing Medicare program, which often pays providers less than commercial insurers. Proponents believe such an arrangement would save money and help drive down costs.
But many conservative Democrats, particularly from rural areas where Medicare typically pays less, want the government plan to negotiate its rates with providers, as commercial insurers do.
Pelosi hopes to settle those differences in time to unveil a bill later this week, according to her office.
The Weiner amendment [PDF] --will be submitted for a floor vote in the House, in the coming days, - This will be a historic vote - the fist time ever Single-Payer has gotten a floor vote.
The Kucinich amendment, [PDF] which will more easily allow states to implement single-payer plans, is already within the bill and must be retained.
Passing these amendments will be difficult, but the votes on them will help set the benchmarks for the next debates on health care so they really do matter. Win or lose, we’ll know who our friends in Congress are...
Sen. Bernie Sanders is sponsoring a Medicare for All bill in the Senate, S. 703. Tell your Senators to support it; find contact info here. He has said that he will be introducing amendments to the Senate Health Care bill, so keep your eyes and ears open for them.
Why it is important to keep fighting for real Health Care Reform:
The New York Times reported on Saturday, October 17, that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is warning his constituents that the “public option” is not going to be available to the great majority of Americans. No one who has actually read the Senate health committee’s “reform” bill or the House “reform” bill (HR 3200) disputes this. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “option” will be available only to about 30 million people, or about one American in ten. As the Times put it (slightly inaccurately), the “option” in the Democrats’ legislation “would be out of bounds to the approximately 160 million people already covered through employers.”
Does the public understand this? According to Wyden, they don’t. Wyden says his constituents are shocked when they are told the "option" will not be available to the vast majority of Americans. When he began informing his constituents about this truth last summer, "They nearly fell out of the bleachers," he said.
Once a bill is passed and signed by President Obama, voters will start to learn just how little help the current reform policies will provide. While it is probable that the reforms will continue to funnel money to the Health Insurance companies to fund their lobbying machines, the relief for citizens maybe too little and/or too complicated and I don't believe anything currently being offered will be sustainable in the long term. So we will come back to this table. And that is why good support for the current Single Payer amendments to H.R. 3200 in the House are critically important.
While media coverage of the health reform debate is focused on the Senate Finance Committee's bill (which was largely drafted by current and former executives at Wellpoint, the nation's largest private health insurance company), several portentous congressional votes on single-payer Medicare-for-All loom on the horizon.
You can help determine the outcome of these votes, which are truly without historical precedent.
Quick Actions:
[Note that the text in the messages needs a bit of updating since it is now Oct. and we need to add a request for a CBO scoring of HR-676 in the one for the Weiner Amendment]
1. In the House - Ask your representative to support the Weiner and Kucinich amendments
Sometime in the next two or three weeks, Rep. Anthony Weiner's (D-N.Y.) amendment to substitute single-payer legislation (along the lines of Rep. Conyers' H.R. 676) for the House leadership's bill, H.R. 3200, will come up for an up-or-down vote on the House floor.
This is the first time single payer will have been put to a full floor vote in our nation's history, and it presents us with a unique opportunity to hold our representatives accountable on this issue. While the individual mandate approach to reform embodied in the Senate Finance bill would leave 25 million Americans uninsured, single payer would assure coverage for every American, as even President Obama has admitted. (You can find the number of people uninsured in your congressional district here.)
Additionally, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has secured a provision in H.R. 3200 that would allow individual states to adopt their own single-payer systems.
Contact your representative today and ask him or her to vote "YES" on the Weiner Amendment for single payer and insist that the Kucinich amendment remains in the final House bill..
The Congressional Switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.
2. In the Senate
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will introduce two single-payer amendments to the Senate bill, one to create a national single-payer plan (along the lines of S. 703), and the other to allows individual states to adopt single payer.
Urge your senators to vote "YES" on the Sanders' single payer amendments.
The Congressional Switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.
Political figures, commentators and editorial writers are now routinely citing the study's finding of 45,000 deaths annually in their discussions of our health care crisis. Even Sen. Max Baucus has cited it, erroneously asserting that "[my] bill would fix that." (Actually, his bill would leave some 25 million uninsured, which translates into about 25,000 deaths annually.)
PNHPer and "Mad as Hell Doctor" Dr. Paul Hochfeld was admitted at the last minute to Obama's press event with physicians Monday and appeared on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" show on MSNBC. The Mad as Hell Doctors, led by Hochfeld and Dr. Mike Huntington, wound up their 26-city, nationwide tour with a rally in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30. They received extensive regional press.
Register today for PNHP's Annual Meeting on Saturday, Oct. 24, in Cambridge, MA, at the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Guest speakers include Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine; Harvard health economist William Hsiao, Ph.D.; journalist T.R. Reid; Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Anthony Weiner and more. You won't want to miss this extraordinary gathering!
Kucinich Amendment Grants ERISA Waiver for Single Payer States.
Sanders Senate Amendment Would Expand Support for Single Payer States
The Center for Policy Analysis worked closely with Congressional staff to craft the two amendments to health reform legislation that offer the greatest prospects for single payer supporters.
Summary
Some state and local governments that have attempted to expand health care coverage have been successfully challenged in court under the terms of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). ERISA pre-empts states from enacting legislation if it is "related to" employee benefit plans. It reserves that right to the federal government. Section 514 of ERISA states that Title V (Administration and Enforcement) and Title IV (Fiduciary Responsibility) of ERISA “shall supercede any and all State laws insofar as they may… relate to any employee benefit plan.” There is no provision for an administrative waiver of these rules.
The Kucinich amendment to HR 3200, approved by a recorded vote of the House Education and Labor Committee, would remove this barrier for states that have enacted and signed into law a single payer system.
What the Amendment Does
The Secretary of Labor, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, would be authorized and required to waive the ERISA pre-emption (Sec. 514) for states that have enacted a state single payer system. In this case, the Secretary could decline to grant the waiver only under extraordinary circumstances. The system would have to meet requirements, and the Secretary could revoke the waiver if it fails to do so.
The state single payer system is defined as a non-profit program of the state for providing health care to all residents. A single state agency would finance and administer the provision of comprehensive benefits that meet or exceed the standards for coverage and quality described in HR 3200, and assure free choice of health care providers. Private insurance that duplicates this coverage would be prohibited. Health maintenance organizations could operate on a non-profit basis if they also own their facilities and provide services directly. The system would not result in greater costs to the federal government. At the same time, the federal government would maintain the equivalent level of support as provided to other states, accounting for variations such as population and demographics. States could seek planning and start-up funds.
What the Amendment Does Not Do
A state single payer amendment was proposed by Senator Sanders. It is more detailed than the Kucinich amendment because it would cover matters beyond the jurisdiction of the House Education and Labor Committee. These include:
Dedicated funding for planning and implementation grants;
Specific allocations of funds from existing federal health programs, and waivers to permit coordination with those programs;
Quality assurance and health professional training programs associated with other federal programs.
Representative Dennis Kucinich ask executives from six of the largest health insurance companies if denial of insurance claims can be fatal. Watch them answer:
The insurance industry is facing new heat from House Democrats as Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Domestic Policy, on Wednesday requested that six top insurance company executives appear before his panel to explain how they do business.
Kucinich in his letter said the Sept. 17 hearing will examine “the nature, cost/benefit, and impact of administrative measures and protocols used by the health insurance industry to determine coverage for doctor-prescribed health care treatments, as well as costs of administrative measures undertaken by doctors to interface with insurance companies.”
The missive went to CEOs of Aetna, WellPoint, Cigna, Humana, Hemingway Health Care and UnitedHealth. It follows a request earlier this month that Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of that panel’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, sent to 52 insurance companies requesting reams of potentially embarrassing financial information. Waxman and Stupak are seeking details of executive compensation packages, conferences and retreats they sponsored, and the profitability of their products.
Congressman Anthony Weiner (D., New York) has introduced an amendment in the House Energy and Commerce Committee that would replace the convoluted please-the-public-and-the-insurance-companies-at-the-same-time healthcare bill with the single-payer plan found in HR 676 and backed by 86 members of Congress. The vote has been delayed beyond Wednesday, support for the measure is growing, people are phoning in constantly, and a whip count is being kept online.
An amendment introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D, Ohio) was passed last week by the House Education and Labor Committee that will allow states to create single-payer systems if the federal government does not. So, if Weiner’s amendment fails, we could still achieve single-payer state by state, and eventually nationally, if we are able to persuade congressional leadership not to strip Kucinich’s amendment out behind the closed doors of a conference committee.
But it is entirely possible that Weiner’s amendment will pass, and even if it does not pass the support it musters will nonetheless serve to improve the bill and maintain a useful public option. Weiner is a supporter of the existing bill and the public option, but clearly sees a value in pushing for something better both as a bargaining position and as an attempt to achieve a solution that we can be more confident would really solve our healthcare crisis. Weiner’s column in the Politico today is worth reading in its entirety. After reading that, please come back here and watch this video of Weiner addressing the concerns of Republicans in the Energy and Commerce Committee.
While Weiner doesn’t say this, I will: Everybody now knows that Republicans will oppose any healthcare bill. Worsening a bill in order to win over a few of them provides not a single person with better healthcare. Republicans are not needed and have nothing to add. But of course to pass healthcare reform you do have to win over all of the Democrats. And are you more likely to do that with a bill that wastes public dollars on an inefficient for-profit system, or with a bill like HR 676 that guarantees significant savings? While HR 676 is an approach that forces congress members to go against the wishes of health insurance and drug companies, the mixed-bad approach allows legitimate criticism of wasting money, and the insurance and drug companies still hate it.
Whichever approach you favor, we’re going to be better off with a significant show of support for single-payer. With it, a useful public option becomes a compromise. Without it, the compromise to win over the worst Democrats has to begin with the current bill and move down from there. So keep the phones ringing.
Americans consistently tell pollsters that they want single-payer. And this is true in Blue Dog districts and Republican districts too. Single-payer is not a tough sell with the public, only with certain Congress members.
Other nations that have public health coverage (government spending on private or public healthcare) provide their people with better care. The U.S. system is ranked 37th by the World Health Organization. The United States is 24th in life expectancy and 29th in reducing infant mortality. Infants who do not survive the U.S. system do not get a chance to enjoy the free market and glory in the absence of socialism.
A single-payer system would cover everyone at all times with no exceptions, allow completely free choice of doctors, invest in preventive care, allow patients and doctors to make their own decisions free of insurance company restrictions, reduce the 30 percent waste in the current system to the 3 percent overhead in Medicare, and create a net gain of 2.6 million jobs, $317 billion in business revenue, and $100 billion in wages. Single-payer is a real economic stimulus, something Washington has been looking for in all the wrong places. Imagine being able to make that argument. We can if we pass Congressman Weiner’s amendment.
Keep calling your reps and especially those on the House Energy & Commerce Committee (E&C)and tell them you want a single payer health care plan like Expanded and Improved Medicare for All - HR-676.
The congressional health care reform bill, H.R. 3200, now contains the Kucinich amendment thus keeping hope alive for a single-payer system.
Two weeks ago, Dennis Kucinich proposed an amendment to the healthcare reform bill that keeps the single-payer option alive. Kucinich's amendment will permit states the power to introduce single-payer health care systems.
Importantly, Kucinich's amendment drew bipartisan support by uniting proponents of single-payer health care with states rights advocates, and it is now the crucial part of the landmark bill that is due to be voted on by the end of this month.
For years, Dennis Kucinich has been a leading advocate of single-payer health care. John Conyers and Dennis Kucinch co-authored the single-payer bill, H.R. 676, a landmark piece of legislation that has 85 co-sponsors.
America is the sole western democracy that does not have a single-payer system. Some nations in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America have single-payer health care systems.
Federally sponsored single-payer health care might be off the table as Congress debates its health reform strategy this summer, but if some House lawmakers get their way, there would be nothing to prevent states from offering that model.
The House Education & Labor Committee voted today in favor of an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), eliminating legal barriers that might prevent states from adopting a Medicare-style system of health coverage.
The vote was 25 to 19, with support coming from an odd mix of liberal Democrats who support single-payer on its merits and conservative Republicans who want to preserve the rights of states to regulate themselves.
The vote is largely symbolic. Cash-strapped states likely won’t be able to rustle up the funding to cover all their residents without federal help, even if they did support the concept politically. Still, some health care groups are cheering the House vote nonetheless. The California Nurses Association, for example, issued a statement calling the vote “a historic moment for patients.”
If the provision were to become law, CNA argues, single-payer supporters could move their lobbying battle from Washington to state capitals.
Kucinich offered his own take on the significance of the push.
“By getting rid of the for-profit insurance companies,” the Ohio liberal said in a statement, “we can save $400 billion per year and provide coverage for all medically necessary services for everyone in the U.S.”
The amendment propels the growing single payer health care movement at the state level. There are at least ten states which have active single payer efforts in their legislatures. They are California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. The amendment mandates a single payer state will receive the right to waive the application of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which has in the past been used to nullify efforts to exjavascript:void(0)pand state or local government health care.
Under the Kucinich Amendment a state's application for a waiver from ERISA is granted automatically if the state has signed into law a single payer plan. With the amendment, for the first time, the state single payer health care option is shielded from an ERISA-based legal attack. Now that the underlying bill has been passed, as amended, by the full committee, we must make sure that Congress knows that we want the provision kept in the bill at final passage!
The state single payer option was one of five major amendments which I obtained support to get included in HR3200. One amendment brings into standard coverage for the first time complementary and alternative medicine, (integrative medicine). Another amendment drives down the cost of prescription drugs by ending pharmaceutical industry's sharp practices manipulating physician prescribing habits. An amendment stops the insurance industry from increasing premiums at the time when people are not permitted to change health plans; and finally an amendment imposing a requirement on insurance companies that they disclose the cost of advertising, marketing and executive compensation expenses (which generally divert money from patient care).
Please make sure you post this message on your social networking sites, ask all your friends to get involved and encourage everyone you know to sign up at www.Kucinich.us so we can build full momentum behind this movement for real health care.
Ah yes, I'm not surprised that psychiatrist David Gratzer testified this week that the Canadian healthcare system is just awful and how the poor deprived Canadians are simply pouring across the border to the Mayo Clinic to get specialized medical care.
Oddly enough, he forgot to mention that the Canadian government was not only sending them across the border, they were picking up the check. Yes, it's a system so awful, even Canadian conservatives defend it.
How gratifying it was, to see Dennis Kucinich lay the smackdown on this guy.
Dr. Gratzer has been a prominent freemarket advocate since his college days and has been riding that gravy train ever since. He is especially beloved of freemarket conservatives because of a piece he wrote two years ago that hit the wingnut sweet spot: "The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care."
He's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a "non-partisan" think tank funded by the usual partisan suspects:
The Manhattan Institute received $19,470,416 in grants from 1985-2005, from foundations such as the Koch Family Foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc., the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. The Manhattan Institute does not disclose its corporate funding, but the Capital Research Center listed its contributors as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Exxon Mobil, Chase Manhattan, Cigna, Sprint, Reliant Energy, Lincoln Financial Group Foundation, and Merrill Lynch.
So I think you can see where he's coming from. And really, what could make the right wing more excited than a Canadian doctor, criticizing the Canadian health care system?
You're probably not aware that for the past decade or so, right-wing American groups have been pouring a lot of money into Canada to undermine their health system. (Can you guess why? I knew you could! So American health care corporations can make a killing there, too!)
Dr. Gratzer's biggest thing is hammering away on wait times - even though the long wait times are mostly for non-urgent care. (You can read a rebuttal about many of the common myths here.) He also thinks the way to bring down the cost of prescription drugs is... to cut back on those pesky FDA requirements!
While serving as an adviser to Rudy Giuliani's campaign, he was called out by Factcheck.org and others for supplying a bogus cancer statistic Rudy used in an ad:
Rudy Giuliani's latest radio ad, which began airing in New Hampshire this week, draws a stark picture for anyone diagnosed with prostate cancer in England. "I had prostate cancer, five, six years ago," the Republican presidential candidate says in the ad. "My chance of surviving prostate cancer, and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine.”
"You would get an F in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins if you did that calculation," said Johns Hopkins professor Gerard Anderson, whose 2000 study "Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data" has been cited by Gratzer as a source for his statistics.... Five-year prostate cancer survival rates are higher in the United States than in Britain but, according to Howard Parnes of the National Cancer Institute, this is largely a statistical illusion.... Both Anderson and Parnes say that it is impossible, on the basis of the available data, to conclude that Americans have a significantly better chance of surviving prostate cancer than Britons.
The Office for National Statistics says that the five-year survival rate from prostate cancer in Britain is 74.4 per cent.
Mr Giuliani’s campaign did not give an immediate response. But a spokeswoman has previously insisted that he would continue to repeat the statistic and run the advertisement. She said the 44 per cent figure came from an article in a “highly respected intellectual journal” published by the right-wing Manhattan Institute, which he had read because “he is an intellectually engaged human being”.
The article’s author, David Gratzer, who is an adviser to Mr Giuliani’s campaign, has acknowledged to The New York Times that the statistic is seven years old and “crude”.
He said that it came from the Commonwealth Fund, which specialises in health policy issues. But the same organisation has since issued a statement accusing Dr Gratzer of misusing its research.
In fact, the five-year survival data cited in the City Journal article do not come from The Commonwealth Fund report, and cannot be calculated from that report. What the report, Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data, 2000 by Gerard F. Anderson and Peter S. Hussey of Johns Hopkins University, includes are data on prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates in the two countries.
Specifically, The Commonwealth Fund report features a chart showing that, in 1997, the incidence of prostate cancer in the U.S. was 136 per 100,000 males and the mortality rate (death rate) was 26 per 100,000 males. By comparison, in the U.K. the prostate cancer incidence was 49 per 100,000 and the death rate was 28 deaths per 100,000. (The prostate cancer incidence rate—which is the number of men diagnosed with the disease in a given year—in the U.S. is thought to be higher because prostate cancer screening is much more common in this country.)
The incidence rates simply report the number of men diagnosed with prostate cancer in a given year. Prostate cancer mortality rates report the number of men who died of the disease in a given year. Neither speaks to length of survival, and that figure can not be calculated using the others.
Yes, Dr. Gratzer (like most right-wing true believers) is prone to seeing what he wants to see, and then insisting it's the truth. How refreshing to see him treated as the willful nincompoop he is.
Since May 20 seven more US Representatives have signed on to HR 676, national single payer health care sponsored by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), bringing the total, including Conyers, to 83.
Congressman Conyers was able to get the first official single payer congressional hearing in decades. It took place in a House subcommittee on June 10, 2009.
The witnesses included Congressman Conyers, Chair of the Judiciary Committee and chief sponsor of HR 676; Marcia Angell MD, former Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine; Walter Tsou MD, National Board Advisor of PNHP; and Geri Jenkins, Co-President of the CNA/NNOC, plus David Gratzer of The Manhattan Institute who testified against single payer.
Don't miss the questioning by Representatives Phil Hare and Dennis Kucinich.
Congressman Conyers is requesting that there be single payer hearings in every House committee with jurisdiction over health care prior to deciding on health care reform so that the most popular plan can be fully heard and considered.
Call or fax Committee Chairmen Rangel and Waxman to urge them to hold hearings on single payer health care. If your congressperson is on either committee, you can encourage him or her to speak to the Chairmen in favor of single payer hearings.
