Mike Malloy

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Healthcare NOT Warfare–Support H.R. 676

The market has failed. It is not free and never will be in this area. Our healthcare delivery system is in need of urgent reform. As the profits of HMOs and the salaries of their CEOs increase each year, so do the number of Americans who are dying and falling ill because they lack healthcare coverage. BTW, that doesn’t trickle down; the facts and stats are in.

Below are some frightening facts:

* At least 18,000 Americans die each year from lack of healthcare coverage.

* 80%of Americans who lack healthcare coverage are families with one or more jobs.

* More than 50% of bankruptcies occur due to medical bills and half of those had private medical insurance at the time the illness/injury occurred.

* Of all nations, the US spends the most on healthcare, 14.6% of GDP.

* At 60%, the US has the highest rate of people who believe their health system should be reformed.

* The spiraling costs of healthcare are negatively impacting American businesses making it difficult to compete globally.

Interestingly, we’re already paying for a national healthcare system; we’re just not getting it. History will not look kindly upon elected officials who put corporate profits above the public health. And like I said, it doesn’t trickle down. More Americans are getting that this kind of economic theory with our health care system among everything else, is costing more money and lives as insurance companies continue to play around with their record of surpluses from premiums in the stock market and write off the losses on patients like the Sarkinsyan family. The way our health care system is set up is just like the Wall Street bailout the people of this country cannot afford this kind of treatment and they are fed up with it. It is criminal.

I urge you to co-sponsor HR 676, The United States National Healthcare Insurance Act, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers. The facts are in and any “market speak” about how “competition” will lower prices and provide better health care is false in every way, so I don’t want to hear it. And don’t give me the bit about the poor workers that will be laid off during this transition; HR 676 provides jobs for those workers; CEOs of Insurance companies and HMOs will have to take the hit and they should, because they have failed. I’m an active voter who is among the majority of Americans who want a national healthcare system.

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Overview of Policy on Health Care
By Marilyn Clement

We want a good health care system controlled by us, the patients, not the current multiple-payer chaos.

In fact, we specifically do not want the stockmarket and the insurance companies, HMO's and pharmaceutical companies in control of our health care. They have already harvested too much money. They reap windfall profits while we pay for all health care through premiums, taxes, co-pays, deductibles and out of pocket costs. And make no mistake, we all pay for this.

Our economy is under terrible strain, deeply in debt--with a business community now at a 15% disadvantage in the world market because of our exorbitant health care costs.

Now these companies, together with lobbyists and compliant legislators, are trying every possible legislative scheme to be sure they continue to be in the driver's seat of American medicine. They extract 15% from the overall economy now. Do they hope for 25%?

As a result, our economy suffers. More people are unable to purchase computers, buy shoes, go to the movies, pay for college, or even buy sufficient groceries and fuel because the health care bite is an increasing portion of their income.

Some of the dozens of plans being proposed by the lobbyists and their legislators: state or federal mandates requiring that every individual and every business must purchase "insurance;" high-deductible health savings accounts; minimal benefit, so-called "consumer-driven" plans; tax credits; tax increases for fewer benefits from the over-burdened budgets of the states; federal and state contributions to cover more children--or more people nearing retirement; more contributions for prescription drugs (using our Medicare money to pay for increased corporate profits); more tax money to try out health savings accounts and pay brokers to handle them; and government-supported risk pools for small businesses, as well as more money from co-pays, deductibles, and taxes to support all of this.

None of these schemes will work.

All of them are being promoted in order to keep HMO, drug and insurance company profits growing.

We taxpayers can't afford this irresponsibility any more. We must move to a non-profit national single-payer system such as an enhanced Medicare for all that will save money, save our economy, pay doctors a decent income, and help the ordinary taxpayer get health care.

We need one system with a combined risk pool that serves all of us--more health care for less money.

The infrastructure needs to be organized into a system of regional entities made up of patients, doctors, hospitals, nurses, advocates and other stake-holders using our money wisely and providing comprehensive care for all. But to make this work, the payment mechanism must by-pass insurance companies. They provide no health care and we don't really need them.

We, the taxpayers, want to be in the driver's seat of a real "patient-driven" health care system that belongs to all of us.

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Give him some time, they say of our new leader. OK. I'll give him some time. How about he gives me and my issues the same serious level of action with the same expediency he voted to give to Wall Street and the financial interests last fall? He was on the bail-out bandwagon then and he's on it now.

The reality is that real, working class Americans are suffering. Today. Tonight. Real moms and dads cannot make a safe and comfortable home for their children without decent jobs and wages – and certainly not without healthcare. Putting food on the table, driving the family car, signing the kids up for after school activities, buying the allergy meds… all of it costs real here-and-now cash that families do not have. And it hurts like hell to be patted on the head, showcased for our suffering and then wait for someone to actually give a damn in this whole mess we did not create.

I've lived in the place where the unemployed dwell way too many times in my life. I know the desperation and the anger. I know still the fear of getting sick, missing work, having deductibles and bills I cannot pay and just wanting to never again need a doctor. Yet, the President is still hell-bent on fixing the healthcare system by expanding the one that's already so broken that it makes me--he patient--scared to use it. I don't want a bigger and richer insurance industry. I want a better and safer healthcare system. After all, President Obama said that healthcare is a human right. OK. Prove it to me that you understand what a human right is--for me and for so many others hurting and sick today who may not survive long enough for you to pitch your plan to many more hand-selected audiences.

I am upset today. I am upset many days. I am always in the state of waiting for a better day--and working my ass off to make sure I can enjoy it when it arrives. I have been bruised and battered by this system that values my work and my life less that those I fund--like the Congress and the President (whether it's Obama or Bush). I just want to go to sleep unafraid one night soon. Just one night. Is that too much for an American who has worked for 42 years to ask for?

I'd like the media to start showing us a different contrast on the nightly news than that between the corporate crooks using our funds for their lavish parties and trips and our own roles as taxpayers and funders of their bonanza. I'd like to see a nightly comparison of how my chief executive lives and how Congress lives--the parties, the staff members, the healthcare, the housing--and how I live in fear.

Let's see what really matters in this nation… Do those who govern deserve the consent to do so from those of us being shafted due to their inaction? Come on, let's get honest and let's really get to work fixing this mess for all Americans, and let's stop using Americans who are suffering as examples to push forward an agenda that doesn't yet have them getting much help at all.

If this recovery you think you are crafting takes down millions of families before taking hold, the political ramifications will be mighty--we were asked to believe, and now you are asked to respond in kind. Believe in us--your citizens--enough to know we are the backbone of the recovery. Without our investment, you will lose this battle.

-Donna Smith

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Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm's brother, tapped for White House health care policy advisor spot. The brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a noted bioethicist, is advising the Obama administration on health care reform.

To not pick Dean would be insulting to him and to us, because he is singularly qualified. Also, why is Obama so eager to reach out to the right but not the left? How about 1 or 2 real progressives, like Dean, for a change.


A. Howard Dean has been a practicing physician.
B.Howard Dean has experience in medical and hospital politics
C. Howard Dean LED the DNC brilliantly in 2004 and 2008 advocating the opposite strategy from what Raum Emmanuel advocated.
D. Howard Dean is NOT the brother of Raum Emmanuel

I am disappointed.

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Don’t Know Who Offends Me More, Blitzer or Trump
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/18
by Donna Smith

WASHINGTON - One of Donald Trump's many business interests - his casino company in Atlantic City, NJ - is going belly-up. Bankrupt. Out-o-cash. But, he's assured us all during a lengthy segment on the CNN Wolf Blitzer show that he is more than OK. His other business interests have plenty of cash on hand, Trump told Blitzer. Huh?

Blitzer went on to solicit business advice for America from Trump so we all might benefit from Trump's significant business and real estate acumen. Go buy stock and property, Trump said, as Blitzer fell all over himself taking in the advice of the wizard. Wow.

That's sure as hell not what happened to me and my husband when we went broke. In fact, not one person in our lives now would think we knew "Limbaugh from Shinola" where anything financial is concerned anymore. You see, bankruptcy and U.S. bankruptcy law treat the rich and the well-lawyered folks much differently than the average American.

For me and for millions of other taxpaying poor dumb slobs of America, getting sick while covered by the defective product otherwise know as "health insurance" has meant the end of any hope for financial prosperity. And everyone from the arrogant, disgusting Donald Trumps of this land to the arrogant, disgusting political folks who protect them fails us all.

You see, if Trump's businesses were held to the same standard as we were when trouble came, he'd have to drain every available source of money, be harassed by creditors, be unable to borrow any more money from anyone in his life - and certainly not a bank - and then he should get garnished. Finally, he should be put out of his home for being such a failure in terms of money management. That would be how Trump would see the world if our laws treated him as it does the rest of us.

We got to keep nothing going into our bankruptcy and even had a hard time pulling together enough to pay the damn bankruptcy attorney - and now those bankruptcy laws have gotten even worse for the average American, but not for the Donald Trumps and the Wolf Blitzers of this land.

Better yet, big boys, how about we fix the healthcare system without pouring money into the broken, life-robbing for-profit health insurance companies? Because if we let the big boys worshiping at the throne of Trump-like financial giants, they'll craft a healthcare system that will leave more of us exposed financially and make them wealthier and wealthier.

How about we make the bankruptcy laws offer some protection for regular citizens who try really hard to follow the rules and then just cannot hang on? How about some justice in this mess of a financial system we built on the labor of good people like my husband while leaches like Donald Trump sucked more wealth from the system than we have ever even imagined?

My life has to be rebuilt, step by hard-working step, since our bankruptcy due to medical crisis. It will take me years to build out of it, and I will never be sought-after or respected for my money-management skills - though I am betting I kept the ship afloat through some pretty rough waters that Trump has never seen.

Justice? In our financial systems? Come on, let's at least stop glorifying people like Trump who have "gamed the system" more than a thousand average Americans ever could or would? And while we're at it, let's build a publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare system that doesn't let anyone go broke because they get sick. No more medical bankruptcy. None. Don't we at least have that much compassion and justice in our national soul?

I believe Congress can do what is right. I also believe President Obama can. We aren't all Donald Trump, but we all do vote and pay taxes and talk to one another about what the truth is and is not. This awful system of bankruptcy law is most certainly a violation of our civil rights when the sick and disabled are forced into many years living in purgatory and Donald Trump is celebrated on CNN. And we want some equal time and some equal justice under the bankruptcy laws of this land.

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14,000 Americans Lose Health Insurance Every Day
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/02/17/14000-coverage/

The final stimulus package, which the President is scheduled to sign later this afternoon, includes a fair number of health provisions. Yet it’s not a total victory for progressive health advocates. In the run-up to the passage last week of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, negotiators compromised on some key health components:

For instance, while the final compromise includes $87 billion in additional Medicaid funds to states over 27 months, a 65% subsidy to cover COBRA premiums for nine months, $19 billion for health information technology, $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research and $1 billion for prevention and wellness, negotiators considered Republican objections and stripped provisions that would have allowed workers “to stay on Cobra until they qualified for Medicare” or enroll in Medicaid if they can’t afford COBRA premiums “even with the new subsidies”.

Despite these concessions (and many others), only three Republicans voted for the stimulus bill. The rest stonewalled action to help the economy recover, even as millions of Americans were losing their jobs and health insurance. In fact, according to a forthcoming analysis by James Kvaal and Ben Furnas, as the unemployment rate grew by 0.8 points in December and January, nearly 100,000 people a week or 14,000 people a day lost their health coverage:



Obama reminded lawmakers, “This is not a game…These are your constituents. These are families you know and you care about.” Yet Republicans ignored those suffering from the burden of growing health care costs and limited access, and took their marching orders from conservative pundits who urged lawmakers to unite against the bill.

The ranks of the uninsured will grow as the recession persists, in spite of conservative obstructionism. As Jacob Hacker points out, the stimulus “won’t provide the cure. What we need is a new New Deal.”

Indeed, the reality of 14,000 Americans losing their health coverage daily suggests that the stimulus is no substitute for health reform. Congress must now turn the page to reforming the health care system, dragging conservatives kicking and screaming across the finish line.

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February 19, 2009

G. Richard Wagoner, Jr.
Chief Executive Office, General Motors
300 Renaissance Center
Mail Code 482-C39-B50
Detroit, MI 48265

Dear Mr. Wagoner:

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that the auto industry continues to be competitive, we write to engage you in a discussion about solutions. With a difficult economic outlook, plummeting auto sales, efforts already underway to cut costs relative to the competition, and health care costs rising faster than inflation, there has never been a more prudent time for GM to endorse H.R. 676, the United States National Health Care Act. We invite you to meet with us to discuss the matter in person.

You have convincingly articulated the effect of health care costs on GM’s competitiveness for years. Though the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW) has provided some short-term relief of health care costs by relinquishing financial responsibility for retiree care, the health care costs of current employees remain. Unless those costs are controlled, financial relief will be temporary.

As the nation’s largest provider of health care in the U.S., GM is likely to have captured the majority of the efficiencies that can be gained under a system with multiple, competing insurers. If true, systemic health care reform is the remedy of choice. There is a model for health care finance that has proven in several countries to control costs, provide health care to all, and increase the quality of care: national health insurance, which is embodied in H.R. 676.

One such success story can be found in Canada, where Canadian GM, Ford and Chrysler have publicly declared their support for Canada’s health care system specifically because of the competitive advantage it gives them over their American counterparts.

If H.R. 676 was implemented, the benefits to GM would not be limited to cost control. H.R. 676 would reduce liability insurance & workers compensation costs; eliminate the cost and inconvenience of running a health benefits bureaucracy; eliminate employee concerns about rising premiums and co-pays and conflicts with labor unions over benefit cuts; free up money for consumer spending; reduce absenteeism; and produce a healthier, more productive work force.

Momentum behind H.R. 676 is increasing by the day. It garnered 93 cosponsors in the 110th Congress including multiple Chairs of committees and subcommittees of jurisdiction. Fifty-nine percent of all physicians and about 60% of the American public now support a national health insurance plan like H.R. 676. The California State Assembly has twice passed such a bill in the last three years. National health insurance is supported by the deans of prominent medical schools, a former New England Journal of Medicine editor, a Nobel Laureate, a former Surgeon General, the US Conference of Mayors, the US Presbyterian Church, the League of Women Voters, Consumer’s Union, and the UAW.

Please consider meeting with us at your earliest convenience to discuss the issue further. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,


Dennis J. Kucinich
Member of Congress,

John Conyers, Jr.
Member of Congress,

Marcy Kaptur
Member of Congress

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More Than a Band-Aid for Health Care Reform, Single-Payer is the Solution
James Floyd, M.D.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-floyd-md/more-than-a-band-aid-for_b_165112.html



As the global economic crisis deepens, our broken health care system continues to neglect an increasing number of uninsured Americans, which will top 50 million this year. Tens of millions more who have health insurance still cannot afford the care they need. The resulting illness from inadequate health coverage will lead to missed days of work and lost jobs, making it harder for us to recover from the recession.
. . .

These measures are a prelude to Obama's proposal for comprehensive health care reform, which will likely boil down to increased regulation of the private insurance industry and subsidies for the poor and middle-class to purchase coverage. Some Democrats will fight to include a competing public plan. However, a weak public plan in our current system could easily become a dumping ground for patients with costly and unprofitable illness who are already shunned by private insurers.

There is a better solution that will expand health care access to all Americans and also help our struggling economy: eliminate private health insurance and create a single-payer system that automatically covers everyone under one national health insurance plan. A single-payer system would be funded by progressive income taxation, rather than unaffordable premiums or employer contributions that distort labor markets and leave workers tied to undesirable jobs. It would also address the fundamental problem of costs.

Private health insurers drive up health care spending with unnecessary overhead - high executive salaries, decreased cost-efficiency from smaller insured groups, and profit. They also increase administrative costs for hospitals and physicians who must deal with hundreds of different insurance plans. As a result, Americans spend 31 cents of every health care dollar on administrative costs, by far the highest rate in the world and much higher than the 17 cents spent in Canada.

Further driving up costs is the unrestricted use of expensive and unproven technology and medications. Such waste is best controlled with a centralized system of payment, as has been done successfully by the Veterans Health Administration. A single-payer system would eliminate enough excess spending to provide every American with the same high-quality coverage, without spending more money than we already do.

China recently announced plans to spend $123 billion to provide universal health care for its 1.3 billion citizens. Two decades after free-market reforms dismantled their system of non-profit rural-based care, drugs and visits with physicians are now unaffordable for most of the poor, who often incur crippling debts to pay for care. Chinese economists argue that providing government funding for universal coverage is important for productivity. Also, not having to worry about catastrophic health care costs encourages people to consume rather than save, providing a direct boost to the economy. These same arguments apply to the United States, where half of all personal bankruptcies and home foreclosures are caused by medical bills.

Many politicians agree that a single-payer system is the best way to eliminate wasteful spending and provide health care to every American, but argue that we cannot win a battle with the narrow interests that defend our broken system. To quote President Obama during his inauguration speech: "Stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply." The economic recession and hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate bailouts and stimulus spending have changed everything. It is finally time for us to move to a single-payer system.

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Health Care Industry in Talks to Shape Policy

By Robert Pear
The New York Times
February 19, 2009

Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.

The 20 people who regularly attend the meetings on Capitol Hill include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20health.html?ref=politics

What?! In this time of transparency and Change, when we have an open window of opportunity to finally fix our very sick health care system, we are reverting to a closed door process dominated by the most powerful lobbyists in the nation whose interests take precedence over the American patient?!

Robert Pear reports that they are inching toward a consensus, but read his description of the memorandum prepared by director of the health staff of Senator Kennedy’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. They have agreed on almost nothing. “…the sense of the room is that an individual obligation to purchase insurance should be part of reform…” is as close as they have come, and, even there, there is no agreement on what that coverage should be and on how you would enforce it.

At best, this process can end only with recommendations for a few tweaks in our system, just as the window slams shut and everyone walks out.

Have these people no decency?!

A few in the room do, but they are overpowered by those who… Well, you know. People can go broke and die for all they care, as long as we keep our public institutions out of their private businesses.

Stall and walk out. How’s that for CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN?

[Doc]

Time for Universal Care
By Pat LaMarche
Bangor Daily News
2/17/09

Very few people in the United States remember the Great Depression. And to our discredit, we don’t spend much media time hearing from those seniors. Most of us have to learn the details from history books or even novels on the subject.

Put “The Grapes of Wrath” back on your reading list. Even if you read it back in high school, you’ll find it eerily poignant reading it again. Especially the early chapters where Steinbeck goes into great detail discussing the powerful banks, how much more important they are than people and how much sway they have over government officials.

Oddly enough, most of the scary conditions in the book already were in place before our own great depression hit this past fall. Millions homeless, hundreds of thousands of them our military veterans, people dying for want of medical attention, smart kids unable to pursue an education because the price tag has outstripped their earning potential: we’ve got it all.

The one remarkable thing about our times is that our economic collapse may have brought us to the tipping point. Our society and our individual consciences have long tolerated a certain amount of tragedy when it happens to somebody else. But now that the rest of us — from fat cats to the middle class — are losing wealth, homes and health insurance, it appears that everyone is headed for the Dumpster. Consequently, our economy, our society and our government are finally prepared to make corrective changes, hoping to avoid universal calamity.

Perhaps you watched the president’s speech from Elkhart, Ind., on Feb. 9.

I have to watch; it’s my job. And anyway, it’s like a car wreck — except that this mess we’re in right now was no accident. We picked a fight halfway around the world, hired no-bid contractors with money we borrowed from often unfriendly foreign countries and removed the safeguards from our financial system. All so we could lull ourselves into believing that we would become a more flourishing and robust nation by doing so.

With unrighteous hands we cracked the whip on “terrorism” and now the lash has recoiled and struck us in the back. And that backlash hurts.

The president told us that 598,000 U.S. jobs were lost in January. All these newly unemployed workers won’t create homelessness or food insecurity or health care shortages in the U.S. They’ll just swell the ranks of the millions already experiencing those nightmares.

That’s when the tipping point appears. And it’s the tipping point that the folks in charge want to avoid, no matter what.

So the president stood in Elkhart and enumerated the many ways the stimulus money would stave off further cataclysm, including millions and millions of dollars to pay COBRA bridge health insurance premiums for the workers who recently lost their jobs.

U.S. taxpayers, many of them from the same pool as the nearly 50 million Americans currently without health insurance, will be borrowing money from their grandchildren — after first indebting them to China — to pay insurance premiums.

And it’s not because a half-million more people without health insurance matter one fig when put up against 100 times that many who already live in fear of illness or injury.

And it’s not that the insurance companies and drug companies and all the rest of the for-profit medical establishment don’t want to lose the revenue the recently laid-off generated as workers.

And it’s not even that insurance companies who sell COBRA make so many campaign contributions that they can pretty much tell Congress what to do.

No, it’s because our bloated, costly exclusionary and at times deadly health care financing system is teetering at the brink and may tip over.

It’s because this year, as he has for many years, Michigan Rep. John Conyers has introduced HR 676, which already has garnered nearly 50 co-sponsors — a bill that restructures our health care system much like the rest of the civilized world and guarantees health care for all Americans.

And it’s because poll after poll, like the October 2008 ABC News poll, shows that two-thirds of Americans support changing our current system to a universal system.

Call Congress and the White House. Tell them to pass HR 676. The tipping point has come.

Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of “Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States.” She may be reached at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.

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Our current national health care system is simple:

Don't get sick!

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Single-Payer National Health Insurance

Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private.

Currently, the U.S. health care system is outrageously expensive, yet inadequate. Despite spending more than twice as much as the rest of the industrialized nations ($7,129 per capita), the United States performs poorly in comparison on major health indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and immunization rates. Moreover, the other advanced nations provide comprehensive coverage to their entire populations, while the U.S. leaves 47 million completely uninsured and millions more inadequately covered.

The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) of Americans’ health dollars.

Single-payer financing is the only way to recapture this wasted money. The potential savings on paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying any more than we already do.

Under a single-payer system, all Americans would be covered for all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, long-term care, mental health, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital, and doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.

Physicians would be paid fee-for-service according to a negotiated formulary or receive salary from a hospital or nonprofit HMO / group practice. Hospitals would receive a global budget for operating expenses. Health facilities and expensive equipment purchases would be managed by regional health planning boards.

A single-payer system would be financed by eliminating private insurers and recapturing their administrative waste. Modest new taxes would replace premiums and out-of-pocket payments currently paid by individuals and business. Costs would be controlled through negotiated fees, global budgeting and bulk purchasing.

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Can US Achieve Meaningful Healthcare Reform Within For-Profit System?

(Excerpts)

We host a debate between Dr. David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program and Len Nichols of the New America Foundation.

Juan Gonzalez: ...if these private insurance companies will remain involved in the healthcare — in healthcare insurance in the future, how can those costs be controlled?

Len Nichols: ...a lot of the administrative costs that David talked about, which is borne by the providers, I agree completely, they’re wasting a lot of energy now satisfying a lot of different kinds of claims forms. You could have a common claims form required by the government. You would get the industry to agree on what it is or tell them you’re going to impose one. They would agree in about an hour. And then you could have very much more efficient ways of billing and collecting, so that the extra costs that we’re spending now could be taken out of the system by rules and regulations that would make their self-interest pursue our social interest.

Dr. David Himmelstein: ...Len Nichols claims all we need is a common billing form for hospitals. We already have that. It’s called UB82. And we have computerized virtually all hospital billing. It hasn’t saved a nickel. It’s because the insurance companies aren’t actually interested in saving money on administration. That’s where they make their dime. And no amount of government regulation is going to change their behavior, as long as they’re still in the game.

Amy Goodman: Len Nichols, we’re talking nationalizing banks. Why not nationalize health insurance? Why not nationalize healthcare in this country?

Len Nichols: You know, it certainly is tempting, and at a certain level, you’re right. The atmosphere is one where it seems like all things are possible. But I would just say the American people, by and large, are not ready for government-run healthcare. Look at the way people can be scared by one-size-fits-all kinds of rhetoric. ...but I think the American people are nowhere near ready to have the government take over their healthcare, because that set of decisions about how you treat your illness, etc., is so private and so emotional. They do want choice. They want to believe in their doctor, and they do, in large part, believe in their individual doctor.

Amy Goodman: So, Dr. Himmelstein, respond to that. It’s not practical right now. It’s not achievable.

Dr. David Himmelstein: Well, yeah. I mean, people want choice. They want to be able to choose their doctor, and they want to be able to choose their hospital. They want to choose their care. And that’s what they can’t do at this point. We’re saying every American should be able to go to any doctor, any hospital in the country, and have a completely free choice. And under the private insurance system, they don’t have that.

Juan Gonzalez: ...I’d also like to throw in a little personal experience that I’ve had recently. I just had a minor shoulder surgery a few weeks ago. And I have to tell you, because I am insured through my company, and I have to tell you the amount of time that I have had to spend on the phone with my employer, with the health insurer, with the hospital, the various bills from both the hospital, the surgeon, the laboratories, the amount of time that I’ve had to spend to try to maneuver through this incredibly complex system — and is it in network or out of network? And I have to imagine that millions and millions of Americans every day are going through the same procedure, even those who have insurance, enormous amounts of time and energy and frustration spent trying to maneuver through the system.

Len Nichols: Sir, I agree. I’ve shared some of that same frustration in my own life, as have we all. And I would agree, our system is a mess. ...Today, insurers make money by excluding the sick and by making it hard for people to get the carrier talking about it. I agree that’s what they’re doing. It’s about that. But if you change the rules and you say, “Look, we’re going to publish patient satisfaction. We’re going to publish what things cost. We’re going to publish what it would cost to be covered by you,” and make all that very clear, and you make — essentially you give people choices among them, they will compete on the right dimensions, because that’s the way they’ll make money.

Amy Goodman: Len Nichols, we started with you. Fifteen seconds, Dr. Himmelstein, we’ll end with you.

Dr. David Himmelstein: Well, we need single-payer national health insurance. If private insurance could solve this problem, I’d be all for it. Unfortunately, it can’t. My patients desperately need it. Our nation desperately needs it. There are things we say are not appropriate for the market, like the fire department and the police department. Medical care ought to be one of those.

Amy Goodman: We’ll leave it there. Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard University, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. And Len Nichols, director of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation.

For the full 18 minute video, audio, and transcript:
http://i4.democracynow.org/2009/2/27/can_us_achieve_meaningful_health_care

[Doc]

There are troubling parallels between Kennedy’s secret meetings and the meetings of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform chaired by Hillary Clinton in 1993. Although special interests were officially excluded from the Clinton task force, documents obtained through a lawsuit filed by the National Legal and Policy Center revealed that more than 300 individuals who participated in task force working groups came from the private sector, and included representatives of the insurance industry and small business groups. In addition, a report from the Center for Public Integrity revealed that around the time of the task force, 80 former government officials — including 12 former members of Congress — had gone through the “revolving door” to work for health care interests, many of whom actively lobbied on health care reform.

Fast-forward to 2009 and former-Senator Tom Daschle’s failed appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The official story focused on his failure to pay his taxes, but what angered most health care reform activists most was his previously undisclosed work as a health insurance lobbyist.

In post-mortems on the Clinton health care reform effort, pundits concluded that it was overly ambitious and too complicated to garner the necessary public support. They also recognized the impact of the highly successful lobbying effort by the health insurance industry — the “Harry and Louise” television ads — and the anemic response from the White House. Perhaps what doomed the Clinton effort to failure at an early stage was the inclusion of the very interests that must be fought to guarantee comprehensive and universal coverage to every American.

Yesterday, President Obama released a budget proposal that includes $634 billion to fund health care reform, days before a White House summit on health care reform begins. Like the Kennedy meetings, this summit currently does not include advocates for single-payer but is well-represented by lobbyists for the insurance industry and other groups who oppose fundamental reform.

President Obama, we urge you not to make the same mistake that the Clintons made. Please don’t exclude from the discussion the people who are your grassroots support for real change. Although people in your meetings may be telling you otherwise, there is tremendous support throughout the country for a single-payer system. Give us a seat at the table if you truly want to build consensus around health care reform.

[Doc]

Subsidizing COBRA Is Not Enough--We Need Single Payer


Andrew Coates MD

COBRA is a law that allows you to keep your employer-sponsored health insurance for 18 months if you lose or change jobs. To do so, you have to pay 102% of the cost (the full premium plus a 2% surcharge).

The stimulus package just passed provides for laid off workers, who had health insurance on the job, to receive a subsidy of 65% of the health insurance premium for up to nine months.

According to a report by FamiliesUSA, the national average unemployment benefit is $1,278 monthly. Under COBRA, national family coverage averages $1,069 per month. So laid off workers, in order to keep health insurance for their families, will have to pay more than $375 a month but after nine months will have to come up with the full $1,069.

To keep family coverage under COBRA, with the subsidy, it will cost people who are laid off, on average, almost one-third of every unemployment check. This money will go to a health insurance company, instead of food, housing and school expenses for the family.

A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund reported that only 9% of unemployed workers continued health insurance under COBRA. The 65% subsidy should allow some to consider keeping health insurance under COBRA, where before it would have been just unthinkable. This can help those with chronic illnesses, or those with very sick family members, or where a spouse continues working.

But while the subsidy makes private health insurance through COBRA slightly more affordable for the unemployed, purchasing it remains a Faustian bargain. What is there in asking a person who has just lost their job to give almost a third of each unemployment check to the private insurance industry? And what will they do after nine months have come and gone?

Despite the good intentions in Congress and the White House, subsidized COBRA payments are not feasible for the unemployed — and terrible policy for the nation. There is no reason why Congress should shovel our money into an industry that pits its profits against our health, with a program that holds almost one-third of our limited unemployment check hostage and only lasts nine months.

If the leaders of this nation wanted to provide health security for all they would enact a single-payer mechanism to finance health care.

Single payer would mean that no one would ever be without health care. Not first time job seekers, not workers changing jobs, not laid off or striking workers. Everyone would be covered.

A single payer health program would save at least $400 billion in health spending per year, and create millions of new jobs. It would mean enormous savings for employers (including federal, state and local governments as well as schools and not-for-profit agencies) who now pay private health insurance premiums, and allow unions to get back to bargaining for wages and working conditions instead fighting over reduced benefit levels, bigger premiums, more co-pays and deductibles. Everyone would be relieved from the worry about health coverage that now comes with the loss of a job.

Now that would be a stimulus! We really need single payer national health care.

[greg]

Well Stated.



_________________
"I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing" Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826

[Doc]

Howard Dean: Real Health Reform ‘Rises And Falls On Whether The Public Is Allowed To Choose Medicare’

Today, during an appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball, former Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT) said that a public insurance option is essential to any health reform effort:

If Barack Obama’s bill gets changed to exclude the public entities, it is not health insurance reform…it rises and falls on whether the public is allowed to choose Medicare if they’re under 65 or not. If they are allowed to choose Medicare as an option, this bill will be real health care reform. If they’re not, we will be back fighting about it for another 20 years before somebody tries again.

Watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-El_acTyN8&eurl=http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/02/24/dean-public-option/


Progressives argue that regulated competition between a public and private health insurance plans would lower health care costs and improve quality. In other words, allowing patients the choice of a private plan or a public plan would re-invigorate real market competition. Private and public plans would have to deliver the highest quality at the lowest possible cost to attract patients.

This is certainly a familiar argument, but Dean is going one step further. He’s suggesting that a public option is a key progressive value, on par with universality and affordability of coverage. President Obama is expected to lay out his health care principles during tonight’s address. We’ll have to see if the President agrees with the Governor.