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Where’s Our Elizabeth Warren for Healthcare?
Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren has been rocking some pretty swanky boats of late as she presides over the Congressional TARP Oversight Committee (Troubled Assets Relief Program, you remember - it's the taxpayer-funded bail-out). Warren has been tough and clear and focused on the truth like we all need her to be.
We need her in so many areas of this nation's policy review and reform - I'll admit it, I'm jealous that she's not heading up an oversight panel on the healthcare reform effort. I cannot even imagine the difference in the debate if Warren were overseeing the healthcare industry bail-out now, as it takes shape in Congress. But instead we'll be waiting to sweep up the mess following the inevitable waste of taxpayer funds and national resources that is about to happen as Congress gets ready to force all Americans to buy health insurance and pay any tax load necessary to protect the big money industry interests.
It will be sold as the long-awaited health reform the nation has needed so badly. But nothing about it will resemble a national healthcare plan - it will be a national healthcare financing plan, and you and me will be footing the bill and praying we somehow can maneuver our way through the maze of rules and regulations and health industry requirements to get healthcare when we need it. The healthcare industry will say when we are allowed to get care and when we are not. The healthcare industry will say from whom we can seek care and from whom we cannot. The healthcare industry will set the rates paid for treatment and for premiums and they alone will decide who lives and who dies under their reform.
And finally, the healthcare industry will determine for the nation - for each and every one of us - what we will pay for the basic human right of healthcare through our taxes. Congress is simply putting the closing document s together for the industry.
Warren is an expert on consumer debt and bankruptcy, and she could surely take a gander at the plans being floated to keep the healthcare industry happy and see if those same plans will keep America's working and middle classes happy and healthy. I'd like to see her overview of what would happen to an average American family if someone got sick, couldn't work for a bit and needed care under the plans being offered by our Congress. I am betting we wouldn't like what she'd tell us.
So, knowing this has become strictly a financial and taxpayer-funded deal in the making, I want Warren to look things over and tell me a few things. Straight up. Clear and clean. She is smart enough to be defending us all surrounding the TARP deal - and asking the sticky wicket questions. Like, where is all the money going? And why are taxpayers being screwed over when it's our money bailing out these huge financial interests? I love when I hear this no-nonsense, down-to-earth woman speak truth to power. She speaks for me, and I like the sense of honor and justice she brings to the discourse. Better yet, she isn't funded by the special interests dictating what gets said.
Professor Warren could sure look at where the healthcare dollars are going to go too. Which CEOs are traveling in style while policy-holders and patients die or wait for care? Which hospitals and industry groups are enjoying huge tax breaks and write-offs while premium-paying, tax-paying Americans wonder if they can see a doctor or afford a prescription? Which healthcare industry pirates are holding which government leaders hostage and demanding the ransom of blind loyalty and national servitude? How are those insurance company profits doing in the current economic downturn? And how are their stockholders being told the companies will profit going forward?
We deserve these answers before we bail out the healthcare industry. We need an Elizabeth Warren asking the questions and reporting to some committee of Congress that will actually take sides in this healthcare reform effort - and the side they take needs to be ours. The taxpayers. The funders of the whole damned show.
We, the taxpayers of this nation, write all of the checks - the Congressional payroll and benefit checks, the tax subsidies, the bail-outs, the premiums, the co-pays and deductibles and therefore even the insurance company, pharmaceutical company and hospital corporation stockholder dividends. An estimated $2 trillion over the next 10 years to give the insurance industry everything they want in this system. $2 trillion. We ought to at least have an accurate accounting of what we're paying for, eh?
And then how about an accurate comparison of all the viable options before us, like a publicly funded, privately delivered plan? I'd like this before we just give away the farm.
But with this bail-out, we certainly deserve to know these answers up-front. Now. Before we commit to the programs worse for the nation than we can even fathom in this broken healthcare system. I'd like an opinion rendered by an oversight panel headed by someone very much like Professor Warren.
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15 Comments so far
Show AllShe was pretty good on The Daily Show last night...Elizabeth Warren had a nice simple explanation for why we need genuine economic and financial regulation.
Supporters of the 2003 Medicare pharma extortion legislation claim that the bill (which forbids the gov. from negotiating drug prices) was better than no bill.
I am afraid that the same excuse is being used to pass TARP legislation and will be used to create a healthcare system than criminalizes those who are unable or unwilling to ante up.
And that will be when ACLU should challenge it in court. Just because a bad law passes doesn't mean it will actually take effect. There is a process to resist immoral laws.
Sioux Rose
How can they force citizens to buy insurance when so many are going homeless and out of work? Massachusetts tried this and it has failed. The costs of "law enforcement" can also add to the tab.
I HATE The idea of being forced to buy insurance, especially for all the reasons Ms. Smith relates. I have known people who were told that they were not "covered" for certain medical problems while they paid all along. I am not up for this kind of extortion.
If we had tiers of service, it would make more sense. If a person keeps their weight down and doesn't smoke, they should pay a fee less than the person who is grossly overweight and indulges in unhealthy habits. I think government (single payer) should come half way, and citizens have a responsibility to also care for their bodies.
I had no idea as per the Mokhiber article that the AARP was such an obstacle to single payer. At least in that elucidating article we see the true enemies to health care reform. Maybe some of those can be tackled with?
Maybe some of those can be tackled with?
_________________________________________________
This reads like an incomplete sentence, so I suggest you follow "with" with "spiked clubs" or "grappling hooks".
· Yr Obd't Servant
>>If we had tiers of service, it would make more sense. If a person keeps their weight down and doesn't smoke, they should pay a fee less than the person who is grossly overweight and indulges in unhealthy habits. I think government (single payer) should come half way, and citizens have a responsibility to also care for their bodies.
I am not sure such an idea would work.
Your suggestion would have all manner of groups trying to extort more money based on life style and be much too intrusive. As example the IRS would demand to know your weight, what you are eating, whether or not you exercise enough.
Mr Johnson our agents report that last night you sat on the couch in front of the TV for 8 hours straight eating pretzels and hot dogs and that you also purchased 24 cans of beer at the store on 5th and oak. Therefore we are raising your tax rates.
I think it far simpler for upfront sin taxes to be levied coupled with incentives such as tax credits for entering excercise programs.
If you smoke or drink ir eat bags of potato chips you pay more in the way of taxes via the sin tax levied.
Frankly, just because you're living a healthy lifestyle- exercising, keeping your weight down, not smoking, etc.- doesn't guarantee you will avoid catastrophic illness. Genetics plays a key role, too.
We need to steer talk away from insurance. Forcing people to buy insurance, and helping poor people get on insurance plans, is not the answer. That still allows health insurance providers to profit while making decisions about what procedures and medications doctors can prescribe, and sticking you with high deductibles and copays while the corporations reap in big profits.
Sioux Rose
GW NORTH: There's room for compromises. I know a woman who is a chainsmoker, eats poorly, drinks and she's had government assistance. Two heart operations and no lifestyle changes. The government, i.e. us taxpayers, pick up the tab. I don't think it's right! And where I live if I have to venture into Wallmart I see people bigger than their cattle, and a LOT of them. It's sad that persons allow their bodies to grow to that extent, and I think it reflects an emptiness within that they seek neurotically to fill with food. I wish children were taught that their bodies are their temples, and to treat them with respect. But of course how would that message fly in a media world that pushes every manner of toxic substance at them 24/7?
Sounds of the circus midway
The ONLY way to control run-away H/C costs is to:
1] CAP premiums, deductables and copayments charged by the GREEDY, Corporate Insurance Companies; studies have shown that 1/3rd of Insurance Companies ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS are an absolute WASTE from INEFFICIENCY and 'padding' the salaries of [''indispensable''] CEOs, COOs, CFOs etc, etc - - the 'empty-suits' with fancy titles sitting around in countless, mindless, meaningless, and pointless ''Board Meetings'' all day long !!
2] CAP Medication / Drug costs by GREEDY, Corporate 'Big Pharma' like they do in other countries - - and Prez Obama, don't fall for their ''no money for research'' crap !!!!
3] CAP what hospitals charge for in-patient care and ''expensive'' procedures like MRIs etc, etc
And so, MY FELLOW AMERICANS, the name of the game is - - CAP, CAP. CAP, CAP !!!!!!!!
Agreed, any public health care scheme needs to start with reigning in costs through mandated caps.
I have never understood how USAns passively accept completely unjustifiable, criminally scandalous hospital fees.
My aging father has a toe amputated (gangrene from poor circulation and heart failure). The follow up rehab care for a couple weeks - a bed, meals plus a PT once a day - completely consumed a $95,000 benefit account.
Isn't the very idea of covering medical care with "insurance" a little absurd? Insurance is supposed to be for things one hopes never happen. But nearly everyone needs medical care - particularly as they age.
So, shouldn't medical care be considered simply part of the normal public infrastructure of a country, like transportation, water, and sewer? I suspect this his how the UK and most Europeans view it.
and considering "mandatory insurance", it is one thing when it is provided as a benefit of employment, but there is something distinctly ugly about a government physically forcing everyone to give their money to a profit-seeking capitalist corporation for a basic human need.
Where's Elizabeth Warren for TARP?
Yes she asks the tough questions, but the banks continue to reap obscene profits and they are in the process of ridding themselves of toxic assets at the expense of you and me ....
Yes, we bailed out the banks, but who will bail out the unemployed, home-less and infirm? Who will bail out the billions of malnourished who have been fucked by the US and the rest of the developed world for centuries?
The biggest financial rip-off in world history and nobody, except "Poor" Bernie Madoff has gone to jail. Jamie Diamond should be in for life, but he still gets millions in bonuses. And how many of you have paid off you Bank of America credit card that charges 34% per year? And they get free money from the government ...
We will cry poverty to protect the status quo in Health Care. We acted immediately to bail out banks. where is the immediate bailout of health care?
The government has done nothing to fix the biggest problem facing Americans.
Nothing..nothing..nothing
Yes, we can sit here and commiserate. We may gain pyrhic victories from time to time. Until Obama takes this seriously and commits the trillions needed to fix the system, we can sit here an bitch for all it's worth.
So, when will you join us in the streets and town halls and union halls and beyond to demand that our leaders listen? Many are doing so, many arer doing much more than mental work or sitting around hoping and complaining.
And if a true accounting of a sound fix was done -- including cost savings from administrative waste, advertising, excessive profit-taking and abuse along with boosts in other areas of the economy -- Obama would not have as difficult a financial argument as he has right now for expanding this disasterous system. He'd still have a political battle. But he knows those can be won.
Donna Smith, American SiCKO
Donna, it's good to see you are continuing to fight the good fight. It's interesting to note that you are looking for an Elizabeth Warren to speak up on this mess, when Elizabeth Warren herself spoke quite eloquently on this issue in the interview bonus feature on the "SiCKO" DVD. So let's see ...... how DO we get Elizabeth Warren to be in two places, two issues, two messes at once? Because you are absolutely right, she would be the best person to speak up for spanking the bad boys and girls in these and other corrupt industries. This is a woman of brilliance and clarity, and if anyone could sweep up two messes simultaneously, it would be her.