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TechnoratiBlowing Our Chance for Real Health Care Reform
If you want to fix the disaster that is called the American healthcare system, the first thing to do is to clearly point out what its major failings are, and there are two of these.
The first is cost. America is one of the most expensive places, or possibly the most expensive place, in the world to get sick or injured. The corollary of that is that it is one of the best places to make a killing if you are in the medical business, whether as a doctor, a hospital company, a pharmaceutical firm or a nursing home owner.
The second is access. One in six Americans—a total of 50 million people at latest count—have no way to pay for that care. Too young for Medicare, too “well off” for Medicaid, but too poor to buy private health insurance or too sick to be admitted into a plan, or employed by a company that doesn’t provide health benefits, these people get no medical care until they get so sick that they are brought into a hospital emergency room where they get treated (often too late) at public expense, or at the hospital’s expense, with the cost shifted onto taxpayers or onto insured patients’ premiums.
Any reform of this atrocious “system” must address these two major failings or it is no reform at all.
And that’s where all the various versions of Obamacare fall flat.
Simply put, you cannot solve either of these problems by leaving the payment system for medical care in the hands of the private insurance industry, since the whole paradigm of insurance is to make money by keeping high-risk people out of the insured pool, and by keeping reimbursements and coverage for premium payers as low as possible.
Having a so-called “public option” plan working in competition with private insurance plans will not solve this problem. Either the public option will become like the private options—trimming benefits and rejecting some applicants—or it will become a dumping ground for all the high-cost, high-risk people that the private sector insurance industry doesn’t want. At that point, the public plan will become a huge cost burden on the taxpayer, who will begin demanding that it cut back in the benefits it provides, taking us right back to where we started.
The fact that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are both raising the issue of the high cost of health care “reform,” and are talking about ways to raise revenues to pay for it tells us all we need to know about the alleged “reform” schemes they are contemplating. They are doomed and, even if implemented, will not work.
Real reform of the American health care system would not cost money. It would save money.
There is a level of dishonesty in what passes for the debate over health care “reform” in both Congress and the media that is stunning in its brazenness and/or venality. Of course real reform would cost more in government spending. But that is because real reform would remove the cost of medical care from both employers and from workers (who over the last 20 years have been shouldering an increasing share of their own medical care). And that shift would mean more profits for US companies, which would free up more money for wages, and it would mean less money deducted from paychecks, meaning higher incomes for workers.
If President Obama had any political courage at all, he’d simply get on TV and say this: I will create a plan that will cover everyone, lift the burden of paying for health care from individuals and employers, and have the government pay for it all. You the taxpayer will pay for this plan with higher taxes, but you will no longer have any significant medical bills, you will no longer have health insurance premiums deducted from your paycheck, your employer will no longer be paying for employee medical coverage, and you will never have to worry about losing health benefits again, even if you are laid off. (Incidentally, eliminating employer-funded health insurance would go a long way towards allowing workers to fight to have unions, and to strike for contracts, by ending the threat that they would lose their benefits.)
Of course, to do that the president would have to be talking about what is variously known as national health care or a single-payer plan, in which the government is the insurer of health care for all.
This option isn’t even being discussed in this so-called debate. As I’ve written earlier, even though there is an excellent single-payer system in place that has been running for a third of a century just to the north in Canada—a system where patients have absolute freedom to choose their doctor, get instant access to a hospital and to expert specialist care in emergencies, and have a healthier society by every statistical measure—all at a fraction of the staggering cost of healthcare in the US, not one Canadian expert working in that system has been invited down to discuss its workings with the White House or with members of Congress.
There has been a lot of negative propaganda spread about Canada’s single-payer system, by right-wing, business-funded “no-think” tanks, and by medical industry lobbies from the American Medical Assn. to the pharmaceutical industry, but no government committee or agency has bothered, or dared, to bring in Canadian experts to respond to and debunk that propaganda. The corporate liars talk about waiting lists and lack of access to CAT-scan or MRI machines. But all we really need to know about the Canadian, and other similar single-payer systems, is that nowhere that they have been instituted have they been later terminated, even when, as in Canada, right-wing governments have been elected to power. The public, whether in Canada, or France, or England, or Taiwan or elsewhere, loves their public health insurance system, whatever flaws or problems with underfunding those systems may have at certain times. Trying ot eliminate such systems would be political suicide for a conservative government, as even arch-free-marketer British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who never met a government activity that she didn’t want to privatize, learned.
Right now, with half of all Americans reportedly fearing that they could lose their jobs, and with one in five Americans reportedly either unemployed, or involuntarily working part-time, we have a situation where a majority of Americans either have no health insurance, have lost their health insurance, or are in danger of losing their employer-funded health insurance. It is a unique moment when a bold president and Congress could act to end private health insurance and establish a public single-payer insurance plan to insure and provide access to affordable medical care to all Americans.
Instead of this, we are being offered half measures or no measures at all by leaders who are shamelessly in hock to the health care industry or who are afraid of its power.
17 years ago, the Clintons had a similar opportunity to grab the health care industry by the neck, strangle it, and produce a single-payer alternative. They blew that chance by trying to keep the health care greed-heads happy. Now, almost a generation later, we have another shot at it, and Obama and his Democratic Congress are doing the same thing again. There is a strong likelihood that they will fail, like the Clintons before them. If they succeed in coming up with some kind of hybrid public-private Frankenstein of a system that includes a public insurance option, it will simply delay the inevitable disaster, as medical costs, already 20 percent of GDP—the highest share of any economy in the world—continue to soar, and as the cost of the public plan, which will inevitably become a dumping ground for high-cost patients, becomes politically untenable. In the end, we will have even more expensive and inaccessible healthcare than we have today.
It doesn’t have to be this way, but only if Americans rip their eyes away from their crisp new digital-image TV screens and start demanding real health care reform will we get honest reform. A good place to begin would be to start writing and phoning your local media outlets to ask why they are not reporting on single-payer, and in particular on the single-payer bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), which is being silently blocked and killed by his colleagues in the Democratic congressional leadership and by the White House. A good place to begin would also be to start calling your elected representatives to demand that they support Rep. Conyers’ single-payer bill.
94 Comments so far
Show AllI've always been suspicious of MoveOn. Just a little too f*ckin slick.
Maybe it's about time to re-read Norman Mailer's "Advertisements for Myself," written in the Sixties, before the Age of Tweet. Back when every once in awhile you had to buy a typewriter ribbon. (I still have my mother's old Remington, maybe not yet a museum piece, given how well the country is being governed these days!)
Today, boy is it hard to find a typewriter ribbon. Another decade of this sh*t and we will be (re-)learning how to do cave paintings. On that first pass, it took a few hundred thousand years. Today, most computers can't read 3-1/2-inch floppy disks, which were The Thing a mere decade ago...
Are we forgetting the Foundations of Civilization, again? Just how defective are we as a species? For it is certain that we are defective.
"The World: Too Big To Fail, Not Too Big To Save."
(copyright at this web site, 061709 by ME...)
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Move-On is a front for the Democratic Party's sclerotic leadership. It has many well-meaning members, but its own leaders are careful not to respond to the organization's members, who clearly want Move-On to be solidly anti-war (it is not) and solidly pro-single payer (it's not).
DAve Lindorff
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
Why is Moveon.org quiet about Single Payer?
They seem to be a tool of the Democratic Party which is simply a tool of industry.
I will not vote for a politician who does not support single payer. That's why I've had to vote Green for the past 18 years.
Nice analysis.
I do see one optimistic possibility in a public option, though I acknowledge that it is pretty problematic.
Were enough insurance clients to leave the insurance companies, we could wound the lobbies. They will probably take quite a hit if there's a public option, since large companies will use it to reduce benefits to workers.
Public solidarity will be far from complete, but it likely will not have to be.
bardamu--
Please specify what you mean by "public option." How do you imagine that it would operate?
Thanks.
It's all being kept deliberately vague, but the basic idea is that the government would operate one health insurance plan that people (and companies? that's never been made clear), could buy into. Theoretically, it would operate in competition with the private insurance industry, to provide real competition on rates and coverage, but the industry is already lobbying heavily to make sure that it can't really compete--they want to keep benefits low and premiums high, and to limit access.
Given the industry's already successful lobbying to keep single payer out of the discussion altogether, you can bet that they will make the "public option" a loser from the start.
Dave Lindorff
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
30 years ago I was camping in Canada with a friend who became ill and was having a rough time of it. We made our way to a hospital. It was about 9:30 at night. She received first rate treatment in the Emergency Room as soon as we walked in, no questions asked, no fuss over both of us being Americans and not Canadians. The only fuss came as I forced the staff to tell me what the cost of treatment was so I could write them a check. They didn't want to take my money, probably because they didn't know how to log the contribution in. I was just thankful someone was willing to take care of my friend.
Up until January of this year I was paying for a so-called health insurance policy with a $5,000 annual deductable out of my own pocket. When the letter arrived stating my premium was going to go up by an additional 15% "So they could continue providing me with the continued level of services I had been receiving . . ." (even though I was never able to afford to see a doctor because I didn't have enough cash to pay him out of my own shallow pocket anyway) I decided it was more important to pay my rent that month and dropped the policy.
Health care in this country is a sick joke -- a scam that allows vampires to feed off the suffering of the weak.
We need to revoke the health care benefits Congress receives. They don't deserve it.
Thanks, Dan, for putting together this article that covers the issue better than any I've seen elsewhere.
Sioux Rose
Before I even read the comments, I wish to say, Dave Lindorff, in my view, this is the BEST, most concise and important article that you have ever written. I appreciate its honesty and clarity, and while you're preaching to the choir on C.D. your points I hope will extend beyond this forum. I will call the local papers, that's an excellent strategy!
A second thought occured to me: the pervasiveness of the "Disaster Capitalism" model and its influence over American culture and what THAT will mean if the government ever sees fit to pick up the medical/costs tab. I am speaking about lax gun laws (and the hundreds injured each year from stray or directed bullets), and road rage, sugar and artificial fillers added to food, tobacco, alcohol, and lots of big pharma's cocktails (not pulled from the market until enough people suffer). My point? That if the government ever did take on single payer and find itself the entity paying, perhaps we'd see more muscle directed at those things that undermine health and the well-being of citizens. Currently with Mammon (the naked profit motive) and Mars (violence in so many forms) calling the shots, no one gives a darn about THESE costs. If as a result of the insurance lottery you find yourself ACTUALLY covered for whatever may ail you, then you're in luck; but screw everyone else. And the fact that so many chemicals are let loose without any consideration for their net effect on immune system dysfunctions, maybe if there was single payer, the EPA might actually be instructed (and funded!) to do its job. In short, Single payer would represent a major obstacle to the tenets of Disaster Capitalism. All the more reason to get it ON the table!
Yes, it's quite obvious that single payer is the only solution. Medicine as a capitalist enterprise has failed the nation.
So, I agree with Dave Lindorff there. His other axiom, which we saw during the election, is you have no choice but to vote for the Democrats, since third parties have no chance.
Unfortunately, the people agreed with Lindorff. They voted for the Dems in droves. The Green Party, which supports single payer healthcare, got maybe two percent of the vote.
So, now people are faced with a rear-guard action trying to stave off a fake reform that likely will doom any single-payer option in the future. Hillary Clinton similarly botched healthcare reform by keeping insurance companies in the game. It only emboldened them.
Clearly, this strategy isn't working. Why exhort people to get involved under these circumstances? The interests of the people aren't supported by Republicans, but they equally are not supported by Democrats. The Obama megalomania we see daily doesn't sound like some sort of FDR kind of thing - it's more like Herbert Hoover. Nothing could be clearer at this moment.
So, there's a lesson here. It's better to lose but fight for what you want than to spend all of your time warding off bad decisions by parties that do not represent your interests. This seems like common sense. I have never successfully lobbied my Congressional representatives on issues I care about. It doesn't matter whether I write letters personally or via an organized campaign. It hasn't mattered whether the Dems or Repugs are in power. We get pretty much the same policies every time with the duopoly.
Dave Lindorff is flat wrong when he writes:
"If President Obama had any political courage at all, he’d simply get on TV and say this: I will create a plan that will cover everyone, lift the burden of paying for health care from individuals and employers, and have the government pay for it all."
Once again, Dave, "courage" has nothing to do with it. Face the facts - it's ideology. The Democratic Party serves corporate interests. It can't be reformed or turned by the people's demands. How many defeats under the hands of the Democrats will the people endure? Until the people change their minds and stop voting for them, we'll see many more losses to come.
-TIA
The problem is simple. "We the people", are no longer the owners of America. The top 5% own America and it's so called Gov't. The rest of us are slowly being reduced to nothing more then serfs on "Maggie's farm." Our political system is as dysfunctional as our so called medical system. They mirror each other. We are a two class system once again after a brief period with a middle class. The Reagan Reaction set out 30 yrs. ago to end the tyranny of the middle class over the aspirations of the aristocracy and guess what? They won.
They won the initial battles, skirmishes,... I have a feeling there's more to come.It's currently a covert war against the common man but by reveling in their arrogance, THEY are exposing themselves to one and all in glaring daylight now. Slave revolts become inevitable. We need to get into the habit of thinking long term goals like the PTB. I just hope the war they've inaugarated doesn't wipe away the Earth in the meantime. G~d knows they're doing as much as they can to that end, poor flora and fauna.
I agree and am not a supporter of the so-called "public option." I think it will end up being hijacked by the insurance industry and used for its own purposes--namely to allow these companies to dump people into it that they don't want to have to cover. And the danger then is that it will be presented as yet another failed example of "the government trying to run something."
Dave
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
I think you have nailed it!
Keep up the good work!
Dear Mr. Lindorff
Though I am occasionally 180 from you (of course when you are wrong) (lol), in this instance you are so correct in the need for Single Payer, but I am afraid that if they get anything through it will prop up the system for longer than you suggest.
What they are proposing will bring a cascade of tax money into Washington.
This article nails it.
The main point Mr. Lindorff makes is that the US health system becomes less functional and more destructive to physical health and economic health every year, and anything that Obama is talking about will not only not change that, but may very well increase the rate of disintegration.
I would add that it obviously should not be forgotten that the US health care system is so expensive and so bad that it is also helping to destroy the economy as a whole. Ironically, this process is very much like how a tumor eventually destroys the whole body.
The only way to single payer that I see is simply to do nothing until the system collapses even more so than now, at which time single payer will be the only possible option, which of course it is in the long term.
Lindorff thinks that if the "public option" becomes real along with a mandate, that the system will collapse at the same rate or more quickly. So although Lindorff thinks that the reform would be nothing other than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, I personally fear that this "reform" would delay the collapse of the system by, I don't know exactly, maybe 25 years. (Maybe I'm too much a pessimist!)
Predicting the timing of collapses is difficult, and I do not know, even to the nearest decade, when the system, as it is now, will be considered collapsed completely, just as I was unable to chronologically accurately predict the timing of the economics collapse, although I did get it right to the nearest 30-40 years!
In the meantime, should Obama's reform pass, there would be a continuation of untold health and economics miseries for everyone other than, of course, the wealthy. Due to the "mandate," the misery would spread to those who have tried to opt out of the disaster of a system.
Maybe, possibly, a full scale public option would have really helped 30-40 years ago when costs were still only high instead of off the deep end. But Obama is a generation too late. Today, health care goods and services costs are far too high for anything like this to work substantially. Moreover, the insurance company lobbyists will prevent a full scale public option from coming into existence.
So it would be better that nothing be implemented at all until the system is so collapsed that everyone except for the huge insurance companies has come to their senses and is ready to go with single payer.
Iremaine,
Totally disagree with your analysis, and the point of collapse is much sooner than 25 years. I've heard health experts say the system will implode in less than a decade.
Your analysis suggests that as things worsen, there will be more pressure brought to bear on our legislature to move left and provide healthcare for the general population. It fails to recognize that there are many who support the current system, that our Congress is at a once in a lifetime crossroads where the Democrats actually run both houses and the presidency, and that the powers that control the debate (the media, the health care industry, the AMA) will still be in power in the future and even more concerned with protecting their status and bottom line as the general population becomes poorer.
From a long term perspective, it is clear that since the Vietnam War and the Reagan error, the effects of government policy have been to strip the population of their financial wherewithal. Think about immigration, minimum wage, healthcare, anti-union bias, war spending - anything that would help the general worker has been attacked and disparaged.
We are seeing the Brazilianization of our economy (something I have said was happening even during Reagan's terms - when the industrial rust belt became a tragic reality). Over half of our workforce will be unemployed or destitute in the next two decades. The upper 1% represented by our Congress will only get stronger in the future. The time to act is now.
I don't think you really disagree.
I said I didn't know when the current system will be considered collapsed by a big majority. 25 years is a very rough estimate of the additional years before the system is considered collapsed (above the baseline of current policy) if the public option and the mandate are enacted, not a prediction for how long the realization of collapse takes if they are not enacted.
And I think you don't understand what a collapse means here. And this gives me a chance to add something, the one thing I didn't go back and add in before...
Whether the system is considered collapsed in 10 years or 25 years or 40 years is not ultimately relevant; ultimately, there will either be single payer or there will be, like some countries in the hardcore 3rd World, essentially no system at all except for the wealthy. The fact that there is not one single reputable country which doesn't think single payer is necessary is something to keep in mind here: that many countries can not be wrong.
The number of uninsured in the US is roughly 50 million right now; estimates of the number of seriously underinsured range up to another 50 million. The entire population is 306 million. Now here is one of my main points restated: regardless of exactly how many years it takes until the great majority (most everyone other than the insurance companies and many die hard right wingers) agree that single payer is necessary, it is clear that the system is in an advanced state of collapse right now as we speak. Over about 40 years of extreme inflation, and especially now in this current economic debacle, costs have become a truly crushing burden.
Therefore, the number of uninsured and the number of underinsured is poised to rise at a very rapid rate over the next 5, 10, and 20 years. The rate of uninsured is undoubtably spiking as we speak. There could very easily, for example, easily be 70-75 million uninsured by about 2020. There could easily be 100 million uninsured by about 2030. And the percentage of the economy taken over by health care, already extremely high, is poised to go much higher in the years just ahead.
So this is the kind of collapse that even some working for insurance companies realize is coming down the pike. That's why some of the insurance company lobbyists are not shutting the door completely on this "reform".
But when I say collapse, I mean collapse; no economy can operate with 25% of the income going to the health care industry and with about 30% of all adults with no clear means of obtaining health care. Ultimately, the health care industry is not important enough to an economy to sustain that percentage. As for the percent uninsured, once it exceeds about 25% of the population, no one will be able to pretend anymore that the US is not a third world country. So at that point, either single payer will come into being or everyone with a brain will be clear as to what kind of country this really has become due to right wingers.
So in a broad historical sense, there really isn't all that many years to wait before single payer is the only real option.
However, if the "public option" and the ultra regressive tax (the "mandate") are enacted, this is the thing that could delay the inevitable for, as I said, maybe roughly 25 years. Because now the number of uninsured, at least on paper, would not be going up, but down! But who knows how inferior the "public option" coverage might be, and the economic life span of the public option, as noted by Lindorff, would be limited.
But although the public option would not be a real solution (especially since it would not be a real public option due to the lobbyists) it would be a feel good measure in the short term. Millions opted out of this disaster of a system would have a choice they don't have any choice now. A limited choice is better than no choice at all.
The cost problem, from an economics perspective, is bigger now than the health care distribution problem. And again, with the public option and the mandate, there would be very little or no real cost control due to patient dumping, due to refusal of the lobbyists to allow a single government agency to negotiate costs, due to refusal under this scheme of practitioners to give up lavish salaries, and perhaps for other reasons.
As for your main point, I disagree that the US will become a hardcore third world country with absolutely no response from the population or the elected politicians. There is a big difference between a country with third world tendencies, and a full scale third world country. I think that single payer will be one thing that is finally enacted so that the US will avoid reaching the kind of absolute rock bottom that you envision.
"Regardless of exactly how many years it takes until the great majority(most everyone other than the insurance companies and many die hard right wingers) agree that single payer is necessary, it is clear that the system is in an advanced state of collapse right now as we speak."
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Awfully generous of you. Only 60% or so are for single payer (something that would be hard to define if you were to ask most what the term even means). Die hard rightwingers put Bush in power two straight elections and gave him majorities in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. Die hard rightwingers have the power to force us to live in a country where there is NO healthcare access for the vast majority. You minimize this threat and I don't.
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"So at that point, either single payer will come into being or everyone with a brain will be clear as to what kind of country this really has become due to right wingers. So in a broad historical sense, there really isn't all that many years to wait before single payer is the only real option. "
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People like me can already see what this country has become due to rightwingers, but also due to those in denial like yourself. You think our country has some long term lease on life. Not going to happen. Besides the healthcare debacle, the country will have to cope with dwindling oil supplies, a military unhampered by budget constraints due to militarism and false flags, a global threat to its currency as the world's reserve, and a global threat from greenhouse gasses. In your timeframe, 30 to 50% of the world's species could be extinct, oil could be $1,000 a barrel, and the entire Southwest abandoned due to lack of water. You simply do not get it.
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"Over about 40 years of extreme inflation, and especially now in this current economic debacle, costs have become a truly crushing burden."
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Only to the great unwashed. Like minimum wage, or welfare reform under Clinton, or energy prices. You seem to believe that the government truly cares about the unwashed. This is a false belief. It has been proven time and time again that it cares only for those who write the checks. And those who write the checks can afford healthcare, at almost any price.
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"The cost problem, from an economics perspective, is bigger now than the health care distribution problem."
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This really goes without saying.
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"As for your main point, I disagree that the US will become a hardcore third world country with absolutely no response from the population or the elected politicians. There is a big difference between a country with third world tendencies, and a full scale third world country. I think that single payer will be one thing that is finally enacted so that the US will avoid reaching the kind of absolute rock bottom that you envision."
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It already is becoming a hardcore third world country. Stay up with the news. They are now bulldozing large tracts of old suburban homes in Flint, MI. Homeless camps are springing up around the country. The State of California is technically bankrupt and will run out of cash within weeks (http://www.cnbc.com/id/31390835). And the BRIC and SCO are plotting against the dollar (http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson06152009.html). If the dollar loses its reserve currency status, all hell will break out. Here's what Chris Hedges posted on Common Dreams just yesterday (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/15-0):
"The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations. We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities—think Enron—for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25 percent of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses. There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics. America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite."
You are living in a fantasy world. Reality is changing far quicker than you're aware of. Good luck my friend.
Wow, we're on the same side but you think I'm living in a fantasy world. Careful there. Me thinks you doth protest too much, laugh out loud.
You somehow extrapolated incorrectly several times and stated my opinions incorrectly. For example, I don't think the government cares much about low or moderate income people at all. That is ridiculous to me. I can't see how you could think that I do think that from my essays. I mean, I have a hunch that the average person thinks I'm off the deep end about the current relative uselessness of the government, laugh out loud.
But seriously, as bad as things are, we have not hit rock bottom yet, nor will we in my lifetime. There is no currency in the World that can replace the dollar as main reserve currency for (here we go again with the waiting years) at least 25 years.
Also, some of the things you describe seem worse than even rock bottom, laugh out loud.
Before you jump off the bridge, consider, for example, that the current economics "collapse" is arguably not a true collapse yet. The number of non-farm jobs is still in excess of 130 million, having peaked at a little over 137 million in 2007. Almost 43% of the population (the gross population, which includes children and elderly) still has a job, the same percentage as in 1993, and far higher than the 29-30% which was the case from 1945 to about 1963. The peak percentage employed was just about 47.5% in 1999.
Real wages may be declining, but the rate of decline is painfully slow for anyone wanting a completely new system within the next quarter century.
Are you sure it's just that you wish the system would collapse faster than it actually is? I wouldn't blame you for that, because something much better almost always follows a collapsed system.
I inadvertantly realized during this discussion that the single payer thing will be the primary "Battle of the Bulge" for the US as to whether it becomes a true Third World country or not. There will be a time, 20-75 years in the future, when it is one or the other: either single payer will be adopted or the US will be a true Third World country indefinitely. The public option and mandate postpones that day of reckoning but can not cancel it out completely.
To Logarithmic---
Points very well taken. I well recall Al Gore's wanting Social Security lockboxed during his presidential campaign way back when.
-30-
I guess I'm still not clear on how single-payer is being proposed for this country...would it simply make the government the country's only health insurer, and have the government cover all costs, and leave every other aspect of our system in place?
I would say sir that single payer is NOT being proposed for this country and that is why you are having trouble understanding what these guys in Congress and the President are talking about.
Consider it like the "stimulas" package that allowed them billions of dollars to use as they liked (witness the illegal use of the money to pay off the unions with the Chrysler and GM bailouts), this is nothing more than a proposal which will cover raising taxes for other purposes in my opinion.
Caveat....I am somewhat bitter this morning after talkinig to the hospital and finding out that our insurance company took back the $1800 thery had paid to the hospital on a $44,000 bill for my wife saying they "don't cover that" Then having the hospital tell me they won't accept the $1800 from me, that the bill reverts back to private pay and we owe the entire $44,000 amount. I am somewhat biased when I hear the BS being spewed in Washington. Sorry.
The bloviators usually ignore situations like yours. I'm guessing that what we have here is a small business owner - an employer even if only indirectly - who has some assets, i.e. a house that had a real mortgage with real payments resulting in real equity over time, and that you are seeing your life's work confiscated by a hospital bill and/or an insurance company. Since you don't feel your life's work should result in bankruptcy, you would like any "reform" to at least recognize that you exist.
CNN is working on reclassifying you as a particular group known as "bitter." You should pay, pay for profits and pay for those who have nothing to lose. Join the growing ranks of those with nothing to lose, and don't be bitter. Sit down and shut up. (snark, of course)
Another stimulus package is exactly what it is, and it goes to some of the same players. But then, they can afford a president and a congress, and you can't.
Pitch Fork
Fairly close to the truth my friend. Excellent analysis and very astute. Impressive.
Actually, because of my life experience and education I can fight back and will. The thing that bothers me and did before this morning are all the people that cannot or don't even know how to talk to these "people" Don't know how to get help. They are just steamrolled by these folks that know all about how to take what they have. Thats the sin of our health care system yhat could be so easily eliminated by Single Payer. So easy.
"Since you don't feel your life's work should result in bankruptcy, you would like any "reform" to at least recognize that you exist."
Got it in one. I have no intention of payiny them one more cent than they agreed to accept from the Insurance company or the other alternative I'll give them is $50.00 the rest of my life.......which could grow shorter with their aggrevation.
"Another stimulus package is exactly what it is, and it goes to some of the same players. But then, they can afford a president and a congress, and you can't."
True and true.
My best wishes to you and trust me, I'll be much louder and active than I have been (and I wasn't quiet about the need for single payer before). Just imagine how a 65 year old lady that just lost her husband would feel in this situation....and its not unusual. It make me furious at this bunch for wasting the opportunity.
Sometimes paying an attorney a couple hundred bucks will result in a nasty letter from him or her to the hospital, and you might find that suddenly they will find that, after all, they actually can accept that $1800 from you after all. I think its worth a look anyway.
Single payer works much as Medicare works. The government provides the payments to providers, but doesn't employ or own the providers. In Canada, doctors for the most part are independent, and work for themselves or in a group. But the fees they get paid are set by the provinces, which each run their own version of the plan (but any Canadian is covered by mutual agreement whatever province they happen to be sick in, regardless of where they live). Hospitals can be private or public, but again, the fees are all set by the government plan.
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
Nicely put.
Thanks, I was really looking for confirmation that it would keep a fee-for-service plan in place. Wouldn't it be much easier to go whole hog like the UK and pay healthcare practitioners' salaries, medical training, and all health facilities, equipment, and medicines directly by the government? Then, for example, a doctor wouldn't feel the need to tack on extra tests just to get reimbursed for doing them, but will instead be paid simply to do his/her job to examine, diagnose, and treat patients without worrying about being paid for it.
Tell them to hold their breath until they get that $44K.
Believe me my friend....hell will freeze over ...........
One more comment on this article.
I am very concerned that any taxes raised for public healthcare be earmarked for ONLY public healthcare. The legislature has proven time and time again that it cannot be trusted to keep its hands off any monies it receives. How much of SSec and Medicare has been raided to spend on wars, including the six we're fighting now [Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Columbia, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror (aka the police state)]? All that's been given to the taxpayer is a fat I.O.U. not worth the paper it's printed on. The reason why these funds are destined to failure is that they have been raided.
Any increase in taxes to support a public healthcare plan must be lockboxed for public healthcare. Otherwise, we are simply giving more money to a government that cannot be trusted and will use the money to bomb brown people living in mud shacks.
Mercian the troll writes:
"Before an additional 50 million people become entitled to medical care, we need to ask where the additional doctors, nurses and hospitals are going to come from. In all the discussions that I've read on the single payer issue, the question of who is actually going to provide treatment is never addressed."
Of coursse this issues has been addressed, by both doctors and nurses as well as single-payer advocates. For starters, the reduction in paperwork and overhead enabled by single-payer would be enormous, thus enabling the existing medical people to devote a lot more time and effort to actual medical care instead of superfluous paperwork and mind-bending decisions about what care to authorize for fear of rejection by insurance companies. Polls have shown that a majority of medical practitioners favor single-payer precisely for this reason. They know that the current system makes them complicit in DENIAL of medical care.
Another result of single-payer, also widely discussed, would be the vast reduction in the use of ERs as last-resort crisis care by the uninsured who avoid treatment until they absolutely need it at which point they require more specialized care at greater cost to the entire system.
Another result of single-payer that is less discussed and harder to quantify is that millions of people in the U.S. would be relieved of the daily ANXIETY of being uninsured. A huge proportion of medical care in the U.S. goes to treating anxiety and depression (often with expensive pharmaceuticals), and with single-payer a significant portion of such care would no longer be needed.
I get the impression that Mercian resents the 50 million unsinsured (to say nothing of the underinsured who end up going bankrupt for medical reasons) and just wants us to go away.
-30-
Check out Physicians for a National Health Plan (www.pnhp.org), the best source I know of on single-payer and health care reform. They note, with supporting academic studies, that the US system wastes 30% of funding on administrative costs, almost all of which is devoted to monitoring provider fraud or to figureing out ways to deny care to patients. In Canada, and in Medicare, administrative costs are only a few percentage points of the entire cost of health care, which is the way it should be. We could start of with almost $400 billion in savings in administrative costs per year, just by switching to single payer, and that's before counting any of the savings involved in eliminating private insurance premiums and co-pays.
The cost issue is a complete fraud.
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
...and with single payer, patients can proactively see their doctor earlier, nipping disease in the bud, staying healthier and less costly to the system.
Early detection, especially in cases like melanoma which is entirely and easily curable if caught early but almost always fatal if allowed to progress, of disease would also make treatment a lot less expensive. There are all kinds of savings available with a single-payer system. Not real good for corporate profits, though, and those corporations are owed lots of favors in return for their campaign donations, or so they assume.
Molly Ivins once quoted a Texas politician who had this mantra:
"If you can't take their money, screw their women, drink their alcohol and vote against them anyway, you don't belong in the [Texas] legislature."
If only members of the federal legislature would follow this creed.
"If you can't take their money, screw their women, drink their alcohol and vote against them anyway, you don't belong in the [Texas] legislature."
If only members of the federal legislature would follow this creed."
Amen! God....I miss Molly Ivins.
She was one of the best for sure. Check out Lewis Grizzard if you like Molly Ivins. Sadly, he too has passed on, moved off this mortal coil.
As someone who enjoys single-payer, I can say this is a spot on article, covers all the bases.
Have you considered that the Dems/Repubs are deliberately setting up the "public option" to fail, so that they can be free of this issue for, perhaps, seventeen more years?
Considered a deliberate setup for failure? More like assumed. This IS the United States after all.
It does not take a rocket scientist to look at the facts and easily come up with an iron-clad case for a single-payer healthcare system for the American people. For one brief and fleeting moment, let us set politics aside and opt, instead, for true statesmanship.
Our political system is as corrupt and self-serving as it has ever been, and our society, in general as depraved as it has ever been. Both are harbingers of a total breakdown of our system of government and the social order of this country. People are smart enough to see the tremendous disparity in the largesse for Wall Street, big money, powerful corporations and the bottomless pockets of our politicians vs. the crumbs the average person is this country is still waiting for in these difficult times. For just once, it is time to give the common person a share of the pie, cut off the testicles of the corrupt healthcare providers and move on to a real, meaningful and far superior system of healthcare in a single-payer system.
We have had enough of deception and stealing by the powerful and affluent. Do the right thing this one time. In the end, morality and basic human decency does matter.
Lindorff is one of the best writers on the left.
He is right on with regards to single payer - a system we desperately need. As he points out, the employer-based insurance system screws the worker. But I would've added that it screws the employer too. It is clear that the auto industry has been possibly mortally wounded by health care costs. It cannot compete with other global auto firms whose host countries have single payer. This stands to reason.
In addition, employers have had to pass on cost increases to their employees or risk failure (about 70% of privately employed workers work for small business, and small business has been penalized by the fact that they have small groups to insure). And they have to shop their plans annually to deal with the double digit rate increases rammed down their throats by insurers. My company, for example, had each employee fill out three insurance forms this year, and even so, it elected to stay with the current provider cuz the rates proposed by the so-called competition were often double what they were already paying. In addition, my company has had to choose plans with increasingly higher deductibles, limited doctor reimbursement, and limited drug reimbursement, simply to contain costs. And it has had to freeze its portion of the cost to cover its employees. This makes our group plan a minimal plan, not a robust one - which means that should someone get really sick, they would risk bankruptcy trying to deal with the costs under our current plan.
Very depressing. The Democrats are a joke. Unfortunately, Obama has squandered his chance to bring real change to this country. And if you think this mountain is tough to scale, just wait til we get to global warming!
"This makes our group plan a minimal plan, not a robust one - which means that should someone get really sick, they would risk bankruptcy trying to deal with the costs under our current plan."
We always mention the 50 million uninsured. But I'm guessing there are at least another 50 million, like you, with inadequate coverage that sometimes turns out to be nearly worthless. This is unacceptable in the "greatest country ever to grace the face of the earth".
UNACCEPTABLE !!
Most people don't know this but most "insured" are underinsured. 1) the insured are always insured after they pay their premiums and before they need medical care 2)once they need medical care, then it takes all the effort in the world to get the pay out due them by virtue of the contract they thought they had. 3) even when the payouts come through for them, if it is a chronic condition or one with extreme measures taken over a few years, the co-pays and deductibles mount and put them underwater financially. 4) if it is the primary insured who is sick they frequently can't continue in the employment that provides their coverage. 5)even the best policies (except for our Congress critters) have lifetime limits, catastrophic or chronic conditions exhaust these frequently. 6) 75% of current bankruptcies involve significant medical debt and 60% of those persons have medical insurance coverage.
Netminnow,
These facts need an article unto themselves. Perhaps Mr. Lindorff will so grace us!
Any chance of changing health care in our country is finished. Its been tossed in the ditch by Obama and the Democrats. It is already over.
The sheer arrogance and condescension of these folks is beginning to repel me.
By the way, does anyone really believe that 1 trillion in costs? That it would be the actual figure? History shows quite clearly that its not close.
Read the above blogs for your answer about the trillion in savings. And stop being so negative. Healthcare is not blown...yet. Wait and see or raise your voice and take to the streets to protest.
Perhaps what really repels you is the prospect that the adoption of single-payer would force you to find a job in which you'd actually have to do something productive.
q
quickstepper
Frankly incivility and rudeness coupled with inane statement's has always repelled me.
Your summation of my productivity is astounding with nothing to base it on. Are all of your opinions reached that way?
Next, with your ability to read minds, I'm amazed you didn't know I favor only Single Payer and never the Hybrid systems that are being proposed. Were you under the impression thast a Single Payer system is being proposed? It is most definately not.
I urge you to read more slowly and consider more carefully before making a statement.
Nothing in your first post suggests that you support single payer. In fact, it appears that you are urging others to give up the fight for it. Your statements are at best ambivalent and at worst incomprehensible.
As a matter of fact, I can't read your mind; I can read only what you write.
I urge you to take the time to write more clearly.
q
I think you need to change your tampon, quickstepper.
Sioux Rose
EKATON: Was that necessary?
quickstepper
"Your statements are at best ambivalent and at worst incomprehensible."
I still feel it was quite clear what I was saying.
"As a matter of fact, I can't read your mind; I can read only what you write."
Then where did the insult about my productivity and my job come from?
"I urge you to take the time to write more clearly."
So let me try to be clearer. Single Payer is already dead in the water (in my opinion) I see no way it would be proposed at this late date, nor do I think any one would believe it now.
In my opinion Health Care reform of any kind will not pass this year (in my opinion) aside from which as I stated elsewhere, whats proposed is nothing more than a cover to raise taxes as the stimulas bills were, a "bait and switch" again.
If they pass anything it won't help anyone (in my opinion) it, if anything will "help" like the Auto bailouts helped the already retired auto workers. They were losers in the "bankruptcy" (in my opinion)
Perhaps you didn't mean what you posted the way I took it, I don't remember you being that type.....so lets forget it and see where we differ or agree.
My take is you still feel Single Payer can be restored to life while I feel its a "no way" proposition.
Perhaps you favor the proposal by the Congress and the administration, in which case we will never agree.
And if you feel any meaningful reform will pass, I disagree and one of us is wrong.
Good Day To You
"Single payer is dead in the water." This is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the political slacker.
Good thing the abolitionsts and suffragists and unionists didn't adopt this same defeatist attitude against even steeper odds.
i just reacted to your comment about implying that the guy you were attacking is not productive because he doesn't have a job
its cruel and judegemental
lots of folks don't work because of health issues
they can still be productive and often are
he could have cancer, or ms or be homeless or many other things
seeing though that we all agree on single payer - let's all be productive and work towards forcing this adminsitration to throw off the hmo's and bring in health care for all
that could be all of our jobs for the time being
q: i'm not sure how or what you know about anyone else's employment status
my guess is you are just being a prick, pointless and hurtful - were you treated harshly as a child
besides that: who said jobs are productive - most are dreary, dull, pointless surrenderings of 8 hrs/day of your life - 8 hours you will never get back
most of us work to stay out of the homeless shelters
that's why you don't see many folks who win the lottery back in the plant or factory or office after they cash their winnings
in your case - don't get a job - get a life
lots of people don't work due to health reasons
i have 23 years on the job - i'm not unhappy - i enjoy my clients - i have a nice desk and access to a clean washroom
i could walk out tonight though and never think of it again - i'm one lotto win from freedom
ma g
Thanks very much for the kind thoughts. Frankly I didn't understand the attack.
Claiming that health care reform is finished deserves a response.
If you don't like it, learn to express yourself better.
q
quickstepper
I thought it was expressed quite succinctly. It is finished. Do you think there is any chance of Single Payer.....any at all? I certainly do not. I don't know how much better I could express it than....Single Payer is dead. There will be no health care reform passed that will help anyone. I don't know how to express it any better than that.
If you favor the mix proposed by this Congress and this President, we are simply on opposie sides in our view of what will make a difference.
"I thought it was expressed quite succinctly."
Of course you do; you know what you were thinking when you wrote it. The rest of us don't.
Why would someone claim that the single-payer issue is dead unless that person wants to convince its supporters to give up? And who would want us to give up besides someone with a stake in the health-insurance industry?
You probably don't like this logic but it's a perfectly reasonable inference from your own writing.
q
I'm not claiming anything. It was my opinion just as what you are saying is yours.
The only stake I have in the insurance industry is they just stiffed me.
I have no concern wheither you give up or not, but I'll bet you a trillion internet dollars you won't see Single Payer out of this bunch. Not now, not ever. If they wanted it, they would never have proposed anything else.
And no I don't see your reasoning as a perfectly reasonable inference from what I wrote. So we agree at last!
part of the strategy of the nwo/controllers is to create false divisions within the population
the old divide and conquer
nowhere is that more prevalent than in health care
race cards are played, social class cards are played and religious cards are paid
they have us right where they want us
the us against them strategy - or as sarah palin calls it "my whole political platform"
let us not forget that there are many millions of american who have health care - that is they pay for it - and then when they try to use it the are cut off for any numbers of reasons
the whole thing is simple, either:
1. health care exists to provide a prohit mechanism for the hmo's, pharma and other concerned parties
or,
2. health care exists as a compassionate, kind and socially wise government service
option 1 or option 2
what say you
Clear-eyed assessment and reminder: United we stand, divided we fall(fail).
Before an additional 50 million people become entitled to medical care, we need to ask where the additional doctors, nurses and hospitals are going to come from. In all the discussions that I've read on the single payer issue, the question of who is actually going to provide treatment is never addressed.
If the number of doctors and specialists is not increased in proportion to the new number of patients, then health care rationing and inferior treatment will become the norm as it is in Canada and Britain.
Everyone will have access to a waiting list and CNN is reporting that our taxes will go up by about one trillion dollars.
You're listening to rush limbaugh and his clones, apparently. The "waiting list" thing is a tipoff that you are being bamboozled by misinformation. I actually often go to Canada for health care because it's faster, cheaper, friendlier, and easier.
There is no "Rationing" of Health Care in Canada. Where did you get thyat Information?
CNN is propaganda. They lie to you 24/7. If you must watch, put a sign on your set that says, "They're lying to me." Or, if you prefer, "Who benefits?"
You said, "Before an additional 50 million people become entitled to medical care..." You are assuming that 50 million of us are not currently "entitled" to care. We are "entitled," in that they don't leave us to bleed to death in the parking lot - yet-, which is your inferred preference. The care is delivered. The hospitals are reimbursed one way or another, including increased costs to paying patients, squeezing every available drop out of patients who have some means, and tax subsidy to the indigent. So, the level of care needed isn't going to suddenly increase by 50 million people.
Even a Fox News reporter pointed out that the stimulus bill provides funds for the training of more nurses. Julia Banderas's only complaint was that it wasn't enough. The simple answer to whatever problem you think exists would be to provide medical schooling for free...and perhaps allow someone besides an MD to treat light injuries and illnesses such as sprains, childhood illnesses, etc.
There already are nurse practitioners and physicians assistants, although not nearly enough, to handle exactly what you suggest. Thank you for mentioning that facet of medical care.
If your scenario is a real one then single-payer could also include medical and nursing school scholarships for college and high school graduates in the top 1/2% of their classes. If that means paying to build a few new medical schools, so what? Taxes may go up a trillion dollars over a period of time while, as Mr. Lindorff points out, medical insurance paid by employees and employers over the same period of time may decrease by an even greater amount than that trillion dollars. And, I DON'T CARE how much single payer would cost. It would certainly not cost as much as our trillion dollar a year militarist interventionist forein policy, and THAT is one place where we make cuts to finance single payer.
Sioux Rose
EKATON: And don't forget the trillions plus to the darling bankers who have always shown such regard for the American people, NOT! The money exists, it's about priorities. If the rest of the world cuts us off and says "bah, humbug" about our dollars, we will need to see more wealth-creation enterprises circulating within our domestic confines. Perhaps retired medical personnel can give courses at community colleges that prepare communities for basic first aid in the event they can't afford local doctors or hospitals. We have enormous resources, it's often the matter of how distribution comes about, or is motivated to do so.
This is not correct. You're being suckered by the insurance industry's and AMA's lies on this issue. The US has a surplus of docs, not a shortage. It's just that right now, they're all crammed into locales where they can get more money. If they were getting paid set fees by a single-payer program, they'd end up spreading out to where the patients are. There'd be no particular advantage to serving Manhattan or Beverly Hills.
As for that $1 trillion figure, what you're forgetting is that that is just the government cost of the program. From that you have to subtract the money that employers currently pay for employee healthcare, and that employees contribute.
The average American today spends about $7000 a year for medical care, if you add up out of pocket expenditures, contributions to insurance coverage, and employer premiums. Multiply that by 300 million and you get 2.1 trillion dollars, almost all of which would be eliminated.
So you'd end up, by your figures, with a net $1 trillion in savings.
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
There is no doubt among honest people that single payer is the correct method to solve this disaster in health care. I never hear anyone complaining about their Social Security or Medicare except the rich who don`t need them. There is plenty of resources in this country to give everyone a decent life, but some think they should have the hogs share for themselves and their cronies and the rest can share the scraps.
However, heaven will be a great place also, but impossible to have on earth, so we do the best we can to improve our lives. That means we have to deal with what we have and not what we dream about having.
Bush had an attack on the twin towers to allow him to push everything he wanted through using lies and scare tactics. Obama has to deal with a wrecked country and an opposition that is determined to stop him in any way possible. Remember, half a loaf is better than none, so maybe we should support his public health plan, even if not perfect.
I agree with you Kernelz. Healthcare will come in stages. The public healthcare plan is the first stage. Hopefully, single payer will come next but it won't happen unless all these outspoken people come out of their "computer" closets and march on Washington screaming for single payer healthcare.
"Remember, half a loaf is better than none, so maybe we should support his public health plan, even if not perfect."
Not if the "half a loaf" is poisoned, as the "public option" will be.
"we have to deal with what we have and not what we dream about having"
You can't say that until after you have adopted an alternate strategy and given it a chance - perhaps as much of a chance as the elites have given themselves in their quest to dominate.
We should commit to a policy of changing the K-12 school curricula and the media, including entertainment, to change the values of the society. It's a hell of a lot easier than the army of whiners believe today. We've heard too many "can't dos" that we know are simply excuses for the lazy comforts of surrender/submission.
Kaka on all that. First get through your head that you can change the society by starting with your local K-12 school board. Go to the meeting and tell them how it's going to be. Bring the kids and show them how to be the thorn in the side of the establishment. Recognize the elites encroached on our sovereignty and are forcing us to fight for it. Who's going to win? The elites or the people? It's obvious. The elites are weaker than ever now. They're frantic.
Sorry-- this is a particularly feckless and pathetic appeal to a bankrupt and empty variety of hopeful submissiveness masquerading as "pragmatism".
· Yr Obd't Servant
Sort of a corollary to "voting for the lesser evil".
Incidentally, much as I admire Rep. John Conyers for his stand on single-payer health care reform, I must say there is poetic justice in the fate his bill is suffering at the hands of his leadership colleagues in Congress. It was, after all, Rep. Conyers who for years has bottled up and prevented a hearing on impeachment bills filed against former President George W. Bush and vice President Dick Cheney.
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
Sioux Rose
DAVE: The problem with your (Conyers) observation is that the American people are the ones who suffer the karmic boomerang of both thwarted initiatives, rather than those who behaved cowardly.
It's great that we can get on the internet and voice all of our fears and opinions. Nice substitute for the 60's and 70's when a generation of people took to the streets to complain and protest which is our right as Americans. I agree with what many are saying here but it depresses me tremendously because I know that these blogs give us a place to vent which stops us from being activists. We need to take to the streets with signs and raise our voices loud enough so everyone can hear us. All presidents are controlled by the corporations.Everyone of them and as the 21st century moves on, they get more and more powerful. I believe that Obama is guilty of being nieve. He thought he could get into office and make real change. I believe those are his intentions but his advisors and his masters (corporations) are limiting him severely. We, the people, need to make him do the right thing. He needs us to get into the streets and scream and rant and wave signs and protest to make real change. This happened in the 60's and 70's. It needs to happen again but we use these blasted comment areas to vent instead of banding together to make congress and the president do what we want. We want real healthcare. We need education and college tuitions decreased. We need affordable housing and jobs. We need a decent wage. As Americans, we have to make the president help us. This is how he can get around the corporations and the advisors and the people that control him. We need to become activists in the streets, in front of the world, not peacefully sitting behind our computer screens voicing opinions that no one cares about and no one can do anything about!!!!!!! Wake up America before it's too late!
MARCIE, I agree with everything you said about getting into the streets and have posted so many times on CD. This is why I am posting less and less on CD.
There should be multi-million person march on DC in favor of healthcare reform, i.e., single payer! Someone should organize it. I'll be there.
Dave, you are absolutely correct in your analysis!
To reiterate:
1) the "public option" will be a dumping ground for unfortunate extremely sick people. In effect the "public option" will be a subsidy to insurance companies by removing these sick people from the insurance company's responsibility. The "public option" is corporate welfare and doomed to be high cost and unworkable insurance (just as conservatives want)
2)No country that currently has single payer, or variant, wants to change their health care system to the US model! These single payer systems may have issues but minor compared to the problems of the US system.
3) And yes, what doesn't get a lot of press or discussion, is this fact that Americans must stay in a job to keep their health insurance. Employers use this power to pay poorly and provide poor working conditions. Single payer health care would FREE Americans to change jobs as they wish.
Advocate, push for single payer.
Nicely summarized, Dave. Then there's this from the article:
"(Incidentally, eliminating employer-funded health insurance would go a long way towards allowing workers to fight to have unions, and to strike for contracts, by ending the threat that they would lose their benefits.)"
It goes farther than the mere fact of unionization. How many workers, unionized or not, feel stuck in their jobs? How many would up and quit right now if they weren't afraid of losing their benefits?
Single-payer would make for a mighty uppity workforce, one with the freedom to go when and where it wished; preventing that is one of the key strategic goals of the class warriors. I think this explains why the US auto industry, for one glaring example, won't back HR676, even though it would be relieved of the burden of paying for employee health plans. It's not as counterintuitive a position as it first appears.
Jethro's hit the crux of it right here. This is one of the most far-reaching and potentially culture changing aspects of a single payer health care system. Most people don't like their jobs very much, but are afraid to take a chance and pursue the things that really excite them. And that's great for the cubicle-housing corporations that exert such a control over the economy and, as result, the culture. A single payer system would effectively reduce the risk people would have to take to try for a different kind of life. If it suddenly takes less than a rebel's temperament to seek out alternatives to a corporate-driven lifestyle, it could end up altering much of how the economy is currently organized. That kind of change scares the Great White Fathers and they will fight like hell to keep things the way they are -- by using their lobby, money, and media clout.
Capitalism is at the core of most of the U.S. problems!
True, but that observation and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee.
There is no revolution on the horizon.
Then again, they have capitalism in Europe, but somehow they also have various versions of socialized medicine. So how are you going to explain that?
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
In the social democracies, the beast capital is in the harness pulling the plow. But in the USA's faux-democracy, the people are in the harness and the beast capital cracks the whip.
"If President Obama had any political courage at all, . . ."
You can stick this clause into a discussion of our failure to resolve just about any issue facing us.
q
The politicians can't do anything because they need corporate money to play the game. We all know this.
We also know we could fix the situation with publically-financed elections. But Obama has screwed that for us. He is not a Democrat.