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The Incredible Shrinking Healthcare Reform
Like soap in a rainstorm, "healthcare reform" is wasting away.
As this week began, a leading follower of conventional wisdom, journalist Cokie Roberts, told NPR listeners: "This is evolving legislation. And the administration is now talking about a glide path towards universal coverage, rather than immediate universal coverage."
Notions of universal healthcare are fading in the power centers of politics -- while more and more attention focuses on the care and feeding of the insurance industry.
Consider a new message that just went out from Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee, which inherited the Obama campaign's 13-million email list. The short letter includes the same phrase seven times: "health insurance reform."
The difference between the promise of healthcare for everyone and the new mantra of health insurance reform is akin to what Mark Twain once described as "the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
The "health insurance reform" now being spun as "a glide path towards universal coverage" is apt to reinforce the huge power of the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries in the United States.
President Obama says that he wants "things like preventing insurers from dropping people because of pre-existing conditions." Those are not fighting words for the present-day insurance industry. Behind the scenes, massive deals are taking shape.
The president of America's Health Insurance Plans, Karen Ignagni, "noted that the industry had endorsed many of the administration's proposed changes, including ending the practice of refusing coverage for pre-existing conditions," the New York Times reported on August 3. A couple of days later, in a profile of Ignagni, the newspaper added: "Rather than being cut out of the conversation, her strategy has been to push for changes her members can live with, in hopes of fending off too much government interference."
This year, no more significant news article on healthcare politics has appeared than the August 4 story in the Los Angeles Times under the headline "Obama Gives Powerful Drug Lobby a Seat at Healthcare Table." http://pdamerica.org/articles/news/2009-08-04-12-46-58-news.php
It's enough to make you weep, or gnash your teeth with anger, or worry about the consequences for your loved ones -- or the loved ones of people you'll never meet.
During his campaign last year, Obama criticized big pharmaceutical firms for blocking efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. But since the election, the LA Times reports, "the industry's chief lobbyist" -- former Congressman Billy Tauzin -- "has morphed into the president's partner. He has been invited to the White House half a dozen times in recent months. There, he says, he eventually secured an agreement that the administration wouldn't try to overturn the very Medicare drug policy that Obama had criticized on the campaign trail."
The story gets worse. For instance, "Tauzin said he had not only received the White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining, but also a separate promise not to pursue another proposal Obama supported during the campaign: importing cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe."
Meanwhile, with a "mandate" herd of cash cows on the national horizon, the health insurance industry is licking its chops. The corporate glee is ill-disguised as the Obama administration pushes for legal mandates to require that Americans buy health insurance -- no matter how dismal the quality of the coverage or how unaffordable the "affordable" premiums turn out to be for real people in the real world.
The mandates would involve "diverting additional billions to private insurers by requiring middle class Americans to purchase defective policies from these firms -- policies with so many gaps and loopholes that they currently leave millions of our insured patients vulnerable to financial ruin," says a letter signed by more than 3,500 doctors and released last week by Physicians for a National Health Program.
Days ago, a New York Times headline proclaimed an emerging "consensus" and "common ground" on Capitol Hill. In passing, the article mentioned that lawmakers "agree on the need to provide federal subsidies to help make insurance affordable for people with modest incomes. For poor people, Medicaid eligibility would be expanded."
It's a scenario that amounts to expansion of healthcare ghettos nationwide. Medicaid's reimbursement rates for medical providers are so paltry that "Medicaid patient" is often a synonym for someone who can't find a doctor willing to help.
But what about "the public plan" -- enabling the government to offer health insurance that would be an alternative to the wares of for-profit insurance firms? "Under pressure from industry and their lobbyists, the public plan has been watered down to a small and ineffectual option at best, if it ever survives to being enacted," says John Geyman, professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington.
A public plan option "would do little to mitigate the damage of a reform that perpetuates private insurers' dominant role," according to the letter from 3,500 physicians. "Even a robust public option would forego 90 percent of the bureaucratic savings achievable under single payer. And a kinder, gentler public option would quickly fail in a healthcare marketplace where competition involves a race to the bottom, not the top, where insurers compete by NOT paying for care."
While the healthcare policy outcomes are looking grim, the supposed political imperatives are fueling the desires of Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill to produce a victory that President Obama can tout as healthcare reform. Consider this quote from "a prominent Democrat" in the August 10 edition of Time magazine: "Something called health-reform legislation will pass. The political consequences of not passing anything would be too great."
The likely result is a glide path to disaster.
- Posted in
122 Comments so far
Show AllSioux Rose
Yesterday FRANK posted the strategy of having everyone pay $10 a month, thus of the 50 million uninsured, $500 million could be raised each month. Could a group incorporate to amass and manage that umbrella fund, and could it, with its potential revenue stream hire its own "brand" of nurse-doctor teams? Many conditions if treated in time do not require hospitalization. It would be great if "the peoples' health care" option generated from THE people and found reception with those medical professionals who are to modern medicine, what the the U.S. military is to "peace keeping" global forces. In other words, there have got to be good-hearted renegades within the medical field who recognize it's sold out on the basic Hippocratic Oath.
It's Frank's idea, and it has merit. Anyone want to pitch in on how something like this might get implemented? I suppose we'd need major media exposure and/or a truly effective Internet campaign? Other?
Siouxrose August 5th, 2009 9:32 am...I think this is a tremendous idea and brilliant in it's simplicity. I am going to forward it to a former chief of staff friend of mine and get his view. He was always one of these docs that worked outside the system...refused to wear a tie in med school..stuff like that. I am not a lawyer and have O legal sense, but I see no reason this could not be done. Even the threat of something like this may bring the insurance companies and the CONgress to their senses. We cannot give up this fight...it is of the utmost importance.
Now, what article was that remark on, I have forgotten? I can go back and find it, of course....
There may not be enough professionals initially, but as things got rolling, I believe they would get on the bandwagon.
And who's to stop a group of citizens from incorporating? It could be useful in many other sutuations.
Anyway, I found the post....and sent it on.
Yes, it is brilliant in its simplicity and a simple solution will be the best solution.
One warning:
I worked for several corporations over the years and more than one had an unwritten mantra that there is profit in confusion. Manifestation of this mantra is ever more common in legislation and the tax code. Corporations know that the more complex something is, the more people will ignore the details and the more opportunity there is for those in control to play a shell game with those who are not in control.
Those sitting at the health care reform "table" will avoid any simple solutions because that will limit their opportunity to find "hidden profit centers" and other corporate ways of manipulating the system.
raydelcamino August 5th, 2009 10:40 am.........Is this not a people's solution? Who needs these greedy bastards sitting at the health care table. This goes around them, does it not....or am I missing something here?
Under the current "system" Frank's idea certainly could go around "them". It appears, however, that the "health care reform" Congress is concocting will criminalize any person or business that doesn't buy insurance from the insurance companies. Lets hope it doesn't turn out that way !
Ray---
Hence the 1200-page bill proudly touted by Henry (so-called 'mustache of justice') Waxman last night on The Daily Show --- along with his new book detailing the many "accomplishments" congress has achieved over the last 35 years.
A much more in-depth interview was provided earlier in the day by Amy Goodman, and yet, it kills me that this guy is still considered one of the 'liberal' Democrats in the House.
Three images are burned into my brain considering this guy:
1) He ran UNOPPOSED.
2) In a 'Democracy Now!' show during the Democratic convention, in a story about how some 'investigative' journalists were being denied access to after-hour parties that were sponsored by huge corporations, there, through a window, I could clearly make out Mr. Waxman sipping a martini smiling at the outside camera (Dude! After you gain access to these 'freebies', at least have the good sense to stay away from the windows!)
3) When I called to complain about his support for the banker bailout last September, his staffer told me that Mr. Waxman was working diligently to include 'regulations' to insure transparency "so the public will be aware of where the money is spent". That turned out well. And now, he assures Amy and Jon that a large chapter of his 1200-page bill is devoted to guaranteeing that the large insurance companies keep their prices low. Gimme a break!
Term limits, anyone?
Sioux
RAY: Your post sent my imagination flashing on a great scene from the Terry Gilliam film, "Brazil," where Robert Deniro plays a renegade plumber. Since everything in the society depicted by that film requires filling out the appropriate forms & paper work, this rebel shows his covert muscle against that system by fixing things WITHOUT any paperwork! Can you envision the equivalent among renegade medical personnel, the underground Robin Hoods of the therapeutic community? Hey, f--ked up times call for desperate, or at the least creative measures!
Sioux Rose
EASY: I noticed that FRANK, the originator of this idea posted a more detailed proposal on this thread (1:11 I believe), and I think this idea IS worth pursuing. Although Vanmugo makes a good point about an earnest fight for single payer, I have ZERO confidence in the current congress, our president, or any of the other counterfeits parading as public servants. The scale of sell-out is too pervasive and redundant to expect anything better now. That's why enough citizens forming their OWN alternative, with a network of participating medical persons (hospitals are the big question, although if enough funds were collected and managed by a Soros or Gates, Sr. perhaps that, too, could be worked in) might be the best we can come up with. I would certainly rather pay tops $200 a month to such a plan, then be extorted to buy what I do not want, do not trust, and recognize as a complete usurpation of my so-called free rights/civil liberties as a U.S. citizen. The insurance companies are also cutting back on their obligations in other areas now, like what they will cover, property-wise, in a storm, or weather event. Just as the bankers got it all and have no need to negotiate, now it's the turn of the insurance companies. I'll bet Obama had the best little Whore house in Texas in a prior incarnation, he's too good at pleasing all his "clients" to have picked up such skill in one mere corporeal go-round.
It's an interesting idea. I think some doctors are already doing this as far as forming a group and seeing patients who pay a flat fee for care. But it doesn't address the hospital problem. I would like to see the whole idea of "pools" done away with. There should only be one pool and we're all in it. A hospital charges an uninsured person a different rate than a BCBS patient. Why, when the cost to the hospital was the same? So, if we tried to do a people's self-insurance, providers like drug companies and hospitals could charge us prohibitively more. They're already lobbying together, so why wouldn't they also conduct this kind of anti-competitive business?
Sioux Rose--
This is pie in the sky. No one outside of the government or major corporations has the means of effectively organizing such an effort.
We need to keep focused on pressing Congress for single-payer Medicare for all.
This futile pipe dream would just siphon off energy needed to fight for single payer. It's a form of defeatism, a tacit admission that the fight for single payer is over. But that fight has just begun.
State run single-payer has been added as an amendment to HR 3200.
HR 676, the National Single-Payer plan WILL be brought to the floor and voted on.
Single -payer is not only "ON THE TABLE" as of July 31, 2009, but it is "ON THE TABLE TWICE"
http://www.healthcare-now.org/single-payer-to-be-introduced-on-the-floor-of-the-us-house-of-representatives/
vanmungo August 5th, 2009 1:18 pm.............Tell me why you think this idea is pie in the sky? "No one outside the government or major corporations has the means of effectively organizing such an effort." Excuse, but that statement is nonsense and DEFEATIST in itself. Even an effort that failed would create some leverage. Pie in the sky is thinking that single payer will pass without a major amassing of the electorate. The internet is an amazingly powerful tool for getting these things underway. Keericed, even if it's 20, bucks a month..what's that?...a couple of movie tickets?
Effectively what you are proposing is just some kind of ad-hoc HMO - or would it be an ad-hoc insurance plan with a preferred provider list. Either way, I think you will find it a complex undertaking, and $20 per month is not going to buy a lot of healthcare.
pjd412 August 5th, 2009 5:57 pm..........It may well be ad hoc...ideas have to start somewhere. That does not make it impossible or invalid. Difficult...yes. But simple in it's concept. Dreams may be made of sterner stuff, but let us face it, it's about as stern as SP, right now...and likely just as possible. Citizens may well contribute even 30-40 bucks knowing there was even a slight chance. Hell, let's use the internet in a concrete way instead of blabbing at each other.
I like it.
It won't start with the entire $500 million, and $10/month won't float it even w/o hospitalization, ER, & drugs. But it could do a lot less and still be the best game in town.
A genuine cooperatively owned entity capable of supplying even partial care or consulting would not detract from the movement to get single payer, far from it. It would considerably free people from insurance companies and slice into the insurance market.
In the sadly likely event that a purported "Health Bill" will force Americans to purchase relatively useless private insurance, it may function something like credit unions to provide a legal option outside the corporate ghoulcrew.
In general, cooperatively owned entities have a lot of merit. They can cultivate an effective socialism without centralizing government and with a minimum of immediate direct conflict with larger pre-existing institutions.
As another point, much as corporations find it useful to invest heterogeneously, cooperative institutions might benefit from interinstitutional cooperation. So I wonder what support might be found for such ideas from food and housing cooperatives, credit unions, existing volunteer healthcare services, and labor unions pertinent to specific services.
Every alliance would free the group from some part of some aspect of dependence on corporate exploitation.
Sioux Rose
BARDAMU: It's probably an idea that needs to float around soon, perhaps to the Cal Nurses Assoc. to see if it could get some traction. Then, since this is THE nation that bows before the altar of alleged free trade, set this system up as genuine competition for the typical insurance companies so that persons like myself, can buy into this alternative, as opposed to being forced at virtual gunpoint to purchase the extortionists' brand!
Yeah... perfect...another "Internet campaign".
Yeah.. that'll get it done.
The ease with which health care was bargained ("compromised") away leave me with very little hope that any of President Obama's campaign promises will mean anything. The Republicans' well-orchestrated "shout it down" campaign is largely to blame, but the Obama love for compromise above all and his unwillingness to stand his ground and use the so-called "bully pulpet" to fight for this by his own definition incredibly important issue is going to mean that "we the people" won't "get" much of anything.
I know. People will post replies jeering at me for ever believing what he said during the campaign. To my defense I will say I was distrustful but hoped this time the content might bear some resemblance to the package.
The last president I voted and worked (a bit) for was Lyndon Johnson in 1964 (the "peace" candidate). That, obviously, didn't work out but I still think it was a good "lesser of two evils" vote. I think Barry Goldwater might well have been trigger happy with the nukes, and I think John McCain (a Goldwater protege) would have been a danger in the same way, so I'm not sorry Obama won; I'm sorry he is not, as least so far, turning out to be the man he pretended to be.
You call it Obama's love of compromise, PP, I call it Obama's (and the DNC's) pattern of capitulation.
The basic concept of negotiation and the definition of compromise is that each party demands more than they expect to receive, and after negotiations are complete you end up somewhere in the middle.
The BEST cases we have witnessed among the Democrats is their demanding so little at the start of negotiations, resulting in achieving nothing at the conclusion of negotiations. In the case of "health care reform" it appears that the Democrats plan will make a bad system worse. The Republicans' push to do nothing will actually be less harmful to most Americans.
I agree, Ray.
And following through with your train-of-thought, the Obama Administration MUST pass something, any kind of healthcare 'reform' because the Repubs have managed to paint BO and the Dims into a corner by playing politics with people's lives!
As Norman ends with the following quote: "...The political consequences of not passing anything would be too great."
Hmmm. Let's see. Insurance "reform" with a "glide path" toward universal mandatory coverage.
Yup. If that has anything at all to do with health care, it certainly does sound like a plan for shrinking it sure enough. But it actually sounds more like a plan to coerce an expanded base for profit taking.
Only in America could compulsory acceptance of Mafia "protection" be regarded as the route to better health. I suppose it beats getting your knee caps busted, but not by much.
**The corporate glee is ill-disguised as the Obama administration pushes for legal mandates to require that Americans buy health insurance -- no matter how dismal the quality of the coverage or how unaffordable the "affordable" premiums turn out to be for real people in the real world.**
Corporate glee and corporate expenditure to get this bill because it's a glide path to profit. If it were not, and if the Dems were interested in helping people, they would have a balancing mandate on profiteering. Insurance companies who have raised their take from 5% to 20% would have that limited by law. Insurance execs who give themselves multi-million dollar payouts would have that limited by law. Drug companies would have to negotiate prices. And, hospitals' opaque purchasing practices would be made transparent. That kind of thing. A balance, but there is none.
The only glide path for the people here is as the author states: a glide path for disaster.
"if the Dems were interested in helping people"
Oh, they are. Believe me. They're VERY interested in helping people. And so are the "loyal opposition."
The bottom line is $$. They ( The health Mafia) have it and we don't.
The U.S. economy depends on continual warfare now, which means money goes to any kind of weapon production--in this case, Big Pharma, or drugs or stem cell-related products, that could be more devastating than nuclear weapons. That is why we will not have single-payor or "government-payor" care anytime soon. This is a hot area because of recent discoveries in neuroscience. Check out Thomas Metzinger's “The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self,” (Basic Books, 2009):
When certain processing stages are elevated to the level of conscious experience and bound into the self-model active in your brain, the become available for ALL your mental capacities. Now you experience them as your OWN thoughts or urges to act—as properties that BELONG to you. They appear spontaneous because they are the first link in the chain to cross the border from unconscious to conscious brain processes; you have the IMPRESSION that they appeared in your mind “out of the blue,” so to speak. The unconsious precursor is invisible, but the link exists. The fact that the conscious experience is just a SLIVER of the process in the brain, and since THIS fact does NOT appear to us, we have the robust experience of being able to spontaneously initiate causal chains. This is the appearance of an agent. The brain is blind to its own inner workings.
The science of the mind is now beginning to reintroduce those hidden facts into our ego tunnels.
The idea of free will does not exist in our minds alone—it is also a social institution. It is a window connecting us with social practice around us. The assumption that something like free agency exists is a concept fundamental to our legal system and the rules governing societies—rules built on accountability and guilt. These rules are mirrored deep in the structure of our self-model and this incessant mirroring, created complex social networks. If one day, we must tell an entirely different story about what human will is this will affect our societies in an unprecedented way. For example, it would be meaningless to punish people (as opposed to rehabilitating them). RETRIBUTION would then appear to be a STONE AGE concept, something we inherited from animals.
When neuroscience discovers the sufficient neural correlates for willing, desiring, and executing an action, we will be able to cause, amplify and modulate the conscious experience of will. It will become clear that the ACTUAL causes of our actions often have very little to do with what the conscious self tells us.
We now have an information jungle that is increasing each day. It already is reconfiguring our brain. Perhaps our body perception will change as we learn to control multiple avatars in multiple virtual realities, embedding our conscious self into entirely new kinds of senorimotor loopos. A growing number of social interactions may be avatar-to-avatar and we already know that social interactions in cyberspace increase the sense of presence more strongly than higher-resolution graphics ever could. We may finallly come to understand that a lot of our conscious social life has been all along-and interaction between images, a highly mediated process in which mental MODELS of persons begin to causally influence one another.
We already use the the Internet as part of our self-model. We use it for exernal memory storage , as a cognitive prosthesis and for emotional autoregulation. We are learning to multitask, our attention span is shorter and our social rels have a disembodied character.
A related problem is management of our attention. The ability to attend to our environment, to our own feelings to those of others as naturally evolved feature of the human braing. Attention is a finaite commodity. Our brains can generate only a limited amount of attention each day.
The advertisement and entertainment industries are attacking our foundations for experience and trying to rob us of our scarce attention. New insight s into the human mind by cognitive and brain science “neuromarketing” is one of the ugly new buzzwords. If I am right that consciousness is the space of attentional agency and if it is also true that the experience of controling and sustaining your focus of attention is one of the deeper layers of phenomenal (experience) selfhood, then we are witnessing not only an organized attack on the space of consciousness per se, but a form of depersonalization. New media may create a new form of waking consciousness that resembles weakly subjective states—a mixture of dreaming, dementia, intoxication and infantilization.
Lives can be ruined because we have not done our homework. The price of denial may rise. Many new psychoactive substances of the hallucinogen-type—such as 2C-B (“Venus” or “Nexus”) or 2C-T-7 (Blue Mystic” or “T7”0 are out on the illegal market without any clinical testing; their numbers will continue to increase.
And that’s just the old problems the homework we never did. In our ultrafast, ever more competitive and RUTHLESS modern societies, very few people are seeking deeper spritual experience. They want alterness, concentration, emotional stability, and charisma—things thatr lead to success. In the rich societies of the world, people are growing older than ever before—and they want not just quantity but QUALITY of life. BIG PHARMA knows this. Everybody has heard of modafinil, and perhaps that is already with us in the Iraq war; but there are at least 40 new molecules in the pipeline. There is hope and alarmism is not the right attitude, but the technology is not going away.
Big Pharma, circumventing the border between legal and illegal substances is quietly developing new compounds; they know that cognitive enhancers will reap them hefty future profits from “nonmedical use.” For instance, Cephalon, maker of modafinil has said that 90 percent of prescriptions currently are for off-label used. The spread of Internet pharmacies has given them new ways for distribution and new tools for mass testing potential long-term effects.
Modern neuroethics will have to careat a new approach to drug policy: The key question is: Which brain states should be legal? http://apocalypse-blues.typepad.com/
Interesting post. My poor little spot light of attention just read Goodman's piece on the Honduran coup, and it relates in this way: The powers that be don't believe in democracy, don't believe in freedom. They keep telling themselves that in the real world, governments can't be left to people's choices. In fact, nothing can be left to people's choices. Real politics require real intervention by those who know better, the Powers That Be. So, chemically control by the PTB, is only a progression of an already justified process. At the bottom of that slippery slope, people are no more than penned cattle. Once you've decided that manipulation is a right of power, you've abandoned the proposition of democracy with its dignity of a human life to be free even with all the flaws and sorrows that entails. Our government has reduced any attempt to live that life into only a symbol used as a shield against accountability.
thank you for this fascinating read! While I wish I were more surprised at some of the things you've mentioned, I am certainly going to do some studying of them, and I can't say how much I appreciate the opportunity to learn new things!
I would, and frequently do, propose a total abandonment of modern life, up to and including the cessation of all industrial activity and energy use, but have been aware that this would be difficult, at best, due to human resistance to change, and to direct contest by the Powers That Be (PTB)...the levels to which the PTB will go, however, make any self-directed change appear to be almost impossible, given what you've stated here...how can I change in ways that would be counter to the PTB if they are able to influence my very thoughts, and are ready to kill me if I prove more trouble than I'm worth? Certainly, I have severed myself, to a large degree (one can't avoid them entirely) from the various sources of mind-influence, but the PTB are insidious, using religion, social custom and tradition, education, media barrage, sexual deprivation, violence, etc. (carrot or stick, whatever works) to bolster their positions...
War...violent war resulting in a great deal of death, may well be the only way to regain any semblance of naturalness...hoping, of course, that the victors appreciate the natural order, and take steps to reinstate it (assuming that the natural world is robust enough to continue in spite of our ongoing industrial and chemical, not to mention genetic, assaults)...these people will stop at nothing less...I hate to say it so bluntly, but I don't really see any alternative any more...I think the PTB know this, also, and are preparing to be the victors...are we? How will I know you are my fellow, my brother or my sister, and not my enemy, that I might join with you, and not murder you by mistake?
. . . a leading follower of conventional wisdom, Cokie Roberts, told NPR listeners: ". . . the administration is now talking about a glide path towards universal coverage, rather than immediate universal coverage."
Light at the end of the tunnel, just like Vietnam.
Huh. All I see at the end of the glide path is a mountainside.
Almost GOEBBLES_SEZ,
The Health Plan is crafted so that upon its failure, or hitting the mountainside, that single payer might be considered on a state by state basis …
N
Cokie Roberts eats the White House sandwiches.
It appears all too obvious now that Obama will cave to the demands of the healthcare industry. However, what Obama fails to recognize is that this move to essentially reinforce the existing broken system, will spell doom for the Democrats in the next elections. Whatever plan is finally 'approved' in Congress, you can guarantee that the corporate media will trash the reform while Republicans will take credit for predicting its inadequacy in delivering what the President promised.
Ideally the public would learn from this corporate manipulated outcome and bounce all corporate sycophants (Dems and Repubs) from office in the next election. But alas, the public's misguided rage will play into the arms of the Republicans. Nader will continue to be marginalized or completely ignored by the media, Dennis Kucinich will be excluded from participating in Democratic debates in the drive to produce a new leader and American Hate Radio will bombard millions of commuters each day with carefully crafted misinformation redirecting the public anger away from corporate America and zeroing in on Obama.
I really wish people would stop talking about a scripted stage play as if the characters were determining the plot. The roles, the "cave-in" and the "doom" were all fore-ordained by the authors. The actors themselves know that and, even if the audience doesn't, its reaction is also pretty much as expected.
Sioux Rose
SPACE CADET: Your scenario, which I agree with, seems to signify a sort of slow bomb detonating over the American people, an experiment not unlike that of dropping the real thing(s) over Nagasaki & Hiroshima. Here we have the engineers of Disaster Capitalism apparently observing the effects of their economic weapons of mass destruction on a civilian population. How much can a society take before it utterly implodes? Seems they have that base covered, too, between 2 million prison beds, FEMA camps, at least 8 different organizations of "armed guards," and the lovely illegal law rendered legal making it easy to spy on citizens who might have sufficient clout to organize something real... well, at times like this I HOPE astrological cycles, the power of prayer, or some form of Divine Intervention will enter the mix to alter the evident equation.
Jeevee
DIVINE INTERVENTION, WITH THE GENERAL PUBLIC FALLING ON THEIR KNEECAPS, IS INDEED THE ONLY SOLUTION , RATHER THAN DROWNING IN THE THICK CORRUPTION.
No universal coverage with all Americans covered, no legislation, now new laws. If Americans and our politicians will not accept true equality of access, there seems little point in not doing what we are doing now. Universality requires a dedicated, sustainable system of financing, and an understanding that coverage is not based on the ability of individuals to pay. Without that, where financing is cobbled together to hide the true cost, we will be in the same mess as we are in now, only insurers, providers and drug companies will increase their profits and costs will increase even more than is now the case. Reform, a la Obama, is a loser. Scrap it and start over.
Herman Schmidt
The silliest part is that there's really no need to start over from scratch. There are plenty of tried and tested examples worldwide from which Americans could pick and choose and extract the best.
But nothing that isn't "made in the USA" and that adheres to "American traditions" of private profit rip-offs could possibly be considered of course. Can't let those foreign commie influences infect the dear fatherland.
HR 676 is "made in the USA".
My reply to Obama propaganda today was:
HR 676
Single-Payer
Medicare for All.
It's the right thing to do.
I agree. So far all we have is that Obama has gone from talking about a "down payment" on achieving healthcare for all to a "glide path." If all they can do is manipulate language, might as well keep the old wallet in the pocket and wait for the wreckage to pile up until real change is possible.
Bailing out the insurance companies is worse than nothing. The already too big to fail will become bigger. The already too poor to afford care (but rich enough to pay for the poorer to have care) will become poorer. And the already too corrupt system in Washington will once again be rewarded for it.
Under, even the best of the curent plans:
1. I will still see things like at my workplace - where co-workers with terminal cancer had to still show up for work to stay on the payroll s they could maintain their insurance until nearly the very end - and still count their blessings, because in private industry, they would have been simply fired when their paltry 5 days sick leave was used up.
2. Medical related family bankruptcies and poverty will continue.
3. Most of those 22,000 excess deaths will still occur as people continue to not seek medical care for fear of #2 above.
4. Even if the proposed 12% cap in insurance costs for the poor poeple stays in, it will still be prohibitive. $200 per month is a lot of money for someone raising a family on $10/hr. Assuming. that after the humiliating means-testing process, they qualify at all. And the insurance they recieve will probably be next to worthless in coverage.
5. Many millions will be turned into scofflaws for refusing to give their money to these professional swindlers called insurance companies.
So, bring on the disaster; the worse, the better. Maybe real solutions will then be considered.
The disasters are here, and Washington is oblivious. I doubt that congress had to fill out an excruciatingly detailed and invasive "application" for healthcare, and then find out that the reason was so that the insurance company would be able to find a mistake somewhere and rescind their contract with you should the equation turn from taking your money to paying out.
Congress doesn't realize that a young person paying a mandated $300 a month has $300 less to pay rent or fill the gas tank. It's a tax on a lifestyle that is already just getting by.
Congress doesn't realize that by saying working people can subsidize the payments of the non-working people, they just put a squeeze on already pathetically low wages.
Congress doesn't realize that on the way to being stone-sucking poor and qualified for subsidy, middle class people have something to lose. We are working for our own dreams, remember? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Congress, it is a disaster for us. Your solution to our disaster is to keep digging us into debt to our corporate owners, the same folks who leave you a $20 on the nightstand. How else to understand how you could take a problem: we can't afford healthcare, and mandate the solution as we'll make you buy it.
What you said.
Actually, even non-working people will have to meet the mandatory insurance requirement or face fines.
You left out the part where the insurance company approves the care under "medical nessessity" and then recinds it because it wasn't covered.....leaving you with the bill.
Thats under the "you are covered, but oops you're not after the fact" clause. But make no mistake, the plans offered by Congress and the Senate would be worse.
Respectful, civil, single payer advocates get arrested and tossed in jail by Democrats like Baucus and Feinstein. Feinstein had some elderly women arrested at her office, who only wanted a few minutes of her time to talk about health care. Or the 12 year old girl arrested in Idaho. The media barely gave any of this a mention. Or Obama's doctor gets nixed from an appeareance on ABC. You can be sure that decision was made by the Oval Office.
On the other hand, Democrats allow abusive, threatening, gangs of right wing extremists shout them down to defend the statue quo. The media gives it wall to wall coverage.
This is not a coincidence.
Baucus and Feinstein? Somewhat like Laurel and Hardy with power. Those old gal's deserved to be arrested. How dare they want to talk to their representatives! The shame of it.
Of course it's not a coincidence.
I'd really like someone to explain to me exactly what influential institutions actually do represent the people or reflect their interests in the "greatest democracy on earth." The media? The legislature? The presidency? The "education" system? Evangelical "religion"? The financial system? Anything?
If the answer is "none of the above", and especially if all of the foregoing are mutually reinforcing, is there any realistic hope at all for achieving ANY popular goal EVER short of outright revolution? Personally, I don't see it.
Sioux Rose
Free Press: Excellent analysis. Thank you for sharing it.
It was in Iowa. Kinda doubt there are many single payer activists in Idaho.
Jeevee
WAIL to wall coverage.