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Health Care Reform on the Homestretch
In his speech on health care to a joint session of Congress, President Obama talked about the long, long history of health-care reform efforts in this country, and said he wants to be the last President to take up the issue. Let's hope not.
The reform now shaping up in Congress--with a heavy dose of industry-written language--is not likely to be much of a fix. Without a robust public option--a "Medicare for all" program that can cut administrative costs and compete with the profit-hogging private insurance companies—we are not likely to see a big improvement in health care for Americans.
By taking single-payer health care off the table and working on a compromise the insurance industry can support, Obama is letting us down.
But that is no reason to give up the fight. Some progressive members of Congress are still pushing for single-payer legislation. And rarely does health care receive so much intense public attention. Now is the time to get the message out about what a functional health insurance system would look like.
Industry knows that and that's why we are hearing the echo chamber of talking points: beware a "government takeover" of health care, the "consequences of rationing," and "bureaucrats, not doctors prescribing medicine." These words and phrases are all over Fox News, conservative talk radio, and in the mouths of Republican members of Congress, repeated at town hall meetings, and at the recent Tea Party rally in Washington, DC. They are also, verbatim, in a memo produced by Republican strategist Frank Luntz directing the party how to oppose health care reform.
On the other side are the Mad As Hell Doctors, members of Physicians for a National Health Program. This group of physicians from Portland, Oregon, is driving across the country to a rally in Washington, DC, in support of single payer on September 30. They are in Madison, Wisconsin, today to meet with health care providers and hold a rally on the steps of the state capitol building at 5 pm. The so-called Kucinich Amendment--HR 676, the "Medicare for All" bill, sponsored by Representatives Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers, is supposed to come to the floor this month, and various single payer advocates are planning events around it.
Kucinich begins hearings tomorrow in the domestic policy subcommittee entitled "Between You and Your Doctor: The Bureaucracy of Private Health Insurance" with a witness list that includes the family members of patients denied needed care because the industry needs to maintain its high profit margins.
This is the message health care reform advocates need to get out: Private health insurance companies are the bureaucrats who stand between you and good medical care. Because these companies must maintain 20 percent profit margins--that is, keep 20 percent of the money you pay them for health care--in order to maintain their high stock prices, they have a perverse incentive to limit medical care.
Under our private insurance system, America wastes 30 percent of health care dollars on advertising, administration, and CEO pay. The idea that we have more "choice" is also ridiculous. People in other industrialized countries with universal, national health care are far more satisfied with the care they get and their choice of doctors. What we have is a system in which your employer or your HMO can push you out the door if you start to cost too much. After all, they are in business to make money, not to see that you get the care you need.
As health care reform reaches the homestretch in Congress and Americans tune into the issue, it is important for everyone to get these facts. Members of Congress need to hear from real constituents, and your friends and neighbors who are being fed so much of the industry line need to hear from people who understand the issue and care. It may be a long road ahead for health insurance reform, but this is an important step along the way.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllHealthcare on the Homestretch my ass. The game is already over and we're in Triple Overtime.
Home stretcher is more like it.
On the home stretch? it fell on the first turn and is waiting for the vet to put it down.
Not only will Obama's "health care reform" not be "much of a fix", it will result in less medical service at higher cost than the current broken system provides.
The only way you will benefit from Obama's "health care reform" is if you own insurance and drug maker stock.
Progressives and right-wingnuts alike need to be contacting your two US Senators and telling them to vote against this immoral bill that will criminalize individuals who refuse to pay extortion money to insurance companies.
As of Sept. 8, the day before the President's speech to the Congress, Representative John Conyers from the 14th Federal District in Michigan said that the only choice for American's was the Public option. This U S Representative was stating that he would be able to compromise on getting a provision that would allow citizen's to buy insurance from the Pool of Insurance providers that would be qualified and checked by our government. He was the original creator of H.R.676, the Bill introduced in 2005 that created a "medicare for all" provision.
Since June, the Congressional Budget Office describes that the measure of H.R. 3200 Introduced July 14, by Congressman John Dingell-D-MI, called America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 would increase premiums for Medicare recipient's, but it would decrease costs for prescription drugs. The added increase in expenditure for providing coverage for all Americans would increase Federal Deficits by $645 Bn from 2010-2019. The profits of a single Private Health Insurance mega corp would be equivalent to all of the increased costs borne by the Federal Government for the years described.
These two sets of facts, the CBO costing of the H.R. 3200 and the Public Option description that congressman Conyer's are describing are important enough on their own to show that the "dog and pony" show going on in the Congress right now are just a stalling measure to set-up a stunning outcome for America's need for a better Health care system.
I read today Sept. 16 that the description of a Public Option has been dropped altogether from the Senate Finance Committee version of the debate. Senator Max Baucus a Democrat from Montana and the "Group of six", a Blue Dog Democrat has finally released a public version of his committee's draft.
This is the time that we all need to contact Congressman Conyers, and Congressman Kucinich to rally around the Single Payer option. No, it's not dead, It's been allowed to wait while Congress works out a different approach to fixing the problem. Well, I can't speak for you, but I don't want a Private Insurance Bureaucrat deciding for me what the Insurance company will allow me to be treated for. The record of care that the Private Insurance Industry has accumulated has convinced me that I would rather create a Universal Single Payer Insurance System. The information that the House got from interviewing industry leaders in June about the claims of Canadian Health care system problems and the long wait times was conclusive, but not reported by the MSM. The drawbacks of the Canadian System do exist, but they are minor compared with our own health care system. Single Payer works in every Country that has created it. The reported debt incurred by citizens of Britain, and Canada is real (as high as 30% per citizen in France), but the health care system works. Do you understand that. It works.
Actually, DK introduced a "Medicare For All" bill in 2004. 676 is a second try for it, not the first.
Credit where it's due.
Do the letters BFD mean anything to you?
This so-called reform that Obama and the Congress is carrying for their bosses is not only not an "improvement," but it is vastly worse than what we already have, allowing corporations to dig even deeper into public arena.
It is beyond imagination that Conniff can rationalize that this spectacular surrender/defeat somehow moves the debate over single payer forward.
Single payer was never allowed to be seriously considered, and now even the most progressive members of the Congress (having bitten on the notion of the "public option") are going to accpet a truly horrid, regressive bill and justify it as the best they could get -- and a step forward.
Shame on Conniff for surrendering to this illogical position. Maybe spending so much time on TV talk shows has confused her. She used to be a clear-thinking columnist and journalist.
Shame on you for completely mischaracterizing Conniff's column. Conniff does not claim that Baucus' bill is a "step forward."
Do you believe that others on this site don't actually read the articles?
The worst that Conniff does is to use poor grammar.
q
In a teleconference call I participated in with Dennis Kucinich, he signaled that a bill would pass, but it would have no public option. Evidently, he believes enough representatives in the house who have been holding the line for a public option will cave under pressure from Nancy Pelosi for this to happen.
Kucinich believes a true grassroots movement must start in the states to first get single-payer passed on the state level, then carry the movement to Washington to have a national single-payer plan finally passed. His website is being used to try to get this movement started through meetup and actions.
Public movements are the only response citizens can make against a thoroughly bought and corrupted Congress. Contacting congresspersons alone will not do it. Recent history has show they just ignore us, no matter how much we jam their phone lines. A bottom-up movement is the only way to get out from under a political system which thinks its constituency is large corporations.
Well, that was a thoughtful idea.
I have no problem with that, only with watching the debate slip away yet again. I'm not discouraged, only disappointed.
Yep, the game is over as blip said. It was over on election day. The voters in reality voted for the insurance companies. 18,000 will continue to die every year in the US from lack of access to health care. That is like having a 9/11 every 60 days. Maybe the real terrorists are the US voters.
I'm glad I voted for Nader.
"Under our private insurance system, America wastes 30 percent of health care dollars on advertising, administration, and CEO pay. "
With all due respect, I believe the ad agencies and insurance administration employees and CEOs disagree. President Obama loves to remind us how "Health Insurance Corporations" are a HEALTHY 20% of our ECONOMY. This is NOT code speach. This is, in your face, the people be damned, Corporations are king, blatant, naked, power with a total disdain for the needs of the low and middle classes.
Paranoid Pessimist is partly right with health care being on a stretcher. The stretcher isn't being carried to an ambulance though; it's being carried to a rack.
stay healthy, folks. Help is not on the way.
Home stretch?
But running the wrong way, perhaps?
I'm all for the "keep fighting" message that seems to underlie this, but this fight shows every sign of staying nasty.
Let's keep swinging though; at least nothing looks ready to pass that is NOT single payer, and the Dems at least need to pass something.
With or without the now-shriveled public option, all the main Democatic bills are WORSE than no reform. They neither control costs nor significantly expand coverage, but now FORCE people to buy the overpriced, gap-ridden products of the HMOs. Just another cynical corporate bailout tricked out as "reform."
The prhase "public option" has become an MSM buzzword vaguely meaning "something like Medicare." But the pub-op proposals on the table are nothing like Medicare. In fact, they have been cynically neutered to present no threat to the HMOs or to offer any path to single payer.
The corporate elite plays for keeps--they are always at least a dozen strategic steps ahead of the opposition. They feign apoplexy over the public option even though they have covertly worked to reduce it to a harmless nullity.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
Please see the following:
1. "Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold"
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%9Cpublic-option%E2%80%9D-was-sold/
.2. "Does the Congressional Progressive Caucus Care About Its Progressive Principles?"
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/28/does-the-congressional-progressive-caucus-care-about-its-public-option-principles/
3. Reply to Critics
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/08/08/reply-to-critics-of-%E2%80%9Cbait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%98public-option%E2%80%99-was-sold%E2%80%9D
Brainstorming for Healthcare:
We need a theme song, easy to remember on point lyrics, catch tune, keep the protestors energized and make our point clearly.
Teach-ins at local gathering places, outside of Congressional Reps. local offices, outside insurance company offices -- medical professionals and people who have been denied coverage speeches, seminar style and lectures.
Sick-ins -- again in public areas, outside Reps and Ins. Co. offices
medical pros set up mini-clinics where people w/o insurance can get consultations
Street Theater
Impromptu rallies with really impressive artistically rendered signs, singing our theme song(s), shouting slogans, open mike
Letter/postcard flooding campaigns to elected reps, government healthcare officials, insurance lobbyists, President Obama, news media, most especially groups organized to oppose healthcare reform
Also call-in campaigns to those people
Bumper stickers, lawn signs, t-shirts
more brainstorming
Here's a suggestion someone else gave on another forum:
"We need a "slogan" to turn the tide toward a demand for health care that actually works. I suggest, that criticism of the single-payer option as "socialized medicine" should be answered by saying, "Not socialized medicine, but how about civilized medicine?"
This leaves open a discussion of what "civilized medicine" might accomplish to the end that any sane person can see that what has been in place is broken and that urgent action is needed to fix it, that a simple "more of the same" approach is not rational and will not work. Then we can start talking about what would be the civilized way to provide health care."
http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/
http://www.madashelldoctors.com/
Can capitalism work in a medical industry that has a goal to reduce customers, reduce gross profit, reduce return on investment, reduce employees as soon as possible and measure success based on how fast you can go out of business? But what fool would invest real money in such a venture?
We have a capitalist medical industry that charges twice as much for medical coverage as any nation on earth, and still 32 other countries have better overall health and longer life expectancy. The reason being we operate our medical industry for maximum profit in the only way possible, by zero oversight and no regulation.
Comes now a quest for the impossible, to reform our medical industry in a way that increases health better, reduces the need for medicine faster, and still allows for increasing profit and capital growth.
Venezuela, now they had the identical problem several years back when President Chavez enacted Medicare for all, as all the doctors and hospitals went on strike. So they hired several thousand doctors and nurses from Cuba, and in a nation where 70% never saw a doctor they all get free healthcare and a most friendly doctor.