« Bernanke's Real Message About Budget Deficits | Robert Reich's Blog | Watching Out for the Details in Healthcare, and How Hard the White House Pushes for Them »
How Pharma and Insurance Intend to Kill the Public Option, And What Obama and the Rest of Us Must Do
I'ved poked around Washington today, talking with friends on the Hill who confirm the worst: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill.
You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits.
So they're pulling out all the stops -- pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called "moderate" Republicans who say they're in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they've been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.
Max Baucus, Chair of Senate Finance (now exactly why does the Senate Finance Committee have so much say over health care?) hasn't shown his cards but staffers tell me he's more than happy to sign on to any one of these. But Baucus is waiting for more support from his colleagues, and none of the three proposals has emerged as the leading candidate for those who want to kill the public option without showing they're killing it. Meanwhile, Ted Kennedy and his staff are still pushing for a full public option, but with Kennedy ailing, he might not be able to round up the votes. (Kennedy's health committee released a draft of a bill today, which contains the full public option.)
Enter Olympia Snowe. Her move is important, not because she's Republican (the Senate needs only 51 votes to pass this) but because she's well-respected and considered non-partisan, and therefore offers some cover to Democrats who may need it. Last night Snowe hosted a private meeting between members and staffers about a new proposal Pharma and Insurance are floating, and apparently she's already gained the tentative support of several Democrats (including Ron Wyden and Thomas Carper). Under Snowe's proposal, the public option would kick in years from now, but it would be triggered only if insurance companies fail to bring down healthcare costs and expand coverage in he meantime.
What's the catch? First, these conditions are likely to be achieved by other pieces of the emerging legislation; for example, computerized records will bring down costs a tad, and a mandate requiring everyone to have coverage will automatically expand coverage. If it ever comes to it, Pharma and Insurance can argue that their mere participation fulfills their part of the bargain, so no public option will need to be triggered. Second, as Pharma and Insurance well know, "years from now" in legislative terms means never. There will never be a better time than now to enact a public option. If it's not included, in a few years the public's attention will be elsewhere.
Much the same dynamic is occurring in the House. Two members who had originally supported single payer told me that Pharma and Insurance have launched the same strategy there, and many House members are looking to see what happens in the Senate. Snowe's "trigger" is already buzzing among members.
All this will be decided within days or weeks. And once those who want to kill the public option without their fingerprints on the murder weapon begin to agree on a proposal -- Snowe's "trigger" or any other -- the public option will be very hard to revive. The White House must now insist on a genuine public option. And you, dear reader, must insist as well.
This is it, folks. The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle.
You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits.
So they're pulling out all the stops -- pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called "moderate" Republicans who say they're in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they've been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.
Max Baucus, Chair of Senate Finance (now exactly why does the Senate Finance Committee have so much say over health care?) hasn't shown his cards but staffers tell me he's more than happy to sign on to any one of these. But Baucus is waiting for more support from his colleagues, and none of the three proposals has emerged as the leading candidate for those who want to kill the public option without showing they're killing it. Meanwhile, Ted Kennedy and his staff are still pushing for a full public option, but with Kennedy ailing, he might not be able to round up the votes. (Kennedy's health committee released a draft of a bill today, which contains the full public option.)
Enter Olympia Snowe. Her move is important, not because she's Republican (the Senate needs only 51 votes to pass this) but because she's well-respected and considered non-partisan, and therefore offers some cover to Democrats who may need it. Last night Snowe hosted a private meeting between members and staffers about a new proposal Pharma and Insurance are floating, and apparently she's already gained the tentative support of several Democrats (including Ron Wyden and Thomas Carper). Under Snowe's proposal, the public option would kick in years from now, but it would be triggered only if insurance companies fail to bring down healthcare costs and expand coverage in he meantime.
What's the catch? First, these conditions are likely to be achieved by other pieces of the emerging legislation; for example, computerized records will bring down costs a tad, and a mandate requiring everyone to have coverage will automatically expand coverage. If it ever comes to it, Pharma and Insurance can argue that their mere participation fulfills their part of the bargain, so no public option will need to be triggered. Second, as Pharma and Insurance well know, "years from now" in legislative terms means never. There will never be a better time than now to enact a public option. If it's not included, in a few years the public's attention will be elsewhere.
Much the same dynamic is occurring in the House. Two members who had originally supported single payer told me that Pharma and Insurance have launched the same strategy there, and many House members are looking to see what happens in the Senate. Snowe's "trigger" is already buzzing among members.
All this will be decided within days or weeks. And once those who want to kill the public option without their fingerprints on the murder weapon begin to agree on a proposal -- Snowe's "trigger" or any other -- the public option will be very hard to revive. The White House must now insist on a genuine public option. And you, dear reader, must insist as well.
This is it, folks. The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle.
Advertisement
Well I emailed both of my Senators, and my Congresswoman about a month ago. So far only one has answered my email, and that's because she is the only one facing a possible difficult re-election campaign. Now, of course, if I had included a check for about $2000 with my letters, I would have gotten a little attention. But, my budget doesn't allow me to buy those folks.
Let's look at a US Senator, up for re-election next year. If she ticks off the pharmaceutical and health industries, she might as well retire. They would simply generously fund a competitor for her seat, making it virtually impossible for her to be re-elected. Unlike me, those industries can easily fit the price of a US Senator into their budget - after all they just pass that expense on to their customers anyway.
June 6, 2009 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I Emailed mine a few weeks ago about the Single Payer option. One got back to me and thanked me for my interest in 'public land usage'. I guess I should have included a check for $2000 if I actually wanted them to read my letter. We need to turn around "If she ticks off the pharmaceutical and health industries, she might as well retire", to read, 'If s/he ticks off the voters, s/he might as well retire.
June 6, 2009 12:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
HA, why bother emailing your congressman? They are bought and paid for.
June 6, 2009 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
These folks in the plutocracy just don't get it.
The sophisticated way of saying it, is Newton's third law of motion: every action has an equal opposite reaction.
In other words, its the old saying "pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered" means nothing to them.
The normal rate of return is about 4.5% for a business. Anything over that is called 'rents'. The firms are pulling down oligoply and monopoly rents and in the case of Pharma, super-monopoly rents. To do this, 18,000 Americans needlessly have to die while millions of Americans take pay cuts to help fund these rents.
The lesson of the Russian revolution means nothing to these people. Perhaps the more circumspect ones think they'll get off with a mere public chastisement like the Wall Street crowd got. They just don't get it.
They don't realize that they are flirting with mob rule gone wild. Once the public fully realizes that the healthcare oligopoly is responsible for six times more deaths every year than Al Quaida was on 9/11, and are over charging us to boot, they'll be lucky if they end up with only one pitch fork stuck through their abdomens.
These folks simply aren't content with getting fat, they are intent on getting slaughtered. This is the next great event emerging in our time.
The alternative to public option is medicare for all, arriving on a pitch fork. We all know, single payer is not going to get done unless we hit the streets.
Doctor's and nurses are already doing just that. It's high time we join them.
Imagine that - you can have free health care for the rest of your life, and it will cost you nothing more than an afternoon walking with friends.
Oh, and if that's not incentive enough, single payer (medicare for all) is so efficient that it will probably end the recession in a fortnight.
June 6, 2009 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent points all!
June 6, 2009 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bravo Tim!
Such good imagery!
June 6, 2009 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent (of course) Mr Reich and comments by Tim and others.
There have been a bunch of diaries at Daily Kos today on the public option vs single payer discussions. Many have referenced this column.
Two important points and one suggestion.
Public option is NOT single payer. The reality that it will not solve the problem - and may even make it worse - needs to be made very clear to the public so that, as DrSteveB points out, the rights to citing failure are not automatically given to the PHI and Pharma.
The reason single payer is the only solution is because it gives us the money to pay for universal coverage - without adding any.
I think we should turn the trigger concept into the safety net for single payer. The HCR act would set single payer as the ultimate goal. The first phase would include the public option plan. It would also set the criteria for when the next move to single payer would be triggered. There should be parts of the act that help us move towards those criteria ASAP. It should have sunset type provisions for evaluating and improving aspects of the act. Like electronic health records.
We have to accept we won't get it right the first time. Not likely to be close to right. Very likely to be a choice between something that will continue the loss of life and other tragedies, or make it worse. The goal will to be minimizing those consequences until they can be virtually eliminated.
This situation really demands action by millions at all levels. Contacting elected officials, LTE, joining groups that are organizing for door to door campaigning and showing up at rallies.
June 6, 2009 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hoppy, if you want to get on the board with Senator Baucus top 100 donors, you'll have to up that check to at least $12,000+.
The US Supreme Court has ruled dollars given to politicians are free speech, and Senators like Max like to encourage your right to send him money.
Top 100 Contributors Senator Max Baucus 2005 - 2010
June 6, 2009 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
To highlight a few of Senator Max's contributors:
#1. Schering-Plough Corp - Healthcare
#5. Aetna Inc - Insurance
#6. Amgen Inc - biotech/pharmaceuticals
#8. New York Life Insurance
#9 Blue Cross/Blue Shield
#10. DaVita Inc. - Healthcare
#18. Wyeth - pharmaceuticals
#20. Kindred Healthcare
Those are just pulled from his top 20 contributors. I think it's plain to see who comprises Baucus's real constituency.
June 6, 2009 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for that info. I just sent the following email to Max:
I sent a similar letter to my Sen.'s. If we all bury them in emails we may not have to march!
June 6, 2009 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
hoppy,
the blogs and others, like consumer groups, "Single Payer" groups, etc. should
start a full court press. making public the campaign funds contributed by those opposed to the public option and/or single payer to all Congressmen and Senators involved in forming the plan. Make a big issue out of it.
Lets see how they operate with that information in the public's eye.
June 6, 2009 7:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nothing happens in this country unless their is big, concentrated money behind it. In the final analysis, Patronage is the fuel of politics and back scratching is the mechanics of politics.
The vast majority of people don't have the concentration of resources to get things done. Some how, we are poorly organized. The conservative media is framing the options as between current system plus some institutional enhancements such as computerized records vs Obama's public option.
Single payer isn't even getting any play from the media - despite doctors and nurses marching in the streets.
We have to take this up another notch.
Maybe one way might be to use Fox's faux public demonstrations "tea bagging parties" against itself.
Fox loves to cover tea parties, lets give them a real one to cover - nationwide tea parties for single payer. Lets get 80 million people out in the streets. Love to see the look on Hannity's face when he ends up having to cover a tea party for single payer health care - one that exposes their made up party as a fraud. LOL
To get people out they need motivation.
Start by telling them that an afternoon in the park with a million other friends, drinking a friendly cup of tea, get's them free health care for life.
Then tell them it will require no new taxes: the current per capita governmental outlays for healthcare in the U.S. are already comparable to those in France (and far exceeds England's).
Then tell them that the real death tax in this country is our health care system - no matter how much money they save up, for most people, all of it will go to health industry in the last year of their lives.
Then tell them that their biggest threat to bankruptcy is health care.
Then tell them, even if they are insured, their current ensurer is constantly looking for pretext to deny them healthcare, either through pre-existing conditions or spending caps. Truth is, they have only partial health care.
Then tell them that 20,000 Americans will die this year because they didn't have health care.
Then tell them that the industry is currently doing research and lobbying congress to be able to deny people health care based upon the their DNA profile. Using DNA profiling they can predict with stunning accuracy the likelyhood of you getting sick.
Private health care insurance exists to make a profit.
That means Private health care insurance exist to keep you from having access to health care when you really need it.
We all ready pay in taxes as much as we need for this. It's a policy change. That's all.
The lucrative private health care industry has turned our nation into a giant plantation for their benefit and their comfort.
They hold all of us in captivity.
Just whose nation is it anyway? There's or ours?
Isn't it time we rise up and take what is justly and rightfully ours?
Aren't these people just highway robber's - taking the lives of their fellow countrymen for enormous profit to themselves?
What country on earth would allow this?
What kind of democracy allows this?
How can we just sit back and let them take our money, our labor and deny us health care.
The constitution grants us a right to liberty - to protect and ensure that it grants us a right to an attorney.
In this country you have the right to a lawyer - shouldn't you have a right to a doctor too?
Doesn't "the right to life" enshrined in the constitution suggest that we do?
Lets take to the street and hang the scalawags in burning effigy to remind them of their own potential for infirmities.
June 7, 2009 12:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
As the Senate was unable, after bailing them out with hundreds of billions in 'loans', to buck the failing banking industry lobby on the bankruptcy changes once championed by Obama, I would say the chance of a straight up single payer option is about zero. Anything less will either do little or hand more money over to the insurance industry and make them stronger.
Mr. Reich your honesty, sincerity and efforts are greatly appreciated nonetheless. One can hope that the voters in this country will stop electing the likes of Jon Kyl (R-Az), the killer the bankruptcy changes, and other Republicans who have never done a thing to improve the lives of the people in this nation.
June 6, 2009 1:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Time to get in touch with your Congressional representatives!
June 6, 2009 5:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's face it, sending emails to members of congress is an exercise in futility. I have never gotten more than a form letter back from any of them--even the good guys.
What we need to do is send every one a copy of Michael Moore's "Sicko". I watched it for the first time yesterday and I'm still shaken by it. Universal health care WORKS. Everybody knows it, and yet we're still held hostage by Pharma and the insurance companies, whose only stake in all of this is to find ways to make more money.
People DIE because of them. People's lives are altered forever because of their decisions. They have no right to make decisions about anybody's health--and yet it's accepted practice in America.
This has got to stop. Appealing to congress obviously has no affect. We need an all-out campaign with full-out exposure about how much their practices actually cost us. We need to see first hand how real, actual people have had to live lives of misery because of them. I cannot bear to watch one more parent cry over the death of a beloved child because the care wasn't there. That is unconscionable--and yet it happens every day.
One quote from Moore's film: "We are the only country in the Western world without universal health care."
Shame on our leaders for letting this happen.
Shame on them for lying to us and telling us that government-controlled health care would be a terrible thing.
Shame on them for sequestering themselves in their ivory towers so they don't have to see the human suffering their lies and their neglect have caused.
And shame on those of us who elected those people, knowing full well that they were bought and paid for by the very corporations that hold our lives in their hands.
What have we come to, and where are we going? This has to stop. NOW.
(And by the way, paying more taxes for government-controlled health care makes sense. Would you rather pay more taxes or pay sky-high premiums that will only go higher because they CAN?)
June 6, 2009 8:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's so appalling. I agree with both you and Michael Moore and was very troubled by the information in Sicko too, although I already was well aware of what the lack of health insurance can do to a person's life. Let's hope that Sicko is replayed over and over on the cable film networks in the time leading up to the health care vote.
It's hard to understand how Congress can shamelessly capitulate to the very organizations that in many ways created the health care mess in the first place (not to mention the economic mess). The reason of course is money, so when I write my Congress people, I'll also put in a pitch for the measure that Senator Durbin has just introduced, for comprehensive campaign financing reform. You can read more about it here: http://washingtonindependent.com/45583/small-movement-in-congress-eyes-campaign-finance-reform
I hope others will do the same.
June 6, 2009 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
My bet is that all the networks bury Sicko on the bottom of their pile or more likely still, throw it in the round file.
June 7, 2009 12:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is Obama's true test. If there is no bona fide public option, I will consider his presidency a failure no matter what else he does.
June 6, 2009 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Does that mean you'll help him achieve a public option, or just watch on the sidelines?
June 6, 2009 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
The only thing you can do is hold them accountable. If they can vote like Republicans and they still get your vote, they will.
I started my plan with Senator Amy. Admittedly, it has been futile so far because sadly Senator Amy was indeed elected, but she said universal healthcare is "unrealistic" and I said to myself "A vote for Senator Amy is unrealistic". So I voted for some nice Green person whose name I can't remember.
Also notice that Reich says we're going to get universal healthcare. I very much doubt that we're getting that at all, public option or not.
June 6, 2009 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Beyond phone calls, emails, and letters, what do you suggest?
June 6, 2009 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Howabout throwing the tea party farce into Fox face. Call nationwide demonstrations in the form of tea parties, as apposed to tea bagging, for health care.
How hard can that be.
Just tell people: "you want free health care for the rest of your life? Then spend an afternoon with 80 million of your friends sipping tea and talking policy."
Then remind them that it is free.
The government already pays out as much as France does, per capita, on health care.
Then tell them that the current health care system is destroying our industries and our economy.
Then tell them that single payer is so efficient, that, if passed tomorrow, could single handedly release so much purchasing power, and reduce demands on business that we could walk out of the current depression in a fortnight.
Then remind them that the health care corporations earn monopoly and oligopoly and sometimes super monopoly rents (pharma) and that in the name of those profits, 20,000 of their fellow Americans will die this year for want of insurance.
Tell them that what ever estate they amass in their life will be consumed by these health care companies in the last years of their life. Their posterity will get little or nothing.
Tell them that, for the want of oligopoly rents, their biggest exposure to bankruptcy is from health care.
Tell them that even if they think they have insurance, the health care companies are working night and day to make sure they won't have to pay out when their worst health night mares come true.
Tell them that the health care companies are working to find ways of using DNA analysis to predict the likelihood of their becoming sick and are lobbying congress to ensure that once they've mastered this assesment, they will be able to deny you coverage. They'll only ensure people who statistically speaking, have DNA that suggest they are less likely to become sick.
Tell them the truth.
Agian, remind them we already pay enough taxes, the government already pays out enough money, this is absolutely free for the rest of their lives, all they have to do is spend one or two afternoons sipping tea, coffee and grape juice with 80 million of their friends.
The doctors and nurses are already taking it to the streets. I don't think this should be to hard. All we have to do is follow.
Let me say that again: FREE. HEALTH INSURANCE. FOR LIFE.
At the meager cost of one or two afternoons of people's time.
This is already paid for. We are already paying.
There is no added cost.
As Woody Allen once said: "90% of success in life is just a matter of showing up."
So lets show up - and shove it in their faces.
If Obama says we can't, let's remind him that, yes, we can.
June 7, 2009 8:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Amen to Rich in NJ. He is spot on.
If Obama can't won't stand his ground on the public option and fight for it, he will not make the impact he wants. When the going gets tough, and it will, the tough better get going.
June 6, 2009 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Unless Obama demands a single payer option and threatens to veto anything else that comes to his desk it will be hard to make this happen. He was supposed to represent the people.
I think job action by those in the health care provider business may be necessary to get action in Washington to break the strangle hold of big money.
June 6, 2009 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama, citing political reality, is telling us that we can't have single payer health care insurance.
Maybe we should take it to the streets and tell him "Yes, We Can."
June 7, 2009 7:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
polling certainly indicates public support for single payer; imagine if there was an honest public debate about what it actually entailed, instead of the tried and true 'gubmint is bad' bs.
i've read accounts of home state public meetings with baucus' staff turning into rowdy discussions/support for single-payer and criticism of baucus's inclination to support the insurance industry.
and this morning the wapo has a piece talking about 'noisy' 'leftists' 'hounding' democratic members in advocacy of a 'european' styled program; and quoting rick scott without mention of his curious background.
June 6, 2009 9:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I had my comment halfway typed when I read Ramona's comment. She said it all. The sight of Baucus and the rest blocking the public option while taking big bucks from Big Pharma and Big Healthcare is a disgrace. And the prospect that our society may not be able to muster the outrage and indignation appropriate to such brazen whoring by our political elites is depressing, to say the least.
The Iraq war fraud was obviously symptomatic of a society that was very ill. If we fail to implement the only sensible, decent and equitable solution to this healthcare crisis, it just further confirms my suspicion that we've become a society untethered from even the most degraded notions of community and empathy for our fellow man.
June 6, 2009 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bravo, Thomas. This brought tears to my eyes. I so want it not to be true:
June 6, 2009 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Think of this.
We are in an economic depression.
Millions of people not only don't have health insurance, they don't have jobs.
Millions more are under employed.
Our industry, our economy and our jobs are ALL being driven into the ground by private health care.
On top of all of that the government all ready pays out as much as France does on a per capita basis.
So we are already paying for universal single payer - we just aren't getting it.
Single payer is so massively more efficient than our current system that we could walk out of our current economic depression tomorrow if we adopted medicare for all tomorrow.
How sick is that. We're in an economic depression, and we still can't do the right thing for insurance.
As this becomes more clear, the people advocating for private health care may soon be running from pitch forks.
20,000 people will die this year because of this system we have.
Ours is currently and inherently a cruel society.
As Gandhi said, poverty is the worst form of violence.
And we are inflicting this upon ourselves.
If that's not a banana republic, I don't know what is.
June 7, 2009 8:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Olympia loves triggers--her support of Bush's original tax cuts was premised on triggers that would short-circuit the cuts if the deficit ballooned. How did that work out? She looks for fig leaves that allow her to play moderate for the folks in Maine, while carrying water for the party in DC.
June 6, 2009 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
This isn't Obama's true test, it's our true test. If I hear one more oh so cynical whiny ass titty baby tell us how all the politicians have been bought off, it's a done deal, we're screwed I'm gonna puke.
Don't email your House reps and senators, fax them, emails get pitched. Call first and ask who the staffer is who works on healthcare and fax him or her and demand a response. Larn about this, do your homework, write letters to the editor. 59% of doctors want a single player plan, 62% of the American public want one too. This is doable people but we have to do it. Electing Obama was just the start, but we still have to do the heavy lifting. To paraphrase and old saying lead, follow or STFU, we don't need complainers who say it can't be done, we need volunteers to make it happen.
June 6, 2009 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, the politicians have been bought off--but a done deal? Who said anything about giving up? I have a suggestion, Mark. Why don't you post a real blog about the ways to get through to the powers-that-be about health care? Comments are fine, but if you really want to do something, DO SOMETHING. If you have some of the answers, get out there and SHARE them.
Your suggestions are good ones, but your first paragraph almost made me stop reading. No answers there--just one more rant.
June 6, 2009 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm too busy organizing a canvassing meeting on this subject today. 1pm Panera Bread on Ogden in Downers Grove IL, if you're in the area. 14 have signed up including a pediatrician. We'll be getting petitions signed for the next couple of weeks and will send copies to Rangle, Biggert (IL-13), Scott Harper her opponent, Kennedy, Baucus, and any other legislator who needs a little spine or not so veiled threat.
June 6, 2009 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Does my heart good to see people DOING something...keep up the good work.
June 6, 2009 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
What do the petitions say? Can you share?
June 6, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Haven't written them up yet Ramona but will post a link to them this week in a blog when I do. In the meantime you can go here to look up more info.
http://www.pnhp.org/
Physicians for a National Health Program is a non-profit research and education organization of 16,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance.
A month ago 17 of their members stood up at Max Bauscus's healthcare roundtable discussion after being totally shut out of the process and demanded he include a single payer representative on the panel and got arrested for their trouble.
He caught so much flack for that he's now dropping charges and backpedddling as fast as he can. So fast Chuck Grassley is reduced to whining instead of demanding he get his way.
June 6, 2009 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the link, Mark. I've added their logo and link to my blog. I'll go back and read it thoroughly.
June 6, 2009 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Mark.
The Politicians are ASKING for input. Thanks CTMan for the heads up:
Senator Dodd Wants to Know What YOU Think About Healthcare Reform
Get busy folks.
June 6, 2009 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Bwak. Dodd goes on the list too.
June 6, 2009 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Profits or health care? What do we want more of? To get one we will have to sacrifice some of the other at the margins. That, and how many people are found at the margins to be sacrificed, is what this health care battle is all about.
Is the purpose of the "health care" system to make profits for the owners of the providers of health care, pharmaceuticals and health insurance, or it the purpose of the health care system to provide health care to individuals? Those wealthy owners are much better organized than the general population, as should be expected.
America, like all large urban societies, is to a great extent a plutocracy dominated largely by the very wealthy and powerful. Money and power defend and perpetuates themselves. Those with money and power work hard to differentiate and separate themselves from the mass of the population. The self-interested very wealthy take control of government and bend it to their needs - needs which are clearly self-interested and often achieved at great cost to those who are not similarly wealthy.
But government itself can only exist if the majority of those governed think it is providing its functions of providing economic and social stability for almost everyone. When government ceases to provide that stability it will be replaced. Over the centuries we have replaced riots and revolutions with democratic and comparatively peaceful procedures of replacing those who fail to provide adequate government. The health care mess has reached the level where is it a major source of social and economic instability. The balance between the plutocrats and the population has gotten out of whack in the health care arena, and government leaders - are the behest of the plutocrats - is resisting change. (This is also true right now in Big Banking, but the social, political and economic forces as well as who gets hurt in that arena are very different.)
Democracy often opposes the self-centered behaviors of the rich and powerful, but it is easily manipulated using modern communications and by picking off or replacing political leaders. This is well known in the Senate, a body designed to give power over government to the wealthy and locally powerful.
But what this battle boils down to is answering the question of whether government will continue to sacrifice lives in order to maintain higher and higher profits for the Big Pharma and the health insurance companies. We provide large amounts of revenue to those industries in hopes that they will as a side effect of making profits provide top flight health care, but as we look around the world we see other systems that do a much better job at much lower cost. The entrenched powers really, really don't want to lose their government sponsors so they are pulling out all the stops to defend their wallets.
June 6, 2009 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
If you want to register your opinion with members of Congress it's important that you *call them* instead of sending emails. Emails sit in an inbox where they can easily be overlooked. Phone calls require a staffer to answer the phone and record your sentiments.
June 6, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
As soon as Obama won the nomination I predicted this. You reap what you sow.
Obama a change candidate? HA
The "Middle ground" he will find will be ground owned lock, stock, and barrel by big pharm and the insurance corps. Once again, we are sold down the river in the name of expediency and whopping huge profits for the corps that own the congress.
Obame needs a "Reform" win for Health care to win again in 2012. He will pick up and carry what ever lipstick smeared pig the bought and paid for congress sends to his desk - and call it a victory.
Wake up America, from your deep zombie sleep.
June 6, 2009 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course this is just my opinion, but I think it is unreasonable to expect our individual contacts with our representatives in Congress to result in anything at all. But, if 10% of the voters in a district make those contacts, and all are on one side of an issue, it works, whether the contacts are email, telephone calls, faxes, letters, or visits to his local office to deliver a written communication.
An example of this would be my representative, who used to be on the fence on some of the issues I care a lot about. She would usually vote right, but you could never be sure of that. Lately, after a couple of years of steady pressure from what is very likely less than 10% of her constituents, she is now a dependable ally for progressive causes.
I agree with Markg8 that we all need to do what we can, even though I don't agree that just one form of communication is the important one. For sure, commenting here is not the most effective way to influence a Congressional representative.
June 6, 2009 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
i agree, we've got to get off our lazy rears and call and fax. BUT--
this 18th century compromise-thingy called the senate (ah glorious rome) really pmo. we get these, mostly 100iq farmers from some wind blown prairie representing 300,000 people re-elected 6yrs after 6yrs running important committees in the name of 300,000,000 of us, telling us what's good for us.
at the very least couldn't we put the population of the state they "own" behind their names when referred to in the media?
e.g. sen baucus,mt or better, the number of votes he actually got(maybe
June 6, 2009 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Baucus is getting his ass kicked in Montana on this issue. At Townhall after townhall they are demanding single payer. And it's working, he's being softened up quite a bit. If you know any doctors who support it, and there are plenty, get them to write.
June 6, 2009 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. We need to remind ourselves that we're supposed to be a gov't of, by and for the people. We need to remind ourselves that this is the 21st century and America is NOT supposed to be a third world country. And we need to remind ourselves that real people suffer real consequences when we turn a blind eye to real suffering.
June 6, 2009 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's not forget - single payer universal coverage IS ALREADY PAID FOR.
The government already spends as much per capita on health care as France does.
This is not a fiscal issue.
It's a policy change.
As a side benefit, it would also walk us out of the economic depression we are in.
June 7, 2009 8:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am serious when I say this. If you don't call, or send an email, or send a fax delete your account. I don't want to be associated with TPM'ers who won't fight for what WE ALL believe in.Come monady WE FIGHT FOR US. I am calling for YOU and YOUR kids, you and YOUR families. I would hope you would do the same for me. Will you fight for us? If you will just reply "YES I WILL" under me please. I will ask one more time WILL YOU FIGHT FOR US?
June 6, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
"YES I WILL"
June 6, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, 2/3 of my representation in Congress consists of the odious Virginia Foxx (R-Hydrophobia) and Richard Burr (R-Bigpharma). But I'll send one to Kay Hagen. She's a go-along-to get-along no-seniority newbie with Blue Dog tendencies and a lot of local Big Pharma, biotech and private insurance pressure on her (BCBS of NC controls the market here and is a major player among the universal health saboteurs), but she's what I got.
June 6, 2009 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I will.
June 6, 2009 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dr. Reich..wanna drop by?????
June 6, 2009 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I support the full public option that Kennedy is offering. Baucus is looking like a self-serving chicken, and we will find out if Obama has the stones to veto all hollow, sham plans that are being gamed out as detailed by Reich. Make no mistake: as much as I like Obama, it will be harder to listen to the soaring rhetoric if Baucus and Co. are allowed to prevail.
With unemployment benefits beginning to expire for people who got laid off early in the downturn (before the extension provision kicked in), and with a business climate in which people over fifty especially have trouble getting hired again when employers who are looking to keep health care costs down, there has never been a better time to get this done and do it right.
June 6, 2009 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
My Texas sis in law recently laid off received her first unemployment check
The 400 won't cover the 500 they pay under Stimulus Reduced COBRA
June 6, 2009 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not just the insurance and Pharma corporations.
This New Yorker article questioned why health care costs in McAllen Texas are so much higher than in the rest of the state.
It's about doctors and hospitals churning profits on unnecessary tests and surgery.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande?yrail
Money quotes:
"I gave the doctors around the table a scenario. A forty-year-old woman comes in with chest pain after a fight with her husband. An EKG is normal. The chest pain goes away. She has no family history of heart disease. What did McAllen doctors do fifteen years ago?
Send her home, they said. Maybe get a stress test to confirm that there’s no issue, but even that might be overkill.
And today? Today, the cardiologist said, she would get a stress test, an echocardiogram, a mobile Holter monitor, and maybe even a cardiac catheterization.
“Oh, she’s definitely getting a cath,” the internist said, laughing grimly."
"The Medicare payment data provided the most detail. Between 2001 and 2005, critically ill Medicare patients received almost fifty per cent more specialist visits in McAllen than in El Paso, and were two-thirds more likely to see ten or more specialists in a six-month period. In 2005 and 2006, patients in McAllen received twenty per cent more abdominal ultrasounds, thirty per cent more bone-density studies, sixty per cent more stress tests with echocardiography, two hundred per cent more nerve-conduction studies to diagnose carpal-tunnel syndrome, and five hundred and fifty per cent more urine-flow studies to diagnose prostate troubles. They received one-fifth to two-thirds more gallbladder operations, knee replacements, breast biopsies, and bladder scopes. They also received two to three times as many pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, cardiac-bypass operations, carotid endarterectomies, and coronary-artery stents. And Medicare paid for five times as many home-nurse visits. The primary cause of McAllen’s extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine."
"Renaissance... is the newest hospital in the area. It is physician-owned. And it has a reputation (which it disclaims) for aggressively recruiting high-volume physicians to become investors and send patients there. Physicians who do so receive not only their fee for whatever service they provide but also a percentage of the hospital’s profits from the tests, surgery, or other care patients are given. (In 2007, its profits totalled thirty-four million dollars.) Romero and others argued that this gives physicians an unholy temptation to overorder."
June 6, 2009 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent article
Study after study confirms the damage over ordering does to health care
June 6, 2009 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks so much for that link, jeffgee.
EVERYBODY: PLEASE READ THAT ARTICLE!! (linked in jeffgee's post, above).
This debate about single payer is just the first step. It is a necessary step, in my opinion, but it is not the answer.
We need to move toward a more fully socialized system of medicine: the Mayo clinic model (read the article), where doctors are on salaries, and the overall "system" is a cooperative, not-for-profit entity.
Capitalism really has no place in the medicine biz. That truth became real for me over the past six months, as my father has been trying to recover from a stroke.
-- ARG
June 8, 2009 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lord knows, I try not to look at things in over simplistic, 'Bushian' terms, but the notion that a bunch of well-dressed folks sit in a mahogany-lined board room somewhere and scheme earnestly about how to maintain their monstrous profits at great cost to the health and lives of millions of people...it just feels evil, doesn't it? I mean honest-to-goodness devil-shit evil.
June 6, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Billyshake,
It's not at all hard for those well-dressed guys if the only question they are trying to answer is "How do we increase our Revenues and Profits?" They are handed financial records and focus on making the profit and loss statement.
Make it a purely financial decision and it is easy to ignore the cost to the patients and those who pay for the services. Milton Freedman would say that the cost to the patients is their responsibility. But he didn't consider monopoly power to be especially significant in economic transactions.
They don't see the evil because there is no one at the table to bring it to their attention. Instead they see themselves as doing well by doing good. They even become insulted if you try to bring their attention to the evil they are doing because they have already discounted those arguments and they don't want to readdress them.
June 6, 2009 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's unfortunate, and will have to be sucked up once again by us rational people playing by the rules, is that there are both ill begotten profits being made by the large pharmaceutical insurance companies supported by the current "system", but there are also middle class workers (most notably union workers who unions purchase their healthplans) who get fleeced by unfair cost shifting that takes place and will occur to a greater extent when a massive public plan (not a universal single payor plan) arrives.
I'm already totally sick of my manager telling me that the billing rates they use to invoice customers for my service have to be raised again and again because of the ever increasing hourly healthcare fund contribution my union collects to fund my rather unremarkable health insurance plan. It's up to $7.90/hr. The $16,000+ a year I pay out per year is close to 4 times the average cost of an individual health insurance policy, and significantly more than the average cost of a family of four insurance plan. I've been gifted with excellent health. My wages have been pretty much near flat for a decade, negative when factoring in inflation.
The rub is that my company isn't the only company competing for the work I need to earn a living. I can deal with simply trying to be the best at what I do so my company can charge more and I can earn a bit more.
What's disturbing is when other companies offer little or no health benefits to their workers, this making them eligible for a public plan (my state already has one) that is much cheaper than what I spend and has equal or better coverage. The true costs are simply shifted to those that will pay (notice I didn't say CAN pay). Interestingly, I've seen doctors and providers strike some of the very best deals for cash customers, leaving the commercially group insured the payer of first AND last resort.
Now I not only have to show my customers a value improvement on my jobs that covers my slightly higher wage and my companies incrementally larger overhead and profit, but the value of my results also have to justify the additional cost of a health insurance plan that costs more as a direct result of making a public plan available to employees and families of some of the same companies who are trying to win the buiness away from my company.
The solution, since most of us now agree that healthcare is a right, and the reality is that a very small portion of the poulation spend an overwhelming proportion of the total expenditures, has got to lie in some sort of universal combination wealth and income tax for a garanteed, common schedule of benefits.
I've heard that total healthcare sending is 2.4 trillion. That's $7100 per person. Including my employer and my medicare contributions, the portion of my state and federal taxes that go to anything healthcare, and my (albeit small) actual out of pocket medical expenses, I contribute 3 times that and I'm not even in the top 20% of income or wealth.
I guess I'll get behind this "public option" because it's much fairer to the dispossesed and unfortunate than the current system, but make no mistake that there will be bigger losers than the insurance and pharmaceutical outfits, when the government bids down prices for healthplans and drugs. That would be us loyal union workers, who keep doing what we are told.
June 6, 2009 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fahgetaboutit. It's time for campaign reform. Nothing the public wants from banking to medcare will be achieved until our representatives represent us and us alone.
June 6, 2009 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent point.
How about a "national sovereignty amendment" - spelling out that the sovereignty lies in the people, manifested in the vote.
Those people who give aid, comfort and money to public employees are subverting the will of the people and guilty of treason against the sovereign.
A second amendment allowing for spending caps for campaigns for governmental office, as well as contribution caps. Contribution caps must not exceed what the median voter can afford to contribute.
A third amendment spelling out that those who lobby government cannot give aid, comfort, money or material well being to a public official or a person within five years of being a public official, or aspiring to the same, within those five years.
I also wonder if we shouldn't consider revising our system more thoroughly. The congress should be turned into a parliament, and it should elect the President. The President would be forced to have to defend his policies in debates every week, or so like the British PM does. Allow the senate to become the house of property interests. Allow it to receive as much campaign funding as they want. Let the senate become the outlet for political bribery. However their no vote functions purely as a veto that can be over ridden by a 55% vote in congress. We no longer need to be so federalized. currently 33 million people, in the bottom 20 states in population, can deny the other 275 million of us what we want and need - that's not very democratic. When the constitution was written, it took an eternity to get from the far corners of the country to the capital. With the exception of Alaska and Hawaii, none of us is much more than four hours away from each other, and communications are instantaneous. Federalism was just a way to allow slavery and slavery interest to continue in an other wise United States.
June 7, 2009 7:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
"To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits."
Which is one of a thousand good reasons to put those fucks out of business and institute SINGLE PAYER NOW!
The tactic of offering a "compromise" measure that appears to the brain dead media to be similar to a real public option but is in fact a well designed fake intended to fail is as old as the hills. But it is a very popular method for the nearly extinct "moderate" Republicans in Congress and the prostitutes posing as Democratic elected officials in the House and Senate in order to make it appear they tried to do something on behalf of the people yet for some mysterious reason it didn't work out.
This issue is far too serious and important for the whores of Capitol Hill to be allowed to scuttle. Will the President ever use his popularity to force the right thing (for once) down the throats of whores of Capitol Hill? We'll see on this issue which is critical to the economic well being of the future not to mention that actual health of the American public.
Obama was a fool to keep single payer out of the picture from day one. If nothing else, wielding that stick deftly would have been useful in cowing the parasites of the insurance and drug industries into agreeing to public "option" instead of struggling to even keep a public option in whatever piece of crap legislation they produce later this year---in any.
June 6, 2009 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
June 6, 2009 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Listen if you want National Health (or anything else for that matter) you're going to have to put your lives and lively hood on the line and get out on the streets and fight for it just like people did for civil rights in the 60s.
Setting on your big fat asses and typing on a blog oe emailing some one in Washington is not going to get it.
The reason those othe countries, France, Germany, the UK have the programs they have is because the people there did just that.
C
June 6, 2009 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Couldn't agree with you more! You might find, as I have, that there are many who will actually say that's just passe and "doesn't do any good" despite the fact that it works everywhere on earth, those folks will say no and prefer to write a letter to their elected representatives, etc...
Personally, I think if there were a call for a huge march in Washington and if there were also major demonstrations around the country, the corrupt whores in DC would take notice and "our" side would start getting heard. As long as progressives remain passive and working within the system we have which is designed to prevent us from having a real voice, nothing will change.
June 6, 2009 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is easy to be cynical about the use of writing or emailing to your senator or representative--I used to be until I worked in DC (for the NIH). Letters to representatives truly are heard. We used to get letters forwarded to us by members of congress and we had to draft a response, which would be vetted by execs and sent back. The letters put us on guard, because we knew that congres was paying attention and we had to be able to justify programs. Members of congress will track the messages they get because the letters represent votes. So what's it going to cost you--a few minutes of your time--to write.
June 6, 2009 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
E-mails are terrific but I think putting a real stamp on an envelope, typing a letter (even if it's a paragraph) and sending it in the mail is even better.
Checking Obama's website and sending in donations to this cause I also think is a great way to influence this issue. The site is very efficient and I do trust them with the money. They accept contributions as low as 5 or 10 dollars.
June 6, 2009 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Phone calls get reactions, also. Even when it is to Congressmen like mine who are bought and paid for and intend to dance with those who brought them to the dance. But that is primarily for upcoming votes on issues that have already been framed, processed and only wait for the final (public) vote.
June 6, 2009 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I sent another futile e-mail to Senator Amy. Senator Amy number one concern per her web site is ash borers. As you might tell from that, Senator Amy is a real tower of strength, a veritable profile in courage.
You have to drill pages deep on her web site to find her weak weasel words on healthcare.
So this is how it goes in the land of centrism. If you are a tree your Senator is concerned about your health. If you are a person, not so much.
June 6, 2009 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Robert Reich - Is there any source of information on the specifics of Snowe's proposal? How many years will be assigned to evaluation before invoking the trigger, and what will be the exact criteria used to decide whether the trigger should be pulled? Although a full, unqualified public option is almost certainly preferable, comments on the cited alternative would be aided by knowing more about its exact nature.
June 6, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you realize how deftly we have been played? Instead of us talking about how to get single payer health care enacted, even in a bare bones manner for now, we are discussing a weak compromise, the public option, and treating it as if it were what we want. That is the consequence of compromising before even beginning to negotiate. That is, in fact, what I think is Obama's major weakness.
As a community organizer in Chicago, making any kind of progress was a major accomplishment, impossible unless the requested changes were all palatable to the moneyed interests that run that city, just as they run all other cities. Obama is trying to duplicate his success there, by using the same techniques in dealing with Congress. I wish he had spent a lot more time studying how LBJ operated.
Already this year we have missed an opportunity to reform our "financial sector" and, instead, have chosen just to put it back together exactly like it was. Now, we are rapidly losing the chance to reform our health care sector, in a futile effort to achieve a consensus among Democrats and Repubs, wealthy corporate owners and ordinary voters. There can be no consensus if you really want to make big changes. Obama hasn't accepted that yet. But, I still have hopes he soon will.
June 6, 2009 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Hoppy - I'm inclined to disagree with you, at least in part. If pushing a single payer system is a tactic to move an eventual compromise position closer to one with a major public component, it may be a wise strategy worth pursuing. If done in the hope that a single payer system is feasible on a national level in a nation as large and heterogenous as ours, I see it as unrealistic, at least for many decades. My own perception is that the other industrialized nations, which almost universally offer their citizens better health care than we do, accomplish that goal in a variety of ways. Some, like Canada with its much smaller population, utilize a single payer method, whereas others, like Germany, employ an employer-based system with government mandates and complementation to ensure universal coverage.
Politics is said to be the art of the possible, and so I'm favorably inclined toward President Obama's approach in accordance with that principle. Abrahma Lincoln didn't propose civil rights legislation in insisting slavery is evil, and while I wouldn't preclude the possibility of single payer U.S. government-run health care in the remote future, Obama and the rest of us are constrained to operate in the present.
June 6, 2009 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now there, you have given us the Blue Dog, Blue Plate Special argument - we are "unrealistic". You must have met my Senator Amy.
Universal healthcare is "unrealistic". End of argument. End of story. Shut up you stupid proles and listen to your betters. Who do you think you are there, Oliver Twist, whining for more? Unrealistic, I say. Unrealistic.
In other words, preemptively surrender not merely the policy but the argument.
Hoppy, if you can hold on another 100 years, Fred might offer you some healthcare with your cake. In the meantime, invest in big insurance and big pharma. It's a good bet. So profitable, they bought Congress. Now, there's some realism for you.
June 6, 2009 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bluebell - You may have misunderstood my comment, or perhaps I didn't state my point as clearly as I should have. The other industrialized nations all provide universal health care - something you and I desire - but do not necessarily accomplish that via a single payer system, and so single payer seems not to be the only route to the same objective
I believe individual states will experiment with various single payer options over coming decades, and their experience might ultimately result in a national single payer mechanism (although I'm not convinced) but promoting this currently at the national level is something that elected officials won't take seriously. If one is interested in results, being realistic is still not a bad approach. I should add that I'm extremely impressed with Canada's single payer system, and my point is not that I wouldn't like it here, but rather that it ain't going to happen here.
June 6, 2009 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder why Medicare works here. In fact, I really do wonder why Obama didn't push to expand Medicare, rather than take his current approach of just forcing everyone to buy health insurance, a commercial, profit making product. Medicare could rather easily be expanded to cover age 55 and older, and age 19 and under. Of course the same corporations would fight that too.
June 6, 2009 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Medicare is so disastrously underfunded that only a massive infusion of taxpayer money - probably in the form of higher income tax rates - can save it. That may eventually be seen as necessary, and I wouldn't oppose it, but if I were advising the President, I would suggest he not recommend that step in the current political and economic climate.
Perhaps an even more salient example of a superb single payer system, but one not politically extensible universally, is VA medical care. VA care, once a subject of derision, has improved to the point where it now surpasses most private forms of health care. It too is underfunded but will enjoy the benefit of testimony on its behalf by grateful veterans. It has also served as a model for the replacement of many unnecessary inpatient services with equally valuable but less expensive outpatient services.
Although VA care is not about to become universalized any time soon, it does demonstrate one important feature of public plans - the fact that their enormous financial leverage forces prices down, as in the reduced cost of prescription drugs for VA patients. This is an important reason to favor a substantial public component for any proposed approach to universal health care.
June 6, 2009 10:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, Medicare is increasingly underfunded as the cost of medical care keeps rising faster than the cost of living. But, that isn't a problem, in the context of using it as a foot in the door to covering everyone. Whatever plan is adopted it will cost something, so the financing will have to be developed in any case.
My preference would be to start the system by requiring that people who would be covered have their health insurance premiums go to the expanded Medicare program, and shortly thereafter the premiums be adjusted as far downwards as is possible. I would expect the "general fund" to partly subsidize this. Eventually everyone would be covered by it, and the cost savings that are supposed to occur would enable the premium paid by everyone to be less than now paid for their health care. Those of us who get our health insurance partly paid by our former employer, or by a current employer, would have that payment sent by the employer to the expanded Medicare program. Again, eventually the "premiums" would be adjusted to equalize them per person, and reduce them as much as is possible.
June 7, 2009 12:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Medicare for all is, in fact, the best answer to our dillemma. Once that is established and the disasterous Republican drug benefit is overhauled and fashioned to work instead of simply to further enrich the drug companies we will be on the right course. The whole business about Medicare being underfunded is a red herring. With the trillions of dollars saved combined with the trillions made available to fund a Medicare for all system there is more than enough money available. Remember, we are already paying exponentially more than we ought to for what little care we do have. Once we get rid of the parasites and take all the money we're currently overpaying and put it toward a rational system the hunt for "extra" money to fund the system is over. Don't be taken in by those who keep carping about how it isn't practical to expect single payer. What isn't practical is to continue to put good money after bad in a system that is stealing us all blind while failing to provide the healthcare it ostensibly is designed to provide. We can't do worse with single payer than we're doing under the parasite model of profiteering by the insurance and drug companies.
June 8, 2009 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Electing an African American President wasn't "realistic" either until happened.
I'd like to know what is realistic about the current approach which seems to be morphing into a plan to go to the middleclass who currently have health benefits and tell them that their health benefits are going to be taxed. In return they will receive nothing. Other folks will be ordered to buy insurance from for profit AIG type financial industry giants. And maybe, well maybe, somebody might get a tax credit, someday.
June 7, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: In return they will receive nothing.
I don't call universal healthcare (meaning you will never be uninsured) "nothing". And come on-- why should all of us pay something toward that goal?
June 7, 2009 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
The comment above should conclude with:
"Why shouldn't all of us pay something toward that goal? "
June 7, 2009 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
So is it time for a PublicPAC or SinglePayerPAC or some such thing? Do they exist already? Or several non-affiliated PACs to increase them love?
June 6, 2009 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.healthcare-now.org/ is the organization that is most active, holding forums, events, demonstrations, etc. all over the country. My wife added both of us as members just today.
June 7, 2009 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Single Payer PAC....I like it.
If we can't sway them with reason and individual
campaign contributions, perhaps they'll respond to the same type of whore fodder that they've come to expect from Insurance/Pharma, and/or the thinly veiled threat of organized finance of their next campaign opponent. Should be fairly easy to come up with a sample commercial to be sent to their "committee to re-elect"
Fight fire with fire. 527 anyone?
June 7, 2009 12:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was very discouraged earlier this week about where this has been going, and the deafening silence from President Obama. This is one of those crystal clear moments when you have to be leader and sell to the people some type of public health care. I prefer one-payer, but it is obvious that is not happening. I am encouraged, however, to read today that Obama is going to ramp up the discussion and pressure. IMO, this is the defining moment in his Presidency. Let's hope he can pull it off. BTW, there should be term limits in the House and Senate. I always opposed this concept but it paramount to cleaning up D.C. Too many lazy, bought and paid for life timers running the show.
June 7, 2009 12:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
"(P)ushing Democrats..." how?
I alway hear about how the corporations are making Democrats do these horrible things. How are they accomplishing this? And why are certain Democrats going along?
I fundamentally do not understand how corporations consistently make lawmakers do the wrong thing.
Is this all about campaign contributions?
June 7, 2009 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
VictorL is asking and answering his own questions! (CC's and other forms of lobbying and inducement, yes.) Good, then I can say this instead: A lot of good stuff has been said here. We do have to write our Congresspersons, but fully expect that to carry far less weight than the writing of gigantic checks to them does. So, in addition, we need to do other things - I'm thinking probably getting a lot of people out in the street for real reform, whether the "public option" thing or single payer which is of course what most of us want. As has been said here, it is already being paid for. We just have to redirect the dollars we're giving to private interests now.
So I was considering contacting PNHP.org and healthcare-now.org and asking them to promote July 4 as a get-out-in-the-streets-and-show-yourselves day. People will be off work, but also a lot of people will be vacationing somewhere. Would any of you guys have a notion of a good date to choose? And then we could all go to all of our favorite NGO's and ask them to organize for that date? I'll post this request at the other article I see is now at the top of TPMCafe. What do you think?
June 7, 2009 10:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think demonstrations, when the are huge ones, spread all over the country, do a great deal to force Congress to do our bidding. Just look at the success of the huge demonstrations, spread all over the country, in stopping the invasion of Iraq.
Sorry about the snark.
It occurred to me this morning that Obama's "public option" plan is, in fact, a single payer health care plan. If we succeed in getting it, it will be a very short time before that option will be the only option, since Insurance companies will not be able to compete. That, of course, is why they are in a panic to defeat it. The more I think about it, the better I like it. And, the only thing that is going to change my mind is if the insurance companies stop fighting it - that is a red flag!
June 8, 2009 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Check out this clip of Uber-Christian, Pat Robertson slipping and saying that private health care systems couldn't compete with a government run system. Does he even realize what he said?
http://progressnotcongress.org/blog/?p=1666
June 8, 2009 8:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
you all are so funny.
like the diaries at kos you all think you are informed.
so when it comes to the truth and what needs to be done you cant stop it because you are years behind the curve.
the point is these politicians were corrupt from the go and the people were getting ripped off for ever.
now you want to stop all that as if it has just begun and you are shocked to learn of it.
for many years i have told the truth of all this as have many others.
no one payed attention to it.
thats why the corruption wont be stopped.
you all do to little to late and are uninformed.
June 9, 2009 8:34 AM | Reply | Permalink