Hi, I'm going to post some of the single payer emails and stuff I get here. I really do believe it might be the unifying sub-movement that will be a base for a true socialist movement...anyway, fyi for those interested...
(this one could be crossposted under one of the Obama threads)


The Public Option Con
Selling Out Single-Payer
By HELEN REDMOND

“As we roll out new products we will continue to price businesses for appropriate margins. We will not sacrifice profitability for membership.”

– Angela Braly, Wellpoint CEO


At the Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and Citizen Action Illinois sponsored rally in Chicago last weekend, single-payer advocates confronted HCAN leadership and Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) who instead of working to pass HR 676, John Conyers single-payer bill titled the United States National Health Insurance Act, are supporting the so called “public option.”

What the public option plan is, no one can exactly say. There are no concrete proposals spelling out what the plan would include, who could join it, how much it would cost, or how it would be funded. But the details don’t matter, they advocated for it anyway.

In a heated exchange with Schakowsky before the rally, she argued HR 676 (she is a cosponsor of the bill, yes that’s right) has no chance of passing and something has to be passed this year. She lied and said there isn’t enough support for single-payer, but there is for a public option. I and other activists challenged Schakowsky on every assertion and demanded she fight to pass HR 676. We said the insurance industry is going to fight just as hard against a public option as it will single-payer so let’s have a smackdown for single-payer. We argued the passage of HR 676 would guarantee an end to the crisis and finally make health care a human right that could never be taken away. She got pissed and complained loudly to her staff as she walked into the building, “Can you believe she is lecturing me?” I yelled after her, “I’m just expressing my opinion, I’m your constituency.”

The rally was a slick “Sell out single-payer and confuse em’ show” from start to finish, replete with retro 70’s song Ain’t no Stoppin’ Us Now blasting into the auditorium.

HCAN staffers, state representatives, Tom Balanoff - President of SEIU Local 1, small business owners, patients, doctors and medical students all took the stage, outlined different aspects of the crisis, and rightfully denounced the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Their solution: the creation of a public plan to compete against the private insurance industry they despise. Speaker after speaker projected a wish list of health care reforms onto the nonexistent public option plan: benefits must be comprehensive, coverage must be affordable, no denial of care, and equal access to quality care. Who could disagree if a plan like that could actually be enacted? The problem is the United States will never, ever get a plan like that while the private insurance industry is still breathing. HCAN and liberal Democrats have to engage in this “magical thinking” in order to convince a skeptical public that a public option embedded in a for-profit system can work. Only a single-payer system, one that drives a stake through the heart of the insatiably greedy insurance corporations once and for all, can deliver on those promises.

A little history is in order.

The American health insurance system is based on the avoidance of the elderly and sick so insurers didn’t care much when Medicare was created: seniors have complex and costly health care needs that cut into profit margins. Let the government and taxpayers foot the bill for old people. Plus, people aren’t eligible for Medicare until they turn 65 so the vampires would have decades of opportunity to bleed Americans into medical bankruptcy. A similar dynamic was at work with Medicaid: poor people tend to have chronic health problems and that cuts into profit margins. Let the government and the taxpayers take care of them, but the minute they are healthy enough to work, kick ‘em out of the program and into the clutches of the vampires or the ranks of the uninsured. Whose left? Everybody in between. That’s what is driving the insurance industry and Karen Ignagni, the Chief Evil Officer (CEO) of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), into a frenzy. They fear a public plan will snatch away “their” market: the millions of people who don’t fall into the above categories of old and poor, especially the young and the healthy. It’s the profits, stupid!

Ignagni and the industry are whining that if a new government insurance program is created to compete with them, like Medicare, that’s unfair competition and they’d be driven out of business. Ohhh, don’t you feel sorry for Ignagni and all the other millionaire CEOs?

They think a government health plan would be unfair to them. But they’re exaggerating the effects a public plan would have on their pursuit of profit. Just look at how they have sunk fangs into Medicare.

Doctors Himmelstein and Woolhandler from Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) explain:

“A quarter century of experience with public/private competition in the Medicare program demonstrates that the private plans will not allow a level playing field. Despite strict regulation, private insurers have successfully cherry picked healthier seniors, and have exploited regional health spending differences to their advantage. They have progressively undermined the public plan – which started as single-payer for seniors and now has become a funding mechanism for HMOs – and a place to dump the unprofitably ill. A public plan option doesn’t lead toward single-payer, but toward the segregation of patients, with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in the public one.”


Private Medicare Advantage plans cost the government 13 percent more per beneficiary on average in 2008, and overhead for private plans is also much higher, at 13 percent, compared to 2-3 percent in traditional Medicare. Of the 45 million Medicare recipients, 23 percent are in private plans. Most Americans aren’t aware of the extent of privatization of Medicare.

What is the lesson HCAN draws from the privatization of Medicare? On their website an article is posted titled, Will Government Give Public Health Insurance an Unfair Advantage? Experience Tells Us No. Experience shows the government has given an unfair advantage to private insurers when it comes to the Medicare program, which HCAN acknowledges. In twisted logic that is hard to follow, HCAN thinks that’s a good thing, it’s proof the government won’t lower reimbursement rates or impose cost controls on private insurers. Now HCAN is all about reassuring the insurance industry they claim to loathe so much they only want a public plan to compete against them on a level playing field: the goal is not to drive them out of business.

This is the logic that confuses people mightily. One minute HCAN is calling out the insurance industry for the profit-hungry killers they are, then they argue the companies need to stay in business to compete against a public plan honestly in the marketplace – even though they agree they never compete fairly, Medicare being the prime example.

The health care reform proposals advocated by Jacob Hacker from the University of California at Berkeley are suddenly all the rage, but there is nothing new about them. He proposes a national health exchange of private plans with the addition of a public option (essentially Obama’s position.) Hacker, like HCAN, is careful to assuage the fears of the private insurers and says under his scheme, “More Americans have private insurance after reform than do before – either th

rough their employer or through the national exchange.” Smells a bit like Massachusetts where 200,000 people remain uninsured and the costs to subsidize the program have doubled from $630 million to $1.3 billion.
Single-payer advocates oppose the creation of a public plan for a different set of reasons.

1. It doesn’t make health care a human right that can never be taken away.
2. It continues to divide, devalue, and define people by their health status.
3. It can’t address the endemic racial and gender disparities in the system, including the 12 million undocumented.
4. It leaves the employer based system of health care provision intact. That link has to be broken so workers are free to change jobs, go on strike and not fear loss of coverage.
5. The system would continue to have multiple payers and therefore the complexity and gaps in coverage that are inevitable when there are numerous bureaucracies to navigate.
6. Where will the money come from to finance the plan, especially in a time of economic recession, like right now? A public plan is not fiscally sustainable because it’s rooted in a multiple payer system that foregoes at least 84% of administrative savings.


Single-payer on the other hand, would immediately inject 400 billion into the system by eliminating bureaucracy, billing apparatus, administrative waste, advertising, corporate profits, and CEO compensation. That’s enough money to bring everyone into the system with no co-pays or deductibles.

We don’t need any more feasibility studies or examinations of single-payer in other countries. It’s a proven fact that a single-payer system can cover everyone and control costs. Period, end of discussion.

So the question becomes why don’t the Democrats and HCAN fight to get rid of the parasitic private health insurance industry (the source of the crisis) once and for all instead of constantly and unsuccessfully, decade after decade, trying to rein in, regulate, and do an end run around them?

For the Democrats, with the exception of John Conyers and a few others, they simply don’t want to abolish the private insurance industry. They are capitalists and believe in the capitalist system that makes health care a commodity to be bought and sold. For them, health care is not a human right. And importantly, they don’t want to take on President Obama who is opposed to single-payer. Like the true cowards they are, they will not oppose Obama on health care reform even though they disagree with him.

HCAN thinks it’s impossible to get rid of the insurance companies, they’re too powerful, and they have too much money and influence. They don’t believe a large social movement can be built to take on and win against the insurers and the government. The leadership of HCAN are the ones who would have said under slavery, “We can’t win abolition, so let’s settle for a few reforms that make the lives of slaves more bearable.”

This attitude is astonishing given the sea change in consciousness around health care. A number of events have coalesced to make winning a single-payer system possible. No longer does the invoking of “socialized medicine” scare people, not after the government has socialized billions of dollars of losses in the financial sector. If the government can bail out AIG, why not the health care system? Poll after poll shows the majority of Americans want a government run health care system that guarantees health care. People often express this by saying, “I want what they have in Canada.” Physicians used to be an obstacle to single-payer, now 59% support single-payer.

Employment-based health care is collapsing and employers want to get out of the business of providing health care to workers: it costs too much. Millions of laid off workers now realize tying insurance to employment status is a disaster; lose your job, lose coverage. Those with jobs are paying staggering premium increases for less coverage. Single-payer legislation has been introduced into the House HR 676, and SB 703 in the Senate. There is a grassroots movement, including unions, all over the country organizing and fighting for single-payer. And most significantly, people are ANGRY and want change.

HCAN and Democrats like Schakowsky are deceiving and leading people down yet another dead end alley of incremental reform. We’ve had decades of incremental reform and now there are 50 million uninsured, 25 million underinsured and between 18,000 to 100,000 people die every year because they lack access to health care. For spineless Democrats like Schakowsky and HCAN, the day will never come when single-payer is “politically feasible,” because if now isn’t the time, when will it be?

The fight to make health care a human right is the new civil rights struggle. We are standing on the shoulders of all the great social movements that have come before us.

The time to win single-payer has never been better. We are going to keep fighting like hell to destroy the corporate killers, not create a faux option that allows them to live another day.

Sí se puede, yes we can!

Helen Redmond is a member of the Chicago Single-Payer Action Network and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She works in the emergency room at Cook County Hospital and blogs at http://helenredmond.wordpress.com She can be reached at redmondmadrid@yahoo.com

This so much reminded me of a single-payer vs. citizen action/health care for America now debate in Kingston NY. the woman for Citizen Action had no plan at all, 98% of the people were for single payer, and the pnhp member was so cogent, clear, and right, right, right!! Good to see the support...you can keep stepping on the lawn, but when the grassroots are this strong its gotta hold...


m

Here's an action for a letter to Sweeney...
Put Single Payer in the Survey!


By Andy Coates, MD
Steward in the Public Employees Federation (PEF), AFL-CIO,
A statewide New York union affiliated with AFT and SEIU

In an attempt to find out what union members think about the health care
crisis and its solution, the AFL-CIO recently asked union members and
supporters to complete a health care survey.

http://www.aflcio.org/issues/healthcare/survey/index_survey.cfm?source=hc_survey_wfn

The problem with the survey is that it does not present the full range of
opinions union members have, and nowhere in the survey is single payer, or
Medicare for All, or HR 676 even mentioned as an option.

Question #21 in the survey offers only variations on keeping for-profit
insurance companies in the center of health care. There is no choice to
go to a single payer, publicly funded system that covers all medically
necessary care as in HR 676.

Everyone knows that single payer is supported by many within labor. Over
500 union organizations, including 39 state AFL-CIO’s and 126 Central
Labor Councils, have endorsed HR 676 which is co-sponsored by 76 members
in the House of Representatives. Recently, Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders, a friend of labor, introduced SB 703, a single payer bill, in the
Senate.

Since a large section of unions and union members supports a single payer
solution to the health care crisis, it is unfair to construct a survey
that completely ignores opinions from single payer advocates.

The AFL-CIO has a crucial role to play in the health care debate now
unfolding. It is important that those who speak for labor in this debate
are able to reflect the vital and growing single payer sentiment within
our union movement.

We encourage you to write President Sweeney, jsweeney@aflcio.org, and urge
him to include the single payer choice in the survey seeking the views of
union members on health care. You could also fax President Sweeney at:
(202) 508-6946. #30#


Distributed by:
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org
04/26/09

Agree with ya 100%, Mary. It's a fuckin' gimee, a no lose deal. Why aren't we doing it? Who is 'we'.

Thanks BP, hey some representatives of "we" seem to be doing their job here:


State Legislators Launch Effort to Push HR 676

A group of state legislators has initiated a nationwide effort to publish
an Appeal to President Obama and members of the 111th Congress to support
HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced in Congress by
Representative John Conyers, Jr. and 75 co-sponsors.

Twenty four state legislators, from 16 states, have sent a copy of the
Appeal to all 7,500 state legislators in the United States asking them to
add their names to The Appeal which will be published in Roll Call, a
widely read Capitol Hill publication.

The legislators, in their letter, cite the growing “economic crisis” and
“badly strained” state budgets as the reason why they are asking “The U.S.
Congress … to heal our hemorrhaging state budgets while bringing
comprehensive quality health care to all our people, by passing HR 676….”

Co-conveners of the campaign are State Senator Jim Ferlo of Pittsburgh and
Assemblyman Richard Gottfried of New York. Senators and representatives
from Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia and
Wisconsin also signed the letter.

Kay Tillow, Coordinator of the All Unions Committee for Single Payer
Health Care—HR 676, welcomed the effort by these state legislators and
urged everyone to contact their own state senator and representative and
ask them to sign the Appeal.

“State legislators,” Tillow said, “are caught in a vice of escalating
healthcare costs, driven largely by the for-profit insurance industry and
declining revenues. Without a national single payer system, state budgets
will continue in crisis and health needs will not be met.”

The ‘Dear Colleague” letter, the ‘Appeal’ and other materials can be found
at:
http://www.healthcare-now.org/campaigns/state-legislators/

#30#

Distributed by:
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org
04/28/09

But not in SC, oh no, not here. What a bunch of fuckwits. The Upstate is home of 2 of the biggest assholes in DC, DeMint & Ingeles, both up from the ranks, plenty more like them. At least we don't have any two-faced liberals around muddying up the waters. Fitting, this state was founded specifically for commodification, slavery and elite advantage.

CDAUH_Newsletter-May_2009_with_logo[1].pdf

anyone know how to attach a pdf??? see above (feel free!) :)

from my email:

on edit, I tried to activate the links, some worked? but you can go to the site http://www.pnhp.org and should find the info...

From: Physicians for a National Health Program http://info@pnhp.org
Date: Fri, May 1, 2009 at 17:07
Subject: Single payer in the news, House and Senate
To:

http://salsa. democracyinactio n.org/dia/ track.jsp? v=2&c=a5FL42FI8s ND0wQPoQFO5NQi% 2BRH1gUYt

May 1, 2009

Dear PNHP Colleagues,

Single-payer national health insurance got some noteworthy media attention
this week, including:

1.

A wonderful prime-time television endorsement of single payer by MSNBC's
Ed Schultz (after an outstanding interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders, the
Vermont legislator who introduced a single-payer bill into the Senate, S.
703).

*"I would love to hear President Obama come out and say, 'Look, I don't
have all the answers, but everything is on the table.' And this idea that
single payer is not politically achievable, Mr. President, respectfully, I
think you're wrong on that. I think it is politically achievable, because
the people want it." *

You can view the whole segment (7 minutes, 41 seconds) here:
http://tinyurl. com/cnz6eu<http://salsa. democracyinactio n.org/dia/ track.jsp? v=2&c=TmyWBwVYbf 0dp5Uo7ggjd9Qi% 2BRH1gUYt
2.

Important coverage of PNHP co-founder Dr. David Himmelstein' s single-payer
testimony <#120fe00c2901f06a_ testimony> on Capitol Hill on April 23,
including in the Congressional
Quarterlyhttp://salsa. democracyinactio n.org/dia/ track.jsp? v=2&c=XPrJFjPQRL Rdde8UFyrGpdQi% 2BRH1gUYt
Kaiserhttp://salsa. democracyinactio n.org/dia/ track.jsp? v=2&c=8xREOWit8r iHbTIKJXLlRdQi% 2BRH1gUYt,
and the San Diego Union
Tribunehttp://salsa. democracyinactio n.org/dia/ track.jsp? v=2&c=OaV4RfSoFL XHj1nGHKX% 2BANQi%2BRH1gUYt,
among other places.

Activists are encouraged to print, e-mail, and otherwise widely distribute
Dr. Himmelstein' s concise, compelling testimony
(below<#120fe00c290 1f06a_testimony> )
to policy makers, colleagues, students, listservs, etc., and to use it as
the starting point for your own op-eds, letters to the editor and speaking
engagements.

If you've ever wanted to speak out in support of single payer but didn't
know how to get started, this brief piece will help!

------------ --------- ---------

*Action Alert - *

It's unacceptable that the Senate has not permitted one advocate of single
payer national health insurance to testify so far this year, and, looking at
the witness lists for future hearings, they don't intend to.

Indeed, the chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus,
a leading recipient of campaign cash from private insurance, for-profit
dialysis firms, and other corporate health interests, continues to insist
that single payer is "off the table."

PNHPers and groups like Montanans for a Single
Payerhttp://salsa. democracyinactio n.org/dia/ track.jsp? v=2&c=RDaEO1RWwL zduwIs4jhBp9Qi% 2BRH1gUYtare
lobbying Sen. Baucus to represent his constituents instead of the
private insurance industry, but Baucus also needs to hear from his
colleagues in the Senate.

In response, our allies in the national single-payer alliance, the
Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, have issued an Action
Alert calling for help getting a single- payer supporter into the May 5 and
May 14 meetings of the Senate Finance Committee. You can send a fax through
our allies at http://www.1payer. net/campaigns/ finance-committe e.htmlhttp://salsa. democracyinactio n.org/dia/ track.jsp? v=2&c=p%2FEts2a6 lYfijvAtNsx9FtQi %2BRH1gUYt

We are asking PNHPers to call for single-payer witnesses in upcoming
hearings and to go one step further: Ask your senator to co-sponsor Sen.
Sanders' single payer bill, S. 703, as the most fiscally responsible option
for universal coverage and comprehensive care. If you would like assistance
setting up a meeting, please drop a note to Danielle@pnhp. org.

Thank you for your continued support and especially your priceless efforts
for reform.

Yours truly,

[image: Quentin Young Signature] [image: Ida Hellander Signature] *Quentin
Young, MD*
National Coordinator *Ida Hellander, MD*
Executive Director

------------ --------- ---------

Testimony of David U. Himmelstein, M.D.
before the HELP Subcommittee

*The following text contains the testimony of Dr. David Himmelstein at a
hearing on "Ways to Reduce the Cost of Health Insurance for Employers,
Employees and their Families" organized by Health, Employment, Labor and
Pensions Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor on April
23 in Washington.*

*April 23, 2009*

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. My name is David Himmelstein. I am a
primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and associate professor of
medicine at Harvard. I also serve as national spokesperson for Physicians
for a National Health Program. Our 16,000 physician members support
nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance because of overwhelming
evidence that lesser reforms will fail.

Health reform must address the cost crisis for insured as well as uninsured
Americans. My research group found that illness and medical bills
contributed to about half of all personal bankruptcies in 2001, and even
more than that in 2007. Strikingly, three-quarters of the medically bankrupt
were insured. But their coverage was too skimpy to protect them from
financial collapse.

A single-payer reform would make care affordable through vast savings on
bureaucracy and profits. As my colleagues and I have shown in research
published in the New England Journal of Medicine, administration consumes 31
percent of health spending in the United States, nearly double what Canada
spends. In other words, if we cut our bureaucratic costs to Canadian levels,
we'd save nearly $400 billion annually - more than enough to cover the
uninsured and to eliminate co-payments and deductibles for all Americans.

By simplifying its payment system, Canada has cut insurance overhead to 1
percent of premiums - one-twentieth of Aetna's overhead - and eliminated
mounds of expensive paperwork for doctors and hospitals. In fact, while
cutting insurance overhead could save us $131 billion annually, our insurers
waste much more than that because of the useless paperwork they inflict on
doctors and hospitals.

A Canadian hospital gets paid like a fire department does in the U.S. It
negotiates a global budget with the single insurance plan in its province,
and gets one check each month that covers virtually all costs. They don't
have to bill for each Band-Aid and aspirin tablet. At my hospital, we know
our budget on January 1, but we collect it piecemeal in fights with hundreds
of insurers over thousands of bills each day. The result is that hundreds of
people work for Mass General's billing department, while Toronto General
employs only a handful - mostly to send bills to Americans who wander across
the border. Altogether, U.S. hospitals could save about $120 billion
annually on bureaucracy under a single payer system.

A

nd doctors in the U.S. waste about $95 billion each year fighting with
insurance companies and filling out useless paperwork.

Significantly, these massive potential savings on bureaucracy can only be
achieved through a single payer reform. A health reform plan that includes a
"public plan option" might realize some savings on insurance overhead.
However, as long as multiple private plans coexist with the public plan,
hospitals and doctors would have to maintain their costly billing and
internal cost tracking apparatus. Indeed, my colleagues and I estimate that
even if half of all privately insured Americans switched to a public plan
with overhead at Medicare's level, the administrative savings would amount
to only 9 percent of the savings under single payer.

While administrative savings from a reform that includes a Medicare-like
public plan option are modest, at least they're real. In contrast, other
widely touted cost control measures are completely illusory. A raft of
studies shows that prevention saves lives, but usually costs money. The
recently completed Medicare demonstration project found no cost savings from
chronic disease management programs. And the claim that computers will save
money is based on pure conjecture. Indeed, in a study of 3,000 U.S.
hospitals that my colleagues and I have recently completed, the most
computerized hospitals had, if anything, slightly higher costs.

My home state of Massachusetts recent experience with health reform
illustrates the dangers of believing overly optimistic cost control claims.
Before its passage, the reform's backers made many of the same claims for
savings that we're hearing today in Washington. Prevention, disease
management, computers, and a health insurance exchange were supposed to make
reform affordable. Instead, costs have skyrocketed, rising 23 percent
between 2005 and 2007, and the insurance exchange adds 4 percent for its own
administrative costs on top of the already high overhead charged by private
insurers. As a result, 1 in 5 Massachusetts residents went without care last
year because they couldn't afford it. Hundreds of thousands remain
uninsured, and the state has drained money from safety-net hospitals and
clinics to keep the reform afloat.

In sum, a single-payer reform would make universal, comprehensive coverage
affordable by diverting hundreds of billions of dollars from bureaucracy to
patient care. Lesser reforms - even those that include a public plan option
- cannot realize such savings. While reforms that maintain a major role for
private insurers may seem politically expedient, they are economically and
medically nonsensical.

*Physicians for a National Health Program*
29 E Madison Suite 602, Chicago, IL 60602
Phone (312) 782-6006 | Fax: (312) 782-6007
www.pnhp.orghttp://salsa. democracyinactio n.org/dia/ track.jsp? v=2&c=5F9DqbJz% 2FvK891XI16jc2tQ i%2BRH1gUYt|
info@pnhp.org
© PNHP 2009

Here's an article in NY Teacher magazine by some art teacher from Coxsackie-Athens:

http://www.nysut.org/cps/rde/xchg/nysut/hs.xsl/newyorkteacher_12868.htm

Here's an article in NY Teacher magazine by some art teacher from Coxsackie-Athens:

http://www.nysut.org/cps/rde/xchg/nysut/hs.xsl/newyorkteacher_12868.htm




That was damn good, Mary.

Here's an article in NY Teacher magazine by some art teacher from Coxsackie-Athens:

http://www.nysut.org/cps/rde/xchg/nysut/hs.xsl/newyorkteacher_12868.htm




That was damn good, Mary.


Thanks bp. Here's the latest news, the power brokers are getting scared of the grassroots movement, it seems.


Dr. Margaret Flowers and other single payer advocates took direct action this morning and got carted off to jail. Fifteen of our allies demanded to know why single payer ws not even allowed a seat at the table yesterday during 'Mad Max" Baucus's Senate Finance Committee sham hearing on insurance-company-friendly fake 'reform." Look at the video here.

Notably, Baucus made mouth noises about the 'respect' he has for single payer advocates. Apparently , his respect does not extend to allowing our ideas to be heard in Congress. Meantime, his Senatorial colleagues were joking and laughing about the protest, paying it no attention. Yet, the clowns at the testimony table, including Karen Ignoble Ignani, were accorded the greatest respect by the clowns at the hearing table.

Margaret and those who were with you -- you are HEROES. You make us proud. Each of us can take a lesson from you and each of us must do what we feel is the most we can do. Without all of us acting together, more millions will die through the mis-managed and neglectful health insurance driven non-system.

Baucus, your hypocrisy makes me ill. Obama, you are complicit in this crap.Journalists, your silence on single payer shows where your real professional allegiance lies -- in your pockets with the big business money that lines them.

Here are the folks who were arrested this morning:

Katie Robbins
Russell Mokhiber
Kevin Zeese
Carol Paris
Margaret Flowers
Mark Dudzic
Jean Fox (?)
Adam Schneider

Here's an article in NY Teacher magazine by some art teacher from Coxsackie-Athens:


Heh.

That was damn good, Mary.


I'll say.

Oh no, the dreaded "S" word. You write a good letter, Mary.

Ha, totally missed your "hint" at first, Mary ;)

Great point on the "whos gonna for this" question: we already are so how can it get any worse?

Ha, totally missed your "hint" at first, Mary ;)

Great point on the "whos gonna for this" question: we already are so how can it get any worse?


My cover is blown!! We don't even know how much we really pay...25,000 minimum deaths caused from lack of insurance? thats at least 8,000 more than die in drunk driving accidents! and think of all the ruckus and organizations that battle for that.

Really sickly good sign people are being arrested for this, shows how important it is...really need to get those emails out, the reps claim they ain't coming enough to move them...

BTW: thanks to all for the kind responses here, its a movement to get active in, I think, at least online: http://www.healthcare-now.org Spread the good S word!!!

...the reps claim they ain't coming enough to move them...


People can't afford computers anymore and are too weak to type.

...the reps claim they ain't coming enough to move them...


People can't afford computers anymore and are too weak to type.


that's more likely... :(

Dear PNHP Colleagues,

As you may be aware, three PNHP physicians, along with five other single-payer advocates, were arrested Tuesday after speaking up in a dignified way for single payer at the beginning of a Senate Finance Committee "public roundtable discussion" on health reform.

Drs. Margaret Flowers, Carol Paris, Pat Salomon and the others took this extraordinary and courageous step after it became clear that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Committee, was determined to disregard the tens of thousands of requests - via letters, e-mails, phone calls, faxes and personal visits - urging him to invite a supporter of single-payer health reform to the discussion, i.e. to put single payer "on the table."

Dr. Flowers' statement about why she and the others took this action, which carries a potential six-month jail sentence, appears below. Her subsequent appearance on MSNBC television's Ed Show with host Ed Schultz is remarkable. We urge you to watch it here.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/30629823#30629823 Our news release about the event also appears below.

The group's action has resulted in an outpouring of support for them from all over the country and an increase in media interest in single-payer national health insurance, with articles appearing in the online Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Associated Press, Politico, the Congressional Quarterly, and the Kaiser network, among other places. It also resulted in a surge in radio and television talk show appearances.

This Tuesday, May 12, the Senate Finance Committee is holding its third and last roundtable on health reform. PNHP has formally submitted the names of two outstanding physicians, Drs. Marcia Angell and Steffie Woolhandler, to testify as expert witnesses. As of this hour (Friday afternoon), however, no single-payer supporters have been invited. (You can call Sen. Baucus' office in Washington and urge him to extend the invitations at 202-224-2651, or e-mail him here.)

Around the same time that the hearing is taking place inside, a demonstration of physicians, nurses and other supporters of single payer will take place outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington at 9:30 a.m. The group will gather outside the main entrance of the building at 1st Street and Constitution Avenue NE. If you live in the vicinity and can attend, please do. If you're a physician, wear your white coat. (All participants are encouraged to wear black in remembrance of those who have died because they lacked health insurance.)

If you prefer to seek a place inside the hearing, we recommend arriving at the hearing room (106 Dirksen) by 7:30 a.m. The hearing will begin at 10 a.m.

For more information, contact Dr. Margaret Flowers via e-mail at nose1@aol.com or call her at 410-591-0892.

Secondly, on Wednesday, May 13, a "Single-Payer Solidarity Rally" will take place in Washington as part of National Nurses Week. The activity will begin at 11:45 a.m., when participants gather at the Washington Court Hotel. They will then march to a rally at Upper Senate Park (near the Union Station Metro Stop), which will take place from noon until 2 p.m.

Leading the charge is the California Nurses Association which expects 500 nurses to lobby and rally for single payer in the nation's capital. Joined by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, of which PNHP is a part, we want to use this opportunity to make the single-payer message loud and strong for our legislators to hear. Wear your white coat!

Speakers will include Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT); Rep. John Conyers Jr. (MI-14); Rep. Eric Massa (NY-29); Rose Ann DeMoro, CNA/NNOC executive director; Mike Farrell, actor (http://www.1payer.net/videos/24-medicare-for-all/218-everybody-in-nobody-out.html); Dr Margaret Flowers, PNHP; and John Sweeney, president AFL-CIO.

If your schedule permits, please participate in one or both of these actions in Washington next week.

Cordially,

Quentin D. Young
National Coordinator
Mark Almberg
Communications Director
Why we risked arrest for single-payer health care

By Margaret Flowers, M.D.

On May 5, eight health care advocates, including myself and two other physicians, stood up to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the Senate Finance Committee during a "public roundtable discussion" with a simple question: Will you allow an advocate for a single-payer national health plan to have a seat at the table?

The answer was a loud, "Get more police!" And we were arrested and hauled off to jail.

The fact that a national health insurance program is supported by the majority of the public, doctors and nurses apparently means nothing to Sen. Baucus. The fact that thousands of people in America are dying every year because they can't get health care means nothing. The fact that over 1 million Americans go into bankruptcy every year due to medical debt - even though most of them had insurance when they got sick - means nothing.

And so, as the May 5 meeting approached, we prepared for another one of the highly scripted, well-protected events that are supposed to make up the "health care debate" using standard tools of advocacy. We organized call-in days and faxes to the members of the committee requesting the presence of one single-payer advocate at the table of 15. Despite thousands of calls and faxes, the only reply - received on the day before the event - was, "Sorry, but no more invitations will be issued."

We knew that this couldn't be correct. We had heard Sen. Baucus say on that very same day that "all options were on the table." And so, the next day, we donned our suits and traveled to Washington. We had many knowledgeable single-payer advocates in our group. And as the meeting started, one of us, Mr. Russell Mokhiber, stood up to say that we were here and we were ready to take a seat. And he was promptly removed from the room.

In that moment, it all became so clear. We could write letters, phone staffers, and fax until the machines fell apart, but we would never get our seat at the table.

The senators understand that most people want a national health system and that an improved Medicare for All would include everybody and provide better health care at a lower cost. These facts mean nothing to most of them because they respond to only one standard tool of advocacy: money, and lots of it.

The people seated at the table represented the corporate interests: private health insurers and big business and those who support their agenda. The people whose voices were heard all represented organizations which pay huge sums of money to political campaigns. These interests profit greatly from the current health care industry and do not want changes that will hurt their large, personal pocketbooks.

And so, we have entered a new phase in the movement for health care as a human right: acts of civil disobedience. It is time to directly challenge corporate interests. History has shown that in order to gain human rights, we must be willing to speak out and risk arrest. We must engage in actions that expose corporate fraud and corruption. We must make our presence known.

And that is why the eight of us, knowledgeable health care advocates and providers, most of us parents, some of us grandparents, spoke out one-by-one at the Senate Finance Committee. And it is why we will continue to speak out and encourage others to do the same. Our voices must be strong enough to drown out the influen

ce of corporate dollars.

Health care must become the civil rights movement of this decade. The opportunity is here. And we can create a single-payer national health care system.

Yes, we can.

*****

Dr. Margaret Flowers is a pediatrician in Baltimore and co-chair of the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). Her statement was co-signed by Mark Dudzic, Labor Campaign for Single Payer; Russell Mokhiber, Single Payer Action; Carol Paris, M.D., PNHP; Katie Robbins, Healthcare-NOW!; Pat Salomon, M.D., PNHP; Adam Schneider, B'more Housing for All; and Kevin Zeese, ProsperityAgenda.us.

For Immediate Release Contact:
May 5, 2009 Russell Mokhiber
Katie Robbins
Margaret Flowers, M.D., Physicians for a National
Health Program - Maryland chapter
Kevin Zeese, ProsperityAgenda.us
Mark Almberg, PNHP, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org
Doctors arrested protesting exclusion of single-payer at Senate Finance Committee

VIDEO footage:
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) reacts to protesters,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKP05AyfRsI

Russell Mokhiber, Single Payer Action, speaks at hearing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5vhTtxad30

Margaret Flowers, MD & Katie Robbins, Healthcare-NOW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zOShsL4UJo

Carol Paris, MD, PNHP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdIUcrVxGwA

Mark Dudzic, Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1nl32aAh7M

Adam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I26EkvnjZuQ

Pat Salomon, MD & Kevin Zeese
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDHJH7W-ZEo

WASHINGTON - Doctors and other advocates of a national single-payer health system - also known as an improved Medicare for All - directly confronted senators at a Senate Finance Committee "roundtable" on health reform today.

One-by-one, eight single-payer advocates in the audience stood up during the opening comments of the hearing and asked why single-payer experts were being excluded from the proceedings. They each spoke out in turn until they were removed from the committee hearing room and arrested, one-by-one, by U.S. Capitol police.

The doctors and others said that a publicly funded, privately delivered single-payer system is the only solution to the crisis plaguing our nation's non-system of health care, noting that single-payer national health insurance would guarantee coverage for everyone and contains costs.

Despite polling that shows a clear majority of public and physician support for a single-payer system, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has stated on multiple occasions that single payer is "off the table" of health reform.

Today's round table, the second of three, consisted of 15 witnesses with no single-payer advocates among them. By contrast, several witnesses have direct ties to the for-profit, private health insurance industry.

The doctors and activists were dressed in black, which they said was in memory of the 22,000 people who die every year due to lack of health insurance. They represented a coalition of single-payer advocacy organizations including Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Healthcare-NOW, Single Payer Action, Private Health Insurance Must Go, the Campaign for Fresh Air and Clean Politics, Prosperity Agenda, and Health Care for the Homeless.

"Health insurance administrators are practicing medicine without a medical license," said Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-chair of Maryland chapter of PNHP. "The result is the suffering and death of thousands of patients for the sake of private profit. The private health insurance industry has a solid grip on patients, providers and legislators. It is time to stand up and declare that health care is a human right."

Much to the frustration of Baucus, the multiple disruptions demanding single-payer be on the table set the tone for the second of three roundtables on Health Reform by the Senate Finance Committee.

Katie Robbins, assistant national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW, said: "The current discussion on health reform is political theater at its best. Our elected officials are hosting these events to go through the motions of what developing effective national health policy should look like. There is a big difference between getting health policy experts in the room and the witnesses here today who would profit the most from reform. That difference means our hard-earned dollars will go to further insurance industry profits, not to guarantee health care to the American people."

"It's a pretty spectacular display of raw political power," said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action. "The health insurance industry demands that not one of the 15 people who testified today shall be a single-payer advocate. And the industry gets what it wants. It's time for the American people to storm the gates and demand - put single payer on the table."

Single payer is successfully implemented in the United States' own Medicare system providing comprehensive care to the elderly, as well as in many of the best health care systems in the world. A single-payer system, as embodied in legislation H.R. 676 and S. 703, would provide guaranteed, quality care to all Americans with no increase in U.S. health spending.

The single-payer advocates said they will continue to use direct actions and nonviolent civil disobedience to urge the inclusion of a publicly funded, privately delivered system.

Other methods of communication with elected officials have failed in delivering the demand for single-payer national health care as evidenced by the exclusion of single-payer advocates from official hearings on health reform.

###

Healthcare-NOW! is a national grassroots advocacy organization in support of single-payer national health care with a network of activists in 42 states. More information can be found at www.healthcare-now.org

Single Payer Action is a nonprofit activist fueled organization. Find out more at www.singlepayeraction.org

Maryland Chapter Physicians for a National Health Program is a chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org), a nonprofit research and education organization of 16,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance. More information can be found at www.md.pnhp.org

Prosperity Agenda includes single payer national health care as one of the policy changes needed to create an economy that benefits all Americans, not just the wealthiest. www.prosperityagenda.us. Prosperity Agenda is an economic justice project associated with The Campaign for Fresh Air & Clean Politics (www.FreshAirCleanPolitics.net).

Physicians for a National Health Program
29 E Madison Suite 602, Chicago, IL 60602
Phone (312) 782-6006 | Fax: (312) 782-6007
www.pnhp.org (http://www.pnhp.org) | info@pnhp.org
© PNHP 2009

>> Friends:
>> (Please forward widely)
>>
>>
>> Dear Single-Payer Friends:
>>
>>
>> It's National Nurses Week and there are many single-payer festivities in Washington DC. Help us celebrate the leading role nurses play in the single-payer movement by joining us in Washington DC and / or making a call to get single-payer experts into the Senate Finance Committee Roundtable discussion!
>>
>>
>> This Tuesday, May 12, the Senate Finance Subcommittee is holding its final roundtable on healthcare reform. The California Nurses Association / National Nurses Organizing Commmittee has issued a request to include Roseann Demoro, Executive Director of CNA / NNOC and longtime leader in the single-payer movement. PNHP has formally submitted the names of two outstanding physicians, Drs. Marcia Angell and Steffie Woolhandler, to testify as expert witnesses. These voices must be heard. Nurses and doctors are on the front lines of our broken health care system, and they should be the first in line to testify on health reform.
>>
>>
>> As you probably heard, at the last Senate Finance Committee hearing, physicians and single-payer advocates stood one-by-one to ask to have a seat at the table. The Senators laughed and had each one arrested. We need to end the exclusion of the only plan that will be truly universal and contain costs. Our health depends on it.
>>
>>
>> Here is what you can do: Single-Payer New York met with Senator Schumer, member of the Senate Finance Committee, on Friday evening. He agreed to ask Chairman Baucus to include a single-payer expert if we can get another Senator on the committee to join him. If you are a constituent of the following Senators, you can call and ask them to join Senator Schumer [NY] of the Senate Finance Committee to ask Senator Baucus to include a single-payer expert in Tuesday's Hearing:
>>
>> Stabenow [MI] - Washington DC office 202-224-4822
>> Kerry [MA] - Washington DC office (202) 224-2742
>> Rockefeller [WV] - Washington DC office (202) 224-6472
>> For a full list of Senate Finance Committee members, go here: http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/committee.htm
>>
>>
>> If you are not a constituent of Senators on the Finance Committee, please call Sen. Baucus' office in Washington and urge him to extend the invitations at 202-224-2651, or fax him at (202) 224-9412.
>>
>>
>> Thank you for your support at this critical time in our nation's health!
>>
>>
>> Health & Justice,
>>
>>
>> Katie Robbins
>> Healthcare-NOW!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Clark Newhall of Health Justice, 1payer.net, who brought us the Mike Farrell TV ads has urged us to use the simple fax feature on his website. Please circulate this announcement to your local coalitions listserves.
>>
>>
>> FAX THE SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE: Demand single-payer have a seat at the table: http://www.1payer.net/campaigns/finance-committee.html
>>
>>
>> LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE FOR THE SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE: Call the Health Justice hotline to have a message delivered directly to your Senator. When you call this number 1-800-578-4171, state where you live and that you want a single-payer expert in the Senate Finance Committee Roundtable on May 12th. The messages will be delivered as voice messages but will also be transcribed and delivered by fax on monday. Call NOW! 1-800-578-4171.
>

Make It the Baucus 13

Single-Payer Action, May 12, 2009
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=690


Five more people were arrested at the Senate Finance Committee this morning.

They are advocates of a single payer health care system.

And they were protesting the fact that Committee chairman Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) continues to exclude single payer advocates from a series of hearings on health care reform.

Last week, eight doctors, lawyers and activists were arrested as they sought to put a single payer advocate at a table of 15 witnesses.

Today, 13 witnesses testified – not one a single payer advocate.

The Baucus 8 were charged last week with “disruption of Congress” and face a May 26 court date in Washington, D.C.

The Baucus 8 were outside the hearing room this morning wearing black t-shirts that on the front said “Put Single Payer On the Table” and on the back quoted Senator Baucus from last week’s hearing as saying “We Need More Police.”

Inside the hearing room this morning, as the hearing began, a group of about 30 nurses, dressed in red, stood up and turned their backs on Baucus.

On their backs, they wore signs that said “Nurses Say: Stop AHIP. Pass Single Payer.” (AHIP stands for America’s Health Insurance Plans – the health insurance industry lobby.)

After the 30 nurses were led out of the room, a group of doctors, nurses and advocates stood up and one by one, spoke directly to Senator Baucus.

“Today is Florence Nightingale’s birthday,” DeAnn McEwen, an registered nurse from California told Baucus. “Florence Nightingale said if there were none to hope for any better, there would never be any better. This country needs a single payer health care system.”

“People at the table have failed Americans for 30 years,” said Sue Cannon, a registered nurse from California. “We want single payer at the table. We want guaranteed health care so we can give the care we need, when we need to give it.”

“We request that single payer advocates be allowed at the table,” said Dr. Judy Dasovich of Springfield, Missouri. “Health care should be for patients not for profits.”

“It’s a sense of outrage that brings me to your Senate chambers today,” said Dr. Steven Fenichel of Ocean City, New Jersey. “These people were entrusted by the American people to serve the American people’s interests. And they are just serving the interests of the insurance companies and drug companies – the people be damned.”

Jerry Call, a member of Physicians for a National Health Program from South Thomaston, Maine told Baucus that “sixty percent of Americans and sixty percent of physicians want single payer.”

“Why aren’t sixty percent of the people up front not single payer representatives?” Call said.

All five were arrested and taken away for booking.


* * * * *


Baucus Arrests Five More Doctors, Nurses, Activists

By David Swanson
OpEdNews.com, May 12, 2009
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Baucus-Arrests-Five-More-D-by-David-Swanson-090512-669.html


Dr. Margaret Flowers, who was arrested along with seven others at the first Senate Finance Committee hearing on healthcare, just phoned me from the second one. As Chairman Max Baucus called the hearing to order, about 20 members of the California Nurses Association (CNA) stood and turned their backs on the committee. Pasted on their backs were signs reading: "Nurses Say: Patients First," "Stop AHIP," (referring to health insurance lobbyists), "Pass Single Payer."

This was the second hearing at which, despite majority support for single-payer in polls, not a single advocate for single-payer was permitted to participate. The nurses were asked to leave and did so. But five people spoke up for single-payer and were arrested: Dr. Judy Desovich; DeAnn McEwen, a nurse from Longbeach Memorial Medical Center ICU; Sue Cannon, a nurse from UC-Irvine; Dr. Steven Fenichel from New York; and Jerry Call from Maine.

Flowers phoned me from the sidewalk at Constitution Avenue and First Street at 10:30 a.m. as the arrestees were being brought outside one by one and a crowd was cheering and chanting. About 10 nurses staged a brief sit-in on the sidewalk while we were on the phone. Numerous TV cameras and boom mics were present from Bill Moyer's Journal, CBS, and other networks.

Groups involved included CNA, Physicians for a National Health Program, Progressive Democrats of America, Gray Panthers, Public Citizen, and Code Pink. Seven of the "Baucus Eight" arrestees from the last hearing were present for this one.

I heard chants of "Lock Up Baucus!" and "Baucus Baucus You Can't Hide - We Can See Your Greedy Side!"

People were holding up posters and banners including a large one showing a healthcare provider with tape over their mouth and the words "Most Physicians Want a Single Payer National Health System."

Video and photos will be posted soon at http://afterdowningstreet.org/baucus

Dare we hope for media reports as good as was Ed Schultz's last time?

On Wednesday, May 13, Flowers and other leaders of the campaign for single-payer will be speaking at a rally at Upper Senate Park from noon to 2 p.m. (You can also catch a hearing on torture at 10 a.m. in Dirksen 226.) Then at 3 p.m. actor Mike Farrell will join Congressman Dennis Kucinich for a press conference on single-payer at 3 p.m. in Rayburn 2203. Find more about the week's events at http://pdamerica.org

I'll be there. Will you?

Obama on why he is not for single payer health insurance. New Mexico
town hall transcript
By
Lynn Sweet
on May 14, 2009 1:52 PM
President Obama is pushing Congress to pass a massive health care reform
plan. At a New Mexico rally on Wednesday--where most of his planned
remarks were on credit card rules overhauls Congress is poised to
approve--a man asked why single payer health care coverage is not part
of the Obama conversation.

Obama replied....... so this touches on your point, and that is, why not
do a single-payer system. (Applause.) Got the little single-payer
advocates up here. (Applause.) All right. For those of you who don't
know, a single-payer system is like -- Medicare is sort of a
single-payer system, but it's only for people over 65, and the way it
works is, the idea is that you don't have insurance companies as
middlemen. The government goes directly -- (applause) -- and pays
doctors or nurses.

If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of
moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense. That's
the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around
the world.

The only problem is that we're not starting from scratch. We have
historically a tradition of employer-based health care. And although
there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their health care,
the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get health
care from their employers and you've got this system that's already in
place. We don't want a huge disruption as we go into health care reform
where suddenly we're trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the
economy.

So what I've said is, let's set up a system where if you already have
health care through your employer and you're happy with it, you don't
have to change doctors, you don't have to change plans -- nothing
changes. If you don't have health care or you're highly unsatisfied with
your health care, then let's give you choices, let's give you options,
including a public plan that you could enroll in and sign up for. That's
been my proposal. (Applause.)

Now, obviously as President I've got to work with Congress to get this
done and -- (laughter.) There are folks in Congress who are doing
terrific work, they're working hard. They've been having a series of
hearings. I'm confident that both the House and the Senate are going to
produce a bill before the August recess. And it may not have everything
I want in there or everything you want in there, but it will be a vast
improvement over what we currently have.

We'll then have to reconcile the two bills, but I'm confident that we
are going to get health care reform this year and start putting us on a
path that's sustainable over the long term. (Applause.) That's a
commitment I made during the campaign; I intend to keep it.







Here is a press release from the Institute for Public Accuracy regarding the questioner's comments
==============

News Release
Questioned, Obama Says Single Payer Would Be Best
May 14, 2009

AP is reporting: "President Barack Obama says if he were building the
health care system from scratch, a single-payer system would be the
best approach. But he says his goal is to improve the current system."
The comments were made in response to the first question at the "town
hall" type event in Rio Rancho, N.M. by Linda Allison, a local
resident. Video of her question and Obama's reply is here.

Reached by the Institute for Public Accuracy, Allison said: "I asked
why they were excluding single payer from healthcare reform. We have
this convoluted system where veterans get one system, Indians get
another, there's Medicare, Medicaid and of course many employees get
coverage from their companies. Why not just cover everyone under one
plan?

"I see people without healthcare, like my son. He served in Iraq and
Afghanistan as a reservist. He's in college now and he's doesn't have
health insurance. There are people who work who don't have coverage,
or their children don't have coverage. Why should having healthcare be
tied to your employment?

"It's pretty unclear to me, but Obama seems to be for a plan that
would leave the insurance companies in a dominant position and we
really need to get them out.

"Obama said that single payer would be good if we were starting from
scratch. Well, I think things are pretty bad, so we should start from
scratch. But actually, a single-payer system is basically like
expanding Medicare to include everyone, so we have a model just
waiting for us to use. I recently learned that in Taiwan, they looked
around the world for a system and they decided they would copy our
Medicare and use it to cover all the people there. Why don't we do that?

"The other part of my question, which Obama didn't respond to, was
about Max Baucus [chairman of the Senate Finance Committee] and about
how he's chairing the hearings while he's taken all this money from
the insurance companies. I asked if that wasn't a conflict of
interest." According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Baucus's
top funders include PACs associated with American International Group,
Goldman Sachs, New York Life Insurance and Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

http://accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=1992

Chicago Sun-Times
May 14, 2009

Single-payer health insurance is way to go
By Don Terry

An army of lawyers and lobbyists is gathering along the Potomac.

The upcoming battle in Washington over national health care reform is
going to be fierce.

Billions of dollars are at stake.

There will be blood.

So, I called a doctor.

About 70 percent of the patients who Dr. Claudia Fegan treats at her
South Side clinic don't have health insurance -- like the housekeeper
whose breasts were purple and rock-hard from cancer.
"She was just waiting at home to die,'' Fegan says. "She didn't have
insurance. She didn't know what to do. Her daughter finally brought
her in.''

Fegan, past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, has
seen cases like that again and again. A parade of preventable misery.
That's why she supports a single-payer system that would essentially
expand Medicare coverage to include every American, regardless of age.

Under such a plan, the government would pay the health-care bills of
all Americans. Advocates say the somewhat higher taxes that result
would be offset by massive savings in administrative costs rung up by
the scores of private insurance companies that dominate the current
system.

Yet health-care services would remain private. People would still get
their choice of doctors and hospitals -- which isn't always permitted
under some of today's insurance plans.

A single-payer system is not socialism, as its wackier opponents
contend. But the S-word has become the far right's boogey- man of the
moment.

No wonder. Big money is at stake. America spends more on health care
than any country in the world, about $7,200 a year for every man,
woman and child.

France, Germany and Switzerland rank higher than the U.S. in overall
health care yet spend only about $3,400 per capita. Like most of the
developed world, those countries have single-payer health-care systems.

Under a single-payer system, the private insurance industry would be
largely out of the health-care business. That's what's keeping them up
at night -- and at the White House just the other day, when they made
sketchy promises to help cut costs.

A single-payer system would do it for them. Fegan says the program
would save the country $400 billion a year in administrative costs and
other waste. That's a lot of foreclosed homes and jobs that could be
saved.

"The current system,'' she says, "allows insurance companies to
dictate who gets care and what kind of care they get. We shouldn't
allow the insurance companies to practice medicine without a license.''

Before Barack Obama went to Washington, he supported a single-payer
system. He has since backed off that position.

He has proposed a somewhat vague public/private system that would keep
the insurance companies in the game -- and in the money. That's the
most politically feasible option, he contends.

He barely gives single-payer advocates the time of day and
begrudgingly included them at a recent White House health-care reform
conference.

"I'm sorry to say, like many before him, Obama is worried about the
awesome clout of the insurance industry,'' says Dr. Quentin Young, a
Hyde Park neighbor of Obama and a physician for more than 50 years.
"The fix is in.''

"The economy can't tolerate this market-based system. There's a
growing awareness that single-payer is the way to go," says Young,
national coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program.

Fegan says more pressure has to be put on Obama and other officials to
support a single-payer plan. "We have to create a movement. . . . He's
still making politically feasible arguments instead of doing what he
knows to be right. Issues of social justice are never politically
feasible.''

Fegan makes a lot of sense.

Remember, electing a black man from the South Side of Chicago
president wasn't politically feasible, either.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/terry/1573936,CST-EDT-terry14.article

Would prefer she said Working Class, but you get the drift...


Published on Sunday, May 17, 2009 by CommonDreams

Middle Class Healthcare Reform? Bend Over…
by Donna Smith

It's coming. You and me and every middle class, working person in this
nation is about to start handing over more and more of their hard
earned cash to the private insurance industry, courtesy of our own
elected members of Congress and our very popular President. Fire up
those Treasury Department presses. We're going to be printing and
providing money for insurance companies like no bail-out we've seen
yet this economic crisis cycle.

The healthcare legislation under design and so far under wraps for the
American people is slowly being leaked via carefully staged forum and
meetings and a few well-timed hearings and grand press announcements.
Much of the work is still going on behind closed doors in private
meetings attended by those who are deemed appropriate participants and
industry friends.

Remember how open these proceedings were to be following all the
Clinton plan debacles of the early 90s? Well, today's stagings are far
more sophisticated and planned out. So learning did occur by the
industry giants and their political friends over these last 17 years,
I will give them that.

And what do we know so far about what middle class Americans can
expect from the legislation being privately crafted?

First, no matter what percentage of your take home pay it takes, you
will be legally required to buy private health insurance. Second, if
all you can afford is a policy that leaves you financially exposed to
bankruptcy and foreclosure, then you will still be legally required to
purchase that private insurance product. Third, should you fail to buy
a policy, you will pay a fine.

Like it so far? Feeling free and protected? Like the choices so far?
It gets better.

The private, for-profit insurance industry has made concessions we are
asked to celebrate. First, they'll issue every one of us a policy
provided every one of us is legally forced to buy coverage. Second,
they stop discriminating against women because they have uteruses and
child-bearing capacity, provided we all have to buy their product. And
third, and this was a real coup according to our leaders, the
insurance companies, medical equipment folks and providers will slow
the rate of increase in charging for their products to charge just a
bit less in terms of percentages of overall costs than they had
planned to do and as is predicted. Laughable concessions sold as real
compromise.

It's as if we've been beaten a few times every month by an abuser
whose violence and anger is increasing over time, and we know by
calculating the trend that we'll be beaten daily within a very short
time. Up steps the abuser to say, "Wait. I will still have to beat you
more than I do now, but I think I can hold it to 25 times a month
instead of every day." That's the sort of promises we're supposed to
see as victories with the healthcare industry involvement in crafting
the legislation that will determine our families' financial well-being
and matters of life and death.

Let me spell this out for families like mine. You've been getting
overcharged for underinsurance for many years and you've seen the
costs out of your own pocket rise to the point where it is truly
driving whether or not you even try to seek care when ill. You've seen
premiums rise and coverage shrink in employer based coverage, and
14,000 of you a day are losing those employer based benefits in this
stinking economy.

And most importantly to me and millions of other middle class folks,
when you do get sick and need care, you are forced to see only those
doctors and providers your insurance company says you can and those
providers can only give you the insurance company says they can give
you. That's the way our insurance companies want it now and
forevermore, and that's what they are going to get.

Feeling free? Your choices broadening? Your costs lowering?

Wait. There's more. In order to make sure every single American buys
the private products from insurance companies and knowing some
families won't make enough to afford what is offered, we'll all chip
in and pay our taxes to subsidize those who cannot afford to buy the
pricey plans. So, when each of us calculates our own monthly costs for
healthcare, we'll need to factor in not only our own health insurance
premium, our co-pays and deductibles, our medications and other out-of-
pocket costs, but also the percentage of our payroll taxes dedicated
to pay for the subsidies for low-income folks, the agencies to collect
the fines paid by health-insurance-mandate-evaders, and the agency
envisioned to be our clearing house for selling us the private product
we're all forced to buy. If our real costs are added up, there will be
a substantial increase for most middle class families.

These folks are really hoping you will not do the math. They think
middle class folks are too dumb to figure it out.

Let me repeat. This Congress and this President are about to give us
healthcare reform that will make the middle class burden for payment
higher and will even more deeply restrict personal choices in medical
care. And they are about to do it all with great fanfare claiming just
the opposite.

No doubt many of you have feared really looking at a single payer
approach as something scary and restrictive of your personal freedoms.
I can promise you that nothing could be further from the truth. In
fact, your freedom to choose would be greatly enhanced under a
publicly funded, privately delivered national program. Greatly
enhanced freedom. Lowered costs as we each pay the percentage we can
afford from our income. Greatly enhanced choice of providers - no more
being told who is in-network or out. No more risk of financial ruin if
medical care is not approved by a profit-driven entity. And no more
being told a service we already received isn't covered after all - the
great bait and switch the health insurance industry is allowed to do
all the time, leaving so many people with bills they never even knew
they were accepting responsibility to pay.

I like being free to choose. And if this healthcare reform plan
restricts my freedom, takes my hard-earned money and makes my life
more difficult, I won't have any problem at all assigning blame to the
folks who forced it on me.

Look, what's the old saying about excrement rolling downhill? This
president is very popular. He won't get blamed when middle class folks
figure out the ruse. And the Senate is pretty safe, as they get to sit
for six years before ans

wering to the people - and they get oodles of
cash from the industry to make sure they are comfy, cozy. It's the
U.S. House of Representatives - the people's house, they say - that
will take the hit when the moms and dads of this nation figure it out
that they didn't get healthcare reform at all. The middle class will
get a huge burden to bail-out the health insurance and healthcare
industry under the plan moving so carefully but swiftly through the
process.

The kicker? When it's finally unveiled in all its bi-partisan glory,
it'll be sold as a human rights victory. And on that day, 60 more
American families will bury a loved one denied care. And on the day
after that, 60 more will die. And the day after that, they'll be a big
damn party paid for by you and by me for all of those who helped craft
the monstrosity. And the insurance industry CEO salaries will be
enhanced by your money paid to them. Bail-out bonanza for Karen
Ignagni and America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry very fond of
its government entitlements.

Costs will be successfully shifted even more heavily onto the backs of
America's middle class workers. I mean, middle class chumps. And then,
my fellow worker-bees, it will be mid-term election time again.

Donna Smith is a community organizer for the California Nurses
Association and National Co-Chair for the Progressive Democrats of
America Healthcare Not Warfare campaign.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/17-0

Universal health care: We must recognize the human toll of this ‘reform'

By JIM DeMINT
Special to the Herald-Journal


Published: Sunday, May 17, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, May 15, 2009 at 4:54 p.m.
In Great Britain last year, a 24-year-old woman named Katie Hilliard was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The disease has since spread to her lungs and lymph nodes. Last October, she took time off from her course of chemo and radiation therapy to marry her fiancée because, in her words, "We didn't know how ill I would get."

Buy photo The family of Claire Everett does know. She died last September of the same disease, with her parents, husband and 2-year-old son by her side. She was 23.

Both could have been diagnosed early and possibly saved by a routine screening test. But the British National Health Service does not allow women under the age of 25 to receive that test.

These kinds of stories are commonplace in nations with government-controlled health care, with good reason. As the miracle workers in the global medical research field develop treatments to keep us alive and healthy much longer than ever before, the costs of health care inevitably rise. Government health services looking to cut costs usually choose to ration coverage.

In Great Britain, Canada, Sweden and elsewhere, government bureaucrats decide which patients may receive which treatments based on how beneficial the treatment will be — beneficial to the government, that is, not the patient.

The process by which government health departments decide who gets what is called "comparative effectiveness research" (CER). And you might be surprised to know there was more than $1 billion allocated for CER in the so-called economic stimulus bill passed by Congress.

The same research that countries with government-controlled care use to deny hip replacements to seniors with osteoporosis, let patients with macular degeneration go blind in one eye before treatment and deny breakthrough drugs to patients with Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis has now become part of American federal law.

Americans should be shocked but not surprised. CER is only one step in the Obama administration's insidious plan to take over American health care … for our own good.

Consider the case of Tom Daschle, President Barack Obama's first choice for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and America's leading cheerleader for CER. He wrote a book calling for federal bureaucrats to make "specific coverage decisions" for government-managed health care programs and to "exert tremendous influence on every … provider and payer, even those in the private sector."

Consider the billions set aside in the stimulus bill to begin creating a national database of digitized medical records, Health IT. I have no problem with electronic medical records — they will probably reduce mistakes, lower costs and even save lives.

But I have a big problem with the government mandating the format of those records, fining any insurer who chooses alternative formats and then using its massive database of confidential patient information to conduct its CER studies. But that's exactly what the president's 2010 budget advocates: "When [CER is] coupled with electronic health records, these findings can form the basis for clinical decision support tools."

And consider the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the first health care bill President Obama signed into law.

Enacted in 1997 to provide health care coverage for children of the working poor, the new SCHIP will cover children of parents who earn up to $106,000 per year. That is, children throughout the lower, middle and upper-middle class will now grow up eligible for and accustomed to government-managed health care.

Unless Americans act quickly, this health care nightmare could soon be reality. When "Generation SCHIP" reaches adulthood and risks losing its "free" health care, voters will finally allow Democrats to socialize medicine once and for all.

Armed with its Health IT-based CER studies, the federal government can start rationing health care as it must to control the costs of a massive universal system.

When that happens, the consequences here in America will be the same as they have been everywhere else socialized medicine has been tried. Sick patients will wait weeks to see a primary care physician. They will wait months to see a specialist. They will wait years to receive routine treatments. And they will be denied extraordinary treatments altogether.

And before long, we'll understand the true, human costs of a "free" system.

If we do not act quickly to reject socialized medicine, the next Katie Hilliard or Claire Everett won't be across an ocean but across town, across the street or maybe even across the kitchen table.

Jim DeMint represents South Carolina in the U.S. Senate.

How many lies and distortions can ya get in one column? Mebbe a record here.....

Like, does this guy REALLY expect to slip this by people

Rewrite these sentences to apply to the currently existing "system" in the United States


government bureaucrats decide which patients may receive which treatments based on how beneficial the treatment will be — beneficial to the government, that is, not the patient.

greedy private insurers and claims managers decide which patients* may receive which treatments based on how beneficial the treatment wll be -- beneficial to the corporation, that is, not the patient

*you are only a "patient" if you are insured


The process by which government health departments decide who gets what is called "comparative effectiveness research" (CER).

The process by which corporate execs decide who gets what is called "How much can we get away with (KMA)?"

Universal health care: We must recognize the human toll of this ‘reform'

By JIM DeMINT
Special to the Herald-Journal


Published: Sunday, May 17, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, May 15, 2009 at 4:54 p.m.
In Great Britain last year, a 24-year-old woman named Katie Hilliard was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The disease has since spread to her lungs and lymph nodes. Last October, she took time off from her course of chemo and radiation therapy to marry her fiancée because, in her words, "We didn't know how ill I would get."

Buy photo The family of Claire Everett does know. She died last September of the same disease, with her parents, husband and 2-year-old son by her side. She was 23.

Both could have been diagnosed early and possibly saved by a routine screening test. But the British National Health Service does not allow women under the age of 25 to receive that test.

These kinds of stories are commonplace in nations with government-controlled health care, with good reason. As the miracle workers in the global medical research field develop treatments to keep us alive and healthy much longer than ever before, the costs of health care inevitably rise. Government health services looking to cut costs usually choose to ration coverage.

In Great Britain, Canada, Sweden and elsewhere, government bureaucrats decide which patients may receive which treatments based on how beneficial the treatment will be — beneficial to the government, that is, not the patient.

The process by which government health departments decide who gets what is called "comparative effectiveness research" (CER). And you might be surprised to know there was more than $1 billion allocated for CER in the so-called economic stimulus bill passed by Congress.

The same research that countries with government-controlled care use to deny hip replacements to seniors with osteoporosis, let patients with macular degeneration go blind in one eye before treatment and deny breakthrough drugs to patients with Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis has now become part of American federal law.

Americans should be shocked but not surprised. CER is only one step in the Obama administration's insidious plan to take over American health care … for our own good.

Consider the case of Tom Daschle, President Barack Obama's first choice for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and America's leading cheerleader for CER. He wrote a book calling for federal bureaucrats to make "specific coverage decisions" for government-managed health care programs and to "exert tremendous influence on every … provider and payer, even those in the private sector."

Consider the billions set aside in the stimulus bill to begin creating a national database of digitized medical records, Health IT. I have no problem with electronic medical records — they will probably reduce mistakes, lower costs and even save lives.

But I have a big problem with the government mandating the format of those records, fining any insurer who chooses alternative formats and then using its massive database of confidential patient information to conduct its CER studies. But that's exactly what the president's 2010 budget advocates: "When [CER is] coupled with electronic health records, these findings can form the basis for clinical decision support tools."

And consider the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the first health care bill President Obama signed into law.

Enacted in 1997 to provide health care coverage for children of the working poor, the new SCHIP will cover children of parents who earn up to $106,000 per year. That is, children throughout the lower, middle and upper-middle class will now grow up eligible for and accustomed to government-managed health care.

Unless Americans act quickly, this health care nightmare could soon be reality. When "Generation SCHIP" reaches adulthood and risks losing its "free" health care, voters will finally allow Democrats to socialize medicine once and for all.

Armed with its Health IT-based CER studies, the federal government can start rationing health care as it must to control the costs of a massive universal system.

When that happens, the consequences here in America will be the same as they have been everywhere else socialized medicine has been tried. Sick patients will wait weeks to see a primary care physician. They will wait months to see a specialist. They will wait years to receive routine treatments. And they will be denied extraordinary treatments altogether.

And before long, we'll understand the true, human costs of a "free" system.

If we do not act quickly to reject socialized medicine, the next Katie Hilliard or Claire Everett won't be across an ocean but across town, across the street or maybe even across the kitchen table.

Jim DeMint represents South Carolina in the U.S. Senate.

How many lies and distortions can ya get in one column? Mebbe a record here.....


Had me worried there for a second, bp. This "waiting" spin is getting old ... I'll post the latest "move on" movement for "public options" on edit...something else we need to battle...




Dear fellow MoveOn member,

As a doctor, I see the urgent need for health care reform—and especially, a strong public health insurance option.

My patients are being forced to choose between paying their health insurance or their rent, between buying medicine they need or keeping their kids in college.

A public health insurance option could change that by giving Americans the choice of keeping their current insurance or switching to a new public plan that could bring down costs and cover everyone.

I can't stand by while patients suffer under a broken system, especially when change is possible. A key Senate committee could unveil its proposal this week—and we need it to be as strong as possible.

So I'm asking you to call Congress with me today. Just tell your senators: "I support the public health insurance option.


Our goal is 10,000 calls from MoveOn members today. Click here after you call so MoveOn can track the calls.

http://pol.moveon.org/call?tg=FSNY_1.FSNY_2&cp_id=914&id=16154-6174708-TF7bNHx&t=3

The public health insurance option is real possibility. It's gaining support in Congress, and is backed by the president and a majority of Americans.

If enacted, the plan would:

* Create a new, high-quality public health insurance option that could save us lot of money off our private premiums. And we'd still get to keep our doctors.
* Help those who keep their private plan save too! If consumers are able to choose, the for-profit insurers will have to offer higher quality care for lower prices to compete.
* Provide all of us with the security we need. The public health insurance option will always be there for Americans who lose their insurance, or just don't have any.

But attack groups are working hard to stop it. They've already launched an all-out campaign to scare elected officials and the public out of supporting the public health insurance option. They want to stop health reform. Again.

We can't let them succeed. For my patients, the stakes are too high. Please call today.

Thanks for all you do.

–Dr. Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, MoveOn member

P.S. I'm part of an incredible new movement called "Doctors for America", made up of more than 12,000 physicians and medical students working for real health care reform. To find out more (or, if you're a doctor or medical student, to join us) click here:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51426&id=16154-6174708-TF7bNHx&t=4

Sources:

1, 2, 3. "The Case for Public Plan Choice in National Health Reform," Institute for America's Future
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51396&id=16154-6174708-TF7bNHx&t=5


Argh! Insidious and insipid...twist, spin, distort, ...

From my region!!

[quote](The TU is Albany's daily newspaper.)

Times Union
Albany, NY

Editorial: Put single-payer on the table
First published: Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Earlier this month, eight courageous doctors, lawyers and other
activists interrupted a Senate Finance Committee meeting on health
care reform to ask why there wasn't one advocate of a single-payer
health care system at the table. Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana
Democrat, had them arrested.
Shame on Senator Baucus, and shame on Congress if it continues to
stifle debate on one of the biggest issues facing this country.

To claim, as they have, that "everything is on the table" except a
nationalized health insurance system, similar to what many other
modern, industrial Western nations have, is much like saying the
Thanksgiving meal is complete, except for the turkey.

We are not saying single-payer is necessarily the answer. We are
saying that a full discussion of the future of health care in America
can't take place if all credible potential solutions aren't examined.

We are mindful that there are powerful pressures on President Obama
and Congress against discussing a government-run health care program —
whether it is one that coexists with a private insurance market or
one, like single-payer, that replaces it entirely. There are the
inevitable charges from critics on the right of the S-word — socialism
— at any hint of the government suggesting it could do a better job
than the private sector.

And then there's the vast and entrenched health care industry, looking
to scuttle mere talk of a plan that might help the nation gain control
of spiraling health care costs and provide decent, affordable coverage
to the 50 million people without it. Hence its vague offer last week
to trim an astounding $2 trillion in costs over 10 years. That the
industry could shave $2 trillion, just like that, would seem to only
hint at the excess there is in the current health care system.

And what exactly was this offer?

To trim future growth from a crushing 7 percent a year to a still-
unsustainable 5.5 percent. And if costs grow faster anyway? Will we be
told, well, it's still less than it might have been?

We recognize that Democrats would want to avoid the more uncomfortable
discussion. There are many — including New York's own Sen. Charles
Schumer — who agree a single-payer system is the solution America
needs, but that it isn't practical right now.

Well, if we can't even discuss it now — when the country is in a
recession and the ranks of the uninsured are growing; when major
industries like automakers are buckling, in no small measure because
of health care costs; when Americans are poised for change and the
party that promised it is in power — then when?

Perhaps those who prefer to shy away from the uncomfortable yet
absolutely necessary discussion could take courage from 75 members of
Congress, including 10 from New York — among them freshman Democrat
Paul Tonko of Amsterdam — who signed on to Rep. John Conyers Jr.'s
single-payer bill. Or from the people who earlier this month, at the
risk of arrest, went to Washington to say what they thought was best
for the nation.

We'd like to imagine we sent our representatives there for the same
reason.

The issue:
Congress shut down debate on a single-payer health care system before
it even started.

The Stakes:

A solution that many believe is the best for the nation needs to at
least be discussed.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=801536
(http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=801536)

The people are starting to speak out on this, letter extant except for the personal information...(I never heard of the guy..)


Schenectady Gazette
May 17, 2009
Letter to the editor


Don’t take no for an answer on single-payer

How many police does it take to silence the voice of the American
people? We do not as yet know, but Sen. Max Baucus of Montana wishes
to add many more simply to assure that they do not even have to
consider the only health care plan that would work well.

Why is the Senate not even considering the single-payer health plan,
but snidely laughing behind closed doors as they prepare to put
another one over on the American people? When are we going to say
“enough,” like the French people recently did when their government
tried to make them pay for the government’s own ineptness and bad
management? Is there not one person who is still a vertebrate in this
country?

Last week, the Senate Finance Committee thought it a hilarious joke as
they ejected one activist after another because they protested that
not even one spokesperson for single-payer health care was permitted
to sit at the hearing table. Freedom of speech? Equal representation?
Now it is my turn to laugh.

Let us stop cowering. Let us take this country back. Down with wimpy,
mewling American citizens. Start drinking your V8, everyone!

From NPR this morning:



Baucus, meanwhile, made a plea to supporters of a fully government-funded, single-payer plan to back off of their complaints that their proposal is not under active consideration. Baucus had several single-payer advocates arrested by Capitol Police after they disrupted two of the roundtable sessions.

"It just can't pass, not today," he said. But for right now, "we can't squander this opportunity. We can't waste capital on something that's impossible."

Baucus said he hoped single-payer backers would support what he is trying to pass.

"We can reach a very, very good result, where the rate of increase in health care costs is dramatically coming down. That is huge," he said. "Everybody's going to have health insurance; that's not a bad result. And everybody's going to have quality health insurance; that's not a bad result."

The retreat from reform (http://socialistworker.org/2009/05/21/the-retreat-from-reform)

Alan Maass and Helen Redmond analyze the concessions that Democrats are making in congressional debate over health care reform legislation.

May 21, 2009

THE SEVERITY of the health care crisis in the U.S. has millions of people expecting dramatic change.

The U.S. Census Bureau's official statistics say that 45.7 million people didn't have health insurance in 2007. But the problem is even worse, according to a Families USA study--which found that 86.7 million Americans, or about one in three people under the age of 65, was without insurance at some point in 2007 and 2008.

Add in the problem of "underinsurance" for millions of people who think they're covered, but then discover, when they get hurt or sick, that there are giant holes in their employer-provided health insurance policies.

It's no wonder opinion polls consistently show that health care is a top concern for people--and that a majority wants the government to play a role in the health care system, as it does in every other advanced industrial economy. According to a February 2009 Grove poll, for example, 59 percent of people said they would prefer a national health insurance program that covers everyone, over the current system of private insurance, offered mainly through employers.

But in Washington, D.C., despite the bold promises from Barack Obama and the Democrats during the 2008 election campaign, the prospects for genuine health care reform seem to be running in the other direction.

(much more at the link)

people trump insurance interests!! from my email:

From: Unions for Single Payer HR676
<Editor@unionsforsinglepayerhr676.org>

Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 22:56:18 -0400 (EDT)

Union Retirees Persuade Congresswoman to Co-Sponsor HR 676 (Plus More)

HR 676 now has 77 co-sponsors in addition to Congressman John Conyers.
Latest to add her name to the list of co-sponsors is California
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (CA-16). Lofgren spoke May 16th at the annual
Legislators BBQ sponsored by FORUM (Federation of Retired Union Members)
in San Jose.

In her talk on the current health care reform debate, Lofgren asked the
crowd, “How many support single payer?” Virtually everyone raised their
hand. She then asked, “Who supports any of the alternative health reform
plans?” No one raised a hand. Representative Lofgren then announced,
“Okay, on Monday morning I’ll call John Conyers and put my name on his
bill.” Congratulations to Fred Hirsch, Plumbers & Steamfitters, Local
393, and the eighty other union retirees at the meeting.

DULUTH CLC CALLS FOR AFL-CIO CONVENTION ENDORSEMENT OF HR 676

The Duluth Minnesota LABOR WORLD, one of the oldest continuously published
labor newspapers in the country, reports on the action taken by the Duluth
Central Labor Council to ask the AFL-CIO Pittsburgh Convention in
September to endorse HR 676, single payer health care legislation
introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). The Troy Area Labor
Council initiated this effort in a letter sent to all 491 central labor
councils. The Troy Area Labor Council is also calling for the AFL-CIO
Convention to initiate a march on Washington to make health care a human
right.

Read the Duluth LABOR WORLD here:
http://unionsforsinglepayerhr676.org/articles/2009-05-22/clc_calls_for_afl-cio_endorsement

RAY KENNY’S HR 676 LETTER PUBLISHED IN IBEW’S, THE ELECTRICAL WORKER

Ray Kenny, a member of IBEW Local 48 in Portland, Oregon, was instrumental
in getting his local union to endorse HR 676. His letter in support of HR
676 appears in the May, 2009, issue of The Electrical Worker, official
journal of the IBEW International union.

Read it here: http://unionsforsinglepayerhr676.org/articles

CNA MAKES VIDEO OF NURSES’ AND DOCTORS’ PROTEST

California Nurses Association (CNA/NNOC) has made a video of the nurses’
and doctors’ protest at the Senate Finance Committee “roundtable” May 12th
where no single payer advocates were permitted to testify.

View it here:
http://unionsforsinglepayerhr676.org/videos/2009-05-19-rns_and_mds_arrested_for_speaking_out


HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a
greatly improved Medicare system to everyone residing in the U. S.

HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including
prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and
preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health,
physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision
care, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable
medical equipment, palliative care, and long term care.

HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of
billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the
private health insurance industry and HMOs.

In the current Congress, HR 676 has 77 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced SB 703, a single payer bill
in the Senate.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 519 union organizations in 49 states including
127 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 39 state
AFL-CIO's (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,
MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI,
MT, NE, NY, NV & MA).

For further information, a list of union endorsers, or a sample
endorsement resolution, contact:

Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org
05/26/09

Hey Kid, one thing about your profit comment in the Obama thread, is that most doctors are now employed by huge healthcare corporations :o >:(, I think it would be better to have doctors on their own, perhaps, and they'd be kept from profit by the single payer system...I think...some countries doctors are civil servants, that would be best...

Hey Kid, one thing about your profit comment in the Obama thread, is that most doctors are now employed by huge healthcare corporations :o >:(, I think it would be better to have doctors on their own, perhaps, and they'd be kept from profit by the single payer system...I think...some countries doctors are civil servants, that would be best...


First thing everyone comes back with is "But if there's no money in it, why would anyone want to be a doctor?"

Literally, everybody says that, which is kind of off, considering the entrance of HMOs stage left..

I mean, what are doctors actually making now..?

author=Kid Of The Black Hole link=topic=190.msg3171#msg3171
First thing everyone comes back with is "But if there's no money in it, why would anyone want to be a doctor?"

Literally, everybody says that, which is kind of off, considering the entrance of HMOs stage left..

I mean, what are doctors actually making now..?


Plenty, but some, a few, do it to heal people, imagine that...in fact the numbers of those have been rising in the past couple years because the jobs aren't as "profitable"...

The man who really got me active in single payer is a Marxist doctor who as an intern discovered that he couldn't heal everybody who came to the hospital he worked at as they weren't covered, he's been working for this for over a decade, maybe more...he took the Hippocratic oath seriously I'd say...

on edit, kid why is it only your posts I fuck up the formatting on?? :)

Single Payer New York

www.singlepayernewyork.org

Media Release



Groups Urge State and Federal Officials to Make Health Care a Human Right by Adopting A Single Payer Health Care System

A hundred single payer universal health care advocates rallied in the rain today at the state Capitol today as part of a national week of action to make healthcare a human right in America. (www.healthcare-now.org)

The groups, in town for a statewide lobby day on single payer health care, called upon the Governor and state legislative leaders to enact a single payer health care system for New York. A majority of state lawmakers, including the Governor and State Comptroller, have sponsored single payer legislation. The Governor long delayed report on universal health care is due to be released in the next few months; the groups want Paterson to recommend a single payer system.

The groups also urged the State Senate to join the State Assembly in passing a resolution introduced by Sen. Neil Breslin urging Congress to adopt HR 676, the federal single payer Medicare for All bill. So far the White House and top Congressional leaders have refused to allow single payer to even be discussed, despite the fact that has more sponsors in Congress than any other universal health care proposal. President Obama, who advocated for single payer as a State Senate, continues to say that single payer would be the best health care system for America "if we were starting from scratch". A single payer option is supported by a majority of doctors, nurses, general public and health care experts.

"President Obama and Senator Baucus keep saying that people want to keep the health insurance they have. Where did they find such a putrid pearl of political wisdom? Here's a real pearl for you, Mr.
President: we do not want health insurance. We want health care, comprehensive health care -- for everyone!," said Dr. Andy Coates, Secretary of the Capital District chapter of the Physicians for a National Health Program.

"We are fed up with the health insurance we have, fed up with health insurance we can't afford, fed up with the insurance that doesn't cover the care we need and completely fed up with the fact that the top insurance company executive took home $24 million in 2008. $24 million for one profiteer in a year when about 5 million of us lost our health insurance. Enough! It is time for a public single payer
system," said Coates, a co-chairperson of Single Payer New York..

The groups said that the elimination of the present system of for profit private health insurance was essential to any meaningful universal health care reform.

"Insurance companies are a root cause of the failures of the American health care system. They are a principal reason why the US spends far more money on health care than other countries but have a sick care system that performs worse than all the other industrial countries. Health care will never be a right in America as long as private for-profit insurance companies continue to exist. Insurance companies and their demand for profits literally kill tens of thousands of Americans annually. Democrats in Congress are killing the chance for real reform by insisting that insurance companies continue to play a dominant role in our health care system," added Mark Dunlea, co-chair of Single Payer New York and Executive Director of the Hunger Action Network of New York State.

The groups pointed out that the various other universal health proposals being discussed in Congress, including the public option, would all fail to actually provide health care services to all Americans and would do little if anything to control costs. Single payer also provides Americans with the ability to choose their own doctors and health care providers.

"Americans can not afford to continue to waste hundreds of billions of dollars annually for a health insurance system that adds nothing of value while denying essential care and imposing enormous expense with their paperwork, marketing costs and profits. The US already spends more public dollars per capita just on Medicare and Medicaid and yet all the other industrial countries manage to provide health care to everyone. The various reforms being advanced by our national leaders are 'control health care' costs are little more than an elaborate con game to protect the profits and campaign contributions of insurance and drug companies," said Rebecca Elgie of the Tompkins County Health Care Task Force.



"As young people are graduating from college they are faced with the prospect of not having a job but also losing their health care coverage. They are being forced to apply for medicaid to protect themselves from unforeseen medical expenses and many are faced with the prospect of not being able to cover prescriptions and care for existing illnesses. They are scrambling to find any job that will offer benefits and those who have jobs are desperately trying to hang on to them. We need a single payer system which guarantees health care for ALL,” added Elgie, Co-Chair of Single Payer New York

Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus, who keeps insisting that Single-Payer is off the table, took $183,750 from health insurance companies and $229,020 from drug companies in the last two election cycles. Many of his fellow Senators and Representatives have taken similar contributions (http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=F09).

Sponsors of the event include Single Payer New York (www.singlepayernewyork.org), Capital District Alliance for Universal Health Care, Capital District Area Labor Federation; Faith and Hunger Network; Hunger Action Network of NYS: New York State Nurses Association; Physicians for a National Health Program; Students for a National Health Program; Tompkins County Health Care Task Force; Troy Area Labor Council and Citizens for Universal Health Care.

The groups said that the reform being push by Democrats such as public option and mandates that everyone purchase health insurance will fail, just as a variety of similar state-based incremental approaches to universal health care have all failed in recent decades.

According to PHNP, the public option proposal forgoes at least 84 percent of the administrative savings available through single payer. The public plan option would do nothing to streamline the administrative tasks (and costs) of hospitals, physicians offices, and nursing homes, which would still contend with multiple payers, and hence still need the complex cost tracking and billing apparatus that drives administrative costs. A quarter century of experience with public/private competition in the Medicare program demonstrates that the private plans will not allow a level playing field. Despite strict regulation, private insurers have successfully cherry picked healthier seniors, and have exploited regional health spending differences to their advantage. They have progressively undermined the public plan - which started as the single payer for seniors and has now become a funding mechanism for HMOs - and a place to dump the unprofitably ill. A public plan option does not lead toward single payer, but toward the segregation of patients, with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in the public plan.

The California State Legislature has twice in recent years passed a state single payer health care program only to have it vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. A study by the national Lewin group estimated that the State of California would save $34 billion annually through a single payer system. Estimates for savings in New York range from $10 to $25 billion annually.



"In this moment of economic crisis, single payer health care is needed more than ever. It would save enormous amounts of money for taxpayers, employers and consumers. It would provide a major economic stimulus. If NY did it first, it would be a great incentive to attract jobs to our state. It would allow companies like the auto industry to compete on a more level playing field with their international competitors, all of whom spend far less money on health care costs. It would make Americans healthier.,” added Dr. Richard Propp of the Capital District Alliance for Universal Healthcare.

seems to slap Barry anyway

http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/05/25/really-mr-president/

http://www.nesri.org/Single_Payer_Human_Rights_Analysis.pdf

Seattle Times
May 31, 2009

Thousands hit Seattle streets seeking changes to health care
By Katherine Long
Seattle Times staff reporter

The crowd was mostly Democratic, but that didn't stop them from
shouting down Sen. Patty Murray's general remarks about the need for
health-care reform with a more specific call for a single-payer health-
insurance system.

Thousands joined a health-care rally and later a mellow, slow-moving
parade in downtown Seattle, complete with belly dancers, drums, air
horns, children, bicycles and lots of signs, both mass-produced and
hand-drawn.

Many said they wanted a single-payer national health-insurance system
— the type of insurance that's widely used in Europe and Canada.

Organizers put the crowd size at 3,500. Seattle police gave an
estimate of 2,500 as of 1 p.m. — although the crowd seemed to grow as
the day wore on.

More than 190 organizations endorsed the rally, including dozens of
unions, women's organizations, health-care workers and churches.

Many protesters said health-care changes are needed now because so
many people have no health care, whether that's because their employer
no longer offers it, it's too expensive or because they're unemployed.

"The system is broken, and it's going to be so complex to fix it that
we might as well tear it up and start over," said Larry Neilson, a
Seattle medical transcriptionist, echoing a common sentiment.

"I work in health care, and I can't afford insurance," said Neilson,
who came to the rally wearing a doctor's white coat with the whimsical
name "Dr. Schlock" embroidered over the pocket.

Protesters pointed out that the country has one of the most expensive
health-care systems in the world, but lags behind other countries on
such health indicators as the infant-mortality rate.

Typical was a banner several protesters carried that read: "Diagnosis:
the greedy health insurers are parasites! The cure? Single payer
option."

The demonstrators shouted down Murray as she concluded her pro-health-
coverage remarks at Pratt Park in Central Seattle, where the march
began.

"I am heading back to Washington," Murray started, and was drowned out
by chants of "Single payer, single payer!"

Protesters said they were disappointed that Murray hasn't said
anything in support of the single-payer option.

"Did you see Patty Murray shouted down?" asked Stuart Ferguson, a
Democratic precinct committee chairman for the 46th District. "I hope
she took notice. The more people that do it, the more successful we'll
be."

Ferguson said he voted for President Obama, but he's disappointed the
administration has invited insurance companies to the negotiating table.

He and many other protesters said they fear the administration's
efforts at change won't go far enough.

But when they chanted for Obama to pay attention to their concerns,
the crowd did it in Spanish, not English. The chant, "Obama, escucha,
estamos en la lucha," means, "Obama, listen, we are in the fight."

Barbara Hansen and Sara Baldwin, both of Seattle, said they each had
children who had just graduated, or were about to graduate, from
college and could no longer receive health care through their parents'
plans.

If her daughter got into a serious bike accident on the way to work,
it would cost the family so much money that it could force them to
sell their house, Hansen said.

"There are so many more uninsured people today than there were a year
ago," said Linda Arkava, a cardiac nurse at Swedish Medical Center,
who spoke to the crowd just before Murray did.

"I see thousands of dollars wasted when people are unnecessarily
admitted. They come to us needing acute care — it costs so much more
money, and they suffer so much more."

Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or klong@seattletimes.com
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2009282093_healthmarch31m.html

Keep those feet to the fire, works sometimes...


http://www.opednews.com/articles/Baucus-to-Meet-with-Single-by-Kevin-Zeese-090601-302.html

June 1, 2009

Baucus to Meet with Single Payer Advocates

By Kevin Zeese

Senator Max Baucus and the Finance Committee are feeling the pressure



This Wednesday Sen. Baucus will meet with a delegation of leading single payer national health plan advocates.



The delegation includes: Dr. David Himmelstein, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Dr. Marcia Angell, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Medical School and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Oliver Fein, Associate Dean, Cornell Weill Medical School, and President of PNHP, Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, and Geri Jenkins, president of California Nurses Association.



This step would not have occurred without the consistent and growing pressure being put on Senator Baucus and the Finance Committee. This is a victory for single payer advocates.


Kevin Zeese in handcuffs after health care protest



But we know that a private meeting with single payer advocates does not mean that single payer is on the table or that will get a fair hearing.


We are pleased Sen. Baucus is feeling the pressure and reacting but an off-the-record meeting is not enough. We want single payer on the table and really being considered. We know that on every measure: cost, patient choice, improved health care and covering all people -- single payer wins every argument. It isn't even a close question which is why a super majority of Americans support single payer -- improved Medicare for all.



Please take action and write Senator Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee today.(You can take action at www.ProsperityAgenda.US.) Tell them that while we appreciate a private meeting for single payer -- that is not good enough. Single payer needs to be on the table because with fair consideration single payer will be the health care plan adopted by the nation.



The multi-payer system that Sen. Baucus is pushing will be a gift to the insurance industry that has so generously supported him throughout his political career. Indeed, it only makes sense from the perspective of the insurance industry. It makes no sense as real health care reform.



The plan he is working on will push, perhaps even force, people to buy insurance, it will subsidize the industry even more than it already is, it will not control costs indeed it will increase taxes to pay for insurance subsidies, and, if there is a public insurance option it will have so many strings attached that it will fail. This is not reform that provide health care to all at a price the nation can afford.



President Obama put forward three goals for health care reform. On every measure single payer wins on the facts.



1. Cover all American: It is the only system that will ensure that every American has access to health care throughout their lives. Single payer will allow people to keep insurance unrelated to their employment. The Massachusetts model on which the senate is basing their plan has failed to insure all people in Massachusetts.



2. Control Costs: Single payer is the only cost-effective way to achieve health care for all because it immediately saves $400 billion in health insurance created bureaucracy, it will uncover hundreds of billions in waste, fraud, and abuse, it will allow for negotiation on the price of pharmaceutical drugs and and it will reduce malpractice as people with bad health outcomes will have health care to treat them. The Massachusetts model has led to rapidly increasing costs.



3. Provide Consumer Choice: Single payer provides people with the maximum choice. They will no longer be limited by the insurance or HMO "approved" list of doctors but rather will be able to pick their doctor, their hospital and their treatment. The senate is conflating choice of health care with choice of insurance. The latter is really irrelevant as under a single payer system people will be able to keep their current doctors and providers or change them. People have maximum choice under single payer.



Real reform of health care is needed. We do not need to tinker with the broken multi-payer system. We do not need to preserve the costly, failed private insurance system -- we need to end it. Single payer has worked in every country that has tried it. Medicare is working in the United States. Single payer is merely expanding improved Medicare to all Americans.



It is time to put single payer on the table, indeed it is time to make it America's national health policy. A private meeting should spur our movement to increase the pressure senators are feeling.



We want real change not symbolic meetings.



Kevin Zeese is executive director of ProsperityAgenda.US which is working for an economy that serves the interests of all Americans, not just the elites. Single payer health care is one aspect of an economy for all. Kevin is one of the Baucus 13 who were arrested protesting the exclusion of single payer health care from consideration.

This is a set-up. Baucus will tell them to kiss off in private and then make a show of how open-minded he is.

This is a set-up. Baucus will tell them to kiss off in private and then make a show of how open-minded he is.


More than likely, but if he does that they'll be burning more than his feet, these people aren't afraid to be arrested and will make a stink, and they have some strong populist backing...

Here's how they treated him in his home state:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/01/baucus-battered-by-voters_n_209865.html

Ryan Grim ryan@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting



Baucus Battered By Voters For Health Care Stand Posted: 06- 1-09 02:36 PM



Baucus
Sen. Max Baucus got some not-so friendly advice from his Montana constituents last week as he works to reform the health care system: You're doing it all wrong.

Baucus, the chair of the Finance Committee and the leader of reform efforts in the Senate, scheduled 20 town hall meetings with constituents across the state to talk about the future of health care. The Senate was out of session, but Baucus, a Democrat, didn't personally attend. Instead, he sent staff and a video-recorded message.

"I really want to hear from all of you," Baucus said on the video, according to local media. "You're my employers. You're my bosses. You're the people I work for. I'm just the hired hand. I want to hear what you want to see in any legislation we pass in Washington, D.C."

He got what he asked for.

Five separate accounts of the meetings, published in four different local papers, show Montana voters were downright hostile to Baucus' reform proposal. Baucus has been a staunch opponent of single-payer health care, a system in which the government would provide universal coverage.

Baucus has kept single-payer advocates out of negotiations and has yet to endorse a compromise proposal by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would give Americans the option of buying into a publicly run plan that would compete with private insurers.

That stance put his staffers up against a wall, facing angry constituents fed up by what they viewed as a lack of courage in Washington.

"Majority wants single-payer health care," headlined an account in the Helena Independent Record.

At several of the events, Montanans' ire was directed at Baucus chief of staff Jon Selib, who defended the employer-based coverage system that he estimated covers 150 million Americans. Story continues below

"A lot of people like that," Selib said.

When the time came for questions, [self-employed consultant Steve] McArthur stood up and asked a simple question. Looking across a standing-room-only crowd of about 275, he asked how many were happy with their employer-based health insurance.

Fewer than 10 people raised their hands.

"The [argument] is bogus," McArthur said. "It's not working for 95 percent of us."

In fact, any mention of single-payer health care insurance brought raucous cheers and clapping. Any other solution to health care reform - including Baucus' "balanced" plan that would create a mix of public and private plans - was received more coolly.

The bitter questioning led Selib to break some news at the meeting.

"If you think your insurance company is screwing you ... then you'd have the option of going to the public plan," Selib said. "Senator Baucus is fighting tooth and nail to include that in any final deal."

Then he asked the standing-room-only audiences for comments -- and got an earful, mostly on the whys, hows and whats of national health insurance as the preferred option.

Baucus' staff repeatedly argued that 60 votes are needed to move a bill through the Senate and that single-payer, or an otherwise bold reform, simply wouldn't pass. That wasn't what they wanted to hear, said a story in the Missoulian, "Single-payer health care: Baucus keeps getting an earful."

PABLO - Sen. Max Baucus' insistence that consideration of a national single-payer health plan at this point will squander a golden opportunity for health care reform in the United States continues to be met with stiff resistance from many of his constituents.

"The word 'insurance' does not equal health care," Janelle Kuechle of Polson said at a meeting here Thursday. "If I have to pay a $900 premium to have health insurance with a $10,000 deductible, that is not health care."

"Congress ought to be representing us instead of the insurance lobby," said retired school teacher John Oberlitner of Polson. "Max Baucus has stated it's not feasible to pass a single-payer health plan, but one year ago people were saying it was not feasible that Obama could be elected our president."

Voters in Livingston weren't much warmer, recorded the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

But many in the audience grilled a Baucus staffer on why they wouldn't allow single-payer advocates to participate in roundtables held to form his plan. Several doctors were arrested for protesting that point in Washington two weeks ago during a Baucus-led discussion.

Judy Moor of Bozeman asked whether the big campaign dollars Baucus has received from the insurance industry was reason for suspicion.

"Single-payer advocates not giving up the fight," observed the Great Falls Tribune.

Proponents of single-payer showed up en masse at the most well-attended meetings in Missoula, Hamilton, Anaconda, Dillon and Livingston to urge Baucus -- the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee -- to consider single-payer universal health care. Single payer -- a system in which the government provides health insurance to all Americans -- has been declared "off the table" by Baucus, Congress' leading man on heath care reform.

Baucus isn't pushing hard enough, said a Helena business owner, summing up the statewide wisdom. "Max is really making me mad now because he's not really trying to change the system, he's just trying to tweak it."

Obama said to be open to taxing health benefits (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090603/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_overhaul)

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer – 12 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is leaving the door open to taxing health care benefits, something he campaigned hard against while running for president, according to senators who met with him Tuesday.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., raised the issue with Obama during a private meeting with the president and other Democratic senators and later reported the president's position: "It's on the table. It's an option."

The White House said later that Obama did not want to go that route.

"The president made it clear during the campaign that he has serious concerns about taxing health care benefits," Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin said in a statement. "He stated again his belief that health reform can't wait another year, and that while all options should be considered, those options should include the revenue proposals that he included in his budget."

The federal government would reap about $250 billion a year if it treated health care benefits given to employees like wages and taxed them.

Baucus and others are eyeing that money as they search for ways to pay for a costly health care overhaul that would extend coverage to 50 million Americans who are now uninsured. That could cost some $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

The president adamantly opposed health benefit taxes during the campaign, arguing they would undermine job-based coverage, and he criticized Republican presidential rival John McCain for proposing a sweeping version of the same basic idea. But since taking office he and members of his administration have indicated openness to almost all suggestions from Congress on health care, including taxing benefits.

Obama has made some suggestions of his own for paying for a health care overhaul, including cuts to Medicare and limiting tax deductions wealthy people can take, but they've run into opposition from Congress. And, they only add up to about $630 billion over 10 years.

Some experts think limiting the tax exclusion for health benefits is the only way to get the necessary money to pay for a sweeping health care overhaul. But there's opposition from organized labor and from many Democrats, including House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who said recently there was "no way" he would support the approach.

Baucus wants to look at limiting — but not entirely eliminating — the tax-free status of employer-provided health benefits.

"It was not in our plan, it was not in our budget," White House budget director Peter Orszag said earlier Tuesday. "We are saying we want the legislative process to play out, and that's all we have to say on that right now."

Obama is leaving the details of crafting a health care bill to Congress and used Tuesday's meeting to urge senators to swift action.

"This window between now and the August recess I think is going to be the make-or-break period," Obama said before the meeting was closed to reporters. "This is the time where we've got to get this running."

Baucus' Finance Committee and the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee, chaired by the more liberal Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., are both producing sweeping health bills, with some differences emerging between the two committees.

At their weekly luncheon Tuesday, Senate Democrats got a first look at Kennedy's proposals, which would include a new public insurance plan to compete with private providers. The Finance Committee is also considering a public plan though some options being reviewed are more limited in scope than Kennedy's.

Obama brought Democrats from both committees to Tuesday's meeting, urging them to get a single bill through the Senate by early August despite their differences, and telling them they might not all get everything they want, according to senators who attended. Kennedy, who's been diagnosed with brain cancer, did not attend.

___

Associated Press writers Philip Elliott and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

Thanks, sister, here's the topic in a thread at DU:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3904860&mesg_id=3904860

Thanks, sister, here's the topic in a thread at DU:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3904860&mesg_id=3904860


Oh boy. They like to say that making law is like making sausage, ya don't want to watch. But this thing, it's gonna look like road killed haggis.

kiss off


Senator Max Baucus met Wednesday with advocates for single-payer healthcare, including Senator Bernie Sanders, and told them that he might drop criminal charges against 13 people arrested for speaking up in his hearings, but that he would not include any supporters of single-payer health coverage in any future hearings. According to one report, Baucus suggested that he'd been mistaken to exclude single-payer but asserted that the process of creating healthcare reform legislation was too far along now to correct that omission.

Senator Sanders said after the meeting that if healthcare reform did not create a single-payer system it shouldn't be done at all, and that within three or four years we would realize we'd solved nothing. He said that it would be better to increase funding for community health centers and take steps to make it easier for medical students to go into primary care, than to enact major reforms that didn't go to the root of the problem.

Sanders has a bill (S 486) that makes some of the changes he advocates, as well as a bill (S 703) to facilitate the creation by states of single-payer healthcare systems. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin has introduced resolutions on the same topic in the House. Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-chair of the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), attended a press conference following the meeting on Wednesday and filled me in. She said that while states are pursuing single-payer legislation, it would be much easier for them to succeed if they had waivers allowing federal healthcare dollars to go to the states, and if needed changes were made to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

Advocates of single-payer emerged from the meeting with Baucus declaring their determination to push ahead with what they see as a fundamental struggle for human rights. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and national vice president of the AFL-CIO, said the fight for single-payer is a civil rights movement, and that people "have to turn up the heat." When someone questions the political viability of single payer, she said, we should question "allowing people to die and suffer for lack of political will."

The press conference, in which Baucus did not participate, was attended by the New York Times, Politico, the Associated Press, Pacifica Radio, Congressional Quarterly, and a camera that Flowers believed belonged to CNN. Sanders opened the press conference with a statement on the domination of the private for-profit health insurance companies wasting $350 billion per year in billing, profiteering, and complexity. If we were serious about healthcare reform, he said, we would be having a serious discussion of single-payer.

Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and senior lecturer at Harvard, said that in her diagnosis the disease was market-driven healthcare in which access is based on the ability to pay.

Dr. David Himmelstein, co-founder of PNHP and associate professor medicine at Harvard Medical School, reported that Baucus had said he might be willing to drop charges of unlawful conduct and disruption of Congress against 13 people but had no intention of opening up any hearings to include single-payer. Himmelstein also announced the release of two new studies. The first, being released Wednesday, reportedly finds that some of the largest investors in tobacco stock are private health insurance companies. The second, to be released Thursday, reportedly shows that not only are personal bankruptcies increasing, but 62 percent of them are now due to medical debt.

Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and a practicing registered nurse, reported that Baucus had implied he'd made a mistake in not including single-payer but that it was too late now.

And, finally, Dr. Oliver Fein, president of PNHP and associate dean at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, said that he and his colleagues had asked Baucus for a full hearing on the merits of single payer and asked for the Congressional Budget Office to create a comparison of single payer with whatever plan Congress produces that is not single payer. Senator Sanders said that he would continue to push Baucus to hold a hearing.

Dr. Flowers said that in her analysis the single-payer movement is largely inclined to go in the direction that Sanders stated on Wednesday: support for a single-payer bill or nothing. I asked her whether she believed that those pushing for single payer would ever support a public option as doing more good than harm and whether she thought those pushing for a public option would ever advocate allowing states to enact single payer. Flowers acknowledged that there are many (perhaps even most) people in the public option movement who prefer single payer. In fact, it is difficult to find a supporter of the public option who does not claim to "personally" want single payer but to find it "politically unfeasible." But Flowers said that PNHP does not support a public option and backs only single payer. And she said she was unaware of any advocates of a public option also advocating for allowing states to create single payer.

Thanks BP, you got a link for this one?? Kiss off is right, fuck off I say, unctuous bastard...

Thanks BP, you got a link for this one?? Kiss off is right, fuck off I say, unctuous bastard...


Nope, I lifted it from david_swanson's thread over there. He seems a reliable sort but had no link.

Thanks, bp, I found it, and his site is www.afterdowningstreet.org (http://www.afterdowningstreet.org) I believe, just typing it as I recall. Here's a good resource site for at your fingertips info:

http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/facts

Single payer seems to have woken up this person:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5794471&mesg_id=5794471

from my Labor for single payer group...

IBEW Business Manager, CNA Indiana Organizer Speak at Rally for HR 676

Indianapolis, Indiana. Over 100 people rallied for HR 676 outside the
annual stockholders meeting of Wellpoint/Anthem on May 20, then marched to
the offices of Indiana U.S. Senator Evan Bayh. The rally was sponsored by
Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan.

Speakers at the rally included Tom Szymanski, Organizer and Business
Manager for IBEW Local 725 in Terre Haute, and Gary Fritz, Indiana
Organizer for the California Nurses Association/NNOC. The Rally was
chaired by Julia Vaughn from Indiana AFSCME.

The rally called for passage of HR 676, national single payer health care,
ending for-profit insurance companies’ participation in healthcare, and
for the resignation of Susan Bayh from the Board of Directors of
Wellpoint. Susan Bayh, wife of Senator Bayh, was paid almost $300,000 as
a Wellpoint director last year.

Tom Szymanski can be heard at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylES7MKQNPU

Gary Fritz can be heard at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16K9i5uMsRE

We are grateful to Robert Pedersen for these videos. #30#

The worst thing about the lack of health care in the US (for the rest of us that is) is the eroding effect it has on OUR longstanding national health.

Pressure (from the US ruling class) to sign up to bodgy trade deals has put enormous pressure on our subsidised medication scheme.

Much the same as other social spending which becomes "unfordable" in the mealy mouths of our elected reps because we have to "compete" with US spending.

It's like not buying your kids food because you're trying to keep up with your neighbours expenditure on gold plated toilet seats

The worst thing about the lack of health care in the US (for the rest of us that is) is the eroding effect it has on OUR longstanding national health.

Pressure (from the US ruling class) to sign up to bodgy trade deals has put enormous pressure on our subsidised medication scheme.

Much the same as other social spending which becomes "unfordable" in the mealy mouths of our elected reps because we have to "compete" with US spending.

It's like not buying your kids food because you're trying to keep up with your neighbours expenditure on gold plated toilet seats


Wow, Djinn, this is serious cause for concern, could you get me any links or studies on this? Thanks!

Anyone going to be around DC??

Plus, Charlie Rangel is really bucking going for single payer again, I'm working with another woman on designing a bullet flier for his district's constituents, always looking for fresh input...


Single Payer Hearing in House, Wed. June 10

The Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee of the House
Education & Labor Committee will hold a hearing titled “Examining the
Single Payer Health Care Option” this Wednesday, June 10th at 10:30 am in
2175 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

For those of you who would like to attend in person and can make the trip
to Washington, D.C., hearings are open to the public. Just make sure you
get there early, so you get a seat.

You may be able to watch via webcast here:
http://edlabor.house.gov/hearings/2009/06/examining-the-single-payer-hea.shtml

Contact C-SPAN and let them know you would like them to broadcast the
hearing.
C-SPAN's Main Number is: (202) 737-3220

Three Committees in the House have jurisdiction over healthcare (1)
Education & Labor (2) Energy & Commerce (3) Ways & Means.

Please call the chairmen of the Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means
committees and tell them that:

"Because the majority of Americans, doctors, and nurses support a
single-payer healthcare system, we need a robust debate on single-payer
healthcare--with single-payer advocates as witnesses. Please follow Rep.
George Miller's lead and hold hearings on single-payer healthcare in your
committee."

Call or fax the two Committee Chairmen and ask them to hold Single-Payer
hearings

Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman
Phone: 202-225-3976 - Fax: 202-225-4099 -

Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Charles Rangel
Phone: 202-225-4365 - Fax: 202-225-0816
#30#

Distributed by:
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org
06/09/09

Pennsylvania Labor Council, Farm Workers (FLOC) & UE Local Endorse HR 676

Altoona, PA The Blair-Bedford Central Labor Council in Altoona, PA has
endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by
Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). The Blair-Bedford Labor Council is the
128 central labor council to endorse HR 676.

Toledo, OH The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), which began
organizing farm workers in the 1970’s, and is the second largest farm
workers union organization in the U.S. has also endorsed the Conyers
legislation.

Valencia, CA UE Local 1004, which represents more than 500 ancillary
staff working in a community based non-profit hospital, has also endorsed
HR 676 writing to Conyers that “We understand both as health care
providers and as patients that NOW is the time for bold action. Single
payer health care is both an economic and a moral necessity.” #30#

HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a
greatly improved Medicare system to everyone residing in the U. S.

HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including
prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and
preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health,
physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision
care, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable
medical equipment, palliative care, and long term care.

HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of
billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the
private health insurance industry and HMOs.

In the current Congress, HR 676 has 78 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced SB 703, a single payer bill
in the Senate.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 523 union organizations in 49 states including
128 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 39 state
AFL-CIO's (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,
MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI,
MT, NE, NY, NV & MA).

For further information, a list of union endorsers, or a sample
endorsement resolution, contact:

Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org
06/10/09

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/10-9

Published on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 by The Huffington Post

Health Professionals Tell Congress They Want Single-Payer

by Jeff Muskus

At a long-awaited House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, health-care
professionals made it clear that they believe a single-payer system to be
the best and perhaps only workable option for health care reform.

Rep. John Conyers testifying at the single-payer hearing on Wednesday
morning. (Still taken from C-Span)"Single-payer is the only reform that can
control health care costs," said Walter Tsou, a University of Pennsylvania
professor and an adviser to Physicians for a National Health Program. The
last 50 years of government policy have protected insurance industry profits
at the expense of taxpayers, doctors and hospitals, he said.

"Our most famous radical document begins with the words, 'We the People.'
Not 'We the Insurers,'" he said. "It is time for our own generation's
revolution."

For the most part, the panelists testifying before the Health, Employment,
Labor and Pensions Subcommittee agreed that spiraling costs are the greatest
problem currently facing the medical community and its patients.

"Unless you can stop the insurance industry price gouging, we simply cannot
make health care affordable, which means you either have price controls on
the insurance industry or you take them out of the equation through
single-payer reform," said Geri Jenkins, the co-president of the National
Nurses Organizing Committee, which represents 86,000 registered nurses. "If
we were to have a debate on containing costs, improving quality and
universality, the single-payer advantage would be clear."

The discussion about a single-payer approach has been slow in coming because
congressional leaders and the White House took a single-payer system off the
table early in talks on health care reform. But there are signs that they
regret that decision now.

Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.), the subcommittee chairman, said he worries that
systemic inefficiencies in U.S. health care make the nation less competitive
abroad. Ranking subcommittee member Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) complained
that health care is moving too quickly through Congress, noting that
Wednesday's hearing was announced Thursday night, less than the customary
week to 10 days he prefers to wait. But Andrews, who witnessed the failure
of Clinton-era health care reform, responded, "it's not being done nearly
quickly enough."

Fifteen years after the Clinton plan collapsed, the U.S. remains far behind
other industrialized nations on health care, Judiciary Committee chair John
Conyers (D-Mich.) told the subcommittee. Conyers said he has "a plan of a
plan" for a "uniquely American" single-payer program that in its current
form requires 3.5 percent of a taxpayer's income.

"This is the most popular system in the minds of most Americans," he said of
single-payer generally, citing polls and constituents' calls to his office.
"If you take the most popular health care option and take it off the table,
heaven knows what you're left with."

Four of the five panelists, including Conyers, spoke in favor of
single-payer. The only person in opposition was Manhattan Institute fellow
David Gratzer, a doctor born and trained in Canada, who said the Canadian
national-health system struggles to provide care to its citizens. "Like the
Soviet Union, everything is free, nothing is available," Gratzer said.

But as long as Congress adequately funds health care, the other panelists
said, that won't be an issue. "If they were to put the same amount of money
into their systems as we do into ours, there would be no waits," said Marcia
Angell, a Harvard lecturer and former editor of the New England Journal of
Medicine.

"The reason our health care system is in such trouble is that it's set up to
generate profits, not to provide care," Angell said, noting that private
insurers spend 20 percent on marketing and administrative costs, compared
with 3 percent for Medicare. She deemed the health-insurance sector "an
industry that offers almost nothing of value."

Most of the panelists dismissed concerns of job losses at private insurers,
arguing that employment would increase overall given the increased demand
for medical professionals. Jenkins estimated total job creation at 2.6
million.

Some subcommittee Republicans seemed insulted by the very idea that the U.S.
health care system needs reform. "I've been struck by the testimony about
how awful the quality of American health care is," Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.),
who is a doctor, said. U.S. care, Price said, is second "almost to none."

Poor U.S. health outcomes, Gratzer argued, are a function simply of poor
U.S. lifestyle choices, like smoking, drinking, overeating and murdering. If
you remove murders and accidental deaths from U.S. deaths per year, he said,
the "crude statistics" become less compelling.

Andrews seemed impatient with Gratzer's responses, especially when he argued
that more time spent "hanging out with the family doctor" could improve
individual health.

Andrews and full committee chair Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) are scheduled
to discuss a single-payer system with the House Ways and Means Committee
later Wednesday, and the subcommittee chair noted the presence of Ways and
Means member Pete Stark at the hearing. "This is the beginning of the
process, not the end," Andrews said.

Nasty piece here...I almost deleted it as trash, feel free...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/10/AR2009061003384.html?sub=AR

Hold out for single payer
By Nick Skala
The following remarks were presented to the Congressional Progressive
Caucus on June 4.

Today the Congressional Progressive Caucus faces a choice. That choice
is whether Members should maintain their unflinching support for
single-payer, or to accede to intense political pressure to support the
plan currently being developed in Congress under the direction of
President Obama: a mandate for Americans to purchase an insurance plan
from a massive new regulatory “exchange,” with one plan potentially
being a “public option.”

The difference between these choices could not be more stark:
single-payer has at its core the elimination of U.S.-style private
insurance, using huge administrative savings and inherent cost control
mechanisms to provide comprehensive, sustainable universal coverage.

The “public option” preserves all of the systemic defects inherent in
reliance on a patchwork of private insurance companies to finance health
care, a system which has been a miserable failure both in providing
health coverage and controlling costs.

Elimination of U.S.-style private insurance has been a prerequisite to
the achievement of universal health care in every other industrialized
country in the world. In contrast, public program expansions coupled
with mandates have failed everywhere they’ve been tried, both
domestically and internationally.

Many progressives accept that the “public option” is inferior to a
single-payer system, yet support it because of its perceived political
expedience. It is my aim today to convince you that the “public option”
program currently being developed is not only bad health policy, but bad
health politics.

On two separate occasions last month, physicians and nurses were dragged
from the Senate Finance Committee in handcuffs for demanding that
single-payer be considered in our nation’s health reform debate. These
were American doctors and nurses, people who care for patients, people
who want to practice medicine, not protest and disrupt Congress.

But these professionals risked their careers and their freedom. They did
this not because they thought that the “public option” was “good” and
single-payer “better.” They did it because they are firmly convinced, by
well-established health policy science, that the so-called “public
option” has no hope of remedying the systemic defects that cause their
patients to suffer and die, sometimes before their very eyes.

Millions of dollars have been spent by political advocacy groups to
commission polls and statistics “proving” that their health reform is
“politically feasible.” Yet political winds do not make good health
policy. Careful examination of science and experience do. And it is in
the science and experience that we see that single-payer offers the only
way to truly comprehensive, universal and sustainable health care, and
that “public option” schemes offer only more of the same: tens of
millions of uninsured, rapidly deteriorating coverage, an epidemic of
medical bankruptcy, and skyrocketing costs that will eventually cripple
the system.

First, because the “public option” is built around the retention of
private insurance companies, it is unable - in contrast to single-payer
- to recapture the $400 billion in administrative waste that private
insurers currently generate in their drive to fight claims, issue
denials and screen out the sick. A single-payer system would redirect
these huge savings back into the system, requiring no net increase in
health spending.

In contrast, the “public option” will require huge new sources of
revenue, currently estimated at around $1 trillion over the next decade.
Rather than cutting this bloat, the public option adds yet another layer
of useless and complicated bureaucracy in the form of an “exchange,”
which serves no useful function other than to police and broker private
insurance companies.

Second, because the “public option” fails to contain the cost control
mechanism inherent in single-payer, such as global budgeting, bulk
purchasing and planned capital expenditures, any gains in coverage will
quickly be erased as costs skyrocket and government is forced to choose
between raising revenue and cutting benefits.

Third, because of this inability to control costs or realize
administrative savings, the coverage and benefits that can be offered
will be of the same type currently offered by private carriers, which
cause millions of insured Americans to go without needed care due to
costs and have led to an epidemic of medical bankruptcies.

Supporters of incremental reform once again promise us universal
coverage without structural reform, but we’ve heard this promise dozens
of times before.

Virtually all of the reforms being floated by President Obama and other
centrist Democrats have been tried, and have failed repeatedly. Plans
that combined mandates to purchase coverage with Medicaid expansions
fell apart in Massachusetts (1988), Oregon (1992), and Washington state
(1993); the latest iteration (Massachusetts, 2006) is already stumbling,
with uninsurance again rising and costs soaring. Tennessee’s experiment
with a massive Medicaid expansion and a public plan option worked - for
one year, until rising costs sank it.

The Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (the model for a health
insurance exchange) leaves hundreds of thousands of federal workers
uninsured, and has proven unable to contain costs.

Negative results in a recent series of randomized trials explodes the
hope that chronic disease management will cut costs. And the CBO has
thrown a wet blanket on the notion that electronic medical records save
money.

As Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, co-founders of
Physicians for a National Health Program, have remarked, a public plan
option does not lead toward single-payer, but toward the segregation of
patients, with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in
the public plan. A quarter-century of experience with public/private
competition in the Medicare program demonstrates that the private plans
will not allow a level playing field. Despite strict regulation, private
insurers have successfully cherry-picked healthier seniors, and have
exploited regional health spending differences to their advantage. They
have progressively undermined the public plan - which started as a
single-payer system for seniors and have now become a funding mechanism
for HMOs - and a place to dump the unprofitably ill.

Progressive supporters of the “public option” readily concede that
single-payer is a superior system. Indeed, their response to evidence
that their plan won’t work is to commission more charts and graphs
emphasizing its political feasibility.

The “public option” is truly the embodiment of health policy designed by
sound bytes, cobbled together from snippets of information gathered from
focus groups and public opinion polls, and centered around well-polling
buzzwords such as “choice” and “shared responsibility.”

Such a plan may be enough to excite the political classes in Washington,
who care more about what they think can pass the Congress than what will
actually deliver universal, comprehensive health care for all. But
doctors and nurses, the people who actually work in the health system,
see right through it. They are going to jail because they know that this


plan won’t work for their patients.

Nobody is going to jail for the “public option,” because the American
people cannot be inspired by band-aids and half-measures it is
impossible to believe in.

These doctors and nurses are the manifestation of a social movement,
millions strong, that is waiting to be mobilized by the leadership of
the Members in this room. Polls consistently show that two-thirds of the
American people want single-payer. At a recent hearing in Montana
convened by Sen. Max Baucus, only 10 people of three hundred said they
were happy with the insurance they have. Sixty percent of physicians
support single-payer, as do the U.S. Conference of Mayors and 39 state
labor federations and hundreds of local unions across the country.

We’re told that holding out for single-payer is politically unwise, but
to compromise and accept a bad plan at precisely the time when popular
support and grassroots energy are on the side of true reform is the real
political miscalculation.

The history of great social achievement is rife with instances in which
the forces of institutionalized power told social movements - as they
now tell this one - that what they wanted was too much, or too fast, or
too soon. I think, of course, of the abolition of human slavery, the
enfranchisement of women, the Civil Rights Movement, Social Security,
the minimum wage, an end to child labor. In each of these instances,
social movements held fast to their principles and soon discovered that
they had been told was “politically unfeasible” one moment was political
reality the next.

We currently have a better chance to pass single-payer than Lyndon
Johnson had when he passed Medicare. Unlike the public option,
single-payer - because it holds the potential to finally realize
universal, equitable health care - can be a vehicle to inspire the
American people for progressive change.

The voices of doctors and nurses can achieve extraordinary resonance
when they speak selflessly in their patients’ interest. But your
leadership is crucial to inspire the American people. It is my hope that
you’ll see fit to provide it.

________________________________________________________________

IATSE Convention Nears, Locals Keep Endorsing HR 676

In preparation for the upcoming International Convention this July, twelve
more IATSE local unions have endorsed HR 676, national single payer health
care legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

Robert Score, Recording Corresponding Secretary of IATSE Local One in New
York City, who is coordinating the effort to win his International Union’s
endorsement of HR 676, reports that these local unions have endorsed HR
676 and submitted their resolutions to the upcoming convention: Local 3
(Pittsburgh), Local 5 (Cincinnati), Local 7 (Denver), Local 8
(Philadelphia), Local 16 (San Francisco), Local 18 (Milwaukee), Local 22
(Washington, DC), Local 33 (Los Angeles), Local 46 (Nashville), Local 127
(Dallas), Local 284 (Wilmington, DE), Local 417 (Raleigh).

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture
Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts, founded over a century ago,
represents over 110,000 members in the entertainment and related
industries. #30#

HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a
greatly improved Medicare system to everyone residing in the U. S.

HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including
prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and
preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health,
physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision
care, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable
medical equipment, palliative care, and long term care.

HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of
billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the
private health insurance industry and HMOs.

In the current Congress, HR 676 has 82 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced SB 703, a single payer bill
in the Senate.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 535 union organizations in 49 states including
128 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 39 state
AFL-CIO's (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,
MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI,
MT, NE, NY, NV & MA).

For further information, a list of union endorsers, or a sample
endorsement resolution, contact:

Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org
06/14/09

From: Anne Feeney [mailto:anne@annefeeney.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 12:32 PM
To: Herb Hennings
Subject: Please read this and do something! I need you.

Sing Out for Single Payer


Hi Herb,

I really need your help.

I've rounded up over three dozen wonderful professional musicians who
have committed to a "Sing Out for Single Payer Road Show" - health care
for all. The first show is in Los Angeles on July 2nd, with 20+
concerts along the way, ending in Bellingham on July 27th. Check out
http://annefeeney.com/specialevents.html for a list of all the places
we'll be visiting on this tour. And what a cast!

This nearly border-to-border road show will engage thousands of audience
members in dozens of key congressional districts in three states and
generate thousands of letters and phone calls to Congress and to
President Obama.
The tour is dramatically energizing single-payer activist organizations
in all three states, and the concerts will generate much-needed
donations for local organizations.

The tour will also create three dozen + articulate, informed musical
ambassadors for this important issue.

I'm about $10,000 short of what I need to make this happen. I want to
be able to offer each musician $100/show + gas money. You can tell from
the roster of musicians that these are not people who can afford to give
up a week's wages or more to come on this tour - but they're doing it
anyway, because they trust me and know that this is a unique moment in
history. It's important to be able to leave most of the money we raise
at these concerts in the communities where the concerts take place so
that local organizers can continue their important work.

If you each sent me $10 right now, I'd have enough money to pull this
off in a big way.

Please send a check to:

Anne Feeney
2240 Milligan Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15218

as soon as you read this.

If you want to make a tax-deductible contribution of $500 or more, you
can send it to:

Universal Health Care for Oregon
PO BOX 11156
Eugene, OR 97440

(Be SURE to note "Sing Out for Single Payer" or put my name in the memo
of your check)

If you want to use a credit card, there is a Paypal "Donate" button at
http://annefeeney.com/specialevents.html

Or maybe you can help me with an in-kind contribution or loan:

I need clipboards, stationery, postage stamps, envelopes, the use a
digital camera, the use of a digital video camera and tripod, the use of
a van from Los Angeles to Seattle

Or maybe you can forward this to a generous friend...

You've never let me down, and I'm sure you won't now, either.

It seems I've always got my hand out for something-or-other when I come
to you... You may get tired of it, and believe me, I get tired of it,
too. I can't even apologize for it - It's a big and necessary part of
my life's work.

But I so appreciate the folks who get it and just step up to the plate.
Many thanks to Jerry Tucker, Kay and Walter Tillow, Labor Campaign for
Single Payer, Peter Yarrow, Dr. Paul Hochfeld, Neal Eckstein, Karen
Newman, Hilary Chiz and Matt Redabaugh for chiming in generously
and early!

I want to thank Sign and Display Workers' Local 510 for donating a 10' x
4' banner to our Road Show... and Gary Huck for the fabulous graphic.

Thanks to all the wonderful organizers who are hosting this tour,
promoting this tour, housing us and feeding us!

Together, WE CAN make progressively funded comprehensive universal
health care available to everyone in this country!

National Health Care NOW!!
My love and thanks to all of you!
Anne

PS - If you buy some of my CDs this month, it'll help keep me from going
under at home while I'm out on this adventure!
http://cdbaby.com/all/unionmaid
--
Anne Feeney
anne@annefeeney.com

http://annefeeney.com
2240 Milligan Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15218
(412)877-6480 (cell)

"Anne Feeney is the best labor singer in North America." -- Utah
Phillips
"Anne is a role model for us. She has lived her songs." -- Peter Yarrow
"Congratulations on your fine songwriting!" -- Pete Seeger

Seven More Reps Sign On to HR 676; House Holds Single Payer Hearing

Since May 20 seven more US Representatives have signed on to HR 676,
national single payer health care sponsored by Congressman John Conyers
(D-MI), bringing the total, including Conyers, to 83. The full list is
here: http://unionsforsinglepayer.org/ Click on 111th Congress.

Congressman Conyers was able to get the first official single payer
congressional hearing in decades. It took place in a House subcommittee
on June 10, 2009.

The witnesses included Congressman Conyers, Chair of the Judiciary
Committee and chief sponsor of HR 676; Marcia Angell MD, former Editor of
the New England Journal of Medicine; Walter Tsou MD, National Board
Advisor of PNHP; and Geri Jenkins, Co-President of the CNA/NNOC, plus
David Gratzer of The Manhattan Institute who testified against single
payer.

Don't miss the questioning by Representatives Phil Hare and Dennis Kucinich.

CSPAN video with transcript:

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/includes/templates/library/flash_popup.php?pID=286942-1&clipStart=&clipStop=

Conyers at 7:50
Jenkins at 22:37
Tsou at 29:15
Angell at 40:24
Hare at 1:11:16
Kucinich at 1:19:32

Congressman Conyers is requesting that there be single payer hearings in
every House committee with jurisdiction over health care prior to deciding
on health care reform so that the most popular plan can be fully heard and
considered.

You can call or fax Committee Chairmen Rangel and Waxman to urge them to
hold hearings on single payer health care. If your congressperson is on
either committee, you can encourage him or her to speak to the Chairmen in
favor of single payer hearings.

Rep. Charles Rangel, Chair of Ways and Means, Ph: (202) 225-3625; Fax:
(202) 225-2610
Ways and Means Members here:
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/members.asp?cong=19

Rep. Henry Waxman, Chair of Energy and Commerce (202) 225-2927
Energy and Commerce Members here:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=160&Itemid=61
#30#

Distributed by:
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org
06/16/09

Lindorff is kind, I think...but right about the people needing to demand this...the way Obama is using his plan as a means to block single payer is slick as an oilspill...

Following Clinton's Doomed Path
How Obama is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform
By DAVE LINDORFF

http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff06152009.html


If you want to fix the disaster that is called the American healthcare
system, the first thing to do is to clearly point out what its major
failings are, and there are two of these.

The first is cost. America is the most expensive or one of the most
expensive places in the world to get sick or injured. The corollary of
that is that it is one of the best places to make a killing if you are
in the medical business, whether as a doctor, a hospital company, a
pharmaceutical firm or a nursing home owner.

The second is access. One in six Americans—a total of 50 million people
at latest count—have no way to pay for that care. Too young for
Medicare, too “well off” for Medicaid, but too poor to buy private
health insurance or too sick to be admitted into a plan, or employed by
a company that doesn’t provide health benefits, these people get no
medical care until they get so sick that they are brought into a
hospital emergency room where they get treated (often too late) at
public expense, or at the hospital’s expense, with the cost shifted onto
taxpayers or onto insured patients’ premiums.

Any reform of this atrocious “system” must address these two major
failings or it is no reform at all.

And that’s where all the various versions of Obamacare fall flat.

Simply put, you cannot solve either of these problems by leaving the
payment system for medical care in the hands of the private insurance
industry, since the whole paradigm of insurance is to make money by
keeping high-risk people out of the insured pool, and by keeping
reimbursements and coverage for premium payers as low as possible.

Having a so-called “public option” plan working in competition with
private insurance plans will not solve this problem. Either the public
option will become like the private options—trimming benefits and
rejecting some applicants—or it will become a dumping ground for all the
high-cost, high-risk people that the private sector insurance industry
doesn’t want. At that point, the public plan will become a huge cost
burden on the taxpayer, who will begin demanding that it cut back in the
benefits it provides, taking us right back to where we started.

The fact that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are
both raising the issue of the high cost of health care “reform,” and are
talking about ways to raise revenues to pay for it tells us all we need
to know about the alleged “reform” schemes they are contemplating. They
are doomed and, even if implemented, will not work.

Real reform of the American health care system would not cost money. It
would save money.

There is a level of dishonesty in what passes for the debate over health
care “reform” in both Congress and the media that is stunning in its
brazenness and/or venality.

Of course real reform would cost more in government spending. But that
is because real reform would remove the cost of medical care from both
employers and from workers (who over the last 20 years have been
shouldering an increasing share of their own medical care). And that
shift would mean more profits for US companies, which would free up more
money for wages, and it would mean less money deducted from paychecks,
meaning higher incomes for workers.

If President Obama had any political courage at all, he’d simply get on
TV and say this: I will create a plan that will cover everyone, lift the
burden of paying for healthcare from individuals and employers, and have
the government pay for it all. You the taxpayer will pay for this plan
with higher taxes, but you will no longer have any significant medical
bills, you will no longer have health insurance premiums deducted from
your paycheck, your employer will no longer be paying for employee
medical coverage, and you will never have to worry about losing health
benefits again, even if you are laid off. (Incidentally, eliminating
employer-funded health insurance would go a long way towards allowing
workers to fight to have unions, and to strike for contracts, by ending
the threat that they would lose their benefits.)

Of course, to do that the president would have to be talking about what
is variously known as national health care or a single-payer plan, in
which the government is the insurer of health care for all.

This option isn’t even being discussed in this so-called debate. As I’ve
written earlier, even though there is an excellent single-payer system
in place that has been running for a third of a century just to the
north in Canada—a system where patients have absolute freedom to choose
their doctor, get instant access to a hospital and to expert specialist
care in emergencies, and have a healthier society by every statistical
measure—all at a fraction of the staggering cost of healthcare in the
US, not one Canadian expert working in that system has been invited down
to discuss its workings with the White House or with members of
Congress.

There has been a lot of negative propaganda spread about Canada’s
single-payer system, by right wing, business-funded “no-think” tanks,
and by medical industry lobbies from the American Medical Assn. to the
pharmaceutical industry, but no government committee or agency has
bothered, or dared, to bring in Canadian experts to respond to and
debunk that propaganda. The corporate liars talk about waiting lists
and lack of access to CAT-scan or MRI machines. But all we really need
to know about the Canadian, and other similar single-payer systems, is
that nowhere that they have been instituted have they been later
terminated, even when, as in Canada, right-wing governments have been
elected to power. The public, whether in Canada, or France, or England,
or Taiwan or elsewhere, loves their public health insurance system,
whatever flaws or problems with underfunding those systems may have at
certain times. Trying ot eliminate such systems would be political
suicide for a conservative government, as even arch-free-marketer
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who never met a government
activity that she didn’t want to privatize, learned.

Right now, with half of all Americans reportedly fearing that they could
lose their jobs, and with one in five Americans reportedly either
unemployed, or involuntarily working part-time, we have a situation
where a majority of Americans either have no health insurance, have lost
their health insurance, or are in danger of losing their employer-funded
health insurance. It is a unique moment when a bold president and
Congress could act to end private health insurance and establish a
public single-payer insurance plan to insure and provide access to
affordable medical care to all Americans.

Instead of this, we are being offered half measures or no measures at
all by leaders who are shamelessly in hock to the health care industry
or who are afraid of its power.

17 years ago, the Clintons had a similar opportunity to grab the health
care industry by the neck, strangle it, and produce a single-payer
alternative. They blew that chan

ce by trying to keep the health care
greed-heads happy. Now, almost a generation later, we have another shot
at it, and Obama and his Democratic Congress are doing the same thing
again. There is a strong likelihood that they will fail, like the
Clintons before them. If they succeed in coming up with some kind of
hybrid public-private Frankenstein of a system that includes a public
insurance option, it will simply delay the inevitable disaster, as
medical costs, already 20 percent of GDP—the highest share of any
economy in the world—continue to soar, and as the cost of the public
plan, which will inevitably become a dumping ground for high-cost
patients, becomes politically untenable. In the end, we will have even
more expensive and inaccessible healthcare than we have today.

It doesn’t have to be this way, but only if Americans rip their eyes
away from their crisp new digital-image TV screens and start demanding
real health care reform will we get honest reform. A good place to
begin would be to start writing and phoning your local media outlets to
ask why they are not reporting on single-payer, and in particular on the
single-payer bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), which is being
silently blocked and killed by his colleagues in the Democratic
congressional leadership and by the White House. A good place to begin
would also be to start calling your elected representatives to demand
that they support Rep. Conyers’ single-payer bill.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback). He can be reached at
dlindorff@mindspring.com

Slick as snot on a glass doorknob. Those saps that think there is a 'secret plan' or Obama is 'playing chess ' are pitiable or liars.

Just don't know about the phone & letter thing, has that ever worked?

Don't think anything less than feet in the street will do the trick. Those medicos who have been getting busted for trying to talk to our so-called representatives, they would have the cred to start the ball rolling, mebbe.

Slick as snot on a glass doorknob. Those saps that think there is a 'secret plan' or Obama is 'playing chess ' are pitiable or liars.

Just don't know about the phone & letter thing, has that ever worked?

Don't think anything less than feet in the street will do the trick. Those medicos who have been getting busted for trying to talk to our so-called representatives, they would have the cred to start the ball rolling, mebbe.


There's coming "in the streets" planned actions now. One on June 25th in DC, which I'm trying to find out if Citizen Action, voice for Obama's plan is planning it or trying to co-opt it, dontcha love Obama's Health care for America Now campaign vs. Healthcare-NOW a legit single payer outfit. They will try to co-opt any of it, keep the folks confused. On July 30th there's another DC action, I'll maybe pos the info on that shortly...oh and actions to get Charlie Rangel to sign on, he's really hedging...

The letter and phone thing did work in March to get Conyers and I think Himmelstein of PNHP to Obama's table two days before the event, tens of thousands, if there are enough it does work...but the streets is always more effective!! we gotta be big enough to get enough people to see it/join it though...

Sometimes calls work...I'm hoping to get a flier designed for street work soon....


Rep. John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee and lead sponsor of single payer Medicare for All (HR 676) is seeking help over the next few days to convince Rep. Charles Rangel (D-15, NY) to hold hearings on HR 676, in the House Ways and Means Committee.

As you know, Rep Rangel chairs that committee. Rangel had also been a sponsor of HR 676 up until this year. THere are now 83 co-sponsors of HR 676, including many Congress

Please ask everyone you can to call his office at 202-225-4365 or fax a note to 202-225-0816.

Thank you!

Dr. Andy Coates
secretary, Capital District PNHP
co-chair, Single Payer New York

www.singlepayernewyork.org

Call Congressman Charlie Rangel

212 663-3900 or 202 225-4365



Urge Him to Support Health Care for All – HR 676 (expanded and improved Medicare for All)



Cong. Rangel, Senators Schumer and Kennedy and President Obama all say that a single payer system (HR 676) is best for Americans – it would cover everyone, save $400 billion a year, eliminate private health insurance, allow us to choose our own doctors.



Yet they won’t pass single payer health insurance because they say it doesn’t have “enough votes” in Congress, even though 83 Congress members are sponsoring HR 676, including many from NY. What they mean is they are afraid of the power and campaign contributions of insurance and drug companies. Instead, they are going to increase subsidies for insurance companies, increasing their power and profits – and giving us less access to health care.



Single Payer Democratic Leadership


Covers everyone – including immigrants


Leaves 36 million without health care coverage
– and immigrants excluded

Cuts costs by $400 billion annually


Increases Costs by $200 billion annually

Eliminates Private Health Insurance


Mandates that you buy private health insurance – and fines you if you don’t

Allows you to choose your doctor – you
and your doctor decide what health care
services you need


Allows HMOs to choose your doctor and what
services you get
No taxes on health benefits


Taxes health care benefits from work
Provides comprehensive coverage,
including dental

Restricts services, such as dental

Message to Cong. Rangel: Please sponsor HR 676, Medicare for All. Put single payer on the table by having your committee hold hearings. Make sure that Congress includes single payer in their cost analysis of the various universal health care plans.


Hunger Action Network of New York State – 212 741-8192

www.singlepayernewyork.org

Rg the Lg writes…

Actually, for what it is worth, as a pharmacy co-owner RG the LG is VERY active in desiring and working toward a system of universal health care. NOT some watered down single payer crap … but REAL health care for all! My problem with social benefits is that every time someone gets a little, then the fight goes out of us … compromise sets in and we end up getting screwed.

This is a very keen observation and why there are aspects of the “single payer” health care “movement” that really needs to be questioned. My concerned with the “movement” is that it smells more like Liberal reformism rather than something that could go further. Why stop only at single payer and not demand universal welfare.

For example if you are homeless what good is having “health care”? Why not include a demand for housing. And what about all the stress in life like debt? Why not demand debt relief for all? Relieving monetary stress will go a long way to improving health.

My concern is that the demand for “single payer” is really about “middle class” folks who fear going bankrupt. Well the poor really don’t have a stake in that since they are effectively “bankrupt”. It doesn’t seem to be that there is any really solidarity among the “single payer” advocates with the needs of the poor and dispossessed and deadbeats. It seems like the “single payer movement” is really bankruptcy protection for the middle class.

It that is the case, I can tell you that the politicians knows that the “single payer movement” has no real strength of numbers and therefore are fairly safe is coming up with half-assed solutions. It seems to me that had the advocate of single-payer did more outreach outside of their class interest perhaps they would get some aspects of single payer.

What I see is exactly what RG describes. And that is if single payer was achieved this movement would fizzle into nothingness and the ruling class would find ways to degrade they single payer system anyway. This is why a real movement much reach out and find solidarity with the whole of the working class — the poor, the dispossessed and the deadbeats.

Rg the Lg writes…

Actually, for what it is worth, as a pharmacy co-owner RG the LG is VERY active in desiring and working toward a system of universal health care. NOT some watered down single payer crap … but REAL health care for all! My problem with social benefits is that every time someone gets a little, then the fight goes out of us … compromise sets in and we end up getting screwed.

This is a very keen observation and why there are aspects of the “single payer” health care “movement” that really needs to be questioned. My concerned with the “movement” is that it smells more like Liberal reformism rather than something that could go further. Why stop only at single payer and not demand universal welfare.

For example if you are homeless what good is having “health care”? Why not include a demand for housing. And what about all the stress in life like debt? Why not demand debt relief for all? Relieving monetary stress will go a long way to improving health.

My concern is that the demand for “single payer” is really about “middle class” folks who fear going bankrupt. Well the poor really don’t have a stake in that since they are effectively “bankrupt”. It doesn’t seem to be that there is any really solidarity among the “single payer” advocates with the needs of the poor and dispossessed and deadbeats. It seems like the “single payer movement” is really bankruptcy protection for the middle class.

It that is the case, I can tell you that the politicians knows that the “single payer movement” has no real strength of numbers and therefore are fairly safe is coming up with half-assed solutions. It seems to me that had the advocate of single-payer did more outreach outside of their class interest perhaps they would get some aspects of single payer.

What I see is exactly what RG describes. And that is if single payer was achieved this movement would fizzle into nothingness and the ruling class would find ways to degrade they single payer system anyway. This is why a real movement much reach out and find solidarity with the whole of the working class — the poor, the dispossessed and the deadbeats.


Yep, we can't rest everything on the single payer movement, though it is the movement that seems to make socialism a little more palatable to the uninitiated. Housing, jobs, and fighting imperialism, and calling it that, are all part and parcel of the fight. Keeping all this in mind may help singlepayer actually maintain its viability...early morning rant...

Well, that could happen if there is poor leadership. We gotta start somewhere and this is a no-brainer. The people gotta be shown their own strength and this would be a start. The trick is, with this victory under our belt we move on to the next demand, jobs, social security, imperialism, whatever works. And then the next.....

Well, that could happen if there is poor leadership. We gotta start somewhere and this is a no-brainer. The people gotta be shown their own strength and this would be a start. The trick is, with this victory under our belt we move on to the next demand, jobs, social security, imperialism, whatever works. And then the next.....


The critique posted by Rg the Lg is entirely accurate as are his predictions as to where the single payer psuh is headed in the near term. Its not about poor leadership BP because the leadership of the single payer groups isn't socialist nor are they going to be infiltrated by socialists in all likelihood. For us its about taking the words -- and EVERYBODY is saying the words -- and pushing to make the meaning match the words. The words are The for-profit healthcare system is a failure. The for-profit system has failed.

The demand for healthcare can't truly be realized without actually becoming a demand to abolish the entire for-profit system. But once you start down that road, you can't go back and you can't run in place either -- you're "all in"

All of the rest -- jobs, social security, imperialism and the rest (education, housing,..) -- those follow in the exact same manner.

Single payer advocacy (lets be careful what we call a "movement") is just one more harbinger of what is to come, albeit one of key importance

Well, that could happen if there is poor leadership. We gotta start somewhere and this is a no-brainer. The people gotta be shown their own strength and this would be a start. The trick is, with this victory under our belt we move on to the next demand, jobs, social security, imperialism, whatever works. And then the next.....


The critique posted by Rg the Lg is entirely accurate as are his predictions as to where the single payer psuh is headed in the near term. Its not about poor leadership BP because the leadership of the single payer groups isn't socialist nor are they going to be infiltrated by socialists in all likelihood. For us its about taking the words -- and EVERYBODY is saying the words -- and pushing to make the meaning match the words. The words are The for-profit healthcare system is a failure. The for-profit system has failed.

The demand for healthcare can't truly be realized without actually becoming a demand to abolish the entire for-profit system. But once you start down that road, you can't go back and you can't run in place either -- you're "all in"

All of the rest -- jobs, social security, imperialism and the rest (education, housing,..) -- those follow in the exact same manner.

Single payer advocacy (lets be careful what we call a "movement") is just one more harbinger of what is to come, albeit one of key importance


Well, I wasn't speaking so much of this particular group as the leadership, obviously they are going to need help, allies. From these perhaps the kind of leadership that makes those definitive statements might emerge.

Where are they?

Well, that could happen if there is poor leadership. We gotta start somewhere and this is a no-brainer. The people gotta be shown their own strength and this would be a start. The trick is, with this victory under our belt we move on to the next demand, jobs, social security, imperialism, whatever works. And then the next.....


The critique posted by Rg the Lg is entirely accurate as are his predictions as to where the single payer psuh is headed in the near term. Its not about poor leadership BP because the leadership of the single payer groups isn't socialist nor are they going to be infiltrated by socialists in all likelihood. For us its about taking the words -- and EVERYBODY is saying the words -- and pushing to make the meaning match the words. The words are The for-profit healthcare system is a failure. The for-profit system has failed.

The demand for healthcare can't truly be realized without actually becoming a demand to abolish the entire for-profit system. But once you start down that road, you can't go back and you can't run in place either -- you're "all in"

All of the rest -- jobs, social security, imperialism and the rest (education, housing,..) -- those follow in the exact same manner.

Single payer advocacy (lets be careful what we call a "movement") is just one more harbinger of what is to come, albeit one of key importance


Well, I wasn't speaking so much of this particular group as the leadership, obviously they are going to need help, allies. From these perhaps the kind of leadership that makes those definitive statements might emerge.

Where are they?


Ha, you shouldn't ask the tough questions so early in the morning..

Well, that could happen if there is poor leadership. We gotta start somewhere and this is a no-brainer. The people gotta be shown their own strength and this would be a start. The trick is, with this victory under our belt we move on to the next demand, jobs, social security, imperialism, whatever works. And then the next.....


The critique posted by Rg the Lg is entirely accurate as are his predictions as to where the single payer psuh is headed in the near term. Its not about poor leadership BP because the leadership of the single payer groups isn't socialist nor are they going to be infiltrated by socialists in all likelihood. For us its about taking the words -- and EVERYBODY is saying the words -- and pushing to make the meaning match the words. The words are The for-profit healthcare system is a failure. The for-profit system has failed.

The demand for healthcare can't truly be realized without actually becoming a demand to abolish the entire for-profit system. But once you start down that road, you can't go back and you can't run in place either -- you're "all in"

All of the rest -- jobs, social security, imperialism and the rest (education, housing,..) -- those follow in the exact same manner.

Single payer advocacy (lets be careful what we call a "movement") is just one more harbinger of what is to come, albeit one of key importance


Well, I wasn't speaking so much of this particular group as the leadership, obviously they are going to need help, allies. From these perhaps the kind of leadership that makes those definitive statements might emerge.

Where are they?


Ha, you shouldn't ask the tough questions so early in the morning..


Actually the local single payer leaders I know of are socialists, and the questions being asked are how do we use the "scary socialist" aspect to some folks questioning, and say Yes, socialist, and here's why it will work here for single payer and elsewhere, labor et al, increments?

Well, that could happen if there is poor leadership. We gotta start somewhere and this is a no-brainer. The people gotta be shown their own strength and this would be a start. The trick is, with this victory under our belt we move on to the next demand, jobs, social security, imperialism, whatever works. And then the next.....


The critique posted by Rg the Lg is entirely accurate as are his predictions as to where the single payer psuh is headed in the near term. Its not about poor leadership BP because the leadership of the single payer groups isn't socialist nor are they going to be infiltrated by socialists in all likelihood. For us its about taking the words -- and EVERYBODY is saying the words -- and pushing to make the meaning match the words. The words are The for-profit healthcare system is a failure. The for-profit system has failed.

The demand for healthcare can't truly be realized without actually becoming a demand to abolish the entire for-profit system. But once you start down that road, you can't go back and you can't run in place either -- you're "all in"

All of the rest -- jobs, social security, imperialism and the rest (education, housing,..) -- those follow in the exact same manner.

Single payer advocacy (lets be careful what we call a "movement") is just one more harbinger of what is to come, albeit one of key importance


Well, I wasn't speaking so much of this particular group as the leadership, obviously they are going to need help, allies. From these perhaps the kind of leadership that makes those definitive statements might emerge.

Where are they?


Ha, you shouldn't ask the tough questions so early in the morning..


Actually the local single payer leaders I know of are socialists, and the questions being asked are how do we use the "scary socialist" aspect to some folks questioning, and say Yes, socialist, and here's why it will work here for single payer and elsewhere, labor et al, increments?


Huh, I dunno how that works. It seems to me that declaring "I'm a socialist" outside of a specific context is about the same as declaring "I'm Donald Duck". Quack, quack, quack

What they gotta do is connect the dots as to how the for-profit system as a whole (thats capitalism) is a failure and further, how the organization of labor into its own independent political entity is the only cure. Far be it from me to tell them or anyone else how to do that..because damned if I know..

I don't think they should be running from the "Socialist" label, but identity politics isn't part of the equation at least not right now. Give the workers their own political arm and you're damn straight its important for it to openly call itself socialist but that question is for the future

Well, that could happen if there is poor leadership. We gotta start somewhere and this is a no-brainer. The people gotta be shown their own strength and this would be a start. The trick is, with this victory under our belt we move on to the next demand, jobs, social security, imperialism, whatever works. And then the next.....


The critique posted by Rg the Lg is entirely accurate as are his predictions as to where the single payer psuh is headed in the near term. Its not about poor leadership BP because the leadership of the single payer groups isn't socialist nor are they going to be infiltrated by socialists in all likelihood. For us its about taking the words -- and EVERYBODY is saying the words -- and pushing to make the meaning match the words. The words are The for-profit healthcare system is a failure. The for-profit system has failed.

The demand for healthcare can't truly be realized without actually becoming a demand to abolish the entire for-profit system. But once you start down that road, you can't go back and you can't run in place either -- you're "all in"

All of the rest -- jobs, social security, imperialism and the rest (education, housing,..) -- those follow in the exact same manner.

Single payer advocacy (lets be careful what we call a "movement") is just one more harbinger of what is to come, albeit one of key importance


Well, I wasn't speaking so much of this particular group as the leadership, obviously they are going to need help, allies. From these perhaps the kind of leadership that makes those definitive statements might emerge.

Where are they?


Ha, you shouldn't ask the tough questions so early in the morning..


Actually the local single payer leaders I know of are socialists, and the questions being asked are how do we use the "scary socialist" aspect to some folks questioning, and say Yes, socialist, and here's why it will work here for single payer and elsewhere, labor et al, increments?


Huh, I dunno how that works. It seems to me that declaring "I'm a socialist" outside of a specific context is about the same as declaring "I'm Donald Duck". Quack, quack, quack

What they gotta do is connect the dots as to how the for-profit system as a whole (thats capitalism) is a failure and further, how the organization of labor into its own independent political entity is the only cure. Far be it from me to tell them or anyone else how to do that..because damned if I know..

I don't think they should be running from the "Socialist" label, but identity politics isn't part of the equation at least not right now. Give the workers their own political arm and you're damn straight its important for it to openly call itself socialist but that question is for the future


Actually, I didn't say that's what they called themselves, I said that's what they are, and they might prefer I said marxist, doesn't matter, they actually are all labor folks; I can't really figure out exactly what I was saying when I wrote the above, lol, anyway, what you say is basically about right.

Take the profit out of the equation, and this might be the place to get the most populist support...once we get folks there in one area, like single payer, pointing out how capitalism is fucking up elsewhere will be easier?

Time to hit the streets...

Forbes
Associated Press
Managed care stocks rise as health reform stumbles
By TOM MURPHY , 06.18.09, 03:35 PM EDT
pic

INDIANAPOLIS --

Managed care stocks surged Thursday as the health care reform push wobbled in Washington.

Investors have worried for weeks about the possibility of a government payer being created to compete with private health insurers. Many Democrats, including President Barack Obama, strongly support that option as part of a plan to provide coverage for nearly 50 million uninsured people.

But Republicans and businesses groups have argued that it would lead to unfair competition by matching private insurers against a government plan that didn't have to make a profit.

The Democrats' push suffered setbacks this week, as committees working on bills fell behind schedule. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office also said a proposal from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would cost about $1 trillion over 10 years but still leave 37 million people uninsured.

"We are convinced more than ever that any significantly market-changing legislation stands little to no chance of passage," BMO Capital Markets analyst Dave Shove said in a note to investors. "It appears highly unlikely that any bill will come out of the Senate or the House until after August recess.

"This greatly dims the chances of passing a reform bill in 2009 - or maybe in this administration."

Edward Jones analyst Steve Shubitz noted that the entire health care sector rose in trading Thursday. But he added that managed care stocks are particularly volatile.

"These stocks kind of trade on emotion," he said in an interview. "It's like people now on the margin are saying, 'Maybe there won't be a public plan or maybe ... it will be so watered down that it will take a lot of years before it really impacts the private insurance companies.'"

Several health insurance stocks outpaced the overall market. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up 1 percent in Thursday afternoon trading.

Shares of Coventry Health Care Inc. were up more than 9 percent, or $1.61, to $18.37; Humana Inc. shares were up more than 7 percent or $2.11 to $30.45; Cigna Corp. shares also climbed 7 percent, or $1.64, to $23.48.

WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Aetna Inc. all saw their share prices rise 4 percent or more.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

One of today's emails:

On Monday, June 22, single-payer advocates met with Congressman Charlie
Rangel at his district office in Harlem. Rangel, Chairman of the Ways
and Means Committee in the House, was urged to hold a hearing on
single-payer health care as well as sign onto HR 676 as a cosponsor.
Representatives from Hunger Action Network of New York State, Single
Payer New York, Local One I.A.T.S.E., Physicians for a National Health
Program (PNHP), Private Health Insurance Must Go! (PHIMG) and Three
Parks Independent Democrats attended. Many attendees were also
constituents.

Three Parks Independent Democrats began by voicing concern about the
Democrats' political strategy in eliminating single-payer from public
debate. Taking single-payer off the table has, in effect, placed the
public option to the far left of the political spectrum when it could
have been the compromise. Instead, the public option will be
significantly diluted or perhaps not even make it into the final
legislation (indeed, President Obama has not stated whether he would
refuse to sign a bill without a public option). Three Parks also noted
that the present draft does not adequately prevent discrimination
against pre-existing conditions due to ambiguous language and requested
that it be changed.

Jean Fox, Ajamu Sankofa and Laurie Wen of PHIMG subsequently presented
Rep. Rangel with thousands of signatures collected in support of
single-payer. They spoke of the overwhelming public support for
single-payer health care that is not being adequately represented in
Congress or included in public debate. Rangel responded by discussing
the political challenges in the House, namely the Blue Dog Democrats, as
well as the threat of any legislation not having the votes to make it
through the Senate. PHIMG promised to continue their activism until all
Americans have the same access to health care.

Physicians for a National Health Program, represented by Mary O'Brien,
Vic Sidel, Jo Disparti, Kathleen Hanley, Barbara Johnston, Jack David
Marcus and Alec Pruchnicki, testified on behalf of the patients they
treat every day. PNHP provided the congressman with poignant
testimonials from the physician and nurse perspective. They spoke of
children being hospitalized for treatable conditions, such as asthma,
and the anguish of writing a prescription that cannot be filled due to
exorbitant drug costs. The current state of the health care system not
only makes it harder to provide care for those who need it most, but in
many cases, it makes it easier to treat the uninsured simply because of
the red tape created by health insurance companies. PNHP also noted the
challenges and setbacks that have occurred due to the partial
privatization of Medicare and expressed their support of single-payer as
a moral and health issue rather than a political one.

Representing labor was Robert Score, Secretary, Local One I.A.T.S.E..
Score affirmed the endorsements of 39 state AFL-CIO, over 500 Local
Unions and over 125 CLC and ALF for single-payer health care.

Veda Myers, on behalf of Hunger Action Network and Single Payer New
York, spoke about the potential of the public option to become merely a
pool for sick and impoverished individuals.

Congressman Rangel, after listening to all of the speakers, acknowledged
that single-payer is the best option for comprehensive, universal health
coverage and spoke passionately about the need for a national program.
Nevertheless, he stated that he would not cosponsor HR 676 because his
priority is getting a bill that would have the votes rather than getting
the best bill. Advocates praised Rangel's accomplishments and urged him
to take more leadership on the issue, perhaps adding national health
care to his legacy,but the congressman did not appear to be willing to
change his position publicly.

Anyone near DC? Please share...

Single Payer
Summer Unity Session

Calling all single payer advocates. Join us for an indepth working group
session as we set goals for the next 90 days and develop a strategy to
meet them. If you want to help the single payer movement, this is the
Workshop for you. Bring your energy, ideas, and your commitment to a
Single Payer National Health Care System.

Saturday June 27th
10am – 5pm

Welcome & Brunch
10am - 12:00pm
Busboys and Poets, 1025 5th St NW, Washington DC
Brunch & Guest Speakers

Working Group
1pm - 5pm
Hyatt Regency, 400 New Jersey Ave, Washington DC
Room “Columbia C”

For more information contact Margaret Flowers, MD, nose1@aol.com, (410)
591-0892
RSVP Danielle Alexander, danielle@pnhp.org, (510) 219-2004

The Working Group session will be divided into four topics: Legislative
strategy, civil disobedience, public outreach and education, and media
coverage. If you have a preference on which working group topic you’d
like to partake-in, please specify in your RSVP.

--
Katie Robbins
Assistant Coordinator
Healthcare-NOW!
339 Lafayette St
NY, NY 10012

http://origin.ih.constantcontact.com/fs016/1102571640929/img/7.jpg?a=11026198221
42

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105680875

Not news to me and Not a fan of NPR, but something to use to agitate:

Health Care
Insurers Revoke Policies To Avoid Paying High Costs

by Joanne Silberner

http://media.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2009/jun/healthinsurance/hearing2_200.jpg
Robin Beaton
Enlarge

Just a few days before her scheduled mastectomy, Robin Beaton's insurance company retroactively canceled her policy because she had failed to inform them of her history of acne and a rapid heartbeat. Courtesy Rep. Joe Barton

http://media.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2009/jun/healthinsurance/manandwife_200.jpg

Otto Raddatz

When Otto Raddatz, shown here with his wife, was diagnosed with lymphoma, his health insurer rescinded his policy because of a pre-existing condition he was not aware of. His sister Peggy Raddatz testified on his behalf to a congressional committee. Courtesy Peggy Raddatz



Morning Edition, June 22, 2009 · According to a new report by congressional investigators, an insurance company practice of retroactively canceling health insurance is fairly common, and it saves insurers a lot of money.

A subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a hearing about the report's findings in an effort to bring a halt to this practice. But at the hearing, insurance executives told lawmakers they have no plans to stop rescinding policies.

The act of retroactively canceling insurance is called rescission. It happens with individual health insurance policies, where people apply for insurance on their own, not through their employers. Their application generally includes a questionnaire about their health.

The process begins after a policyholder has been diagnosed with an expensive condition such as cancer. The insurer then reviews the health status information in the questionnaire, and if anything is missing, the policy may be rescinded.

The omission from the application may be deliberate, to hide a health condition that might have made the applicant ineligible for insurance. But sometimes there's an innocent explanation: The policyholder may not have known about a health condition, or may not have thought it was relevant.

The rescissions based on omissions or immaterial conditions incensed many lawmakers.

"I think it's shocking, it's inexcusable. It's a system that we have in place and we've got to stop," Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said at the hearing.

From the other side of the aisle, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) was also appalled.

"Doesn't it bother you to do this?" he asked Don Hamm, CEO of Assurant Health, who appeared with the CEOs of UnitedHealth's Golden Rule Insurance Co. and WellPoint's Consumer Business.

Losing Insurance At A Critical Time

Hamm's insurance company rescinded the policy of Otto Raddatz after he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Raddatz had not told the company about a CT scan by a now-retired doctor that showed gallstones and a weakened blood vessel.

That's because he didn't know about the findings, his sister Peggy Raddatz, an attorney, testified. She spent weeks on the phone and ended up at the Illinois Attorney General's office, which began an investigation. The retired doctor turned out to be off on a fishing trip.

"Luckily, they were able to find the doctor, who was able to say, 'Yes, I never discussed those issues with him; they were very minor,' " Raddatz testifed.

After Minor Misunderstanding, A Policy Revoked

One of Barton's constituents, Robin Beaton of Waxahachie, Texas, did know that her health history included acne and a rapid heartbeat. But she didn't think they were relevant to her current health and left them off her application.

After she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was scheduled for a double mastectomy, her insurer cancelled her policy, leaving her devastated.

"I had to completely refocus on what to do, where to turn, because my insurance canceled me," she said. Beaton called Barton's office, which started a series of phone calls to her insurer. It took a call from Barton himself to get her reinstated.

Committee investigators found a total of 19,776 rescissions from three large insurers over five years. The rescissions saved the insurers $300 million.

Insurers Say They Won't Change Rescission Practice

During the hearing, Barton asked Hamm how he felt hearing the three cases of people who'd been burned by rescission.

"I have to say I felt really bad," Hamm replied.

"It's my hope there will be changes made that this will no longer be necessary," he said. His hope, and that of the other insurance company CEOs who testified, is that a health care overhaul will mean that everyone has insurance. If that were the case, people couldn't wait until they got sick to apply, and insurers wouldn't have to worry about whether someone had lied on an application.

Several lawmakers at the hearing suggested there were things the companies could do right now: They could vet applications when they receive them, rather than waiting until people get sick; they could consider whether something that was omitted was related to a current health condition before rescinding; and they could be more careful to positively identify fraud before rescinding a policy.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who chaired the hearing, asked all three CEOs if they would agree to stop rescinding policies except in cases of fraud.

All three said no.

If they don't do something to stop it, said Barton of Texas, Congress will.

I ain't holding my breath... cl

Time to hit the streets.....

Well I'm ready, but are any preparations being made? Can't do shit like what's needed in a minute.

Time to hit the streets.....

Well I'm ready, but are any preparations being made? Can't do shit like what's needed in a minute.


There are plans in the works for a huge rally in DC on July 30th, we need really, really huge, I posted about 5 in a row here, there's one post about work sessions in DC this Saturday, not necessarily about the 30th...I'll be getting tons of stuff real soon and will share...
on edit:
OH and there are some groups planning counter demos to the HCAN rally this thursday in DC, there's some disagreement about whether a counter demo won't be co-opted to add numbers to the HCAN Obama thing...I'm for anything, I think a lot of people are getting confused...

The 30th is probably far enough off - they should have Metro worked out by then, right? Horrific accident last night, friends tell me they are telecommuting today.

ETA - Nevermind, misread that, saw "June" instead of July.

The 30th is probably far enough off - they should have Metro worked out by then, right? Horrific accident last night, friends tell me they are telecommuting today.

ETA - Nevermind, misread that, saw "June" instead of July.


Could you make it? love to connect...

June 24, 2009

Dear PNHP Colleagues,

The health reform debate is reaching a feverish pitch, and while it's been gratifying to see the single-payer alternative winning a higher profile in Congress and the mass media (see summary with links, below), we clearly have much more work to do to keep up the momentum.

Today, Drs. Quentin Young and Steffie Woolhandler testified in Congress in support of single payer before the important House Ways and Means, and the Energy and Commerce Committees, respectively. Interestingly, a former Cigna executive, Wendell Potter, also testified on the Hill today, noting the industry's pernicious influence on the health care debate and even mentioning single payer.

In recent weeks several other PNHPers have testified on the Hill as well, either before official committees (Dr. Margaret Flowers, Dr. Walter Tsou, Dr. Marcia Angell) or to important groups, such as the Blue Dogs (Dr. Rob Stone) and Progressive Caucus (Dr. Deb Richter, Nick Skala). The growing grassroots pressure for single payer and last month's dignified acts of civil disobedience before the Senate Finance Committee are having an impact!

Our media reach has also widened, including recent interviews of PNHP spokespeople on Bill Moyers Journal, FOX News, CNN, and Democracy Now. 43 physicians joined PNHP online the weekend after the Moyers program. PNHPers have also been featured in interviews, letters, and op-eds in the New York Times, Business Week, Reuters, Time, Washington Post, Capital Times (Madison, Wis.) and Boston Globe, to name a few.

An interview with Dr. Woolhandler in Monday's Boston Globe is reprinted below, along with Dr. Quentin Young's testimony today. Stay tuned for an appearance by a PNHP member on the Colbert show!

What you can do:

1.

Meet with your congresspersons in their home district, or if you can, travel to Washington, D.C., in July to urge your representative and senator(s) to sign on to H.R. 676 and S. 703. Contact Dr. Margaret Flowers at nose1@aol.com with your anticipated dates of availability if you're able to join her in walking the Halls of Congress for single payer this summer. For lobbying materials, see www.pnhp.org/change.
2.

Sign and help circulate the Open Letter from Physicians to President Obama urging him to endorse single payer as the only practicable way to attain universal, comprehensive coverage at an affordable price.
3.

Speak up in your local media through op-eds and letters to the editor, and offering to be interviewed on health care reform by local radio and television stations. See, for example, this letter from Dr. Edwin Stickney, past president of the Montana Medical Association. If you need help reaching your local media, please contact us.

Thank you for your continued support and especially for your priceless efforts for reform.
Ida Hellander Signature Mark Almberg Signature
Ida Hellander, M.D.
Executive Director Mark Almberg
Communications Director


Summary of recent developments:

Congressional:
Seven more Representatives have endorsed HR 676, bringing total to 83

PNHPers on the Hill:
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler 6/24/09, Education and Commerce health subcommittee (link)
Dr. Quentin Young testimony 6/24/09, House Ways and Means (link)
Dr. Margaret Flowers, Senate HELP, 6/11/09 (link to testimony and interview link)
Nick Skala's talk to the Progressive Caucus, 6/04/09 (link)
Dr. Deb Richter, Congressional Briefing, 6/10/09 (link to video)
Drs. Walter Tsou, Marcia Angell (House testimony) 6/10/09
Russell Mokhiber, Single Payer Action, did this very nice interview with Margaret Flowers, 6/11/09 (link)
Dr. Rob Stone (closed-door meeting with Blue Dog health committee) 6/8/09

PNHP Media Highlights
Fox News, Dr. Claudia Fegan, 6/18/09 (link)
Capital Times (Madison, WI) editorial for single payer, 6/10/09 (below)
New York Times article by Robert Pear citing PNHP, 6/10/09 (link)
Washington Post letter by Dr. Jerry Earll, 6/10/09 (link)
Washington Post letter by Dr. James Floyd, 6/17/09 (link)
Democracy Now interview with Dr. Quentin Young, 6/16/09 (link)
Chicago Tribune quotes PNHP member Dr. Peter Orris on physician support for single payer, 6/14/09 (link)
Arizona Daily Star, Dr. Charles Katzenberger, op-ed for single payer, 6/09/09 (below)
Des Moines Register Op-ed, Dr. Jess Fiedorowicz, 6/07/09 (link)
Great Falls Tribune, MT, 6/9/09 (below)
New York Times blog, Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler; Doctors' Pay, a Key to Health Care Reform: End Insurance's Bad Incentives, 6/19/09 (below)
Editorial Board meeting, Kaiser Health News (upcoming)
Editorial Board meeting, Albany Times (completed, successfull)
PNHP Press Release on medical bankruptcy (link)
Additional medical bankruptcy coverage in the following places (U.S. News and World Report, BusinessWeek, Reuters)
Time Magazine's coverage of insurance company holdings in tobacco study (link)
PNHP Press Release on Insurance Industry Holdings of Tobacco Firm Stock (link)
PNHP Press Advisory on Blue Dogs, 6/8/09 (link)
PNHP Presss Advisory on House Testimony, 6/24/09 (link)

Other Media:
Mike Dennison on Sen. Baucus campaign cash, Montana Standard, Butte (below)
LA Times' Lisa Girion on "fear of single payer" driving private insurers to support health reform this year, particularly individual mandate (link)
Bill Moyers' endorsement of single payer (link)

Action:

Endorse the "Open letter to Obama to support single payer" (link)
Lobby for single payer HR 676 and S. 703 (lobbying materials at www.pnhp.org/change)
Petition for Single Payer by Rep. Bernie Sanders, Vermont (link)

In Memory of Dr. Linda Farley
Wisconsin chapter leader Dr. Linda Farley died on June 9, 2009, of cancer. She will be greatly missed.

Single-minded on healthcare

By ELIZABETH COONEY
Boston Globe
June 22, 2009

The debate in Washington about how to overhaul the nation's healthcare system has included little from advocates for a single-payer plan. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a Cambridge Health Alliance internist and Harvard Medical School professor who cofounded Physicians for a National Health Care Program, has been raising her voice for a national plan for more than two decades, contending that the current system based on private insurance - including the Massachusetts model mandating near-universal coverage - does not serve people well, whether they are rich or poor, insured or uninsured. Here is an edited version of an interview last week.

Q. What do you think of current efforts in Washington to improve healthcare?

A. What's currently on the table, what [President] Obama and [Senator Edward M.] Kennedy are talking about, will not fix healthcare. They don't have any way to pay for it. We can't just keep pumping money into the system. We actually have to fix the system.

Q. Why aren't single-payer advocates at the table?

A. I think that was due to the tremendous influence of the private health insurance industry. We've pushed some and the process has moved some. At first Senator [Max] Baucus had 13 people, mostly doctors and nurses, arrested outside the hearing he was leading. We did get a hearing on single payer for the first time in history in the House Education and Labor Committee.

Q. How would a single-payer system pay for itself?

A. A single-payer system contains its own funding. It would fix

the system by dramatically reducing administrative costs. Just the complexity of having competing insurance firms and the system overhead make costs go way up. In the United States, administration costs us 31 cents of every healthcare dollar. In Canada, it's about 16.5 cents for every healthcare dollar. If we could have the administrative efficiency they have in Canada, we could move $400 billion in annual costs.

Q. What about waiting lists for care?

A. Canada spends half of what we do per capita on healthcare and they do have some waiting lists, but they're really not as bad as the right wing portrays them. The waiting lists are a result of their level of spending. Our problem in the US is we spend a lot of money but we have a bad system. In Canada they have a good system but they just don't spend enough money on it. We have great hospitals and great nurses and well-trained doctors and lots of fancy technology. We have what we need, and yet we still can't take care of patients because the financing system doesn't work.

Testimony of Quentin Young, M.D., to the House Ways and Means Committee

[The following testimony is the prepared text of the remarks given by Dr. Quentin Young at a hearing on health care reform conducted by the House Ways and Means Committee on June 24 in Washington.]

Testimony of Quentin D. Young, M.D., M.A.C.P., national coordinator, Physicians for a National Health Program

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment on the proposal that has emerged from the three key House committees and to articulate the single-payer alternative. I am national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 16,000 American physicians who support single-payer national health insurance. Our organization represents the views of the majority of U.S. physicians, 59 percent of whom support national health insurance.

I wish to make two points to the Members of this Committee. The first is that the best health policy science, literature, and experience indicate that the Tri-Committee proposal will fail miserably in its purported goal of providing comprehensive, sustainable health coverage to all Americans. And it will fail whether or not it includes a so-called "public option" health plan.

The second point I wish to make is that single-payer national health insurance is not just the only path to universal coverage, it is the most politically feasible path to health care for all, because it pays for itself, requiring no new sources of revenue.

The difference between single payer and the Tri-Committee proposal could not be more stark: single-payer has at its core the elimination of U.S.-style private insurance, using huge administrative savings and inherent cost control mechanisms to provide comprehensive, sustainable universal coverage. The Tri-Committee discussion draft preserves all of the systemic defects inherent in reliance on a patchwork of private insurance companies to finance health care, a system which has been a miserable failure both in providing health coverage and controlling costs. Elimination of U.S.-style private insurance has been a prerequisite to the achievement of universal health care in every other industrialized country in the world. In contrast, public program expansions coupled with mandates, like those in the Tri-Committee proposal, have failed everywhere they've been tried, both domestically and internationally.

First, because the discussion draft is built around the retention of private insurance companies, it is unable - in contrast to single payer - to recapture the $400 billion in administrative waste that private insurers currently generate in their drive to fight claims, issue denials and screen out the sick. A single-payer system would redirect these huge savings back into the system, requiring no net increase in health spending.

Second, because the discussion draft fails to contain the cost control mechanisms inherent in single payer, such as global budgeting, bulk purchasing, negotiated fees and planned capital expenditures, any gains in coverage will quickly be erased as costs skyrocket and government is forced to choose between raising revenue and cutting benefits.

Third, because of this inability to control costs or realize administrative savings, the coverage and benefits that can be offered under the discussion draft will be of the same type currently offered by private carriers, which cause millions of insured Americans to go without needed care due to costs and have led to an epidemic of medical bankruptcies.

Virtually all of the reforms contained in the discussion draft have been tried, and have failed repeatedly. Plans that combined mandates to purchase coverage with Medicaid expansions fell apart in Massachusetts (1988), Oregon (1992), and Washington state (1993); the latest iteration (Massachusetts, 2006) is already stumbling, with uninsurance again rising and costs soaring. Tennessee's experiment with a massive Medicaid expansion and a public plan option worked - for one year, until rising costs sank it.

The inclusion of a so-called "public option" cannot salvage this structurally defective reform package. A public plan option does not lead toward single payer, but toward the segregation of patients, with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in the public plan. A quarter-century of experience with public/private competition in the Medicare program demonstrates that the private plans will not allow a level playing field. Despite strict regulation, private insurers have successfully cherry-picked healthier seniors, and have exploited regional health spending differences to their advantage. They have progressively undermined the public plan - which started as a single-payer system for seniors but has now become a funding mechanism for HMOs - and a place to dump the unprofitably ill.

The $1 trillion price tag on the Tri-Committee proposal already threatens to capsize our new President's flagship initiative. In contrast, single payer avoids these hazardous political waters entirely because it requires no new sources of funding.

In tumultuous economic times, single payer is the only fiscally responsible option. Two-thirds of the American people support it. The majority of physicians are in favor of it, as are the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 39 state labor federations and hundreds of local unions across the country. Millions of Americans are mobilized to struggle for single payer, but your leadership is crucial. I hope this Committee will see fit to provide it.

Thank you.

Say bye to for-profit health insurance

Letter to the Editor
Billings Gazette
June 21, 2009

The for-profit health insurance industry is the major culprit standing in the way of the American people obtaining for themselves their right to adequate universal health care. This industry employs thousands of people whose task it is to find reasons not to insure people (pre-existing conditions) in the first place, then to find ways not to pay claims of those already insured. Further, thousands of employees in hospitals and doctors' offices spend hours on the telephone attempting to file legitimate claims.

Acting in this way makes parasites out of these employees who spend their time non-productively protecting the profits of these companies instead of facilitating the flow of goods and service from medical providers to their legitimate patients.

Single-payer will eliminate this non-productive industry with a streamlined, publicly financed system. By doing so it will save an estimated $400 billion annually in administrative costs, enough money to guarantee everyone quality, comprehensive care and to eliminate all co-pays and deductibles, with no net increase in our nation's health spending.

It is time for the American people

to be aware of this stark reality and rise up against the common enemy of health care reform.

Edwin L. Stickney, M.D.
Billings

[Note from PNHP: Dr. Stickney is past president of the Montana Medical Association.]

Single-payer advocate speaks to Blue Dogs on health reform
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contacts:
June 19, 2009 Robert Stone, M.D., grostone@gmail.com
Mark Almberg, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org

Dr. Robert Stone, a leader of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 16,000 physicians who advocate for single-payer national health insurance, spoke to the Health Care Task Force of the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition on Capitol Hill Thursday.

In his remarks, Stone emphasized how single-payer health reform, as embodied in the U.S. National Health Care Act, H.R. 676, is the most fiscally responsible way of addressing the nation's health care woes.

Stone said that by replacing the for-profit, private health insurance companies with a single-payer program - an improved Medicare for All - the United States would save more than $400 billion in administrative costs annually. He also said that single payer is only reform proposal that includes effective cost-containment provisions.

"In fact, the strongest argument for Medicare for All is that it is the most efficient reform proposal with the greatest ability to control costs," Stone said. "That is exactly why so many members of the 'medical-industrial complex' oppose such a plan, because, as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has said, 'Remember that what the rest of us call health care costs, they call income.'

"In short, single payer is the only plan that pays for itself and covers everyone. It's fiscally conservative and socially responsible," Stone said.

The Blue Dog Coalition's Health Care Task Force was launched in March at the time of President Obama's White House summit on health care reform. It is chaired by Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas, and its members include Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Rep. John Barrow of Georgia, Rep. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota and Rep. Baron Hill of Indiana, among others. Like the Blue Dog caucus itself, the task force emphasizes fiscal conservatism.

Rep. Hill helped arrange the invitation for Stone to speak to the group.

Several members of the Blue Dog caucus were co-sponsors of the single-payer bill, H.R. 676, in the 110th Congress.

Stone is the director and co-founder of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan (HCHP) and the state coordinator of Indiana for Physicians for a National Health Program. He has been an emergency department physician at Bloomington (Ind.) Hospital since 1983, and was the medical director of the Community Health Access Program Clinic in Bloomington from 2005 to 2007, until it was transformed into the Volunteers in Medicine Clinic. He continues to volunteer at the new clinic. He is assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.

Born and raised in Evansville, Ind., Stone graduated from Dartmouth College and the University of Colorado Medical School. He is a Diplomat of the American Board of Emergency Medicine.


Physicians for a National Health Program
29 E Madison Suite 602, Chicago, IL 60602
Phone (312) 782-6006 | Fax: (312) 782-6007
www.pnhp.org | info@pnhp.org
© PNHP 2009

Kerry wants TEN-YEAR delay in public option for health care
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5923353

Kerry Pushes For Public Option Trigger In Closed-Door Meeting

In a closed-door meeting of Senate Finance Committee Democratic members and their staff Wednesday evening, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) suggested that the committee bill include a ten-year delay between passage of health care reform and the implementation of a public option that Americans could buy into, according to two Democratic aides.

Under the plan floated by Kerry, a public health care option would only be triggered by private insurance companies failing to meet certain criteria after ten years. Known as the "trigger" in legislative lingo, the idea is vociferously opposed by health care advocates who consider it the death of reform.

Reform advocates say that the system is already broken and that there's no need to wait any longer, also warning that the insurance industry might be able to game the criteria and prevent the public plan trigger from ever being pulled.

One source familiar with Kerry's unexpected suggestion said that the idea seemed to have little impact on the meeting and that the senators quickly moved on.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/25/kerry-pushes-f...


**********

UPDATE: Kerry spokeswoman Jodi Seth responds with a statement: "Let's be clear, if Sen. Kerry had his way, there'd be no debate: we'd have universal coverage tomorrow with a strong public plan at its core. Sen. Kerry strongly supports a robust public option and has been pushing for it since day one of this debate. When he ran for president, he campaigned on a public option and everywhere he went he reminded the country that Congress shouldn't deny them the public health care that Members of Congress give themselves. The past five years have only strengthened that conviction. Any suggestion that he prefers proposals that would delay or trigger the implementation of a public plan is outright false, end of story. But it's no secret that the Finance Committee is looking at a whole range of progressive options with an eye on what can make its way to the president's desk to become law, and obviously if it's the only way to get universal health coverage then people will consider a trigger that ultimately guarantees a strong public option."

The 30th is probably far enough off - they should have Metro worked out by then, right? Horrific accident last night, friends tell me they are telecommuting today.

ETA - Nevermind, misread that, saw "June" instead of July.


Could you make it? love to connect...


Unfortunately I don't make it to the East Coast often anymore (a couple of weekends last yr, but this yr we've stayed closer to home) and my youngest is 2. But I do want to meet all of you and I'm sure that will happen at some point. I lived in the DC area for 15 years prior to Texas - spent a lot of time in NYC in the 90s as well. Now that I'm in Texas I feel like I live in a foreign country - lol.

Kerry wants TEN-YEAR delay in public option for health care
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5923353

Kerry Pushes For Public Option Trigger In Closed-Door Meeting

In a closed-door meeting of Senate Finance Committee Democratic members and their staff Wednesday evening, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) suggested that the committee bill include a ten-year delay between passage of health care reform and the implementation of a public option that Americans could buy into, according to two Democratic aides.

Under the plan floated by Kerry, a public health care option would only be triggered by private insurance companies failing to meet certain criteria after ten years. Known as the "trigger" in legislative lingo, the idea is vociferously opposed by health care advocates who consider it the death of reform.

Reform advocates say that the system is already broken and that there's no need to wait any longer, also warning that the insurance industry might be able to game the criteria and prevent the public plan trigger from ever being pulled.

One source familiar with Kerry's unexpected suggestion said that the idea seemed to have little impact on the meeting and that the senators quickly moved on.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/25/kerry-pushes-f...


**********

UPDATE: Kerry spokeswoman Jodi Seth responds with a statement: "Let's be clear, if Sen. Kerry had his way, there'd be no debate: we'd have universal coverage tomorrow with a strong public plan at its core. Sen. Kerry strongly supports a robust public option and has been pushing for it since day one of this debate. When he ran for president, he campaigned on a public option and everywhere he went he reminded the country that Congress shouldn't deny them the public health care that Members of Congress give themselves. The past five years have only strengthened that conviction. Any suggestion that he prefers proposals that would delay or trigger the implementation of a public plan is outright false, end of story. But it's no secret that the Finance Committee is looking at a whole range of progressive options with an eye on what can make its way to the president's desk to become law, and obviously if it's the only way to get universal health coverage then people will consider a trigger that ultimately guarantees a strong public option."


We're soo weak...keep the powder dry... what disingenuous assholes, it's thin as gossamer and apparently they no longer even care about pretense.

The 30th is probably far enough off - they should have Metro worked out by then, right? Horrific accident last night, friends tell me they are telecommuting today.

ETA - Nevermind, misread that, saw "June" instead of July.


Could you make it? love to connect...


Unfortunately I don't make it to the East Coast often anymore (a couple of weekends last yr, but this yr we've stayed closer to home) and my youngest is 2. But I do want to meet all of you and I'm sure that will happen at some point. I lived in the DC area for 15 years prior to Texas - spent a lot of time in NYC in the 90s as well. Now that I'm in Texas I feel like I live in a foreign country - lol.


It is amazing how different some states are from others, I'd like to visit more of them...

Kerry wants TEN-YEAR delay in public option for health care
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5923353

Kerry Pushes For Public Option Trigger In Closed-Door Meeting

In a closed-door meeting of Senate Finance Committee Democratic members and their staff Wednesday evening, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) suggested that the committee bill include a ten-year delay between passage of health care reform and the implementation of a public option that Americans could buy into, according to two Democratic aides.

Under the plan floated by Kerry, a public health care option would only be triggered by private insurance companies failing to meet certain criteria after ten years. Known as the "trigger" in legislative lingo, the idea is vociferously opposed by health care advocates who consider it the death of reform.

Reform advocates say that the system is already broken and that there's no need to wait any longer, also warning that the insurance industry might be able to game the criteria and prevent the public plan trigger from ever being pulled.

One source familiar with Kerry's unexpected suggestion said that the idea seemed to have little impact on the meeting and that the senators quickly moved on.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/25/kerry-pushes-f...


**********

UPDATE: Kerry spokeswoman Jodi Seth responds with a statement: "Let's be clear, if Sen. Kerry had his way, there'd be no debate: we'd have universal coverage tomorrow with a strong public plan at its core. Sen. Kerry strongly supports a robust public option and has been pushing for it since day one of this debate. When he ran for president, he campaigned on a public option and everywhere he went he reminded the country that Congress shouldn't deny them the public health care that Members of Congress give themselves. The past five years have only strengthened that conviction. Any suggestion that he prefers proposals that would delay or trigger the implementation of a public plan is outright false, end of story. But it's no secret that the Finance Committee is looking at a whole range of progressive options with an eye on what can make its way to the president's desk to become law, and obviously if it's the only way to get universal health coverage then people will consider a trigger that ultimately guarantees a strong public option."


We're soo weak...keep the powder dry... what disingenuous assholes, it's thin as gossamer and apparently they no longer even care about pretense.


I'm not sure they care about anything, being inside has to make one realize how much sham there is...not to excuse them, but some seem to just go through the motions. I think many realize that the public option will die quickly if implemented as the benefits of public health care will be so diluted by the private option...might be intended?

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1925/35/

Upside Down World
Featured Articles
HEALTH CARE AND DEMOCRACY: A LOOK AT THE VENEZUELAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

Caitlin McNulty

Thursday, 25 June 2009

The right to health care is guaranteed in the Venezuelan Constitution,
which was written and ratified by the people in 1999. Through
implementing a state-funded social program called Barrio Adentro, or
inside the barrio, free comprehensive health care is available to all
Venezuelans. Beginning in June 2003 through a trade pact with Cuba,
Venezuela began to bring Cuban doctors, medical technology, and
medications into rural and urban communities free of charge in
exchange for low-cost oil. The 1.5 million dollar per year program
expanded to provide a broad network of small neighborhood clinics,
larger regional clinics, and hospitals which aim to serve the entire
Venezuelan population. (1) Chavez has referred to this new health care
system as the "democratization of health care" stating that "health
care has become a fundamental social right and the state will assume
the principal role in the construction of a participatory system for
national public health." (2) In Venezuela, not only is health care a
right; it is recognized as an essential for true participatory
democracy.

Some of what characterizes this movement towards health care for all
includes popular participation, preventative medicine, and evaluation
of community health issues. Western medicine typically operates in a
top-down fashion. Doctors treat symptoms, and often fail to evaluate
the larger picture of community health issues or teach prevention. (3)
In a private for-profit system, there is little incentive to prevent
costly illnesses. In Venezuela, however, Barrio Adentro began
constructing clinics within neighborhoods where many had never been to
a doctor. Through this program, a community can organize to receive
funding to build a clinic and bring in doctors. The community is
responsible for creating health committees, the members of which go
door to door to assess the specific health issues of their community.
Doctors who live in the communities also make house calls. (4) People
participate in the process of serving the health needs of the entire
population.

The extensive health program is also being used to train a new
generation of Venezuelan doctors. The training program takes place
within the clinic system itself and relies heavily on experiential
learning. The program seeks to build a new relationship between doctor
and patient based on the values of service, solidarity and compassion.
Doctors participating in the training program are coming from the
communities they are learning in and serving, building on their
intimate knowledge of the communities to provide truly compassionate
and personalized care. Using popular forums, medical professionals
are able to respond to the needs of the community and offer education,
treatment and consultation addressing unique public health issues.(6)
Although the system began by focusing exclusively on preventative
health, it has expanded to include emergency health services, mental
health services, surgeries, cancer treatment, dental care, access to
optometrists as well as free glasses and contact lenses, support
systems for those with disabilities and their families, as well as
access to a large variety of medical specialists. They have succeeded
in taking an under funded, corrupt public health care system and
changing not only the quality and accessibility but also the mentality
of those working there. Instead of a for-profit industry
systematically denying access to large sectors of the population,
health care in Venezuela is seen as a basic human right. No one is
turned away, and no one is denied care. In Venezuela, they treat whole
person, not simply their illness, and money stays where it belongs-
outside of the health care system.(7)

During my time in Venezuela, I developed a cough that went on for
three weeks and progressively worsened. Finally, after I had become
incredibly congested and developed a fever, I decided to attend a
Barrio Adentro clinic. The closest one available was a Barrio Adentro
II Centro de Diagonostico Integral (CDI) and I headed in without my
medical records or calling to make an appointment. Immediately, I was
ushered into a small room where Carmen, a friendly Cuban doctor, began
questioning me about my symptoms. She listened to my lungs and walked
me over to another examination room where, again without waiting, I
had x-rays taken. Afterwards, the technician walked me to a chair and
apologized profusely that I had to wait for the x-rays to be
developed, promising that it would take no more than five minutes.
Sure enough, five minutes later he returned with both x-rays
developed. Carmen studied the x-rays and informed me that I had
pneumonia, showing me the telltale shadows. She sent me away with my x-
rays, three medications to treat my pneumonia, congestion, and fever,
and made me promise to come back if my conditioned failed to improve
or worsened within three days.

I walked out of the clinic with a diagnosis and treatment within
twenty-five minutes of entering, without paying a dime. There was no
wait, no paperwork, and no questions about my ability to pay, my
nationality, or whether, as a foreigner, I was entitled to free
comprehensive health care. There was no monetary value connected with
my physical well-being; the care I received was not contingent upon my
ability to pay. I was treated with dignity, respect, and compassion,
my illness was cured and I was able to continue with my journey in
Venezuela.

This past year, a family friend was not so lucky. At the age of 56,
she was going back to school and was uninsured. She came down with
what she thought was a severe case of the flu, and as her condition
worsened she decided not to see a doctor because of the cost. She died
at home in bed, losing her life to a system that did not respect her
basic human right to survive. Her death is not an isolated incident.
Over 18,000 United States residents die every year because of their
lack of prohibitively expensive health insurance. The United States
has the distinct honor of being the "only wealthy industrialized
nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage".(8)
Instead, we have commodified the public health and well being of those
live in the US, leaving them on their own to obtain insurance. Those
whose jobs do not provide insurance, can’t get enough hours to qualify
for health care coverage through their workplace, are unemployed, or
have "previously existing conditions" that exclude them from coverage
are forced to choose between the potentially fatal decision of
refusing medical care and accumulating medical bills that trap them in
an inescapable cycle of debt. And sometimes, that decision is made for
them. Doctors often ask that dreaded question; "do you have
insurance?" before scheduling critical tests, procedures, or
treatments. When the answer is no, treatments that were deemed
necessary before are suddenly canceled as the ability to pay becomes
more important than the patient’s health.(9)

It is estimated that there are over fifty million United States
residents currently living without health insurance, a

number that
will skyrocket as unemployment rates increase and people lose their
work-based health care coverage in this time of international
financial crisis.(10) Already this year, 7.5 million people have lost
work-related coverage. Budget cuts for the state of Washington this
year will remove over forty thousand people from Washington Basic
Health, a subsidized program which already has a waiting list of
seventeen thousand people.(11) As I returned to the US from Venezuela,
I was faced with the realization that as a society, the United States
places a monetary value on life. That we make life and death judgments
based on an individual’s ability to pay. And that someone with the
same condition I had recently recovered from had died because,
according to our system, her life wasn’t insured.

Many in the United States fear that people would abuse a free health
care system, causing overcrowding and a compromised level of care.
Others claim that a single payer system would limit the freedoms of
both doctor and patient. These claims, propagated by the corporate
media in the United States, are a hollow attempt to keep those in the
US from organizing to demand single payer health care. Primary care
and preventative medicine are seen as the first steps towards
sustainable universal health care, keeping people out of costly
hospital stays, tests, and treatments down the road. Socializing the
costs of medicine keeps costs low by preventing expensive treatments
and health problems. It is difficult to understand how much quality,
free health care means until you find yourself in a position of
vulnerability and need. I felt a sense of security traveling in
Venezuela that I do not feel in the United States; in Venezuela, there
is a safety net ready to catch you when you fall. People in the US
must ask themselves, as a country, where our values lie and how we
have not only let people slip through the cracks but worked to
systematically exclude them. Do we believe that insurance corporations
and the medical industrial complex should be profiting from denying
care and keeping sick people from receiving treatment? Or do we
believe that care should be separate from an individual’s ability to
pay? As a nation, we must embrace our humanity and value life over
profits.

Notes:

1 Wilpert, Gregory. Changing Venezuela The History and Policies of the
Chavez Government. New York: Verso, 2006.

2 "Mision Barrio Adentro." Mision Barrio Adentro. 02 June 2009 <http://www.barrioadentro.gov.ve/
>.

3 Wilpert, Gregory. Changing Venezuela The History and Policies of the
Chavez Government. New York: Verso, 2006.

4 "Mision Barrio Adentro." Mision Barrio Adentro. 02 June 2009 <http://www.barrioadentro.gov.ve/
>.

6 "Mision Barrio Adentro." Mision Barrio Adentro. 02 June 2009 <http://www.barrioadentro.gov.ve/
>.

7 ibid

8 "Insuring America's Health: Principles and Recommendations -."
Institute of Medicine. 02 June 2009 <http://www.iom.edu/?id=19175>.

9 "PR-2000-43/ WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION : ASSESSES THE WORLD'S HEALTH
SYSTEMS." 02 June 2009 <http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/
pr2000-44.html>.

10 "Census Revises Estimates of the Number of Uninsured People —
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities." Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities. 02 June 2009 <http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=245>.

11 "PR-2000-43/ WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION : ASSESSES THE WORLD'S
HEALTH SYSTEMS." 02 June 2009 <http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/pr2000-44.html
>.

-

Thanks choppedliver. Great work on this.

Thanks choppedliver. Great work on this.


Thanks Mike, :)I'm compelled; as I've said before, I really think this movement is a true populist movement that covers the gamut left to right. I can discuss this with the most conservative rwingers, the only people I ever have problems with are the obots who keep spouting that line "single payer would be great, but we could get the "public option" in there and work from there..." bullshit.

I also think this movement is great for the over 40 crowd who dread "socialism" due to the entrenched propaganda from the Cold War days. Its a way to sneak in one aspect, then incrementally more and more.

On edit: of course saving lives is the primary goal here....as is all our work...shelter. food health care, work...etc.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Unions for Single Payer HR676
<Editor@unionsforsinglepayerhr676.org>


Illinois UTU and Indiana UMWA Locals Endorse HR 676

In Salem, Illinois, Paul Byars, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 0979 of the
United Transportation Union (UTU), reports the local has endorsed HR 676,
single payer health care legislation introduced by Congressman John
Conyers (D-MI).

In Booneville, Indiana, Roger Anderson, President of United Mine Workers
(UMWA) Local 9926, reports that his local has also endorsed HR 676.

Roger Anderson said: “The UMWA has been at the forefront of health care.
It was one of the first unions to negotiate health care for its working
members and retirees and the only union to build hospitals in rural areas
to guarantee access to health care for its members and their families.
With the present system in place, the members of Local 9926 understand
that the health care they have fought for and were promised for life can
be taken away overnight.” #30#

A long one here, multi faceted:

June 31, 2009

www.singlepayernewyork.org



Dear Single Payer New York supporters:



Please circulate this information to your local contacts.



In this email you will find information about:

1. July 30th national rally on single payer

2. Local events on birthday of Medicare

3. Update on Single Payer New York website

4. Faith Leaders for Single Payer / Health Care as a Human Right

5. Local events with Congress people during July 4th break

6. Update on scoring single payer by Congressional Budget Office

7. Mass. Health Insurance Plan Cuts $115 Million

8. Governor’s Office Continues to Delay Universal Health Care Study

9. Keep Calling Congress



The struggle for universal health care is heating up in Congress. Single payer advocates have been invited to speak at several recent Congressional hearings, but Congressional leaders are still intent on protecting the health insurance companies by keeping single payer off the table. Helping insurance companies of course costs hundreds of billions of dollars – so Congress is working to scale back benefits and coverage and tax health care benefits from employers. This helps builds pressure for a real solution like single payer – but it remains an uphill fight.



More must be done to focus on the need to eliminate for profit private health insurance. More education is needed about how such insurance drives up costs throughout our health care system while literally helping to kill tens of thousands of Americans each year.



1. Come to DC on Thursday July 30th – Medicare’s Birthday – to Support Single Payer



Celebrate Medicare’s 44th Birthday by showing Congress and President Obama that people want a single-payer health care system. As President Obama says, “We must build on what works and leave out what doesn’t.” Medicare has successfully provided care to seniors and people with disabilities for almost half a century. Medicare is a truly American-made system that other health care systems around the world have since been modeled after. With little over 3% administrative overhead, we must look to this American solution to our health care crisis.



The best way to save this system is to expand it and make it a truly single-payer system by removing the for-profit interests.



The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care is launching a rally and lobby day on Thursday, July 30th in Washington DC with concurrent actions around the country to bring this message to Washington DC and the Congress. The Rally and Lobby Day in DC are currently being planned and logistics will be announced soon. Donate to help fund the rally. Send checks to California Nurses Association National Nurses Organizing Committee, National Nurses Organizing Committee 888 16th St NW Suite 640 Washington, DC 20006, memo: July 30th



Rebecca Elgie is helping to organize a bus from Central NY. heatlhylink@earthlink.net. We also hope to have buses from Rochester and NYC. People are being urged to carpool from the Capital District but if there is enough interest, a bus could be organized.



2. Organize your Own Local Event for July 30th – Postcards are available



In addition to going to DC, groups are encouraged to organize your own local media events around Medicare’s birthday. Have a speaker and a birthday cake at a local senior citizen center. Organize a protest in front of an insurance company. Rally at the federal building or other site.



We need to expand our community outreach during the summer months. Table at your local farmers markets, music festival, block party, post office – or anywhere else you can draw a crowd. Postcards that can be sent to your Congresspeople can be obtained from mikekeenan@pefencon.info. We also have Single Payer NY yard signs for $5; you can contact Connie LaPorta, 1934 Fifth Ave., Troy, NY 12180; 518-274-4863. connie3049@earthlink.net to discuss. (Connie is also the SPNY treasurer and gladly accepts donations.)



3. Updates on Single Payer New York website



Our website – www.singlepayernewyork.org – is being updated on a regular basis with national and state news. It includes a calendar for local actions – please add your events. There are also various flyers, outreach materials, action guides, etc. that you can download from the resource section of the web page - http://www.singlepayernewyork.org/downloads.php



4. Faith Leaders for Single Payer / Health Care as a Human Right



The Faith and Hunger Network is circulating a sign on letter from faith leaders and groups in NYS to Congress and President Obama about the need to make health care a human right. The best way to do that is single payer. Contact dunleamark@aol.com (518 434-7371 xt 1#) for a copy of the sign on letter. It will also be posted on our website. Amnesty International USA recently issued an email alert to its members urging them to support single payer as the best way to make health care a human right.



Statement is attached.



5. Local events with Congress people during August



August is when Congress is in recess. Congressmembers often have town hall meetings or other public events during this time period. This is a good opportunity to stand up and ask questions about single payer – as well as to hand out flyers.



Single Payer Action, which helped organize the demonstrations at the Senate Finance Committee, is organizing similar protests at Congressional Town Hall meetings this summer. Peter LaVenia (mactyler42@yahoo.com) has been hired as their organizer in NYS. Please contact him if you would like to participate – or if you know about a local event with Congress people. The targets of course are those who have not sponsored HR 676. Current sponsors are: Clarke, Engel, Hinchey, Maloney, Massa, Meeks, Nadler, Serrano, Tonko, Velazquez



6. Congress has not yet agreed to analyze single payer



One of our goals is to get single payer “scored” by the Congressional Budget Office along with other universal health care proposals. Scoring means that the proposal is analyzed for its fiscal costs. Senator Schumer has been working with Sen. Sanders of Vt. (sponsor of S. 703) to get single payer scored but have not been successful yet. About 30 single payer activists recently met with Cong. Charlie Rangel (D – Harlem), chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, but he would not agree to ask that single payer be scored. He needs continued pressure.



7. Mass. cuts its health coverage by $115m

By Kay Lazar of the Boston Globe -

Overseers of Massachusetts’ trailblazing healthcare program made their first cuts yesterday, trimming $115 million, or 12 percent, from Commonwealth Care, which subsidizes premiums for needy residents and is the centerpiece of the 2006 law. The board of the Connector Authority made the cuts as officials confronted two side effects of the recession: the state budget crisis and a surge in enrollment by the recently unemployed.

The largest share of the savings will come from slowing enrollment. An estimated 18,000 poor residents who qualify for full subsidies, but who forget to designate a health plan, will no longer be automatically assigned a plan and enrolled and thus could face delays in getting care. Savings will also come from eliminating dental coverage for the poorest residents enrolled in Commonwealth Care, roughly 92,000 people who curren

tly are the only ones in the program who receive that care. This $10 million cut was included in Governor Deval Patrick’s revised budget proposal, but then was restored in the budget lawmakers approved last week. It now falls to the governor to decide the program’s fate.

8. Governor’s Office Continues to Delay Release of Universal Health Care Study



The state report on universal health care is now 14 months late. The first draft has been completed. We are told that the final report will be issued “soon.” We are told that single payer does well in the report. Call Governor Paterson (518 474-8390) to urge him to recommend a state single payer plan in the report.



9. Keep Calling Congress



The White House and the Congress continue to raise expectations that real health reform will be passed this year. The proposals we have seen so far amount to a massive subsidy for the wealth and power of the private insurance industry. The sticking point has become how to raise hundreds of billions of dollars to do so.

During the campaign the President stood against John McCain's proposal to tax health benefits and Hilary Clinton's proposal for an individual mandate. Now these are definitely "on the table" as congressional proposals include these measures: taxing existing health benefits, mandating that individuals purchase of health insurance. In addition "savings" has been projected through cutting existing Medicare and Medicaid benefits and reimbursements! None of these proposals will improve our health care system. The "public plan option," even at this late date, has yet to materialize as a specific proposal – it remains merely a political posture, a talking point.

Single payer has been "off the table" from the beginning. But thanks to our growing, vocal and brave movement, we have been invited, in a big hurry, to testify in Congress. Dr. Margaret Flowers appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance only weeks after being arrested in the same committee room. (Appropriate for the symbolism of the moment, she was granted a half a seat at the end of a very long table, beside Mr. Ronald Williams, Aetna CEO whose personal compensation in 2008 was $24 million.) Since that testimony single payer advocates have appeared before all three of the committees of jurisdiction in the House -- Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.


Because single payer national health insurance along the lines of HR 676 or S 703 -- bills in Congress -- is the only proposal that will save hundreds of billions of dollars and the only proposal that will provide comprehensive care for EVERYBODY, the proposal is gathering momentum, becoming an irresistible force. Pressure for single payer -- demonstrations of public protest, petitions, postcard campaigns and winning new endorsements for the single payer is essential. It remains an uphill fight but our strength is gaining.

It will become clear to everyone that changes in the system based upon private health insurance are not reform and will not make our lives better. As we explain that single payer is the solution we should explain, with confidence, that private health insurance is the problem. Private health insurance is not only wastes massive resources and drives hideous cost escalation, it costs us tens of thousands of lives annually.

It’s time to tell Congress that it’s headed in the wrong direction – proposing to spend over a trillion more dollars to put band aids on a healthcare system that needs major surgery. They are rolling out a shameful basket of reforms that will cost us all a bundle, but:

* Won’t guarantee access to health care for everyone in the United States.
* Won’t stop thousands from dying every year because they didn’t get care they needed.
* Won’t end insurance company denials of needed care, and profiteering from health care.
* Won’t end medical-related bankruptcy.
* Won’t contain the skyrocketing costs of health care.

The following Chairs of the five House and Senate Committees responsible for new legislation need to hear from us NOW. In addition, if one of the Congress people representing you sits on one of these Committees, contact them, too.

Call toll free at 1-866-338-1015 or find more info below.

HOUSE
Chairman Charles Rangel - Phone: 202-225-4365 - Fax: 202-225-0816 - email
Chairman Henry Waxman - Phone: 202-225-3976 - Fax: 202-225-4099 - email
Chairman George Miller – Phone: 202-225-2095 - Fax: 202-225-5609 - email

SENATE
Senator Chris Dodd - Phone: 202-224-2823 - Fax: 202-224-1083 - email
Senator Max Baucus - Phone: 800-332-6106 - Fax: 202-224-9412 - email

The asks are two:
(1) That the CBO score and cost out single payer legislation (HR 676; S 703) and compare it to their scoring and costing of the new legislation now coming out of these committees; and
(2) That single payer experts be included in all Committee hearings on health care reform.

Call, write, email now! Make your voice heard for real health care reform. We have the solution to our healthcare crisis.

Unions for Single Payer HR676


AFGE, IBT and IATSE Locals in New York, Missouri, and Texas Endorse HR 676

In Maryland Heights, Missouri, Chico Humes, President of Teamsters Local
6-505M, Graphic Communications Conference/IBT, reports that his local has
endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by
Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

In New York City AFGE Local 3911 endorsed HR 676 after a presentation by
Len Rodberg, President of PNHP’s Metro NY Chapter. Local 3911
represents federal workers at EPA Region 2.

In Austin, Texas, Keith Roy Harris, President of IATSE Local 205, reports
his local endorsed HR 676 at the June membership meeting. Local 205 is
one of a large number of IATSE locals that will be supporting a HR 676
resolution at the IATSE international union convention at the end of July.
#30#


from me: meanwhile, Walmart and Andy Stern for SEIU back Obama, what's with Stern anyway?

Thanks choppedliver. Great work on this.


Thanks Mike, :)I'm compelled; as I've said before, I really think this movement is a true populist movement that covers the gamut left to right. I can discuss this with the most conservative rwingers, the only people I ever have problems with are the obots who keep spouting that line "single payer would be great, but we could get the "public option" in there and work from there..." bullshit.

I also think this movement is great for the over 40 crowd who dread "socialism" due to the entrenched propaganda from the Cold War days. Its a way to sneak in one aspect, then incrementally more and more.

On edit: of course saving lives is the primary goal here....as is all our work...shelter. food health care, work...etc.


Quoting myself here, on re-reading Ashley Sanders' phenomenal rant that Chlamor posted in the Obama thread, I came across this line "Perform a mini-monologue on the virtue of incremental gains." DID I SAY THAT ABOVE!! (see the bold) "oh me or my", shoot me now!!

Have you folks given up on calling me out?? (or just quit reading my drivel?) Both barrels please, this liberal disease is more difficult to purge from myself than this bout of bronchitis...

Thanks choppedliver. Great work on this.


Thanks Mike, :)I'm compelled; as I've said before, I really think this movement is a true populist movement that covers the gamut left to right. I can discuss this with the most conservative rwingers, the only people I ever have problems with are the obots who keep spouting that line "single payer would be great, but we could get the "public option" in there and work from there..." bullshit.

I also think this movement is great for the over 40 crowd who dread "socialism" due to the entrenched propaganda from the Cold War days. Its a way to sneak in one aspect, then incrementally more and more.

On edit: of course saving lives is the primary goal here....as is all our work...shelter. food health care, work...etc.


Quoting myself here, on re-reading Ashley Sanders' phenomenal rant that Chlamor posted in the Obama thread, I came across this line "Perform a mini-monologue on the virtue of incremental gains." DID I SAY THAT ABOVE!! (see the bold) "oh me or my", shoot me now!!

Have you folks given up on calling me out?? (or just quit reading my drivel?) Both barrels please, this liberal disease is more difficult to purge from myself than this bout of bronchitis...


Slid right by me, and I'm not one to be chucking rocks from my glass abode in any case. That you caught it and self corrected, that is what is significant. Good for you.

Thanks, bp! :-[ Have to keep that mirror constantly available....

Thanks, bp! :-[ Have to keep that mirror constantly available....


I actually agreed with your first statement. You're not going to win everything in one go. The stigma about "incrementalism" comes into play when incrementalism is guised as a plan while really being a ploy (to do nothing)

What you said is fine -- everytime we win something, we demand for more. Its like the Itchy and Scratch theme song: "Fight, fight, fight..fight, fight, fight..fight, fight, fight"

I am reading your stuff, but its more a case of pouring on as much gasoline as you can. Disseminating it all piece-by-piece isn't as vital and its not necessary to be in personal agreement with it all even (look under "C" for Chlamor). Keeping that drumbeat pounding

Thanks, bp! :-[ Have to keep that mirror constantly available....


I actually agreed with your first statement. You're not going to win everything in one go. The stigma about "incrementalism" comes into play when incrementalism is guised as a plan while really being a ploy (to do nothing)

What you said is fine -- everytime we win something, we demand for more. Its like the Itchy and Scratch theme song: "Fight, fight, fight..fight, fight, fight..fight, fight, fight"

I am reading your stuff, but its more a case of pouring on as much gasoline as you can. Disseminating it all piece-by-piece isn't as vital and its not necessary to be in personal agreement with it all even (look under "C" for Chlamor). Keeping that drumbeat pounding


Thanks, Kid. Just been thinking about how much the world is really going into hyperdrive, and that those increments have to get bigger, time is fleeting...and can't waste any more of it on me here!! :)

Two articles follow, the second is an update, I made bold what one friend of mine said should be the quote of the day, pretty scummy stuff.


July 2, 2009

Politico

by Mike Allen

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

And it’s a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.

“Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate,” says the one-page flier. “Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. … Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders …

“Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it. What is guaranteed is a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less. …

“Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters’ CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 … Hosts and Discussion Leaders … Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post … An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. … A Washington Post Salon … July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m.”

POLITICO has asked The Washington Post for a response, and will post it when it arrives.

Sources at the paper say the marketing offer may be getting ahead of what the newsroom is prepared to deliver. The newspaper recently hired someone to organize conferences, and his primary mission is to stage on-the-record events about topical subjects in Washington. Conferences are a trend throughout the news industry.

“Washington Post Salons are extensions of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard,” the flier says. “At the core is a critical topic of our day. Dinner and a volley of ideas unfold in an evening of intelligent, news-driven and off-the-record conversation. … By bringing together those powerful few in business and policy-making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues, Washington Post Salons give life to the debate. Be at this nexus of business and policy with your underwriting of Washington Post Salons.”

The first “Salon” is titled, “Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans? The reform and funding debate.”

Click here for the full report from Politico.com.

The second article here was reached by clicking on the link for the article above! Luckily, I'd copied and pasted the article above to a friend, so I had the original. On a quick look it seems to have disappeared, but it was a very quick look.


WaPo cancels lobbyist event
By: Mike Allen and Michael Calderone
July 2, 2009 08:04 AM EST

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive "salon" at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

With the Post newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Weymouth said in an email to the staff that "a flier went out that was prepared by the Marketing department and was never vetted by me or by the newsroom. Had it been, the flier would have been immediately killed, because it completely misrepresented what we were trying to do."

Weymouth said the paper had planned a series of dinners with participation from the newsroom “but with parameters such that we did not in any way compromise our integrity. Sponsorship of events, like advertising in the newspaper, must be at arm's length and cannot imply control over the content or access to our journalists. At this juncture, we will not be holding the planned July dinner and we will not hold salon dinners involving the newsroom. “

She made it clear however, that The Post, which lost $19.5 million in the first quarter, sees bringing together Washington figures as a future revenue source. “We do believe that there is a viable way to expand our expertise into live conferences and events that simply enhances what we do - cover Washington for Washingtonians and those interested in Washington,” she said. “ And we will begin to do live events in ways that enhance our reputation and in no way call into question our integrity.”

Executive editor Marcus Brauchli was as adamant as Weymouth in denouncing the plan promoted in the flier. “You cannot buy access to a Washington Post journalist,” Brauchli told POLITICO. Brauchli was named on the flier as one of the salon’s "Hosts and Discussion Leaders."

Brauchli said in an interview that he understood the business side of the Post planned on holding dinners on policy and was scheduled to attend the July 21 dinner at Weymouth’s Washington home, but he said he had not seen the material promoting it until today. “The flier, and the description of these things, was not at all consistent with the preliminary conversations the newsroom had,” Brauchli said, adding that it was “absolutely impossible” the newsroom would participate in the kind of event described in the solicitation for the event.

"Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate," says the one-page flier. "Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. ... Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders."

The flier promised the dinner would be held in an intimate setting with no unseemly conflict between participants. “Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No,” it said. “The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it. What is guaranteed is a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less. …

Brauchli emphasized that the newsroom had given specific parameters to the

paper’s business staff that he said were apparently not followed. He said that for newsroom staffers to participate, they would have to be able to ask questions and that he would “reserve the right to allow any information or ideas that emerge from an event to shape or inform our coverage.” That directly contradicts the solicitation to potential sponsors, which billed the dinner as “off-the-record.”

“Our mission in the news department is to serve an audience,” Brauchli said, “not serve our sponsors.”

“We do not use the Post’s name or our journalists to gain access to officials or sources for the benefit of non-news purposes,” he continued.

Brauchli said that Post employees on the business side — not the newsroom — would have been responsible for seeking participants for this event. Reporters, he said, would not solicit sources or administration officials. Brauchli said that he did not know who was invited or who accepted.

Ceci Connolly, a Post reporter who covers health care, told POLITICO that she had been told there would be a dinner and that she would be invited. However, Connolly said, she “knew nothing about sponsorships and had not seen any flier or invitation.”

Brauchli declined to comment on whether anyone on the business side would be held responsible for the abortive plan. He said that would be a decision for either Weymouth or Stephen Hills, The Post’s president and general manager.

But regarding future events, Brauchli said: “I would hope that everybody in the Washington Post Company is always sensitive to the importance of the newsroom’s integrity and independence.”
Charles Pelton, The Post business-side employee listed as the event contact, seemed to dispute Brauchli’s version of events.

Pelton was quoted by Post ombudsman Andy Alexander in an online commentary as saying that newsroom leaders, including Brauchli, had been involved in discussions about the salons and other events.“This was well-developed with the newsroom,” Pelton told Alexander. “What was not developed was the marketing message to potential sponsors.”

According to Alexander, who called the flier a “public relations disaster,” Pelton told him: “There’s no intention to influence or peddle.” “There’s no intention to have a Lincoln Bedroom situation,” referring to charges that President Bill Clinton used invitations to stay at the White House as a way of luring political backing.

Pelton did not return a phone call from POLITICO.

If POLITICO had not reported on the flier this morning, Brauchli said he expects someone would have seen it before the event and, given the obvious ethical issue, it would have been canceled.

Kris Coratti, communications director of Washington Post Media, a division of The Washington Post Company, said the flier “came out of a business division for conferences and events, and the newsroom was unaware of such communication. It went out before it was properly vetted, and this draft does not represent what the company’s vision for these dinners are, which is meant to be an independent, policy-oriented event for newsmakers.

"As written, the newsroom could not participate in an event like this. We do believe there is an opportunity to have a conferences and events business, and that The Post should be leading these conversations in Washington, big or small, while maintaining journalistic integrity. The newsroom will participate where appropriate."

Earlier this morning, Brauchli sent an e-mail entitled “Newsroom Independence” to his staff explaining his position.

"Colleagues,” Brauchli said. “A flier was distributed this week offering an 'underwriting opportunity' for a dinner on health care reform, in which the news department had been asked to participate. The language in the flier and the description of the event preclude our participation.

"We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable. There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do these things in ways that are consistent with our values."

The first "Salon" was to be called "Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans? The reform and funding debate." More were anticipated, and the flier described the opportunities for participants:
“Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters’ CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 … Hosts and Discussion Leaders ... Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post ... An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. ... A Washington Post Salon ... July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m. ...

"Washington Post Salons are extensions of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard," the flier says. "At the core is a critical topic of our day. Dinner and a volley of ideas unfold in an evening of intelligent, news-driven and off-the-record conversation. ... By bringing together those powerful few in business and policy-making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues, Washington Post Salons give life to the debate. Be at this nexus of business and policy with your underwriting of Washington Post Salons."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked Thursday in the briefing room if anyone from the White House was invited to attend the salons, and what the policy is for attending such events.

"I don't know if anybody here was," Gibbs said. "I think some people in the administration, writ large, may have been invited. I do not believe, based on what I've been able to check, anyone has accepted the invitations."

Gibbs said that the White House counsel would review such invitations and that they "would likely exceed" what would be considered appropriate.

It's All About the Money
Obama's False Friends of Health Care Reform
By WENDELL POTTER

I'm hoping President Obama realizes that some of the folks who've been currying favor with him are not, as they claim, bringing "solutions" to the health care reform table. Most Americans -- especially those who voted for him -- want nothing to do with the kind of "reforms" they are peddling.

If you watched the president's televised Q&A on ABC last Wednesday night, you probably noticed that one of the people in the audience was Ron Williams, the chairman and CEO of Aetna, Inc., the nation's third largest health insurer, and currently one of the most profitable. But there are a few things that you should know about Williams.

Back in the '90s, Aetna set out on an acquisition binge in its quest to become the biggest health insurer in the country. It got there by the end of the decade after spending billion of dollars for several competitors. By 1999 it had 21 million health plan members, the most any insurer had ever had at the time.

But, as often happens after buying sprees, Aetna soon came down with a bad case of buyers' remorse. As it turned out, some of the customers it had paid top price for were not as profitable as Wall Street analysts and the big institutional investors who owned most of Aetna's stock expected. When they took a closer look at what Aetna had bought, investors started deserting the company in droves. As a result, the company found its stock price in a free fall.

As the Wall Street Journal reported on August 13, 2004, Aetna's pretax profits as a percentage of revenues began falling dramatically after peaking at about 12 percent in 1998. By 2001 the company was a basket case as far as Wall Street was concerned. It had to do something, and fast.

Probably the most important thing it did to turn itself around was recruit Williams from rival WellPoint, the ambitious for-profit company that was gobbling up Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans from coast to coast.

As the Journal reported, Williams promptly ordered a $20 million revamp of Aetna's data systems. Health care analyst Joshua Raskin told the Journal that the new system that emerged from that investment, which Aetna dubbed the Executive Management Information System (EMIS for short), was "the single largest driver of the Aetna turnaround." Why? Because it helped Aetna "identify and dump unprofitable corporate accounts." How did it do the dumping? By jacking up premiums to unaffordable levels.

By the time the dumping -- or purging, as it is frequently called in the industry -- was done, Aetna had shed eight million of its 21 million members. It shrank so much that by the time it emerged from the Ron Williams-led turnaround, it had fewer members than when the company started out on its multi-billion dollar buying binge.

While Aetna was shedding those eight million men, women and children, by the way, it also reportedly shed 15,000 of its employees. Wall Street likes it when insurers dump employees, too, because the workers who don't get the ax have to assume the responsibilities of their laid-off colleagues. That theoretically boosts productivity, which Wall Street likes. And reducing the payroll leaves more money for profits.

The health insurance industry and its allies are working hard right now to convince you that the creation of a public insurance option would put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. As the 2004 Wall Street Journal article makes it clear, however, EMIS was at its heart a system that put corporate bureaucrats between people and their doctors. Here's what it saId:

Mr. Williams says EMIS helps him ferret out creeping costs so Aetna can react quickly. Sitting in his first-floor office in Hartford overlooking the Aetna parking lot, he taps on his keyboard to see whether some of the health insurer's members are visiting emergency rooms too much for nonemergency reasons, such as for the flu or a sprained ankle.


Did that send a chill up your spine like it did mine? And know this, if Aetna's CEO can keep an eye on your trips to the doctor, so can the CEOs of all the other big insurers.

The insurance industry claims that this time it really and truly supports legislation to reduce the number of people without insurance, that they've changed so much since 1994 -- when they said the same thing but did everything they could behind the scenes to kill reform -- that you can and should believe them now.

The next time you hear someone from the industry talking about how much they are committed to reform, remember that just a few years ago, the CEO of one of the biggest health insurers was the mastermind behind a business strategy that cost thousands of workers their jobs and millions of other people their insurance coverage. That's the real "solution" the industry is bringing to the table -- and the kind of reform Wall Street can really get behind.

Ron Williams has been richly rewarded by Aetna's board of directors for leading the company back to a level of profitability suitable to Wall Street. They tapped him to succeed Jack Rowe as CEO when Rowe retired in 2006. And they rewarded him with compensation totaling nearly $65 million over the past two years.

(Rowe, by the way, was paid $22.2 million in 2005, his last full year as CEO. He played a big role in hawking the high-deductible plans that Aetna and the other big insurers are now trying to push us all into. He claimed that Americans enrolled in managed care plans have been too sheltered from the real costs of health care and that we need to have more "skin in the game," by which he meant that we should have to pay a lot more out of our own pockets when we go to the doctor and pick up our prescriptions, even if we have health insurance. The median family income in the United States is just $50,000, which means that most of us already have a lot more skin in the game than Dr. Rowe and Ron Williams will ever need to.)

The insurance industry's two biggest lobbying groups -- America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of America -- warned members of Congress in a joint letter a few days ago that the creation of a public insurance option would unravel the country's employer-based system.

As they say where I come from, that dog won't hunt.

It is the insurance company executives -- in their never-ending quest to meet Wall Street's profit expectations -- who are doing the unraveling by purging employers whose workers have the audacity to file claims when they get sick or injured.

A final point about Ron Williams: Not only are he and his fellow CEOs trying to kill the idea of a public health insurance option -- a central part of candidate Obama's health care proposal -- but he is the leading advocate of an idea Obama rejected and which differentiated his proposal from Hillary Clinton's -- the imposition on all of us of an "individual mandate." Many insurance executives were wary of such a mandate because they don't like the government mandating anything, especially those pesky state mandates that force them to include certain benefits in the policies they sell. Advocates of an individual mandate eventually brought the skeptics, including many of AHIP's board members, around to their way thinking by persuading them that insurers could make billions more in profits if every American had to buy an insurance policy from them. Now you know the real reason behind AHIP's shift from neutrality on the issue to full-fledged support. It's all about the money.

Wendell

Potter is the Senior Fellow on Health Care for the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090703/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul

On top of the article is a beeauuutiful picture of Obama, ya think it hypnotises people to see his face??

Under Senate health care plan, either way you pay
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 19 mins ago
WASHINGTON – First you paid to insure your car. Soon you may have to add health insurance premiums to that stack of monthly bills as well.

In a revamped health care system envisioned by senators, people would be required to carry health insurance just like motorists must get auto coverage now. The government would provide subsidies for the poor and many middle-class families, but those who still refuse to sign up would face fines of more than $1,000.

The details were unveiled Thursday in a health care overhaul bill supported by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines would raise around $36 billion over 10 years. Senate aides said the penalties would be modeled on the approach taken by Massachusetts, which now imposes a fine of about $1,000 a year on individuals who refuse to get coverage. Under the federal legislation, families would pay higher penalties than individuals.

Called "shared responsibility payments," the fines would offset at least half the cost of basic medical coverage, according to the legislation. The goal is to nudge people to sign up for coverage when they are healthy, not wait until they get sick.

In 2008, employer-provided coverage averaged $12,680 a year for a family plan, and $4,704 for individual coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey. Senate aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the cost of the federal plan would be lower but declined to provide specifics.

The legislation would exempt certain hardship cases from fines, which would be collected through the income tax system.

The new proposals were released as Congress neared the end of a weeklong July 4 break, with lawmakers expected to quickly take up health care legislation when they return to Washington. With deepening divisions along partisan and ideological lines, the complex legislation faces an uncertain future.

Obama wants a bill this year that would provide coverage to the nearly 50 million Americans who lack it and reduce medical costs.

In a statement, Obama welcomed the legislation, saying it "reflects many of the principles I've laid out, such as reforms that will prohibit insurance companies from refusing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and the concept of insurance exchanges where individuals can find affordable coverage if they lose their jobs, move or get sick."

The Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions bill also calls for a government-run insurance option to compete with private plans as well as a $750-per-worker annual fee on larger companies that do not offer coverage to employees.

Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said in a letter to colleagues that their revised plan would cost dramatically less than an earlier, incomplete proposal, and help show the way toward coverage for 97 percent of all Americans.

The Congressional Budget Office, in an analysis released Thursday evening, put the net cost of the proposal at $597 billion over 10 years, down from $1 trillion two weeks ago. Coverage expansions worth $645 billion would be partly offset by savings of $48 billion, the estimate said.

However, the total cost of legislation will rise considerably once provisions are added to subsidize health insurance for the poor through Medicaid. Those additions, needed to ensure coverage for nearly all U.S. residents, are being handled by a separate panel, the Senate Finance Committee. Bipartisan talks on the Finance panel aim to hold the overall price tag to $1 trillion.

The Health Committee could complete its portion of the bill as soon as next week, and the government health insurance option virtually assures a party-line vote.

In the Senate, the Finance Committee version of the bill is unlikely to include a government-run insurance option. Bipartisan negotiations are centered on a proposal for a nonprofit insurance cooperative as a competitor to private companies. (isnt' that what BC/BS is? what's the difference? CL)

Three committees are collaborating in the House on legislation expected to come to a vote by the end of July. That measure is certain to include a government-run insurance option.

At their heart, all the bills would require insurance companies to sell coverage to any applicant, without charging higher premiums for pre-existing medical conditions. The poor and some middle-class families would qualify for government subsidies to help with the cost of coverage. The government's costs would be covered by a combination of higher taxes and cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Are there any suprises here? Other than the degree of cavalier duplicity, not much. It seems that they don't even care if you can see the man behind the curtain anymore.

It's all so entrenched and far beyond making sense. I had to deal with it just this morning. My 2-year old has been running a fever so I took him to the local clinic. Got an older lady doctor who told me in the old days they would've just pulled the tonsils out, but nowadays the insurance companies drive the care so instead we had to do strep test, antibiotic shot, 9 days oral antibiotics, decongestant med, ear drops ($186 retail price), and another appt. in a week to make sure he's healing. The insurance companies have to see minimum 5-6 infections/yr to even consider taking out the inflamed tonsils that are probably at the root of it. I got off relatively cheaply, $75 total out of pocket for everything, but that's after our monthly premiums of nearly $1000 and various deductibles that we've already met for the year. And we have a pretty healthy income, I don't know how other folks handle it.

Hey TBF, I joke about this but its gallows humor. There is a medical center that subsidizes everything based on a sliding income scale. Since I've been debilitated with no income for 4 months I am now qualified for the best scale available: $5/visit FOR THE ENTIRE TAX YEAR until next April 15.

So I pay $5 to see a counselor, $5 for primary care, some reduced amount for x-rays, and so on. I told my Mom my co-pay is less than hers and I don't pay any premiums lol

Of course even my "dirt cheap" MRI was over $700 but that was covered by auto insurance mostly.

Only trouble is if I need to see specialists, that I is out-of-pocket (ie out-of-luck)

Being broke as shit sucks, but there are a few fringe benefits I guess..it is normally $90 f'ing dollars just to see the primary care doctor. Now that's a crock..

Yeah, I don't tend to complain much about my own situation because at least there is still income and "good" insurance relatively speaking, but it annoys me that this could all just be so much simpler for everyone. Universal care, cut out the middle-men, and stress preventative appointments to nip things before they are outrageously expensive. It seems like such a no-brainer.

My situation is decent too, but I'd do better on single payer; what kills me, really makes my heart sick, is those who really don't care about 60 people a day dying just because they can't afford a doctor. What kind of heartless people do we have here??? And because its america, it doesn't matter that our system is so different...sorry for the whine...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_GJkKMPHxw

http://www.counterpunch.org/potter07022009.html

It's All About the Money
Obama's False Friends of Health Care Reform
By WENDELL POTTER

I'm hoping President Obama realizes that some of the folks who've been currying favor with him are not, as they claim, bringing "solutions" to the health care reform table. Most Americans -- especially those who voted for him -- want nothing to do with the kind of "reforms" they are peddling.

If you watched the president's televised Q&A on ABC last Wednesday night, you probably noticed that one of the people in the audience was Ron Williams, the chairman and CEO of Aetna, Inc., the nation's third largest health insurer, and currently one of the most profitable. But there are a few things that you should know about Williams.

Back in the '90s, Aetna set out on an acquisition binge in its quest to become the biggest health insurer in the country. It got there by the end of the decade after spending billion of dollars for several competitors. By 1999 it had 21 million health plan members, the most any insurer had ever had at the time.

But, as often happens after buying sprees, Aetna soon came down with a bad case of buyers' remorse. As it turned out, some of the customers it had paid top price for were not as profitable as Wall Street analysts and the big institutional investors who owned most of Aetna's stock expected. When they took a closer look at what Aetna had bought, investors started deserting the company in droves. As a result, the company found its stock price in a free fall.

As the Wall Street Journal reported on August 13, 2004, Aetna's pretax profits as a percentage of revenues began falling dramatically after peaking at about 12 percent in 1998. By 2001 the company was a basket case as far as Wall Street was concerned. It had to do something, and fast.

Probably the most important thing it did to turn itself around was recruit Williams from rival WellPoint, the ambitious for-profit company that was gobbling up Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans from coast to coast.

As the Journal reported, Williams promptly ordered a $20 million revamp of Aetna's data systems. Health care analyst Joshua Raskin told the Journal that the new system that emerged from that investment, which Aetna dubbed the Executive Management Information System (EMIS for short), was "the single largest driver of the Aetna turnaround." Why? Because it helped Aetna "identify and dump unprofitable corporate accounts." How did it do the dumping? By jacking up premiums to unaffordable levels.

By the time the dumping -- or purging, as it is frequently called in the industry -- was done, Aetna had shed eight million of its 21 million members. It shrank so much that by the time it emerged from the Ron Williams-led turnaround, it had fewer members than when the company started out on its multi-billion dollar buying binge.

While Aetna was shedding those eight million men, women and children, by the way, it also reportedly shed 15,000 of its employees. Wall Street likes it when insurers dump employees, too, because the workers who don't get the ax have to assume the responsibilities of their laid-off colleagues. That theoretically boosts productivity, which Wall Street likes. And reducing the payroll leaves more money for profits.

The health insurance industry and its allies are working hard right now to convince you that the creation of a public insurance option would put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. As the 2004 Wall Street Journal article makes it clear, however, EMIS was at its heart a system that put corporate bureaucrats between people and their doctors. Here's what it saId:

Mr. Williams says EMIS helps him ferret out creeping costs so Aetna can react quickly. Sitting in his first-floor office in Hartford overlooking the Aetna parking lot, he taps on his keyboard to see whether some of the health insurer's members are visiting emergency rooms too much for nonemergency reasons, such as for the flu or a sprained ankle.


Did that send a chill up your spine like it did mine? And know this, if Aetna's CEO can keep an eye on your trips to the doctor, so can the CEOs of all the other big insurers.

The insurance industry claims that this time it really and truly supports legislation to reduce the number of people without insurance, that they've changed so much since 1994 -- when they said the same thing but did everything they could behind the scenes to kill reform -- that you can and should believe them now.

The next time you hear someone from the industry talking about how much they are committed to reform, remember that just a few years ago, the CEO of one of the biggest health insurers was the mastermind behind a business strategy that cost thousands of workers their jobs and millions of other people their insurance coverage. That's the real "solution" the industry is bringing to the table -- and the kind of reform Wall Street can really get behind.

Ron Williams has been richly rewarded by Aetna's board of directors for leading the company back to a level of profitability suitable to Wall Street. They tapped him to succeed Jack Rowe as CEO when Rowe retired in 2006. And they rewarded him with compensation totaling nearly $65 million over the past two years.

(Rowe, by the way, was paid $22.2 million in 2005, his last full year as CEO. He played a big role in hawking the high-deductible plans that Aetna and the other big insurers are now trying to push us all into. He claimed that Americans enrolled in managed care plans have been too sheltered from the real costs of health care and that we need to have more "skin in the game," by which he meant that we should have to pay a lot more out of our own pockets when we go to the doctor and pick up our prescriptions, even if we have health insurance. The median family income in the United States is just $50,000, which means that most of us already have a lot more skin in the game than Dr. Rowe and Ron Williams will ever need to.)

The insurance industry's two biggest lobbying groups -- America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of America -- warned members of Congress in a joint letter a few days ago that the creation of a public insurance option would unravel the country's employer-based system.

As they say where I come from, that dog won't hunt.

It is the insurance company executives -- in their never-ending quest to meet Wall Street's profit expectations -- who are doing the unraveling by purging employers whose workers have the audacity to file claims when they get sick or injured.

A final point about Ron Williams: Not only are he and his fellow CEOs trying to kill the idea of a public health insurance option -- a central part of candidate Obama's health care proposal -- but he is the leading advocate of an idea Obama rejected and which differentiated his proposal from Hillary Clinton's -- the imposition on all of us of an "individual mandate." Many insurance executives were wary of such a mandate because they don't like the government mandating anything, especially those pesky state mandates that force them to include certain benefits in the policies they sell. Advocat

es of an individual mandate eventually brought the skeptics, including many of AHIP's board members, around to their way thinking by persuading them that insurers could make billions more in profits if every American had to buy an insurance policy from them. Now you know the real reason behind AHIP's shift from neutrality on the issue to full-fledged support. It's all about the money.

Wendell Potter is the Senior Fellow on Health Care for the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin.

From Dr. Don McCanne's "quote of the day" list <quote-of-the-day@mccanne.org>


The Seattle Times
July 9, 2009
Health-plan costs soar for individuals
By Kyung M. Song

In what is becoming an annual ordeal for policyholders, Regence BlueShield is raising premiums for 135,000 individual health-plan members in Washington by an average 17 percent on Aug. 1.

It is the third consecutive year that the state's largest provider of individual coverage has boosted rates by double digits. And it comes after two other insurers, Group Health Cooperative and LifeWise Health Plan of Washington, recently imposed similarly steep premium increases.

North Seattle resident Gail Petersen said having more choices won't make health plans any more affordable. Petersen, 55, and her husband pay more than $1,400 a month to Regence to cover their family of five and will pay $300 more starting in August.

In 2008, Group Health rolled out eight products to join its lineup of a dozen individual health plans. They included high-deductible health savings accounts, which allow people to put aside up to $5,950 annually in pretax dollars — if they have that much upfront — to pay for medical expenses.

By catering to different population segments, Group Health in the past 15 months has nearly doubled its individual-plan members to 36,000. But those new customers are facing a 13 percent rise in premiums because Group Health underestimated anticipated medical claims, said Mike Foley, a spokesman for the co-op.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2009436261_regence09m0.html


Comment: Once Congress passes a mandate for individuals to purchase health plans, presumably non-profit Regence BlueShield, as the largest provider of individual plans in the state of Washington, would be a provider of those plans. Also, Group Health Cooperative is the co-op that has been proposed to serve as a model for the public option.

Group Health has been shifting more costs to patients through consumer-directed high deductible plans and HSAs, and still has a double digit hike in premiums. Some model.

Can anyone seriously state, with a straight face, that mandating purchase of these plans will somehow magically end the double digit increases in premiums for these plans?

The answer to this question is actually quite complex, but the fundamental truth is that the cost containment measures under consideration in Congress will have very little impact in slowing the escalation of health care costs.

All other nations have health care financing systems that are much more effective in containing costs and without leaving people out, as we do. One simple click on this link will demonstrate in a single image how the United States is an outlier (and will remain so without bona fide financing reform):

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/us-health-spending-breaks-from-the-pack/

In this graph, note that Canada and the United States followed the same curve until Canada established its single payer system. Then look at what happened.

From Dr. Don McCanne's "quote of the day" list <quote-of-the-day@mccanne.org>


The Seattle Times
July 9, 2009
Health-plan costs soar for individuals
By Kyung M. Song

In what is becoming an annual ordeal for policyholders, Regence BlueShield is raising premiums for 135,000 individual health-plan members in Washington by an average 17 percent on Aug. 1.

It is the third consecutive year that the state's largest provider of individual coverage has boosted rates by double digits. And it comes after two other insurers, Group Health Cooperative and LifeWise Health Plan of Washington, recently imposed similarly steep premium increases.

North Seattle resident Gail Petersen said having more choices won't make health plans any more affordable. Petersen, 55, and her husband pay more than $1,400 a month to Regence to cover their family of five and will pay $300 more starting in August.

In 2008, Group Health rolled out eight products to join its lineup of a dozen individual health plans. They included high-deductible health savings accounts, which allow people to put aside up to $5,950 annually in pretax dollars — if they have that much upfront — to pay for medical expenses.

By catering to different population segments, Group Health in the past 15 months has nearly doubled its individual-plan members to 36,000. But those new customers are facing a 13 percent rise in premiums because Group Health underestimated anticipated medical claims, said Mike Foley, a spokesman for the co-op.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2009436261_regence09m0.html


Comment: Once Congress passes a mandate for individuals to purchase health plans, presumably non-profit Regence BlueShield, as the largest provider of individual plans in the state of Washington, would be a provider of those plans. Also, Group Health Cooperative is the co-op that has been proposed to serve as a model for the public option.

Group Health has been shifting more costs to patients through consumer-directed high deductible plans and HSAs, and still has a double digit hike in premiums. Some model.

Can anyone seriously state, with a straight face, that mandating purchase of these plans will somehow magically end the double digit increases in premiums for these plans?

The answer to this question is actually quite complex, but the fundamental truth is that the cost containment measures under consideration in Congress will have very little impact in slowing the escalation of health care costs.

All other nations have health care financing systems that are much more effective in containing costs and without leaving people out, as we do. One simple click on this link will demonstrate in a single image how the United States is an outlier (and will remain so without bona fide financing reform):

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/us-health-spending-breaks-from-the-pack/

In this graph, note that Canada and the United States followed the same curve until Canada established its single payer system. Then look at what happened.




And that's a "respectable" outfit. The last of a series of parasites that I was with was raising the premium every two months , $50-$100 at a shot. And that's when I quit.

The old guy who represents the county south of me has all kinds of stats and graphs he uses...one shows that by 2025 most folks will be working just to pay their insurance premiums, the rate things are going...this ain't no joke here, its egregiously evil...pure greed...

Of course they have to make enough, and more, as the lobbying costs have to be going up, hmm, how much money does it take to say, "oh, ok, that's enough to counter my guilt of 60 people a day dying..."

from the msm:

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/07/12

http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/16/false-promise-of-choice/


False promise of choice
Posted by Don McCanne, MD on Thursday, Jul 16, 2009

This entry is from Dr. McCanne's Quote of the Day, a daily health policy update on the single-payer health care reform movement. The QotD is archived on PNHP's website.

For Many Workers, Insurance Choices May be Limited

By Mary Agnes Carey and Julie Appleby
Kaiser Health News
July 15, 2009

President Obama and leading Democrats have stressed that people who like their employer-sponsored insurance would be able to keep it, under a health care overhaul. But they haven’t emphasized the flip side: That people who don’t like their coverage might have to keep it.

Under the main health bills being debated in Congress, many people with job-based insurance could find it difficult to impossible to switch to health plans on a new insurance exchange, even if the plans there were cheaper or offered better coverage. The restrictions extend to any government-run plan, which would be offered on the exchange.

The provisions could change, and there are a few exceptions: Workers would be allowed to buy insurance through the exchange if their job-based coverage gobbled up too much of their incomes or was too skimpy. Also, under the House proposal, people could get insurance through the exchange if they paid their entire premiums — a cost that would be prohibitive for many workers.

Democratic lawmakers and administration officials say the restrictions are critical to maintaining a strong employer-based insurance system, which covers 158 million Americans.

But critics argue that the rules run counter to suggestions from health care reform advocates that an overhaul could provide people with a broader choice of insurance options. The rules, they say, could be especially unfair to some lower-income workers who are enrolled in costly job-based insurance. Also, they argue, the restrictions would hurt the proposed public plan by limiting enrollment.

Jonathan Oberlander, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the restrictions create a “big gap between the rhetoric and the reality” of health reform.

“The rhetoric is that Americans will gain new alternatives,” he said. “But the reality is that they are putting up firewalls that are going to restrict the access of people with employer-sponsored insurance to the exchange.”

One result, he said, is that any public plan would be substantially smaller than what many backers are envisioning. That would reduce the public plan’s power to compete with private insurers and hold down costs, he said. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that nine million to 10 million people would enroll in the public plan by 2019.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/July/15/Firewall.aspx


Imagine presidential candidate Barack Obama telling his audiences during the campaign, “We promise you choice. For most of you already receiving your health insurance through your place on employment, we will provide you with the choice of keeping that insurance plan or paying heavy financial penalties for dropping off the plan, no matter how unhappy you are with it. For a select few of you, we will offer the choice of private plans within an insurance exchange, even if you can’t afford them, and maybe even throw in a public plan that a couple of you may be able to purchase, if you meet our rigid enrollment criteria.”

Choice? Over a year ago in a Quote of the Day I discussed the decision to market health reform as a matter of choice - of keeping the plan you have if that’s your choice. The title of that qotd was “Message trumps policy?”

This isn’t an “I told you so.” Er… uh… I guess it is.

If reform is to be effective, it must be based on sound policy science. Instead, it is being based on political messaging. It may sound good, but nothing fits together. What a disaster.

A Public health plan would solve this problem too...




http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/v-print/story/1147098.html

Miami Herald

Posted on Sun, Jul. 19, 2009
Healthcare 'fix' hurts small business


Lawmakers are racing to complete a bill that improves the nation's healthcare system before the momentum for reform runs out. The need for this legislation is clear, as is the need to move quickly.

But reform should not place an unfair burden on one of the most vital and endangered sectors of our economy -- small business.

The bill unveiled by House Democrats last week is a sweeping, 1,000-page blueprint containing scores of provisions that will change the way we pay for medicines and medical treatment. Some have more merit than others.

The proposal to impose a penalty of 8 percent of payroll on all but the smallest businesses is particularly onerous and unworkable -- especially in South Florida where small businesses are the backbone of the area's economy.

In the first place, it's a job killer. To understand why, it is necessary to understand both the nature of small businesses and the essential role they play in the American economy.

According to the Small Business Administration, the nation's 6 million small employers represent 99.7 percent of the total number of businesses that provide jobs, and 50.2 percent of private-sector employment. Small businesses create about 70 percent of new jobs.

Although this includes all businesses with fewer than 500 employees, the typical operation is far smaller. According to SBA figures, 89 percent have fewer than 20 employees, and 98 percent fewer than 100.

Lose-lose proposal

The bill's ''pay or play'' option offers owners with payrolls exceeding $400,000 two unpalatable choices: Either pay the 8 percent penalty, or pay part of the premium for all full-time employees.

For many, this is a lose-lose proposition. A survey by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) found that 20 percent of its respondents would simply shut down if they were faced with this choice. They couldn't afford it. One out of four said they would replace full-time workers with part-time workers in order to avoid having to pay anything.

The level of the proposed penalty is a second problem.

Small employers, like everyone else in America, will have to do their part to support healthcare reform, but the 8 percent figure is too burdensome.

According to NFIB, a typical member employs five people and reports median gross sales of $350,000.

For many of these employers, the option of paying for insurance instead of paying the government penalty would result in paying more in health premiums for each worker than for the employer's portion of the Social Security tax.

Many employers earn relatively little from their businesses, not only making the proposed new fee a problem, but the difference between breaking even or going under.

Built-in unfairness

According to NFIB, 14 percent of small employers have household incomes of $50,000 or less. And 34 percent have a household income of $75,000 or less. For these businesses in particular there is a built-in unfairness in asking owners to subsidize employees who earn close to the same amount as the owner.

And for households that earn $350,000 or more, there is a double whammy in the legislation if they own a small business. The House Democratic bill proposes a surtax on their personal earnings, in addition to payments to cover health insurance that would have to come all or in part from profits.

The best part of the Obama administration's reform efforts involves the drive to improve the effectiveness and delivery of services and save costs. A significant number of healthcare providers has signed on.

Containing costs

Cost containment is essential to success.

Employers who have conscientiously tried to provide insurance for their workers have had to pay more in return for less. They're getting killed by skyrocketing premiums. They will welcome reform that brings costs down to earth.

It's not fair for some employers to pay for workplace insurance while others don't. A mandate that does not address rising costs and forces employers to provide a benefit they can't afford is not the answer.

Lawmakers need to come up with a reform blueprint that offers a solution, not a penalty.

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
President Obama is mad, again, at the usual suspects: progressives that insist on speaking out in the people's interest on single-payer healthcare. He picked up the phone last week to warn lefties and unions to watch their mouths and get with his fuzzy program on healthcare – although even White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel doesn't seem to know what that program is. “For Obama to 'win' his debate, the American people must lose.”

Obama’s Single Payer Beat Down
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“Debate is permitted only to the Right of his own fuzzy position.”
President Obama has escalated his campaign to suppress single-payer healthcare advocates, hinting darkly that there will be repercussions if unions and activists persist in harassing his fellow center-right Democrats. In a pre-Fourth of July teleconference with Democratic congressional leaders, Obama lectured, “We shouldn't be focussing resources on each other. We ought to be focussed on winning this debate.”
The president was attempting to shut down paid media messages seeking to pressure corporatist Democrats to support some sort of public healthcare option – an option that Obama claims to favor, although in terms so vague his own chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, framed the issue as “negotiable.” The ads have been embarrassing to rightist Democrats who are Obama's true political soulmates and a bridge to Republicans he seeks to woo.
Obama's modus operandi is by now well known. His reflexive instinct is to lash out to his left when frustrated, to demand progressives stand down and await his marching orders – even when, as is the case most of the time, Obama's own direction is unclear, at best.
“Obama's reflexive instinct is to lash out to his left when frustrated.”
The objects of his ire are advertisements or fundraisers produced by MoveOn, Health Care for America and Democracy for America. MoveOn's advertising plans successfully pressured North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan to endorse the idea of a public health care plan. No matter. Obama demands that the Left - such as it is - stand down and let Obama do his thing, whatever that is.
The president's admonition that progressives focus “on winning this debate” rather than “focussing resources on each other” makes sense only to those operating under the delusion that Obama is in a real fight with corporate healthcare profiteers. In the real world, Obama is in shifting stages of embrace with Healthcare Inc. Debate is permitted only to the Right of his own fuzzy position, while the Left is shushed and hectored.
For Obama to “win” his debate, the American people must lose, since overwhelming majorities of the public support single-payer or a Medicare-for-all program, which Obama opposes. Obama has no principled program or irreducible objectives. He cares only that some kind of bill emerges to which he can claim bragging rights. Ideally, Obama would prefer to negotiate the broad outlines of legislation directly with the corporate healthcare profiteers, by assuring them his administration means their bank accounts no harm – a courtship that has been Obama's preoccupation ever since his swearing in.
“Obama has no principled program or irreducible objectives.”
The Left complicates Obama's agenda, because progressives want to achieve certain long-sought goals such as universal healthcare, housing as a right, wealth redistribution, etc., while Obama wants to be celebrated as the president that achieved a grand consensus that reconciles America's classes and races. Since, as we have repeatedly learned, he will never confront entrenched economic power, it is progressives that must shut up and sit down in order for the illusion of national consensus to work its magic. That's why Obama gets mad and starts calling people on the phone when his little progressive boys and girls make too much noise and upset the “grown folks.”
President Obama's pattern has been set. There's nothing authentically youthful and brash about him, really; less than six months in office, and he's already predictable. He is a poseur, who pretends to take bold (rhetorical) positions on stubborn issues, only to seek cosmetic solutions along lines of least resistance from those in power. On war, the bankers' meltdown, and now health care, it's the same story. The effect on his remaining legions of progressive supporters, is to make them appear more ridiculous by the day.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%e2%80%9cpublic-option%e2%80%9d-was-sold/

Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold
Posted by Andrew Coates, MD on Monday, Jul 20, 2009

by Kip Sullivan

The people who brought us the “public option” began their campaign promising one thing but now promote something entirely different. To make matters worse, they have not told the public they have backpedalled. The campaign for the “public option” resembles the classic bait-and-switch scam: tell your customers you’ve got one thing for sale when in fact you’re selling something very different.

When the “public option” campaign began, its leaders promoted a huge “Medicare-like” program that would enroll about 130 million people. Such a program would dwarf even Medicare, which, with its 45 million enrollees, is the nation’s largest health insurer, public or private. But today “public option” advocates sing the praises of tiny “public options” contained in congressional legislation sponsored by leading Democrats that bear no resemblance to the original model.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “public options” described in the Democrats’ legislation might enroll 10 million people and will have virtually no effect on health care costs, which means the “public options” cannot, by themselves, have any effect on the number of uninsured. But the leaders of the “public option” movement haven’t told the public they have abandoned their original vision. It’s high time they did.

The bait

“Public option” refers to a proposal, as Timothy Noah put it, “dreamed up” by Jacob Hacker when Hacker was still a graduate student working on a degree in political science. In two papers, one published in 2001 and the second in 2007, Hacker, now a professor of political science at Berkeley, proposed that Congress create an enormous “Medicare-like” program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today.

Hacker claimed the program, which he called “Medicare Plus” in 2001 and “Health Care for America Plan” in 2007, would enjoy the advantages that make Medicare so efficient – large size, low provider payment rates and low overhead. (Medicare is the nation’s largest health insurance program, public or private. It pays doctors and hospitals about 20 percent less than the insurance industry does, and its administrative costs account for only 2 percent of its expenditures compared with 20 percent for the insurance industry.)

Hacker predicted that his proposed public program would so closely resemble Medicare that it would be able to set its premiums far below those of other insurance companies and enroll at least half the non-elderly population. These predictions were confirmed by the Lewin Group, a very mainstream consulting firm. In its report on Hacker’s 2001 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker’s “Medicare Plus” program would enroll 113 million people (46 percent of the non-elderly) and cut the number of uninsured to 5 million. In its report on Hacker’s 2007 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker’s “Health Care for America Plan” would enroll 129 million people (50 percent of the nonelderly population) and cut the uninsured to 2 million.

Until last year, Hacker and his allies were not the least bit shy about highlighting the enormous size of Hacker’s proposed public program. For example, in his 2001 paper Hacker stated:


[A]pproximately 50 to 70 percent of the non-elderly population would be enrolled in Medicare Plus…. Put more simply, the plan would be very large…. [C]ritics will resurface whatever the size of the public plan. But this is an area where an intuitive and widely held notion – that displacement of employment-based coverage should be avoided at all costs – is fundamentally at odds with good public policy. A large public plan should be embraced, not avoided. It is, in fact, key to fulfilling the goals of this proposal. (page 17)

In his 2007 paper, Hacker stated:


For millions of Americans who are now uninsured or lack … affordable work place coverage, the Health Care for America Plan would be an extremely attractive option. Through it, roughly half of non-elderly Americans would have access to a good public insurance plan…. A single national insurance pool covering nearly half the population would create huge administrative efficiencies. (page 5)

Hacker’s papers and the Lewin Group’s analyses of them have been cited by numerous “public option” advocates. For example, when Hacker released his 2007 paper, Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) published a press release praising it and drawing attention to the large size of Hacker’s proposed public program. The release, entitled “Activists and experts hail Health Care for America plan,” stated:


Detailed micro-simulation estimates suggest that roughly half of non-elderly Americans would remain in workplace health insurance, with the other half enrolled in Health Care for America…. A single national insurance pool covering nearly half the population would create huge administrative efficiencies…. Because Medicare and Health Care for America would bargain jointly for lower prices …, they would have enormous combined leverage to hold down costs.

When the Lewin Group released its 2008 analysis of Hacker’s 2007 paper, CAF’s Roger Hickey wrote in the Huffington Post, “efficiencies achievable … through Hacker’s public health insurance program” would save so much money that the US could “cover everyone” for no more than we spend now.

The switch

Now let’s compare the “single national health insurance pool covering nearly half the population” that Hacker and other “public option” advocates enthusiastically championed with the “public option” proposed by Democrats in Congress, and then let’s inquire what Hacker and company said about it.

As readers of this blog no doubt know, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and three House committee chairman working jointly, published draft health care “reform” bills in June. (The third committee with bill-writing authority, the Senate Finance Committee, has yet to produce a bill.) According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “public option” proposed in the House “tri-committee” bill might insure 10 million people and would leave 16 to 17 million people uninsured. The “public option” proposed by the Senate HELP committee, again according to the Congressional Budget Office, is unlikely to insure anyone and would hence leave 33 to 34 million uninsured. The CBO said its estimate of 10 million for the House bill was highly uncertain, which is not surprising given how vaguely the House legislation describes the “public option.”

Here is what the CBO had to say about the HELP committee bill:


The new draft also includes provisions regarding a “public plan,” but those provisions did not have a substantial effect on the cost or enrollment projections, largely because the public plan would pay providers of health care at rates comparable to privately negotiated rates – and thus was not projected to have premiums lower than those charged by private insurance plans. (page 3)

Obviously the “public option” in the Senate HELP committee bill (zero enrollees; 17 million people left uninsured) and the “public option” in the House bill (10 million enrollees (maybe!); 34 million people left uninsured) are a far cry from the “public option” originally proposed by Professor Hacker (129 million enrollees; 2 million people left

uninsured). Have we heard the Democrats in Congress who drafted these provisions utter a word about how different their “public options” are from the large Medicare-like program that Hacker proposed and his allies publicized? What have Professor Hacker and his allies had to say?

In public comments about the Democrats’ “public option” provisions, the leading lights of the “public option” movement imply that Hacker’s model is what Congress is debating. Sometimes they come right out and praise the Democrats’ version as “robust” and “strong.” But I cannot find a single example of a a statement by a “public option” advocate warning the public of the vast difference between Hacker’s original elephantine, “Medicare-like” program and the Democrats’ mouse version.

For example, on June 23, Hacker testified before the House Education and Labor Committee that “the draft legislation prepared by [the] special tri-committee promises enormous progress.” He went on to enumerate all the benefits of a “public option.” Yet the House tri-committee proposal bore no resemblance to the public plan he described in his papers and that the Lewin Group analyzed. Later, when Kaiser Health News asked Hacker in a July 6 interview why “your signature idea – a public plan – has become central to the health care reform debate,” Hacker again praised his “public plan” proposal and offered no hint that the “public option” so “central to the debate” was very different from the one he originally proposed.

Ditto for Hacker’s allies. Representatives of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the organization most responsible for popularizing the “public option,” repeatedly describe the House and Senate HELP committee bills as “strong” or “robust,” always without any justification for this claim, and have repeatedly failed to warn the public that the “public options” they promote today are mere shadows of the “public options” they endorsed in the past. On July 15, the day the HELP committee passed its bill, Jason Rosenbaum blogged for HCAN:


The Senate HELP Committee has just referred a bill to the floor of the Senate with a strong public option.

Searching the websites of the organizations that serve on HCAN’s steering committee – AFSCME, Democracy for America, Moveon.org and SEIU, for example – one will find not a shred of information that would help the reader comprehend how small and ineffective the “public options” proposed in the Democrats’ bills are, nor how different these are from the one Hacker originally proposed. Yet these groups continue to urge their members and the public to “tell Congress to support a public option.”

Hacker’s original model compared with the Democrats’ mouse model

It has become fashionable among advocates of a “public option” to trash the expertise and the motives of the Congressional Budget Office. But the CBO’s characterization of the “public option” proposed in the Democrats’ legislation is entirely reasonable. This becomes apparent the moment we compare Hacker’s blueprint for his original “Medicare Plus” and “Health Care for America” programs with the “blueprints” (if tabula rasas can be called “blueprints”) contained in the Senate HELP Committee and House bills.

Hacker’s papers laid out these five criteria that he and the Lewin Group said were critical to the success of the “public option”:

• The PO had to be pre-populated with tens of millions of people, that is, it had to begin like Medicare did representing a large pool of people the day it commenced operations (Hacker proposed shifting all or most uninsured people as well as Medicaid and SCHIP enrollees into his public program);
• Subsidies to individuals to buy insurance would be substantial, and only PO enrollees could get subsidies (people who chose to buy insurance from insurance companies could not get subsidies);
• The PO and its subsidies had to be available to all nonelderly Americans (not just the uninsured and employees of small employers);
• The PO had to be given authority to use Medicare’s provider reimbursement rates; and
• The insurance industry had to be required to offer the same minimum level of benefits the PO had to offer.

Hacker predicted, and both of the Lewin Group reports concluded, that if these specifications were met Hacker’s plan would enjoy all three of Medicare’s advantages – it would be huge, it would have low overhead costs, and it would pay providers less than the insurance industry did. As a result, the “public option” would be able to set its premiums below those of the insurance industry and seize nearly half the non-elderly market from the insurance industry. According to the Lewin Group’s 2008 report, Hacker’s version of the “public option” would, as of 2007:

• Enroll 129 million enrollees (or 50 percent of the non-elderly);
• Have overhead costs equal to 3 percent of expenditures;
• Pay hospitals 26 percent less and doctors 17 percent less than the insurance industry (but these discounts would be offset to some degree by increases in payments to providers treating former Medicaid enrollees); and,
• Set its premiums 23 below those of the average insurance company.

I question some of Hacker’s and the Lewin Group’s assumptions, including their assumption that any public program that has to sell health insurance in competition with insurance companies could keep its overhead costs anywhere near those of Medicare (Medicare is a single-payer program that has no competition), especially during the early years when the public program will be scrambling to sign up enrollees. A public program will have to hire a sales force and advertise. It will have to open offices. It will have to negotiate rates, and perhaps contracts, with thousands of hospitals and hundreds of thousands of clinics, chemical treatment facilities, rehab units, home health agencies, etc. Or it will have to contract with someone to do all that. But I have little doubt that if a public program were to open with a large enough customer base, and it had the advantage of a law requiring that only its customers receive substantial subsidies, it could do what the Lewin Group said it could do.

Now let us compare Hacker’s original model with the mousey “public options” proposed by the Senate HELP Committee and the House. Of Hacker’s five criteria, only one is met by these bills! Both proposals require the insurance industry to cover the same benefits the “public option” must cover. None of the other four criteria are met. The “public option” is not pre-populated, the subsidies to employers and to individuals go to the “public option” and the insurance industry, employees of large employers cannot buy insurance from the “public option” in the first few years after the plan opens for business and maybe never (that decision will be made by whoever is President around 2015), and the “public option” is not authorized to use Medicare’s provider payment rates. (The House bill comes the closest to authorizing use of Medicare’s rates; it authorizes Medicare’s rates plus 5 percent).

Is it any wonder the CBO concluded the Democrats’ “public option” will be a tiny little creature incapable of doing much of anything? More curious is that CBO gave the House “public option” any credit at all (you will recall CBO said it would enroll maybe 10 million people). The CBO should have asked, Can the “public option” - as presented in either bill - survive?

Put yourself in the “public option” director’s shoes

To see why the “public option” proposed by congressional Democrats remains at great risk of stillbirth, let’s engage in a frustrating thought experiment. Let’s imagine Congress has enacted the House version (it is not quite as weak as the HELP Committee model and thus gives us the greatest opportunity in our thought experiment to imagine a scenario in which the “public option” actually survives its start-up phase). Let us imagine furthermore that you have been foolish enough to apply for the

job of executive director of the new “public option,” and the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (the federal agency within which the program will be housed) decided to hire you. It’s your first day on the job.

You know the House bill did not create a ready-made pool of enrollees for you to work with the way the 1965 Medicare law created a ready-made pool of seniors prior to the day Medicare commenced operations. You realize, in other words, that you represent not a single soul, much less tens of millions of enrollees. You will have to build a pool of enrollees from scratch. You also know the House bill authorized some start-up money for you, so you’ll be able to hire some staff, including sales people if you choose. You can also open offices around the country, and advertise if you think it necessary. But you know you can’t pay out too much money getting the “public option” started because the House bill requires that you pay back whatever start-up costs you incur within ten years. In other words, you may hire enough people and open enough offices and buy enough advertising to create a critical mass of enrollees nationwide, but you must do it quickly so that your start-up costs don’t sink the “public option” during its first decade.

The only other feature in the House bill that appears to give you any advantage over the insurance industry is the provision requiring you to use Medicare’s rates plus 5 percent, which essentially means you are authorized to pay providers 15 percent less than the insurance industry pays on average. But the House bill also says providers are free to refuse to participate in the plan you run.

So what do you do? Let’s say you open offices in dozens or hundreds of cities, you hire a sales force to fan out across the country to sign up customers, you advertise on radio and TV to get potential customers (employers and individuals) to call your new sales force to inquire about the new “public option” insurance policy. What happens when potential customers ask your salespeople two obvious questions: what will the premium be and which doctors they can see? What do your employees say? They can’t say anything. They haven’t talked to any clinics or hospitals about participating at the 15-percent-below-industry-average payment rate, so they have no idea which providers if any will agree to participate. They also have no idea what the “public option” premium will be because they don’t know whether providers will accept the low rates the plan is authorized to pay. And they have no idea about several other factors that will affect the premiums, including how much overhead the “public option” will rack up before it reaches a state of viability, or who the “public option” will be insuring – healthy people, sick people, or people of average health status.

So, let’s say you redeploy your sales force. Now instead of talking to potential customers, you direct them to focus on providers first. But when your salespeople call on doctors and hospital administrators and ask them if they’ll agree to take enrollees at below-average payment rates, providers ask how many people the “public option” will enroll in their area. Providers explain to your salespeople that they are already giving huge discounts, some as high as 30 to 40 percent off their customary charge, to the largest insurers in their area and they are not eager to do that for the “public option” unless the plan will have such a large share of the market in their area that it will deliver many patients to them. If the “public option” cannot do that, providers tell your salespeople, they will not agree to accept below-average payment rates.

In other words, you find that the “public option” is at the mercy of the private insurance market, not the other way around.

This thought experiment illustrates for you the mind-numbing chicken-and-egg problem created by any “public option” project that does not meet Hacker’s criteria, most notably, the criterion requiring pre-population of the “public option.” If the pre-population criterion isn’t met, the poor chump who has to create the “public option” is essentially being asked to solve a problem that is as difficult as describing the sound of one hand clapping. You need both hands to clap.

How did the mouse replace the elephant?

How did the “Medicare Plus” proposal of 2001 (when Hacker first proposed it) get transformed into the tiny “public options” contained in the Democrats’ 2009 legislation? The answer is that somewhere along the line it became obvious that the Hacker model was too difficult to enact and had to be stripped down to something more mouse-like in order to pass. Did the leading “public option” advocates realize this early in the campaign? Or midway through the campaign when the insurance industry began to attack the “public option”? Or late in the campaign when they found it difficult to persuade members of Congress to support Hacker’s original model? Whatever the answer, will they find it in their hearts to tell their followers their original strategy was wrong?

I suspect the answer is different for different actors within the “public option” movement. Hacker surely knew what was in his original proposal and surely knows now that the Democrats’ bills don’t reflect his original proposal. Hacker and others familiar with his original proposal were probably betrayed by the process. As the “public option” concept became famous and edged its way toward the centers of power, they couldn’t find the courage to resist the transformation of the original proposal into the mouse model.

For other actors within the “public option” movement, ignorance of Hacker’s original proposal and of health policy in general may have led them to rely on more knowledgeable leaders in the movement. Their error, in other words, was to trust the wrong people and, as the “public option” came under attack, to cave in to group think. This error was facilitated by the “public option” movement’s decision to avoid mentioning any details of the “public option” whenever possible.

What next?

Those of us in the American single-payer movement must continue to educate Congress and the public on the need for a single-payer system. We must also convince advocates of the “public option” that they have made two serious mistakes and, if they learn quickly from these mistakes, that real reform is still possible.

The first mistake was to think that a “public option” that merely took over a large chunk of the non-elderly market (as opposed to one that took over the entire market) could substantially reduce health care costs and thereby make universal coverage politically feasible. Any proposal that leaves in place a multiple-payer system — even a multiple-payer system with a large government-run program in the middle of it — is going to save very little money. Even if Hacker’s original Health Care for America Plan had taken over half the non-elderly market and then reached homeostasis (something Hacker swore up and down it would do), the savings would have been relatively small. The reason for that is twofold. First, any insurance program, public or private, that has to compete with other insurers is going to have overhead costs substantially higher than Medicare’s. (It is precisely because Medicare is a single-payer program that its overhead costs are low.) Second, the multiple-payer system Hacker would leave in place would continue to impose unnecessarily large overhead costs on providers.

The second mistake the “public option” movement made was to think the insurance industry and the right wing would treat a “public option” more gently than a single-payer. Conservatives have a long history of treating small incremental proposals such as “comparative effectiveness research” as the equivalent of “a government takeover of the health care system.” It should have been no surprise to anyone that conservatives would shriek “socialism!” at the sight of the “public option,” even the mouse model propose

d by the Democrats.

The bait-and-switch strategy adopted by the “public option” movement has put the Democrats in a terrible quandary. Seduced by the false advertising about the potency of the “public option” to lower costs, Democrats have raised public expectations for reform to unprecedented levels. Failing to meet those expectations during the 2009 session of Congress, which is inevitable if the Democrats continue to promote legislation like the bills released in June, is going to have unpleasant consequences. Is there no way out of this quandary?

Conventional wisdom holds that if the Democrats don’t pass a health care reform bill by December, they will have to wait till 2013 to try again. But if the “public option” movement were to join forces with the single-payer movement, the two movements could prove the conventional wisdom wrong. This won’t happen, obviously, if the “public option” movement fails to perceive the reasons it failed.

It is conceivable the “public option” movement could decide the bait-and-switch strategy was wrong and that their only error was not to stick with Hacker’s original model. It should be obvious now that that would also be a tactical blunder. We have plenty of evidence now that conservatives will react to the mousey version of the “public option” as if it were “a stalking horse for single-payer.” We can predict with complete certainty they will treat Hacker’s original version as something even closer to single-payer. If a proposal is going to be abused as if it were single-payer, why not actually propose a single-payer? At least then, when a particular session of Congress comes and goes and we haven’t enacted a single-payer system, we will have educated the public about the benefits of a single-payer and have further strengthened the single-payer movement.

To sum up, “public option” advocates must choose between continuing to promote the “public option” and seeing their hopes for cost containment and universal coverage go up in smoke for another four years, and throwing their considerable influence behind single-payer legislation. At this late date in the 2009 session, it is unlikely that a single-payer bill could be passed even if unity within the universal coverage movement could be achieved. But if the “public option” wing and the single-payer wing join together to demand that Congress enact a single-payer system, December 2009 need not constitute a deadline.

Kip Sullivan belongs to the steering committee of the Minnesota chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.

If Public Option were what it purports to be..what it is misrepresented to be (ie akin to Hackers plan which really doesn't seem like it needed a PhD to formulate) then it would basically BE single payer apart from details. However, it would also drive private insurers out of business almost by definition

So it seems to me that the continued sway of for-profit insurance is really the dividing line on this issue moreso than anyone honestly being "fooled" by the crappy Public Option on the table. For someone to even perceive a difference between PO and single payer, they have to be aware that PO is the more watered down of the two. Given that both are going to receive an equal amount of conservative heat -- even in the neutered form being tossed about currently -- there is no reason other than one to support some crappy PO-lite knockoff. And the reason is they want private insurers to maintain their stranglehold on people's health and wellbeing

Try asking some of the BO-care supporters about it: they lapse into them/us (ie you uninsured mass, we comfortably insured people). They know very well that their dividing line is haves and have-nots. One of them told me that in those exact words today.

If Public Option were what it purports to be..what it is misrepresented to be (ie akin to Hackers plan which really doesn't seem like it needed a PhD to formulate) then it would basically BE single payer apart from details. However, it would also drive private insurers out of business almost by definition

So it seems to me that the continued sway of for-profit insurance is really the dividing line on this issue moreso than anyone honestly being "fooled" by the crappy Public Option on the table. For someone to even perceive a difference between PO and single payer, they have to be aware that PO is the more watered down of the two. Given that both are going to receive an equal amount of conservative heat -- even in the neutered form being tossed about currently -- there is no reason other than one to support some crappy PO-lite knockoff. And the reason is they want private insurers to maintain their stranglehold on people's health and wellbeing

Try asking some of the BO-care supporters about it: they lapse into them/us (ie you uninsured mass, we comfortably insured people). They know very well that their dividing line is haves and have-nots. One of them told me that in those exact words today.



PO was the watered down version, it has been "switched" and won't even cover 10 million of those not covered today...its horrible, the summary I found is pdf, I don't know how to post that here. I am posting the article above at du, right now, if you know anyone there, ahem, give it a kick! Though very few will read the whole thing, which it is important to do, I think.
Plus the whole thing is just a plan to not only keep private insurance viable, but actually, I think, to possibly raise its profitability!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6120089

I'm going to copy and paste elsewhere...look for flamers!

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=print/content/obama-health-care-plan-really-
better-nothing (http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=print/content/obama-health-care-plan-really-bette
r-nothing)

Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?
By Bruce A. Dixon
Created 07/22/2009 - 08:39

Candidate Barack Obama told us to judge his first term by whether he delivers quality affordable health care for all Americans, including nearly fifty million uninsured. So why does his proposal not cover the uninsured till 2013, after the next presidential election when Medicare took only 11 months to cover its first 40million seniors? Why are corporate media pretending that no opinions exist to Obama's left? And why has the public option part of the Obama health care plan shrunk from covering 130 million to only 10 million, with 16 million left uninsured altogether?

Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

The health care debate inside and outside the matrix

Like just about everything else, your take on the national health care debate depends on whether you're inside or outside the matrix.

Within the bubble of fake reality blown by corporate media and bipartisan political establishment, the health care news is that the Obama Plan [1] is at last making its way through Congress. It's being fought by greedy private insurance companies, by chambers of commerce, by Republican and some Democratic lawmakers.

Under the Obama plan, we're told, employers will have to insure their employees or pay into a fund that does it for them. Individuals will be required under penalty of law to buy private insurance policies and for those that can't afford it or prefer not to use a private insurer there will be something called a “public option.” This “public option, the story goes, is bitterly fought by the bad guys because it will make private insurers accountable by competing with them, forcing them to lower their costs. Both the president's backers and opponents agree that the whole thing will be fantastically expensive, and the president proposes to fund it with cuts in existing programs like Medicaid which pay for the care of the poorest Americans and a tax on those making more than $300,000 a year.

The “public option” has that magic word “public” in it, and that's reassuring to progressives and to most of the American people. Taxing the rich is a popular idea too. So if you rely on corporate media, the administration, or some of the so-called progressive blogs to identify the players and keep the score, it seems a pretty clear case of President Obama on the side of the angels, battling the greedy insurance companies, Republicans and blue dog Democrats to bring us universal, affordable health care.

That whole picture has about as much reality as the ones the same corporate media and most of the same politicians drew for us about Iraq, 9-11, weapons of mass destruction and some people over there who wanted us to free them. Iraq and the White House were and remain actual places, and there really is a problem called health care. But the places, problems and solutions are very different from the bubble of fake reality blown around them.

What sustains this fake reality is the diligent suppression from public space of any viewpoints, observations or proposals to Obama's left. As long as the illusion that nobody has a better idea, that the only choice we have is Obama's way or the Republicans' way can be maintained, the crooked game can go on.

But bubbles are delicate things. Keeping this one intact requires so many vital topics to be avoided, so many inquiring eyes to be averted, so many fruitful conversations to be squelched that it's hard to see how the president, the bipartisan establishment and the corporate media can pull it all off.

The real Obama Plan: doesn't cover the uninsured till 2013, if then.

The first clue that something is deeply wrong with the Obama health care proposal is its timeline. According to a copyrighted July 21 AP story by Ricardo Alfonso-Zaldivar,

“President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare law on July 30, 1965, and 11 months later seniors were receiving coverage. But if President Barack Obama gets to sign a health care overhaul this fall, the uninsured won't be covered until 2013 — after the next presidential election.

“In fact, a timeline of the 1,000-page health care bill crafted by House Democrats shows it would take the better part of a decade — from 2010-2018 — to get all the components of the far-reaching proposal up and running.”

More at link above

Pretty big turnout!! much, much bigger than the Public Option press conference/rally!! and significantly bigger than the HCAN rally in the same park recently! We marched by the press conference with our signs; we were way over a thousand I'd say! not bad for the first of its kind...

Quick "personal story" as we walked from Union Station to our initial info gathering site we walked by a man on a park bench pan handling. I stopped and gave him some money and asked how he was doing. He said ok, and then said that he was pan handling to cover the cost of his medications for diabetes (like he felt guilty,). I said it was awful that he had to ask for help from others for his drug costs; I told him about the rally and he seemed interested and gratified that some people are working on his problem and others. It was pretty serendipitous I thought, and I did mention it while lobbying...Derrick M. was his name...

Thanks for the report Mary.

copied direct from my email...preface (in italics) for the first article on edit, will have to send my comrade the preface to share... links provided on edit
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/04-5

Sick Man Lookin’ for a Doctor’s Cure

by Christopher Cooper

A preface for CommonDreams readers: We can reduce the time any of us will invest posting or reading comments on this essay if I explain its purpose and field position before you begin. There is nothing in the sixteen hundred words following that you do not already know. I expect general agreement with my opinion and similar disgust with the conditions and persons I describe.

But you and I are liberals or progressives or socialists or worse. Most of our neighbors are those magnificent moderates every politician courts. Many, even contrary to their own interests, are passionate self-described conservatives. It is to these persons I address my columns. Before arriving at this website my essays are published on the editorial page of The Wiscasset Newspaper, a very small paper in a state that ought properly be part of maritime Canada. After almost eleven years I still marvel that my editor lets me do this. I feel a great obligation to use my prominent space to promote ideas and ways of thinking that I believe to be right but which are seldom granted an honest hearing in such inherently cautious journals.

If this essay seems shallow and obvious to you it might nevertheless seem radical and dangerous to someone you know. Perhaps even to your senator or congressman. Use the time you might spend complaining on CommonDreams to plant some doubts and suspicions in those persons' minds.

***



***

I know you'd like me to tell you this business will work out all right. I'd like to tell you it will be fine. I imagine it would feel very nice to be flushed with optimism. And probably I'd be more popular and subject to less eye-rolling, head-shaking, wincing, grimacing and disgusted, dismissive looks. But since 1935 at least, when Fats Waller first apprised us of the truth, we've all known it's a sin to tell a lie.

None of the clowns and conspirators presently pontificating over and pawing at the putrid edges of our corrupt, cruel and wasteful health care funding system down in Washington, D.C. has any intention toward replacing this business as usual with anything that will do any good for those of us who will become sick, injured or old and who will need to hire doctors or hospitals or pharmacists sometime before we die.

I wish we could just blame the Republicans. You know, the same patriotic, God-addled, small-minded, small-business lovers who did such a magnificent job of running our country into ruin for the last eight years with unnecessary wars, domestic spying, torturing, catering to financiers, jacking up the national debt, poisoning rivers, alienating allies, lying as a matter of policy and personal preference, forcing a brain-dead Florida woman to linger as living dead and turning Dick Cheney loose on an elderly judge with a shotgun.

And they would, for sure, keep your costs high and your receipt of useful services low if they were in charge, but since last January, you know, they haven't been. Now in the minority in Congress and having alienated all but their craziest, most ignorant, most violent followers, the Republicans are our great national joke party. Except perhaps to Senator Reid who is still scared of them since they made him promise never to use the filibuster against them a few years ago, and President Obama who frequently claims a burning urge to create a bastard child called Bipartisanship with them, what good purpose this hideous hybrid might serve never being made clear.

You might think, if you watch television or read the newspapers, the obstacle in the way of reform is those Blue Dog Democrats. A body of pseudo-Democrats, principally from districts in the southern and western states that would vote Republican if the Republicans could raise a candidate who was not under indictment, in jail or in bed with a boy, the guardians of our collective wealth worry that any money spent to keep poor persons from suffering and dying would be too great a price for our millionaires and our corporations to pay. But they could, some of them, be whacked into shape if the chairmen of several committees (Democrats), leaders of both houses (Democrats) and their president (a Democrat with a recent landslide victory and high popularity numbers among the public and the press) cared to discipline them.

We can't fault President Obama, can we? He's no George Bush. And almost everybody you talk to will remind you how eloquent he is. When he was a candidate he was unequivocal in his support for the only system that can assure quality medical care for every citizen -- government-funded care known euphemistically, unnecessarily, annoyingly as Single Payer. Well he was but now he isn't. Not practical. Off the table. Fuggedaboutit.

President Obama likes compromise. He likes it so much it seems that he makes it his opening gambit, rather than a last resort. Meet with the giant insurance companies and they promise to be more reasonable in the future in exchange for only token changes now. Meet with the big hospitals and they say they'll keep costs in line. Chat up the boys at the AMA; cross-check the big players with your campaign donors list; and you're a convert from bold reform to marginal tinkering.

You know -- practical stuff. Things Congress will pass because none of the moneyed interests will be hurt. Something that doesn't challenge the system that has given us the worst coverage at the greatest expense anywhere in the developed world and second-rate even by the standards of the more reasonable developing nations.

See, they're all in this together: Democrats, Republicans, Obama and the millionaires and billionaires who have been living fat off the combination of high premiums and denial of services that leave millions with no coverage and the majority in a constant struggle to keep afloat by buying a bigger deductible or praying for a job with better coverage.

And what does getting sick and getting well have to do with employment? Nothing. It's just a holdover from the early post-war years when it was cheaper for big companies to throw a few benefits to the unions than to increase wages. So now we debate whether to make individuals buy insurance they can't afford and how small a company will be exempt from mandatory insurance provision and how many years of subsidy of insurance a trillion dollars of public dollars will supply. But every bit of the debate has been about insurance, not about health care. And that's just the way your senator and representative and president like it.

And for all I know, so do you. If your employer pays a hundred per cent of your insurance premium and ninety per cent of your family members' premiums, you think this system works quite well. Unless you have a high co-pay. Or a high deductible. Or a raft of exemptions and uncovered conditions. Or you get really sick and are old enough and the gnomes and elves and computers at the insurance company scrutinize your policy and tell you your particular combination of needs and treatments is not medically necessary, by which they mean to say it will be cheaper for them if you just die. And so you will.

Or you could lose your job. Some have in recent months, you know. No job, no insurance, no luck.

But we don't want the damn government messing in our health care, do we? No. That would be socialism. Ask any Blue Dog, any Republican, any insurance company CEO. The

government cannot compete with the private sector.

Unless of course you're over 65: Medicare. Or a veteran: VA doctors and hospitals. Or very poor and meet certain specific requirements: Medicaid. Or a member of Congress: "Fix it, Doc, and send the bill to The People!"

All but a very few members of that latter body are bought and owned by insurance and drug companies. You can look it up. And President Obama achieved his office also with the financial assistance of those civic-minded bodies who knew, somehow, that "Change we can believe in" would not threaten their profit margins. So if it's left to the people fooling around with our lives in D.C. to do right by us we can expect more of what they've been providing. Thousands more of us each day will become uninsured. Those with coverage will pay more and get less. When things get really bad for the really sick the policy will spring a loophole as often as not.

Congress will not change its ways. Only a few men and women there will fight for a public-financed system (as opposed to the useless and counter-productive "public option" amendment to the status quo that a few more will support.) Any bill that passes, any bill the president signs will only continue the torture we now enjoy.

But it could be otherwise. Lyndon Johnson had his flaws. But he was no Bill Clinton, no Barack Obama, no feel-your-pain- compromise- away-your-rights milquetoast. When that fat son of a bitch thought something was right he fought for it. Thus: Medicare. Don't like government health care? Don't sign up for it, citizens; repeal old age health insurance, you simple-minded legislators.

Suppose we had a president who did what he believed in. What if he twisted arms and bashed heads together and called in favors and crowded people into uncomfortable corners and used the great good will and support of the hopeful, desperate people whose votes put him in office in an unrelenting campaign to demand that the giant insurance companies find some other way to keep their executives in private jets and shiny suits and waterfront second homes. Or go out of business, if they prefer. What if he told us he would accept nothing less than a revolution in the way we fund health care so that there was no middleman, no profit taken out, no financiers between you and a cure, pain relief, well-being, good health and personal dignity.

All he would have to do is to say, "Single Payer." Then tell us all that single payer means government payer, not government-as- doctor. He would have to talk about health care reform, not insurance reform. I've got fire insurance and car insurance and liability insurance. I've got all the insurances right there I can afford. Give me a plan where I go to the doctor and the doctor gets paid by somebody who doesn't skim twenty or thirty per cent off the top, doesn't drown me or my doctor in paperwork, and gets the wherewithal to keep the system running with a broad-based, progressive tax on everyone.

Call it Single Payer if you like. But don't expect that or anything like it until we've tweaked the present mess to the satisfaction of all the big players and let it run another eight or ten years so we can see how much suffering that will cause.

I'm five years from Medicare. My health care plan until then is to pray to somebody's god to keep me whole and halfway healthy. I don't expect that will be very efficient, but there's no paperwork, clear expectations and an affordable premium.
------------ --------- ---------

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/458046/why_single_payer_advocacy_matters_now_more_than_ever
Haven't read or posted anything from the Nation is a long, long time, but, there is a point to be said here for really pushing for this in the September house vote..."hope" springs eternal here, I guess...Dream on?

Why Single Payer Advocacy Matters Now More Than Ever

by John Nichols
How should serious supporters of health-care reform spend the month of August?

Not by getting trapped in the narrow "debate" between "party of no" Republicans who favor no reform at all, and Blue Dog Democrats, whose "reform" is to make a bad system worse.

And not by campaigning for "buzz words – "public option," "employer mandates" – or whatever President Obama or Speaker Pelosi happen to favor this week. There will be plenty of advertising and organizing to that end, including a $15 million expenditure by the AFL-CIO.

Americans who want to tip the debate in the most progressive direction should take advantage an opening provided at the last minute during negotiations to get a bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

And they should do so by advocating even more aggressively for single-payer health care.

One of the many side deals that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and Energy and Commerce chair Henry Waxman, D-California, had to cut to get the votes they needed for the compromise reform measure that was approved before the House broke for its August recess will allow a floor vote on real reform.

Waxman sidetracked a move by New York Congressman Anthony Weiner to replace his proposal with a single-payer plan by agreeing – with Pelosi's approval – to schedule a vote by the full House on the plan to replace the current for-profit system with a Medicare-style plan that covers all Americans and controls costs.

"A lot of members on our committee want a vote on that," Waxman, a California Democrat who has worked closely with the Speaker to advance a moderate reform agenda, said of single-payer. "I believe their wishes will be accommodated. "

Weiner is declaring a sort of victory, saying that: "Single-payer is a better plan and now it is on center stage. Americans have a clear choice. Their Member of Congress will have a simpler, less expensive and smarter bill to choose. I am thrilled that the Speaker is giving us that choice."

Of course, getting a September vote on single-payer does not mean that single-payer will get the votes.

With the Obama administration and congressional leaders determined to compromise rather than fight, it is unlikely in the extreme that the current debate will end with the adoption of a single-payer plan. Even if the House approved one, it would still face a fight in the Senate.

But just as Republicans are willing to just say "no" to any reform, progressives should just say "yes" to real reform.

Campaigning for single-payer in August – by demanding that members of the House agree to support such a plan when it comes up for a vote, and by urging senators to schedule and support a similar vote in their chamber – is the best was to assure that whatever reform ultimately comes will err on the side of Americans who need health care rather than insurance companies that would deny them that care.

At the very least, single-payer advocacy should preserve an amendment sponsored by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, which would allow states to experiment with single-payer programs even if the federal government refuses to do so. That's a significant matter, since Canada's national health care program began with single-payer experiments at the provincial level.

The worst mistake that progressives could make in August would be to put their time and energy into getting members of Congress to agree to back a barely-acceptable compromise that could end up being unacceptable by the time the lobbyists and their political handmaidens finish with it.

Better to get representatives and senators to commit to back single-payer bills.
<

br />That does not prevent them from ultimately agreeing to compromise measures.

But it gets them to begin on the side of real reform, and lessens the likelihood that the eventual deals will be as bad as the schemes that the Blue Dogs tried to impose before the break.

Perhaps just as importantly, a strong vote for single-payer will remind the Obama administration that the president was right when he said six years ago that single-payer was the right response to the mess that private insurers and their allies have made of our health-care system.

Groups that back single-payer are gearing up for August activism.

Keep track of the most important advocacy on the health care issue by following the work of Physicians for a Natonal Health Program at www.pnhp.org, the California Nurses Association at http://www.pdameric a.org.

Activist David Swanson is suggesting that this should be "Single-Payer Summer."

Swanson's right.

Only if Americans who favor real reform make this "Single-Payer Summer" will we have anything worth considering in the fall.

Posted both articles from above at DU,
Cooper's sank:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6224891&mesg_id=6224891

Nichols article doing ok:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6224851&mesg_id=6224851

Posted both articles from above at DU,
Cooper's sank:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6224891&mesg_id=6224891

Nichols article doing ok:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6224851&mesg_id=6224851


Thanks for fighting the good fight. For what it's worth, I've posted responses to both your threads.

Posted both articles from above at DU,
Cooper's sank:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6224891&mesg_id=6224891

Nichols article doing ok:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6224851&mesg_id=6224851


Mary, I see that shithead mod, proud patriot, modified your OP for 'copyright purposes'. Was anything important removed?

Posted both articles from above at DU,
Cooper's sank:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6224891&mesg_id=6224891

Nichols article doing ok:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6224851&mesg_id=6224851


Mary, I see that shithead mod, proud patriot, modified your OP for 'copyright purposes'. Was anything important removed?


He left the link intact, I think, but didn't put in the parts I would have...left the other article alone...thanks!

I know we have the BAR on the front page here, but this is too pertinent to this thread to not put it here, I think:

The Battle For Health Care: Between Now and Labor Day, It's Still On
By Bruce A. Dixon
Created 08/05/2009 - 08:49

obama health care againby BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
President Obama told us to judge his first term on whether he managed to provide quality, affordable health care to the American people, especially the uninsured and underinsured.. With various versions of his bill not beginning to cover the uninsured till 2013, it seems a test the administration has forgotten, and hopes that we will too. We won't. The weeks between now and Labor Day will be decisive in determining what, if anything, comes out of congress this year. This is no time to lay back, or to wait and see. This is the critical time to organize and educate, to mobilize and to act.

The Battle For Health Care: Between Now and Labor Day, It's Still On
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

While the failure of the Obama Administration and its allies in Congress to agree even among themselves on the contents of health care reform legislation is bad news for the White House, it may be quite good news for the American people. Far from being over, or even being in recess, the scene of the ongoing battle for health care reform shifts between now and Labor Day to hundreds of congressional district offices, to formal and informal house and neighborhood meetings, in thousands of cities and towns, to web sites and email lists across the nation.
The White House, blue dog democrats and the blue cross democrats too all wanted this thing settled by now. Their aim was to pass a toothless and dishonest bill that would take the issue of health care reform off the table without providing health care to the uninsured. For the last two weeks BAR has provided some of the damning and well-known features of HR 3200 which are rarely mentioned in corporate media such as the facts that

*

few or none of the uninsured would be covered till 2013
*

you could be forced to purchase junk insurance
*

the right to bargain drug prices down has been given away
*

the administration won't reimport Canadian drugs
*

the public option will only cover about 10 million people instead of the promised 120-130 million
*

the public option won't be able to keep insurance companies honest or drive prices downward
*

the public option was emphatically NOT Medicare, and expressly designed not to lead to any version of single payer or Medicare for All.
*

nobody knows what the "health care co-ops" which the administration has agreed might be substituted for the public option are, whether they are "co-ops" of health care providers or health care consumers or health insurance brokers or providers, and no explanations have been offered

As Barack Obama's family doctor explained in several interviews [1], the versions of the bill in several committees were hopelessly compromised and worse than no bill at all. And congress will not meet again till the first week of September.

Small wonder. In the U.S., elected officials of either party answer to voters only once every two, four or six years. But wealthy lobbyists, in many cases their own former and future employees, their spouses, in-laws, family members and former colleagues, have the ears of powerful Republicans and Democrats every day. Unlike ordinary citizens, these lobbyists have their cell phones on speed dial and are frequent visitors to their homes and offices. They spend billions of dollars every election cycle on direct campaign contributions, patronage and a galaxy of favors, many untraceable and most unmatchable by mere citizens. This is how bipartisan corporate power usually trumps people power. The same Barack Obama who was swept in by tens of millions wanting change, accepted $19 million in 2008 from the insurance industry alone, according to the Center For Responsive Politics. This does not include additional contributions from the health care and pharmaceutical industries, or any of the vast sums coming directly from the law firms and relatives of their lobbyists, or directly from lobbyists themselves as so-called small individual contributions.

The fact is that Democrats, including the president and his allies are deeply conflicted. To varying degrees, they are owned by the very interests health care reform would threaten. The act would be transparently obvious to everyone, but for a deceitful corporate media which allow not the slightest hint that any sane or responsible person has a point of view to the left of the administration.

The most salient fact of the health care battle not covered in the corporate media is that two thirds or more of Americans do favor a single payer or Medicare For All health care system that covers everyone. This view is of course completely shut out of TV, radio and print coverage, leading Americans to believe that their own beliefs are somehow extreme and isolated and not shared. But it's not. Congress knows, the White House knows, Big Insurance, Big Health Care and Big Pharma all know that single payer is ordinary, majoritarian American wisdom.

As such, it cannot be resisted forever. If it were not for hundreds of thousands of pro-single payer faxes, emails, and phone calls constantly bombarding the White House, members of the Senate and Congress and the corporate media, along with the unceasing background drumbeat of sinbgle payer activism in towns and cities and rural areas and on the internet, there probably would never have been a public option proposed, and whatever Obama and corporate Democrats have given away in the last few weeks of negotiation would have been surrendered before the start of any talks at all.

The interval between now and Labor Day is a time for negotiation,a time for argument, a time for struggle. Nobody negotiates by giving up the store at the start. Just as salespeople learn that “no” is the start of the conversation, we have to let go of the notion, and let go of leaders with the notion that it's wise and “pragmatic” to give up on covering everybody. We need to come up with new ways of formulating our real demand, which is Medicare For All. We need to press that demand in two directions --- upward toward our elected officials and media, and inward to other ordinary people like ourselves.

Visiting the offices of elected officials is critically important, but not more important than communicating simple, effective single payer arguments to the people we live, and work and worship among. If you know the difference between the shrunken and eviscerated public option and Medicare for All, you need to tell your mother, your auntie, your co-workers. You need to pass on simple effective and persuasive arguments and demands, like why not lower the Medicare eligibility age three years every January till everybody is covered. Why not?

It's time to demand your representative's vote when single payer reaches the floor later this year, and to insist that the ability for states who desire it to enact their own single payer legislation be retained in whatever bill is passed this year. Even if you do not support single payer, and just want a fair and effective public option, and coverage of the uninsured, know that single payer activis

m, single payer pressure makes your demands stronger. And get out there to make your demands too. It's now or never.

This is a time to organize visits of half a dozen or more constituents at a time to the offices of your senator and representative, whether that person is a Republican or a Democrat. If you film that visit, we'll feature it on Black Agenda Report, and if you're near the Marietta GA office of Phil Gingrey, email me at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com, and let's plan to make that visit together with a few dozen of our closest friends. This is a time to join some single payer organizations and mailing lists. Pick one and join it, and take part in something, a mass co-ordinated mail or phone event or teach-in this month. If you're a nurse or health care professional, you should be joining the mailing lists of the National Nurses Association [2] and/or Physicians For a National Health Care [3] program. You can contribute to and get involved with Single Payer Action [4], As kwame Toure used to say, pick an organization that's going sixty percent of where you want to go, and join it. If you can't find such an organization, start one.



Source URL: http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/battle-health-care%C2%A0-between-now-and-labor-day-its-still

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/08/05/are-health-insurers-making-too-much-money/

If ever you were going to visit, call, write, email your representative for anything do it now whether you think it will do anything or not regarding the vote on HR 676 in September; tell them to make sure the vote comes up and to vote yes. Please, and spread this word. Also if your rep has endorsed it, s/he has probably also endorsed HR 3200; they can vote for this and not have to pull away from the other right now, but we need some reps to put the pressure on other reps. (Hinchey is one who needs to help push, hint, hint...)

Also, interesting info here-in, this conference is a week before the G20, Pittsburgh is hot this year, deadline is 4 days away, it any here are savvy of unions close to endorsing:

Many HR 676 Resolutions submitted to AFL-CIO Convention

>From South Carolina to Alaska and California to Vermont over 40 labor
organizations have sent in resolutions calling on the AFL-CIO Convention
to endorse HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by
Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

The AFL-CIO convention will meet in Pittsburgh September 13-17th. The
deadline for resolutions to be received is August 14.

Resolutions can be emailed to resolutions-amendments@aflcio.org or, if
that is not possible, send three copies by mail to the AFL-CIO
secretary-treasurer at 815 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006. To
confirm receipt of your resolution, call (202) 637-3907.

The sample resolution from the Troy Area Labor Council is available here:
http://www.pefencon.info/HR676/Resolution.htm

We have received reports that the following union organizations have sent
HR 676 resolutions in for the convention:

Albany County Central Federation of Labor, NY
Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council, PA
Bergen County Central Trades & Labor Council, NJ
Blair Bedford Central Labor Council, PA
Butler County United Labor Council, PA
California School Employees Association, CA
Capital District Area Labor Federation, NY
Dayton Miami Valley AFL-CIO, OH
Duluth, MN AFL-CIO Central Labor Body, MN
Erie Crawford Central Labor Council, PA
Essex West Hudson Central Labor Council, NJ
Greater Charleston Central Labor Council, SC
Greater Green Bay Labor Council, WI
Greater Southeastern Mass Labor Council, MA
Greater Westmoreland County Labor Council, PA
Huron Valley Central Labor Council, MI
Juneau Central Labor Council, AK
Kentucky Tri-County Council of Labor, KY
Marquette County Labor Council, MI
Mercer County Central Labor Council, NJ
Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, MN
Northern Kentucky Labor Council, KY
North Bay Central Labor Council, CA
North Shore Labor Council, MA
Northwest Central Labor Council, IN
San Joaquin Calaveras Counties Central Labor Council, CA
San Mateo County Central Labor Council, CA
Sheboygan County Labor Council, WI
South Carolina AFL-CIO, SC
South Central Federation of Labor, WI
South Central Iowa Federation of Labor, IA
Southern Iowa Labor Council, IA
Stanislaus and Tuolumne Counties Central Labor Council, CA
Tarrant County Central Labor Council, TX
Tri County Regional Labor Council, OH
Troy Area Labor Council, NY
Vermont State Labor Council, VT
Washington-Orange-Lamoille Labor Council, VT
Webb County Central Labor Council, TX
White River Central Labor Council, IN
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO, WI

Evil and Orwellian' – America's right turns its fire on NHS
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/11/nhs-united-states-republican-health

The National Health Service has become the butt of increasingly
outlandish political attacks in the US as Republicans and conservative
campaigners rail against Britain's "socialist" system as part of a
tussle to defeat Barack Obama's proposals for broader government
involvement in healthcare.

Top-ranking Republicans have joined bloggers and well-funded free market
organisations in scorning the NHS for its waiting lists and for
"rationing" the availability of expensive treatments.

As myths and half-truths circulate, British diplomats in the US are
treading a delicate line in correcting falsehoods while trying to stay
out of a vicious domestic dogfight over the future of American health
policy.

Slickly produced television advertisements trumpet the alleged failures
of the NHS's 61-year tradition of tax-funded healthcare. To the dismay
of British healthcare professionals, US critics have accused the service
of putting an "Orwellian" financial cap on the value on human life, of
allowing elderly people to die untreated and, in one case, for driving a
despairing dental patient to mend his teeth with superglue.

Having seen his approval ratings drop, Obama is seeking to counter this
conservative onslaught by taking his message to the public, with a "town
hall" meeting today at a school in New Hampshire.

Last week, the most senior Republican on the Senate finance committee,
Chuck Grassley, took NHS-baiting to a newly emotive level by claiming
that his ailing Democratic colleague, Edward Kennedy, would be left to
die untreated from a brain tumour in Britain on the grounds that he
would be considered too old to deserve treatment.

"I don't know for sure," said Grassley. "But I've heard several senators
say that Ted Kennedy with a brain tumour, being 77 years old as opposed
to being 37 years old, if he were in England, would not be treated for
his disease, because end of life – when you get to be 77, your life is
considered less valuable under those systems."

The degree of misinformation is causing dismay in NHS circles. Andrew
Dillon, chief executive of the National Institute for Health and
Clinical Excellence (Nice), pointed out that it was utterly false that
Kennedy would be left untreated in Britain: "It is neither true nor is
it anything you could extrapolate from anything we've ever recommended
to the NHS."

Others in the US have accused Obama of trying to set up "death panels"
to decide who should live and who should die, along the lines of Nice,
which determines the cost-effectiveness of NHS drugs.

One right-leaning group, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, lists
horror stories about British care on its website. An email widely
circulated among US voters, of uncertain origin, claims that anyone over
59 in Britain is ineligible for treatment for heart disease.

The British embassy in Washington is quietly trying to counter
inaccuracies. A spokesman said: "We're keeping a close eye on things and
where there's a factually wrong statement, we will take the opportunity
to correct people in private. That said, we don't want to get involved
in a domestic debate."

A $1.2m television advertising campaign bankrolled by the conservative
Club for Growth displays images of the union flag and Big Ben while
intoning a figure of $22,750. A voiceover says: "In England, government
health officials have decided that's how much six months of life is
worth. If a medical treatment costs more, you're out of luck."

The number is based on a ratio of £30,000 a year used by Nice in its
assessment of whether drugs provide value for money. Dillon said this
was one of many variables in determining cost-effectiveness of
medicines. He said of his body's portrayal in the US: "It's very
disappointing and it's not, obviously, the way in which Nice describes
itself or the way in which we're perceived in the UK even among those
who are disappointed or upset by our decisions."

On Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, the conservative commentator Sean
Hannity recently alighted upon the case of Gordon Cook, a security
manager from Merseyside, who used superglue to stick a loose crown into
his gum because he was unable to find an NHS dentist. The cautionary
tale, which was based on a Daily Mail report from 2006, prompted Hannity
to warn his viewers: "If the Democrats have their way, get your
superglue ready."

The broader tone of the US healthcare debate has become increasingly
bitter. The former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin last week
described president Obama's proposals as "evil", while the radio
presenter Rush Limbaugh has compared a logo used for the White House's
reform plans to a Nazi swastika. Hecklers have disrupted town hall
meetings called to discuss the health reform plans.

David Levinthal, a spokesman for the nonpartisan Centre for Responsive
Politics, said the sheer scale of the issue, which will affect the
entire trajectory of US medical care, was arousing passions: "It's no
surprise you have factions from every political stripe attempting to
influence the debate and some of those groups are certainly playing to
the deepest fears of Americans. There's been a great deal of documented
disinformation propagated throughout the country." Defenders of
Britain's system point out that the UK spends less per head on
healthcare but has a higher life expectancy than the US. The World
Health Organisation ranks Britain's healthcare as 18th in the world,
while the US is in 37th place. The British Medical Association said a
majority of Britain's doctors have consistently supported public
provision of healthcare. A spokeswoman said the association's 140,000
members were sceptical about the US approach to medicine: "Doctors and
the public here are appalled that there are so many people on the US who
don't have proper access to healthcare. It's something we would find
very, very shocking."


Print this

http://counterpunch.com/lindorff08122009.html
Why is Rationing by Income Better Than Rationing by Need?
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

By DAVE LINDORFF

1. If Canada's single-payer system is so god-awful, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Canada is a democracy. If Canadians don't like their health care system, why haven't they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer?

2. Why is rationing by income, as we do it here, better than rationing by need, as they do it in Canada?

3. Wouldn't single-payer mean that companies could no longer threaten working people with the loss of their health insurance? Why is this a bad idea?

4. The bigger the insurance pool, the better. So doesn't having a national pool, as with single-payer, make the most sense?

5. Why should we be allowing politicians who are taking money from the medical industry to write the new health care legislation?

6. How can the Congress be developing a health system reform scheme and not even invite experts from Canada down to explain their successful system?

7. If Medicare--a single-payer system here in America--is so popular with the elderly, how come it's no good for the rest of us?

8. Isn't it true that Medicare currently finances the most costly patient group--the elderly and infirm--so that extending it to the rest of the population--most of whom are young and healthy--would be much cheaper, per person?

9. The AMA, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Insurance Industry all bitterly opposed Medicare in 1964-5 when it was being debated in Congress and passed into law, with the right, led by Ronald Reagan, calling it creeping socialism. It became a life-saver for the elderly and didn't turn the US into a soviet republic. Why should we give a tinker's damn what those same three industry groups and the Republican right think of expanding single-payer now?

10. The executives of Canadian subsidiaries of US companies all support Canada's single-payer system, and even lobby collectively to have it expanded and better funded. Why does Congress listen to the executives of the parent companies here at home, and not invite those Canadian execs down to explain why they like single-payer?

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at dlindorff@mindspring.com





Single payer seems to be Lindorff's main thang these days! alright with me...

Trumka Tells Netroots Nation: “My Preference Is Single Payer”

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In a wide ranging speech to the annual
Netroots Nation Convention, Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer,
said, “My preference, and the feeling of many in the labor movement, is
that we should have a single payer health care system.” Netroots Nation
is the largest annual assembly of progressive bloggers and web
journalists.

Trumka’s speech followed an impassioned appeal for single payer by
Pennsylvania State Senator Jim Ferlo who presented the Paul Wellstone
Award to Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY). Massa is a co-sponsor and one of
the most outspoken supporters of HR 676, single payer healthcare
legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

Trumka will return to Pittsburgh in mid September for the AFL-CIO
Convention where he is expected to be elected President. More than fifty
resolutions calling for the endorsement of HR 676 have been submitted to
the convention.

Trumka’s remarks can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnNolT275Yw

HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a
greatly improved Medicare system to everyone residing in the U. S.

HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including
prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and
preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health,
physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision
care, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable
medical equipment, palliative care, and long term care.

HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of
billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the
private health insurance industry and HMOs.

In the current Congress, HR 676 has 86 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced SB 703, a single payer bill
in the Senate.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 556 union organizations in 49 states including
130 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 39 state
AFL-CIO's (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,
MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI,
MT, NE, NY, NV & MA).

For further information, a list of union endorsers, or a sample
endorsement resolution, contact:

Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org

AFL-CIO convention may feature showdown over health care
By Mark Gruenberg
16 August 2009
WASHINGTON - With one month to go before September’s national AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh, the biggest floor fight there may be over health care. And that floor fight, in turn, could affect the whole health care battle on Capitol Hill and nationally.
That’s because while the federation has supported and actively campaigned for legislation based on the principles of universality, cost controls, choosing your own doctor and a government-run alternative to the insurance companies, 552 labor bodies -- from international unions down to local councils -- want to go in a different direction: A government-run single-payer Medicare-like system.

So if the AFL-CIO yanks its support for legislation being considered in Congress, and backed by Democratic President Barack Obama, that legislation could sink.

As of Aug. 10, four days before the resolutions deadline, single-payer health care coverage advocates had sent 40 draft resolutions backing the bill (HR 676, S 703) to the AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer’s office. One was from the California School Employees Association, a union that sits on the AFL-CIO Executive Council.

While dozens of union groups back single-payer, the Executive Council has not -- so far. That may change, a CSEA council rep previously told Press Associates.

Backers include the Steelworkers, CSEA, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and more than a dozen other AFL-CIO unions. Several, but not those three, call single-payer one of several alternative roads to health care reform.

Other labor bodies sending single-payer resolutions to the AFL-CIO include two central labor councils in the greater Cleveland area (the Dayton-Miami Valley AFL-CIO and the Erie-Crawford Pa., CLC), two in the Iron Range (the Duluth AFL-CIO and the Marquette County, Mich., Labor Council), the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, many California central labor councils and the Wisconsin and South Carolina state feds.

The resolutions are blunt, with a model version, from Troy, N.Y., blasting the health insurance companies. The Troy CLC’s resolution not only supports the single-payer bill by long-time Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., but bars the AFL-CIO from taking a fall-back stand in favor of a “public option” in a wider health care reform plan.

If passed, the single-payer resolutions would put the federation on record as trashing and abolishing the private insurers and their high co-pays, premiums and deductibles, denial of care and resulting 101,000 deaths from refusal to pay for care.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

Troy Labor Council is serious!! tough as the machines many of them work with...great group...

AFL-CIO convention may feature showdown over health care
By Mark Gruenberg
16 August 2009
WASHINGTON - With one month to go before September’s national AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh, the biggest floor fight there may be over health care. And that floor fight, in turn, could affect the whole health care battle on Capitol Hill and nationally.
That’s because while the federation has supported and actively campaigned for legislation based on the principles of universality, cost controls, choosing your own doctor and a government-run alternative to the insurance companies, 552 labor bodies -- from international unions down to local councils -- want to go in a different direction: A government-run single-payer Medicare-like system.

So if the AFL-CIO yanks its support for legislation being considered in Congress, and backed by Democratic President Barack Obama, that legislation could sink.

As of Aug. 10, four days before the resolutions deadline, single-payer health care coverage advocates had sent 40 draft resolutions backing the bill (HR 676, S 703) to the AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer’s office. One was from the California School Employees Association, a union that sits on the AFL-CIO Executive Council.

While dozens of union groups back single-payer, the Executive Council has not -- so far. That may change, a CSEA council rep previously told Press Associates.

Backers include the Steelworkers, CSEA, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and more than a dozen other AFL-CIO unions. Several, but not those three, call single-payer one of several alternative roads to health care reform.

Other labor bodies sending single-payer resolutions to the AFL-CIO include two central labor councils in the greater Cleveland area (the Dayton-Miami Valley AFL-CIO and the Erie-Crawford Pa., CLC), two in the Iron Range (the Duluth AFL-CIO and the Marquette County, Mich., Labor Council), the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, many California central labor councils and the Wisconsin and South Carolina state feds.

The resolutions are blunt, with a model version, from Troy, N.Y., blasting the health insurance companies. The Troy CLC’s resolution not only supports the single-payer bill by long-time Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., but bars the AFL-CIO from taking a fall-back stand in favor of a “public option” in a wider health care reform plan.

If passed, the single-payer resolutions would put the federation on record as trashing and abolishing the private insurers and their high co-pays, premiums and deductibles, denial of care and resulting 101,000 deaths from refusal to pay for care.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

Troy Labor Council is serious!! tough as the machines many of them work with...great group...


I've seen this brewing for a while now..wasn't sure what would become of it. This could be a big splash. You're right about the Troy CLC too -- sounds like a kickass bunch.

Maybe I'm wrong about the usefulness of House 676..

AFL-CIO convention may feature showdown over health care
By Mark Gruenberg
16 August 2009
WASHINGTON - With one month to go before September’s national AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh, the biggest floor fight there may be over health care. And that floor fight, in turn, could affect the whole health care battle on Capitol Hill and nationally.
That’s because while the federation has supported and actively campaigned for legislation based on the principles of universality, cost controls, choosing your own doctor and a government-run alternative to the insurance companies, 552 labor bodies -- from international unions down to local councils -- want to go in a different direction: A government-run single-payer Medicare-like system.

So if the AFL-CIO yanks its support for legislation being considered in Congress, and backed by Democratic President Barack Obama, that legislation could sink.

As of Aug. 10, four days before the resolutions deadline, single-payer health care coverage advocates had sent 40 draft resolutions backing the bill (HR 676, S 703) to the AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer’s office. One was from the California School Employees Association, a union that sits on the AFL-CIO Executive Council.

While dozens of union groups back single-payer, the Executive Council has not -- so far. That may change, a CSEA council rep previously told Press Associates.

Backers include the Steelworkers, CSEA, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and more than a dozen other AFL-CIO unions. Several, but not those three, call single-payer one of several alternative roads to health care reform.

Other labor bodies sending single-payer resolutions to the AFL-CIO include two central labor councils in the greater Cleveland area (the Dayton-Miami Valley AFL-CIO and the Erie-Crawford Pa., CLC), two in the Iron Range (the Duluth AFL-CIO and the Marquette County, Mich., Labor Council), the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, many California central labor councils and the Wisconsin and South Carolina state feds.

The resolutions are blunt, with a model version, from Troy, N.Y., blasting the health insurance companies. The Troy CLC’s resolution not only supports the single-payer bill by long-time Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., but bars the AFL-CIO from taking a fall-back stand in favor of a “public option” in a wider health care reform plan.

If passed, the single-payer resolutions would put the federation on record as trashing and abolishing the private insurers and their high co-pays, premiums and deductibles, denial of care and resulting 101,000 deaths from refusal to pay for care.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

Troy Labor Council is serious!! tough as the machines many of them work with...great group...


I've seen this brewing for a while now..wasn't sure what would become of it. This could be a big splash. You're right about the Troy CLC too -- sounds like a kickass bunch.

Maybe I'm wrong about the usefulness of House 676..


Medicare for all; I do think single payer might be the movement that gets some lead out of a lot of asses.

Troy CLC has some serious industrial workers...

FYI, blog spot: on edit: someone called me out (from another place) for posting from a right wing blog, but the info seems pertinent...

http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/08/irs-new-health-care-enforcer.html

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23356.htm



This Isn’t Reform, It’s Robbery

By Chris Hedges

Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large US health-insurance companies: +87%

Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies: +428%

Chances that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance: 7 in 10

—Harper’s Index, September 2009

August 24, 2009 "TruthDig.com" -- Capitalists, as my friend Father Michael Doyle says, should never be allowed near a health care system. They hold sick children hostage as they force parents to bankrupt themselves in the desperate scramble to pay for medical care. The sick do not have a choice. Medical care is not a consumable good. We can choose to buy a used car or a new car, shop at a boutique or a thrift store, but there is no choice between illness and health. And any debate about health care must acknowledge that the for-profit health care industry is the problem and must be destroyed. This is an industry that hires doctors and analysts to deny care to patients in order to increase profits. It is an industry that causes half of all bankruptcies. And the 20,000 Americans who died last year because they did not receive adequate care condemn these corporations as complicit in murder.

The current health care debate in Congress has nothing to do with death panels or public options or socialized medicine. The real debate, the only one that counts, is how much money our blood-sucking insurance, pharmaceutical and for-profit health services are going to be able to siphon off from new health care legislation. The proposed plans rattling around Congress all ensure that the profits for these corporations will increase and the misery for ordinary Americans will be compounded. The corporate state, enabled by both Democrats and Republicans, is yet again cannibalizing the Treasury. It is yet again pushing Americans, especially the poor and the working class, into levels of despair and rage that will continue to fuel the violent, proto-fascist movements leaping up around the edges of American society. And the traditional watchdogs—those in public office, the press and citizens groups—are as useless as the perfumed fops of another era who busied their days with court intrigue at Versailles. Canada never looked so good.

The Democrats are collaborating with lobbyists for the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and for-profit health care providers to craft the current health care reform legislation. “Corporate and industry players are inside the tent this time,” says David Merritt, project director at Newt Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation, “so there is a vacuum on the outside.” And these lobbyists have already killed a viable public option and made sure nothing in the bills will impede their growing profits and capacity for abuse.

“It will basically be a government law that says you have to buy their defective product,” says Dr. David Himmelstein, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a founder of Physicians for a National Health Plan. “Next the government will tell us a Pinto in every garage, a lead-coated toy to every child and melamine-laced puppy chow for every dog.”

“Health insurance is not a race to the top; it is a race to the bottom,” he told me from Cambridge, Mass. “The way you make money is by abusing people. And if a public-option plan is not ready and willing to abuse patients it is stuck with the expensive patients. The premiums will go up until it is noncompetitive. The conditions that have now been set for the plans include a hobbled public option. Under the best-case scenario there will be tens of millions [who] will remain uninsured at the outset, and the number will climb as more and more people are priced out of the insurance market.”

The inclusion of these corporations in the crafting of health care legislation has not stopped figures like Rick Scott, the former head of the Columbia/HCA health care company, from attempting to sabotage any plan. Scott’s company was forced to pay a $1.7 billion fraud settlement—the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history—for stealing hundreds of millions from taxpayers by overbilling for medical care. Scott, who made his money primarily from Medicare, is now saturating the airwaves in a reputed $20 million ad campaign that is stoking the anger and fear of many Americans. His ads are coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the “Swift boat” attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

“They are using our money to campaign against us,” Dr. Himmelstein told me. “The money for these commercials came from health care interests that collect fees from American patients. We experienced this before in Massachusetts. We ran a ballot initiative for universal health care in 2000 and the insurance industry spent $5 million on it, including the insurance company I am insured by. They used my premiums to smear an idea that 70 percent in Massachusetts, according to polls, favored before this smear campaign. Universal health care was narrowly defeated.”

The bills now in Congress will, at best, impose on the country the failed model in Massachusetts. That model will demand that Americans buy health insurance from private insurers. There will be some subsidies for the very poor but not for anyone above a modest income. Insurers will be allowed to continue to jack up premiums, including for the elderly. The bankruptcies due to medical bills and swelling premiums will mount along with rising deductibles and co-payments. Health care will be beyond the reach of many families. In Massachusetts one in six people who have mandated insurance still say they cannot afford care, and 30,000 people were evicted from the state program this month because of budget cuts. Expect the same debacle nationwide.

“For someone my age who is making $40,000 a year you are required to lay out $5,000 for an insurance premium for coverage that covers nothing until you have spent $2,000 out of pocket,” Himmelstein said. “You are $7,000 out of pocket before you have any coverage at all. For most people that means you are already bankrupt before you have insurance. If anything, that has made them worse off. Instead of having that $5,000 to cover some of their medical expenses they have laid it out in premiums.”

The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care—$7,129 per capita—although 45.7 million Americans remain without health coverage and millions more are inadequately covered. There are 14,000 Americans a day now losing their health coverage. A report in the journal Health Affairs estimates that, if the system is left unchanged, one of every five dollars spent by Americans in 2017 will go to health coverage. Private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third, 31 percent, of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough, Physicians for a National Health Plan points out, to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans. But the proposed America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200 in the House) will, rather than cut costs, add an estimated $239 billion over 10 years to the federal deficit. This is very good for the corporations. It is very bad for us.

The lobbyists have, as they did with the obscene bailouts for banks and investment firms, hijacked legislation in order to fleece the citizen. The five largest private health insurers and their trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, spent more than $6 million on lobbying

in the first quarter of 2009. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug maker, spent more than $9 million during the last quarter of 2008 and the first three months of this year. The Washington Post reported that up to 30 members of Congress from both parties who hold key committee memberships have major investments in health care companies totaling between $11 million and $27 million. President Barack Obama’s director of health care policy, who will not discuss single-payer as an option, has served on the boards of several health care corporations.

Obama and the congressional leadership have shut out advocates of single-payer. The press, including papers such as The New York Times, treats single-payer as a fringe movement. The television networks rarely mention it. And yet between 45 and 60 percent of doctors favor single-payer. Between 40 and 62 percent of the American people, including 80 percent of registered Democrats, want universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans. The ability of the corporations to discredit and silence voices that represent at least half of the population is another sad testament to the power of our corporate state.

“We are considering a variety of striking efforts for early in the fall,” Dr. Himmelstein said, “including protests outside state capitals by doctors around the country, video links of conferences in 70 or 80 cities around the country, with protests and potential doctors chaining themselves to the fence of the White House.”

Make sure you join them.
Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C.

Picketing SK Hand Tools
On Strike for Health Care Justice
By LEE SUSTAR

An unfair labor practices strike at Chicago-based SK Hand Tools has highlighted the widespread attack on health care benefits and wages as employers try to take advantage of the recession.

About 75 workers at SK walked out August 25, about three months after the company--which makes the popular Craftsman brand tools for Sears--cut off their Blue Cross/Blue Shield health coverage.

"I've worked here 23 years, and I've always had that plan," said striker Norma Trinidad. "Unilaterally, without any notice, they cut off our health insurance. What he did was 100 percent wrong."

Many workers found out about the cutoff only when they sought medical care. "People walked into Walgreens to get their prescriptions filled and were told that they owe $300 or $400, when ordinarily it was $40 or $50," Trinidad said.

Driving this union-busting agenda are Claude Fuger, president and CEO of SK Hand Tools, and Cliff Rusnak, the company's vice president and board chairman. The two men took over the 88-year-old company in 2005, purchasing it from Facom, the French multinational. Since then, they've been out to cut labor costs--and now they seem intent on breaking the union for good.

The workers' union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 743, has sought to overturn the health care cutoff by appealing to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to rule the cutoff an unfair labor practice. The board is scheduled to hold a hearing on the matter September 2. But with no health care, workers concluded that they had no alternative but to walk out now.

"We have been working without a contract since February 28, and working without health insurance for the last four months," said striker Emilio Lunar, a shop steward. "Our pension is going to be in default at the end of this month. So it's a stressful situation for every worker here. They don't know the next thing [the owner] is going be cutting."

Already, health care costs have put a number of workers deeply in debt. Wages range from $11 to $19 an hour, but most people make around $12 or $14. So even routine medical expenses for prescription drugs can quickly add up.

"We have one guy whose wife has diabetes, and who needs a special pump," Trinidad said. "He had to go online, hunting, trying to find temporary health insurance. We have people with high blood pressure and other medical conditions also."

One worker, John Oprzedek, had a kidney transplant a year ago. "The medication is very expensive each month--almost $4,000," he said. "I must go to the doctor every month to check my blood and urine. I've been working here 13 years, and we always have had insurance."

Another worker, Dejan Gavatsky, finds himself $20,000 in debt--so far--for emergency hernia surgery that he underwent six weeks ago. Gavatsky, who emigrated to the U.S. from Macedonia about four years ago, thought he had found a good job at SK, where he made about $30,000 to $35,000 per year at first. But this year, he's been on layoffs for the equivalent of nearly three months. Before the strike, he was on track to make only about $15,000, he said.

"Every day, there are more bills coming in, and I want to pay them to keep my credit rating," he said. His household has income from his wife, who works as a housekeeper, but it's not nearly enough to make a dent in the medical bill.

Gavatsky and his wife don't have children. But other workers relied on their insurance through SK to cover their kids. One of them, Terry Spiwak, a 23-year veteran worker, finds himself of the hook for $13,000 to cover the cost of a new pacemaker for his 15-year-old son.

The workers joked that owner Fuger, originally from France, won't have those problems. "If he gets sick, he can just go to the doctor in France for free," Trinidad said.

In addition to the cutoff of their health insurance, the workers are also facing demands for a temporary $4 per hour wage cut and a permanent 20 percent wage cut to get the company through the recession, workers on the picket line said. Management had earlier sought to reopen the contract to obtain a 50 percent wage cut, but workers refused.

"It seems like he [Claude Fuger] wants us to work for minimum wage with no benefits," Emilio Lunar said. But that's another battle: The current walkout is limited to an unfair labor practice--cancellation of health care.

* * *


Given the suffering that workers have already endured and the harshness of management's demands, one might expect the SK Hand Tools picket lines to be grim.

Not so. At the factory on Chicago's Southwest Side, a dozen or so workers keep up spirited pickets along 47th Street, where trucks and cars speeding past routinely sound their horns. A local pizza restaurant fed picketers, and visitors from other unions drop by with coffee and snacks.

In the loading docks in back, a picketer reports that unionized truck drivers from UPS and other companies are refusing to cross picket lines. The picture at the SK warehouse in nearby McCook, a Chicago suburb, is similar. "We've had a lot of solidarity--a lot," said Emilio Lunar.

It's easy to see why people identify with the SK Hand Tools workers. They're a microcosm of working-class Chicago. "We've got everybody," Norma Trinidad said. "Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Polish, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Italian, whites, African American, Arabs and more." Many have worked in the plant for at least a decade.

Another factor in the fighting spirit in this strike is the dramatic change in the workers' union, the 13,000-member Teamsters Local 743. After a long and difficult battle against a corrupt union leadership--several members of which are now in prison-- a reform slate led by Richard Berg took over last year.

Berg, now the local's president, has encouraged Local 743 members to make connections with other labor unions and community struggles. Several workers from SK Hand Tools, including shop steward Lunar, went to the rallies in support of the Republic Windows & Doors occupation last December.

Now SK Hand Tools workers find themselves on labor's front lines. Like Republic Windows, the company directly involved is relatively small, but major corporate power looms behind.

In the case of Republic Windows, it was Bank of America that became the target for its refusal to fund severance pay for workers. At SK Hand Tools, workers plan to draw attention to the company's main customer, Sears, with an action at its corporate headquarters in Hoffman Estates outside Chicago.

And the issue involved--defending health care benefits--is a crucial question for tens of millions of workers. As the New York Times noted earlier this year, "Surveys suggest that rising premiums have prompted more than half of small businesses to reduce benefits, raise deductibles or require workers to shoulder a larger share of an ever more expensive pie."

It's going to be a tough fight. To put pressure on Sears and the SK Hand Tools management, the strikers urgently need our support.


http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/28/on-strike-for-health-care-justice

By Andrea Nill at 4:20 pm
American Retirees Move To Mexico For Health Care

movingNativists and anti-health care reform activists often warn that health care reform would “lure more immigrants” into the US, but they don’t mention that the nation’s current health care system is motivating many US citizens to leave. USA Today reports that thousands of American retirees have crossed the Southern border to sign up for a health care plan run by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS).

Mexican immigrants to the US are, for the most part, economic migrants whose primary concern is (and likely always will be) finding work. However, the broken US health care system has been driving American retirees who are less worried about finding jobs, and more concerned about staying healthy to Mexico where they can enroll in “a health care plan with no limits, no deductibles, free medicines, tests, X-rays, eyeglasses, even dental work — all for a flat fee of $250 or less a year.” There are approximately between 40,000 and 80,000 U.S. retirees currently living in Mexico. “It was one of the primary reasons I moved here. I couldn’t afford health care in the United States…To me, this is the best system that there is,” said one retiree who now lives in Sonora.

Many citizens of immigrant-sending countries have better access to health care at home than they would in the US, but that also doesn’t mean that they will flood the borders if the US health care system significantly improves. The big difference is that American retirees are eligible for IMSS benefits, while subsidized health care won’t even be on the table for most foreigners who might consider migrating to the US. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for credits or subsidies under the current House and Senate health care bills and legal immigrants have to wait five years to receive any benefits. Irrespective of whether they are covered or not, health care is usually a secondary concern for most migrants who are more worried about being able to simply put food on the table.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/340/340_cover_sa_mouseland.html

Cover Story
Single-Payer Healthcare
A BlackCommentator.com Series - Part 41
Mouseland:
A 60 year old parable for our time
By John Funiciello
BlackCommentator.com Columnist

Note: This week Brother Funiciello's "Solidarity America" column is presented as our cover story and part 41 of the BC series about Single-Payer Healthcare. Click here to read any of the articles in this special BC series on Single-Payer Healthcare.

The issue of health care for all in America is a recurring one for the generations. Theodore Roosevelt thought that providing care for everyone was a good idea.

That was a century ago. For more recent generations, there was President Harry Truman, then President Lyndon Johnson, there was President Bill Clinton and now, President Barack Obama. They all thought providing health care for all was an idea whose time has come.

Sometimes, a good idea has to travel the birth canal many times before it actually can be born. Universal health care is one of those things.

Europeans look with astonishment at our latest go-round about providing health care for all of the people. They, like a large percentage of Americans, believe access to health care is a human right, not a privilege.

Sadly, in America, health care is a privilege and nearly 50 million are without the financial wherewithal to get help and treatment when they need it. If health care is a right, then the U.S. is a country that daily violates the human rights of so many millions and is responsible for hundreds of deaths every day.

It isn’t just the deaths of women, men, and children that is so shocking—and that it happen every day—but it is the suffering that may go on for months or years that accompanies each one of those deaths.

These things are not a consideration for those who oppose health care for all, such as HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, which has been picking up the support of more and more labor organizations, elected officials, doctors and other medical practitioners, as well as the people.

In the past 60 years, it just “wasn’t the time” to pursue health care for all. There was always some other important consideration. But, there are always other important considerations: wars, natural disasters, economic downturns (or economic disasters). If one looks for “other important considerations,” there is always one around to make it easy to say “it’s not time” and we should fight health care for all, and put it off for another generation.

Canada’s Medicare—health care for all—started in somewhat the same way, but their plan for universal coverage started in the Province of Saskatchewan, under the leadership of then-Premier Tommy Douglas, one of Canada’s best-known political leaders, who started his public life in Ottawa in 1936. After that, Medicare became a national program.

He became involved in Saskatchewan politics, becoming premier (akin to a governor in the U.S.). Always, though, he believed that human rights and needs should be placed above power and profit. And that did set him apart from many politicians of his day—as it would place him apart from about half or more of the national political leadership in the U.S. today, especially when it comes to universal health care.

In a 1944 speech, he told the story of politics and what had to be done to change it, by way of a tale that he delivered as “The Story of Mouseland.” He wasn’t the first to tell the story, but he certainly told it most effectively.

Since nobody is likely to tell the story in the same way, here it is as he told it:

It's the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do.

They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me.

And every time on Election Day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats.

Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are.

Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows.

They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws—that is, laws that were good for cats.

But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds—so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort.

All the laws were good laws. For cats.

But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats.

Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: “All that Mouseland needs is more vision.” They said: “The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes.” And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in.

And life was tougher than ever. And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats.

And they called that coalition.

They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat.

You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice.

Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea.

And he said to the other mice, “Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?”

“Oh,” they said, “he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!”

So they put him in jail.

But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea.

Every day, in the newspapers and on television and radio, we can read and see and hear exactly what Tommy Douglas was warning the people about with his Mouseland story.

With some exceptions, we have a Congress made up of people who are going to act in a manner that is best for them, not for their constituents. They will find every kind of rationale for their votes against universal health care. They will find every kind of excuse. They will evade the questions of the people. Some will hide in their offices or in their vacation homes in the mountains, the seashore, or the islands off some warm coast.

All of the Republicans and many of the Democrats are reminded every day where their campaign contributions come from. Insurance companies and the medical care industry have deep pock

ets and they have in their pockets not only money, but a large number of national politicians, as well.

A plan such as HR 676, which is single-payer and universal, is a direct threat to the billions of dollars of profits that go each year to the medical-industrial complex. The CEOs who take their $10 million or $80 million per year out of those profits are not going to give in to a universal no-profit system without a fight.

That’s what we’re seeing now in the so-called town hall meetings held by (mostly) Democratic representatives, whose events are broken up by Americans screaming about “socialism” and declaring that, if the government gets involved in health care, it will be the end of America as we know it.

Many of them don’t know that Medicare (health care coverage for those older than 65) is a single-payer universal program that is paid for by the government. Or that Medicare does its work five to seven times more efficiently than the for-profit medical industries. It’s true that it doesn’t cover dental care or vision care or most prescription drugs (except for those who opted in to the doughnut-hole system of the Bush Administration), but it is a program of the government that has proven itself to be beneficial to the common good.

Tommy Douglas was on to something and he knew it several generations ago. It’s not new and it’s not unique to Canada or any other country. It’s part of the human condition.

In America, as in other places and times, the society of mice has continually elected cats to govern them. There is a preponderance of them in Congress today, and they’ll keep on voting to keep the cats in power.

The one thing that they count on is that the mice won’t notice that they are cats. But, when the people pay attention to the little mouse with an idea, they might put the cats out and the mice in—it could happen and, when it does, we’ll see profound changes in the way government does its business. At least, for starters, we might see universal single-payer health care, the only reasonable way to go.

(Note: To hear Tommy Douglas (1904-86), in his Mouseland speech, click here to watch an animation of the speech and the story, as only TD could tell it. The animation is introduced by actor Kiefer Sutherland who is a grandson of Douglas.)

Note: This week Brother Funiciello's "Solidarity America" column is presented as our cover story and part 41 of the BC series about Single-Payer Healthcare. Click here to read any of the articles in this special BC series on Single-Payer Healthcare.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers.

The author is the man who inspired me to get involved in this, go to the link for hyperlinks therein:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/coates050909.html

Notes on the Status of Health Reform
by Andy Coates

The election of Obama raised expectations for sweeping health reform sky high. But in spite of several self-imposed deadlines, Senate and House health reform bills were not ready by the time of the August Congressional recess, when passionate local debate erupted at Congressional home district town hall meetings.

The Onion pierced the din with truth: "After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care."

If the goals are health care for all and reduced costs of care, the measures being prepared in Congress will not reform the health system. Instead they amount to a massive taxpayer subsidy for the private health insurance industry.

In 2007, more than one of five working-age people were uninsured for a year or longer. One of six working people had health insurance insufficient to meet the expenses of a serious illness. And there were 8 million uninsured children in the United States. At least 5 million more people lost their health insurance in 2008 and 2009 thanks to galloping unemployment -- on top of years of progressively unaffordable health insurance, inadequate coverage, and steep out-of-pocket costs. The failing economy further accelerated the crisis in health care through devastating state and local cutbacks in safety net care.

Yet the Congressional bills that have come through committees, whose key provisions would not start until 2013, offer precious little relief for these ills.

Against this background, a nascent mass movement for single-payer national health insurance, plugging away for decades, steadily accumulates new force. Single payer would deliver all necessary care for all individuals, lifelong, with no co-pays and no deductibles, through a system in which health care would be publicly financed but privately delivered. By eliminating private insurance, single payer would save an estimated $400 billion annually in health spending. The single-payer bills in Congress are HR 676 and S 703. HR 676 has 86 co-sponsors and has been endorsed by over 500 labor bodies, including 39 state AFL-CIO federations.

Whether a bill passes or flounders this fall, the details in the proposals that have come through Congressional committees have little connection with the popular expectations and grassroots clamor this summer. If Congress enacts reform, in 2013, individuals will be required to purchase health insurance. This is the centerpiece of the "reform." The proposal has come straight from the insurance industry: criminalize the uninsured and subsidize unaffordable private insurance premiums with public funds.

Massachusetts as a Model

An "individual mandate" was enacted in Massachusetts under Governor Mitt Romney in 2006. All residents of the state were required to join the private insurance risk pool or pay a fine. (The state purchased health insurance for everyone with incomes below 150% of the federal poverty level and subsidized those making between 150% and 300% of that level.) This was said to reduce costs through an expansion of the risk pool. It did not.

A new state agency, the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector, was established to match individuals to private insurance plans. The Connector employs more state workers to assist with the purchase of private health insurance than the province of Ontario's Medicare employs. Canada's Medicare is the agency that pays for all necessary medical services for all residents. Ontario's Medicare overhead is 1.3%. In Massachusetts, the Insurance Connector adds 4.5% in administrative cost to each policy it brokers.

The Massachusetts reform went into effect in 2007. As of March 2008, 40% of those uninsured in 2007 remained without coverage. High-deductible policies lowered premium costs by shifting more of the expense onto individuals. Physicians for a National Health Program found that a healthy 43 year-old man making just over $31,000 a year would have to pay $5,096 before any insurance coverage kicks in, with additional co-pay and co-insurance costs.

In Massachusetts when you lose your job you still lose your health insurance, the reform does not protect you from financial ruin when illness strikes, and health insurance remains far too expensive.

Neither is the program sustainable for the state. As the state budget deficit rises into the billions, funding for safety net programs and institutions has been slashed to keep the individual mandate afloat. Services that have been cut include care for the poor, emergency and primary care, mental health, and addiction care. A 2008 survey of opinion intended to bolster the program found that, of those directly affected by the reform in Massachusetts, 56% opposed the individual mandate and 50% said that it "is hurting" the uninsured. In July 2009, moreover, the state revoked subsidized health insurance for 30,000 legal immigrants.

For Healthy Profits

The "individual mandate" is a financial bonanza for the insurance industry just at time when the relentless rise in premiums, far ahead of wages, began to hit a ceiling of unaffordability.

An April 2008 New York Times business column about sagging profits at UnitedHealth carried a frank appraisal of the declining employer-sponsored private health insurance market. "It is never a good thing if many of your customers can no longer afford what you're selling," Reed Abelson wrote. "In recent years despite soaring medical costs, insurers have made big profits by keeping premiums well ahead of health care inflation. But analysts say that business strategy may be reaching its limits, with companies finding it harder to raise prices without losing substantial numbers of customers."

The article closed with a quote from a health business analyst: "The hail Mary may be that we turn to some sort of universal care."

Shortly after the Presidential election, the insurance industry officially embraced health care reform. A November 2008 press release from Blue Cross Blue Shield read: "The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) and the 39 member Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies today announced support for every individual being required to have coverage and all insurers being required to accept everyone regardless of their health status."

If the government would only criminalize the uninsured and pay the premiums for the poor, the industry said, it would stop denying people insurance coverage because they are ill. The industry further promised that women would no longer be charged more than men for health insurance -- again, if and only if the federal government would deliver paying customers -- and guarantee the payments too.

But there is growing recognition that the "reform" is most of all "truly meaningful" for the profitability of the Blue Cross Blue and Shield Association and its competitors. BusinessWeek announced on its front page: "The Health Insurers Have Already Won: How UnitedHealth and rival carriers, maneuvering behind the scenes in Washington, shaped health-care reform for their own benefit." A Los Angeles Times headline read: "

Healthcare insurers get upper hand. Obama's overhaul fight is being won by the industry, experts say. The end result may be a financial 'bonanza.'"

Details of the Swindle

Congressional proposals include a minimum annual tax of $750 and/or a tax of 2.5% of adjusted income upon people who don't purchase health insurance. For those who still could not afford the premiums, a hardship waiver could be requested. The Senate HELP bill defines "unaffordable" as 12.5% of income or more.

Companies that presently arrange skimpy policies, for example the very high deductible plans like what Wal-Mart offers, would be protected by a grandfather clause and exempted from regulations setting forth minimum covered benefits. Recognizing that the costs of health insurance are a nonstarter for individuals, subsidies for private health insurance policies would be granted for people whose incomes are 400% of federal poverty or less. And tax credits would be given to small employers to subsidize the employer share of insurance premiums and grant payments to employers whose plans cover retirees aged 55-64.

But as the Congressional Budget Office began adding up the price tag -- over a trillion additional dollars in costs over the coming decade -- lawmakers moved to scale back the subsidy. According to the Los Angeles Times, "In May, the Senate Finance Committee discussed requiring that insurers reimburse at least 76% of policyholders' medical costs under the most affordable plans. Now the committee is considering setting the rate as low as 65%."

Bankruptcies in the United States in 2009 will affect 3.8 million people. Two-thirds are the result of debt due to illness -- more than three-fourths of them have health insurance. To prevent this, HR 3200 would cap personal costs (at $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a family) -- but only for covered services, not all out-of-pocket costs.

On top of this, the proposal would shift more costs to individuals. Invoking "shared responsibility," the House bill calls for employers to pick up at least 72.5% of the premium for an individual policy and 65% of the premium for a family. The Senate HELP bill would require employers to offer to pay 60% of the insurance premium. Consider that 40% (the direct cost to the employee) of the market price for insurance coverage for a family of four would equal two-fifths of about $16,000 -- $6,400 annually or $533 per month. Plus co-pays, deductibles, and the rest of the usual unaffordable out-of-pocket expenses.

Another feature of proposed bills is a government “exchange,” through which employers and individuals would be encouraged to purchase insurance. Individuals would not be allowed to use the exchange if their employers offer health insurance, including plans that were grandfathered. This agency would add yet another layer of expensive bureaucracy to the presently dysfunctional system, just as the Connector did in Massachusetts.

None of these changes would start until 2013. Some of the provisions that would begin in 2010 include new taxes, increasing Medicaid payment for primary care services to 80% of Medicare rates, and prohibiting insurance companies from recissions --- rescinding policies for reasons other than nonpayment of premiums (often the allegation of failing to disclose a pre-existing condition.)

"Public Option" Posturing

The "public option" refers to an idea that people and employers should be allowed to purchase insurance from a public program along the lines of Medicare. Proponents believe this would pressure the entire insurance market to reform itself. On moral grounds, supporters of the public option advance arguments similar to single-payer proponents: insurer profits amount to blood money, for every penny earned by the company is a penny's worth of care cheated from the effort to make a human being healthy. In comparison, a public program with the lowest possible overhead, its finances open for scrutiny, presents a morally defensible means of paying for care.

But the public option amounts to a moral posture, not a workable reform. Single payer would eliminate the insurance industry from health care; a "public option" cannot. A "public option" won't liberate the resources squandered by the private insurance companies. Instead, it adds duplicative waste in administrative overhead to the system.

The most relevant evidence comes from the state of Maine. Maine has offered a "public option" since 2003. In six years this program has managed to cover only 10% of the uninsured and has not forced its competitors to lower costs.

Perhaps the idea of a "public option," as a clever market-based scheme, reveals something about popular ideological illusions, for it relies upon a crude kind of "free markets equal low costs plus high quality." Of course this is not the way the market works. The laws of the health insurance market, in particular, dictate that the successful competitor will avoid insuring people who are sick and/or poor while recruiting customers who are healthy and wealthy.

Does it really make sense to believe that a "public option" tossed amid the heavily monopolized insurance market in the U.S. would stand a chance at competing for the healthy and wealthy patients? In the best case scenario, wouldn't such a program instead drive the system toward officially sanctioned disparities in care?

Historical note: once upon a time, as Medicare gained momentum required for Congressional passage, the "public option" was put forward by the AMA, Ronald Reagan Republicans, Dixiecrat Democrats, and other right-wing opponents of Medicare. The idea was to let seniors voluntarily purchase insurance from a public plan, in addition to private insurers, instead of enrolling all seniors in Medicare. Does it make sense to now embrace a proposal that was objectionable over 45 years ago?

Topsy Turvy

The "public option," more a political posture than a specific proposal, has given liberals and progressives a reason to support a reform that would be, at its heart, a spectacular bailout for a failing financial services industry, in which the government will hawk the product, coerce customers, and subsidize payments to companies. But the White House seems prepared to jettison even the "public option" in exchange for bipartisan support for the individual mandate, in spite of "public option" supporters' moral indignation.

Prevailing Democratic Party wisdom holds that the tragedy of the Clinton heath reform effort was a failure to maneuver legislation through Congress quickly, thanks to too much deal-making behind closed White House doors. The "nuance" of the Obama administration was to move the deal-making behind the closed doors of Congressional committees. Meanwhile the White House, in parallel, also sought closed-door deals palatable to "stakeholder" profiteers, hoping to expedite bipartisan compromise. History seems to have repeated itself -- if the first time tragedy, this time farce.

The Los Angeles Times reported that former Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin, President and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), visited the White House six times. In exchange for a pharmaceutical industry promise to forgo $80 billion in profit over 10 years, Tauzin told the Los Angeles Times, the President promised not to allow importing of drugs from Canada or Europe and not to reform Medicare Part D. (Medicare Part D has been another government-delivered industry bonanza -- for it prohibits the government from bargaining for dru

g prices.) In return, PhRMA has pledged $150 million in advertising in support of the Presidents' reform effort.

Yet the Right, in response to the industry-friendly proposals moving through Congress, has attacked the entire reform (not just the public option) as if it were single-payer national health insurance! In the resulting gyrations, when PhRMA lobbyist and former House Republican leader Dick Armey joined the chorus of conservative talking heads attacking the Congressional bills as a "government takeover of health care," PhRMA forced his resignation from the lobbying firm.

Because the reform discussions have included Medicare cuts, the Right also found fertile ground among seniors. A Democratic Party-friendly poll found that 39% said "yes" when asked "Do you think the government should stay out of Medicare?"

So, at the end of August, the Republican Party took the position of "hands off Medicare." To leave in place "Medicare Advantage" (which pays private insurance companies 12 to 17% more than it pays for the costs of care of traditional Medicare) and Medicare Part D (another huge giveaway to the drug and insurance industry), the Republican Party tied itself in knots after decades of calling for the abolition of Medicare.

Also in the name of "keeping the government out of health care," the Republican Party came out in defense of the Veterans Administration, a socialized health care system directly owned and operated by the federal government.

In August, the Congressional Budget Office released a study that underscored once again evidence of superior quality of care at the VA: better than Medicare, better than private practice, and better than managed care. If we were to engage in a truly evidence-based debate over how to pay for health care using a "uniquely American" model, it would be a debate between single payer, based on the Medicare model, and socialized medicine, like the VA.

From "Off the Table" to "On the Floor"

Single-payer national health insurance, after more than 20 years of accumulating evidence, now accumulates unprecedented popular support. Although polls have shown for decades that a majority, including physicians, favor national health insurance, the depth and passion of grassroots activism for the proposal is something new. For the first time, this fall, single payer may be voted on the floor of the House of Representatives.

At the end of July, as the Energy and Commerce Committee completed deliberations on HR 3200, Representative Anthony Weiner of New York, with six others, put forward an amendment to replace the text of HR 3200 with the text of HR 676. Committee Chair Waxman interrupted to say that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered to allow single payer to be voted on by the entire House of Representatives if the amendment were withdrawn from the Committee. Weiner accepted. Perhaps the prospect of defeating single payer on the floor of the House of Representatives seems, to the Democratic Party leadership, a way to at last get single payer off the table.

Single-payer activists have welcomed this turn of events, however, for it was the direct fruit of grassroots mobilization. The proposals before Congress, with the exception of HR 676 and S 703, will simply not work. Whatever happens in Congress this fall, the system will grow more dysfunctional. And with expectations for fundamental reform now raised even higher, excellent prospects to build a movement for single-payer national health insurance will persist.
Andrew D. Coates, MD is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program.

URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/coates050909.html
MR
StatCounter - Free Web Tracker and Counter

I posted the piece above at Democratic Underground, you know what to do if so inclined/able:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6470843

here's another:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6478304&mesg_id=6478304

Hi all this email was so chock full of info, I'm emailing it extant. Of especial use to me is the US census info. I've had several people ask me where the 47 million uninsured info comes from, now I can answer. Of course since last year the numbers have got to be increasing due to the loss of jobs:


Update from Andy Coates

(please forward as appropriate)

Thank you to all who attended our discussion of how to win single payer national health insurance at the Andes public library on August 31. It was a great honor to have your attention and your thoughts. (Please accept my apology for the delay in writing to thank you all. I botched the management of one of my email accounts.)

1. Save the date! Single Payer New York to meet in Albany on October 10th.
2. New estimate of the uninsured in 2008 from the U.S. Census Bureau.
3. CBO Scoring of HR 676.
4. Recent articles of interest.
5. Some news about me. (Including: meeting in Delhi, NY at 7pm on Thursday, September 17th.)

===========

1. Save the date! Single Payer New York will meet in Albany on October 10th at Albany Medical College, in the Huyck Auditorium. The meeting will begin at 10am and end by 5:30pm. It will include an update on the national movement for single payer by Healthcare-Now! national coordinator Katie Robbins and what has been happening all over New York state for single payer by SPNY outreach coordinator Alice Brody. How to explain the case for single payer and the prospects for federal and state-based reform will also be featured. We plan to leave the meeting with specific proposals to work together to create unstoppable grassroots momentum for single payer.

2. New estimate of the uninsured in 2008 from the U.S. Census Bureau. The PNHP Press release begins:
>
> Official estimates released this morning by the Census Bureau showing a marginal increase in the number of Americans without health insurance in 2008 - now estimated at 46.3 million, up from 45.7 million in 2007 - masks the true dimensions of the problem, a national doctors’ group said.
>
> Significantly, in Massachusetts, where an individual-mandate health reform law, much like what President Obama is proposing on a national scale, was passed in 2006, at least 352,000 people, or 5.5 percent of the population, remained uninsured in 2008. That number was actually (but non-significantly) higher than the number of uninsured in 2007, before strict enforcement of the individual and employer mandates went into effect.
>
> “The legislation championed by the president and the congressional leadership is a virtual clone of the Massachusetts plan,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). “Today’s numbers show that plans that require people to buy private insurance don’t work. Obama’s plan to replicate Massachusetts’ reform nationally risks failure on a massive scale.”
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/september/uninsured_figures_sh.php

3. CBO Scoring of HR 676.

Last week Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) wrote a letter to the Congressional Budget Office requesting that CBO "score" HR 676 -- for he plans to introduce it as a substitute amendment to HR 3200. One of the members of Single Payer New York, Leo Wong, took initiative to contact CBO to see if they would do so. Here is the email he got back:

> "Sun, Sep 6, 2009... at 6:01 PM
>
> CBO produces formal cost estimates of bills when they are reported out of committee. As no committee has announced plans to vote on that measure, I am not aware of any plans to provide a formal estimate. If there is a vote on an amendment containing the text of that measure, it is possible we would provide the members with some understanding of its fiscal impact. That could be in the form of a letter or memo or table; I do not know.
> I hope this helps.
>
> Melissa Merson
> Director of Communications"

How the CBO treats single payer is something we should watch closely.

4. Recent articles of interest.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-anthony-weiner/giving-single-payer-a-sec_b_278966.html
Rep. Anthony Weiner, Congressman from New York:
Giving Single-Payer a Second Look

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_13269823
Everybody in, nobody out By Susanne L. King, M.D.
Dr. King practices medicine in Lenox, MA

http://www.blackcommentator.com/340/340_cover_sa_mouseland.html
Mouseland: A 60 year old parable for our time By John Funiciello
John has a farm near Sharon Springs, NY

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/sick_and_wrong
Sick and Wrong
How Washington is screwing up health care reform – and why it may take a revolt to fix it
by MATT TAIBBI

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/insured-but-bankrupted-anyway/
Insured, but Bankrupted Anyway By ANNE UNDERWOOD
Interview with PNHP founder Dr. David Himmelstein

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/health/10chen.html
Health Care Reform and ‘American Values’ By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.
Interview with Dr. Allan S. Brett, professor of medicine and bioethicist at the University of South Carolina

http://www.openleft.com/diary/15066/unitedhealth-lobbyist-announces-big-fundraiser-for-pelosi-as-she-backs-off-public-option
EXCLUSIVE: UnitedHealth Lobbyist Announces Pelosi Fundraiser As She Begins Backing Off Pub Option by David Sirota

http://www.missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_ae12571c-9e2f-11de-a7a9-001cc4c03286.html
Health reform should start with moral question by Richard A. Damon, MD, Bozeman, MT

Many more recent articles--
http://www.pnhp.org/news/articles_of_interest.php
http://www.healthcare-now.org/category/single-payer-news/
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/news.php

5. My news.

The meeting in Andes, NY on August 31st was a powerful, in depth, engaging and thought-provoking discussion. I have tried to digest much of what I said into an essay:
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/09/07/on-the-status-of-health-reform/

This effort got around a bit, to my surprise really, and in part because of it I was invited to on several radio shows this week -- WAMC's "Vox Pop" yesterday and a Fox Radio call-in show in St. Louis this morning, a morning roundtable discussion on a station in Jamaica on Thursday and a brief comments after Obama's speech Wednesday night -- on "The World Today" on the BBC World Service. We can hope that "single payer" is becoming a household word.

Tomorrow, September 13, I'm looking forward to participating a dialogue with Congressman Massa at St. Bonaventure University, "Single Payer Under the Microscope" --
http://www.sbu.edu/About_News.aspx?id=25612
http://www.healthcareaccesscoalition.org/

On Thursday September 17, I will be speaking in Delhi at the invitation of Faiga Brussel and Kathy Mario. The format will be a short presentation about single payer followed by questions and answers. I am very much looking forward to returning to Delaware County! The event is at 7pm at United Ministries, 46 Church St., Delhi, NY.

Finally, We are very excited that at the end of this month we will travel to Spain, where I'll be participating, representing PNHP, at the Conference of the International Association of Health Policy & Annual Meeting on Public Health Services Debate "Health and Global Crisis." The ev

ent is at the Ministry of Health in Madrid!
http://www.healthp.org/node/274
http://www.healthp.org/system/files/fadsp-english+version.pdf

Single payer now!

Thank you one and all.

Hint, any upstate NYorkers here welcome to any and all venues!!

here's another:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6478304&mesg_id=6478304


I am on this, but I am kind of busy right now

EDIT: sorry, replied to the wrong post. Not that this thread isn't worth some time as well ;)

here's another:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6478304&mesg_id=6478304


I am on this, but I am kind of busy right now

EDIT: sorry, replied to the wrong post. Not that this thread isn't worth some time as well ;)


Thanks kid! Four town hall meetings on health care in as many weeks, the battle rages on for the needs of the disenfranchised...

notice how quickly they archive this stuff...assholes...can't even reply to the last post and hasn't been a week...

LABOR CAMPAIGN FOR SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE

SPECIAL BULLETIN

AFL-CIO ENDORSES SINGLE PAYER MEDICARE FOR ALL
In a unanimous vote, the AFL-CIO yesterday endorsed the Single Payer Medicare for All approach to healthcare reform as the "most cost-effective and equitable way to provide quality healthcare for all." The resolution caps a successful effort led by the Labor Campaign for Single Payer (LCSP), the Labor Caucus for HR 676 (a coalition of national unions) and the All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care to put the Federation on record rejecting private insurance and in support of a social insurance model for healthcare reform.

Over 70 resolutions were submitted to the Convention on this subject--more than on any other single issue in the history of the AFL-CIO. Submissions came from a diverse range of labor organizations including 5 national unions, 7 state labor federations and over 60 central labor councils. Yesterday's Convention actions came as a direct result of the mobilization efforts of hundreds of labor bodies, state federations, central labor councils and local unions.

The resolution passed shortly after President Obama addressed the Convention. The Convention also passed a resolution that set conditions for support of the main legislative proposals before the House and Senate but delegates were unanimous in their agreement that the private insurance industry was the biggest roadblock to real healthcare reform.

"We've had debate within our own movement," said United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, who chaired the discussion,"But what unites us is greater than what divides us."
The single payer resolution charts a clear course for the future by stating that, "Whatever the outcome of the current debate over health care reform in the 111th Congress, the task of establishing health care as a human right, not a privilege, will still lay before us." It supports current single payer legislation including the HR 676 Medicare for All legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers.

Yesterday's vote capped several days of enthusiastic organizing at the Convention. Many delegates wore stickers and buttons in support of single payer. On Monday night, hundreds of delegates attended a reception sponsored by the LCSP and the Labor Caucus. Several national union presidents spoke at the gathering including USW President Leo Gerard and Mineworkers President Cecil Roberts. LCSP Board Members Donna Dewitt,President of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, and Jos Williams, President of the DC Metro Labor Council also spoke. CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro introduced special guest Michael Moore. After the reception, over 1,000 delegates and guests marched through Pittsburgh to a movie theater to watch the U.S. premiere of Moore's new film, "Capitalism, A Love Story".

Twelve delegates gave impassioned speeches in favor of the Single Payer Resolution. IFPTE President Greg Junemann stressed that the resolution reflects the "realities of tomorrow". "We will not rest," he said, "until we have healthcare for all Americans." Clyde Rivers of CSEA spoke of the incredible burden that the costs of the private insurance system places on the backs of public workers in California and elsewhere and of the cost savings that could be achieved through single payer. Jeff Crosby, President of the North Shore (MA) Labor Council said that he was proud that the Federation will assume "moral leadership" of the movement for healthcare for all and of how important that leadership is for our allies in the community.

South Carolina State Federation President urged delegates to support the Weiner amendment which is due to come up for debate in Congress. Rose Ann DeMoro expressed hope on behalf of all nurses that, by the next AFL-CIO Convention, the establishment of single-payer in the U. S. will have moved the country's international healthcare ranking "from a deplorable 37th into the top 10."

"This resolution is an extraordinary achievement," said LCSP National Coordinator Mark Dudzic. "Its passage was made possible by the powerful organizing efforts of grassroots labor activists around the country. Now our job is go back to our communities, build the campaign and take the fight to the halls of Congress."
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Labor Campaign for Single Payer www.laborforsinglepayer.org
contact: organizers@laborforsinglepayer.org
9/16/09

For your consideration...go to the site, sorry I have no time to transfer the images here...worth seeing, I think...

http://artforhealthcarereform.googlepages.com/

Of course looking at the source they would defend the some of the indefensible bullshit of BO's plan, but there's horrendous truth here...

[quote]Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance
Thu Sep 17, 2009 6:11pm EDT
By Susan Heavey

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58G6W520090917


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States
each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack
health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School
researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.

"We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than
drunk driving and homicide combined," Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author
of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in
an interview with Reuters.

Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack
health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who
have coverage.

The findings come amid a fierce debate over Democrats' efforts to reform
the nation's $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare industry by expanding
coverage and reducing healthcare costs.

President Barack Obama's has made the overhaul a top domestic policy
priority, but his plan has been besieged by critics and slowed by
intense political battles in Congress, with the insurance and healthcare
industries fighting some parts of the plan.

The Harvard study, funded by a federal research grant, was published in
the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health. It was
released by Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors
government-backed or "single-payer" health insurance.

An similar study in 1993 found those without insurance had a 25 percent
greater risk of death, according to the Harvard group. The Institute of
Medicine later used that data in its 2002 estimate showing about 18,000
people a year died because they lacked coverage.

Part of the increased risk now is due to the growing ranks of the
uninsured, Himmelstein said. Roughly 46.3 million people in the United
States lacked coverage in 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported last
week, up from 45.7 million in 2007.

Another factor is that there are fewer places for the uninsured to get
good care. Public hospitals and clinics are shuttering or scaling back
across the country in cities like New Orleans, Detroit and others, he
said.

Study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler said the findings show that
without proper care, uninsured people are more likely to die from
complications associated with preventable diseases such as diabetes and
heart disease.

Some critics called the study flawed.

The National Center for Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank that
backs a free-market approach to health care, said researchers overstated
the death risk and did not track how long subjects were uninsured.

Woolhandler said that while Physicians for a National Health Program
supports government-backed coverage, the Harvard study's six researchers
closely followed the methodology used in the 1993 study conducted by
researchers in the federal government as well as the University of
Rochester in New York.

The Harvard researchers analyzed data on about 9,000 patients tracked by
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center
for Health Statistics through the year 2000. They excluded older
Americans because those aged 65 or older are covered by the U.S.
Medicare insurance program.

"For any doctor ... it's completely a no-brainer that people who can't
get health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that
health care is supposed to prevent," said Woolhandler, a professor of
medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.

Ya gotta love it. Here is how that is being played, as per a Boston Globe headline this morning...

Study Finds Lack of Insurance Can Be Lethal

Or at the very least get you fined or jailed.

"This study underscores the serious health consequences that people face when they are uninsured, as well as the potential benefit of extending coverage to all..."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/18

All of this talk about dying - 45,000 killed by that, 2 million might be killed by this - is all about scaring and herding people. Never mind dying - the death rate for people is 100% and nothing will change that. It is how we live that matters. Whenever people start talking about "you could die!!!" I know that they are going to start fucking with the way we live.

Speaking of which, there is a flood of new articles the last few days from the food Nazis, led by that asshole Pollan. You see, the health care problems are caused by it all being too expensive, and the reason it is too expensive is because we are eating the wrong things. The evil farmers are at fault, along with the belief systems of those fat and lazy TV watching, WalMart shopping, fast food eating people. The pharmaceutical compnaies and the insurance companies are our allies in this battle against fat people, and we need legislation that cripples farmers, and taxes soda, and helps the health care industry cut costs by coercing the people into eating the "right" things. I kid you not.


Unhealthy US Diets Prompt More Calls for Reform

The increasingly unhealthy American diet has contributed to epidemics of obesity and diabetes. The government and the insurance industry, which pay the cost of treatment, may form an unlikely alliance to demand the food industry play a bigger part in getting Americans on a healthier footing.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/18-9

OK, now follow this logic...


"Today, chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease (primarily heart disease and stroke), cancer, and diabetes are among the most prevalent, costly, and preventable of all health problems," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says on its website.

Almost half of all Americans lived with at least one chronic condition in 2005, the CDC said.

Chronic diseases account for 70 percent of all U.S. deaths, and costs for caring for the chronically ill account for more than 75 percent of the nation's $2 trillion health care costs.

Change we can believe in...


Soda Tax: It’s the Real Thing

Obama, in the current issue of Men's Health, said soda taxes should be explored. "There's no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda,'' Obama said. "And every study that's been done about obesity shows that there is a high correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity.''

Obama acknowledged that taxes would be resisted by the soda industry and their political enablers. But he said, "If you wanted to make a big impact on people's health in this country, reducing things like soda consumption would be helpful."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/19-2


And now for the libertarian ant-regulation anti-gubmint pitch, so popular among organic activists...


Protecting Local Farms

The first problem is that these regulations sweep small, direct-market farms into the same category as industrial food processors like Dole Foods. Visualize the typical small farm, where a farmer cuts salad mix with scissors and carries it in a basket to her packing shed to wash and box up for the next morning's farmers' market, after taking a bag to the house for her family's dinner. Then think about California's vast acreages of lettuce-harvested by machines, trucked to a factory for washing, cutting, and packaging, put on another truck and shipped to a warehouse, then to a supermarket, where it sits on a shelf until the expiration date arrives.

The small farmer would argue that her salad mix is not even the same product as the bagged supermarket stuff, known in the industry as "fresh cut." Production at such a large, industrial scale introduces risks that aren't present at the local level, such as contaminants introduced by machinery and packaging, or the increased risk of cross-contamination when produce comes from multiple farms. Yet the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement calls for burdensome regulation of all leafy greens, wherever they are grown and whether or not they are processed.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/18-8


If you are going to sell food to the public, you should be subject to public food health and safety inspection and regulations. Period. I don't care how much love you give your veggies, or how enlightened your "world view" is.

Next, enlightened capitalism comes to the rescue...


From Fast Food Nation to Pro Food Ventures

As sustainable food discussions move into the mainstream, so will the opportunities for entrepreneurs and existing companies to bring to market innovative approaches to selling higher quality, healthier foods to increasing percentages of consumers, businesses and institutions. As these companies grow, they have an increasingly realistic chance to break the near death grip that industrial food has put on America's food system:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/18-1

And Wall Street will help!


The next wave of ProFood start-ups will have the advantage of leveraging the many lessons learned by these pioneers. Unlike earlier sustainable food entrepreneurs, this next-generation will also have the benefit of a growing number of mission-driven investors showing up sustainable food conferences, e.g., Slow Money Alliance and New Seed Advisors, looking to drive sustainable food forward.

Pollan says that aligning with big insurance can help us bring down evil big agriculture - and getting everybody thin and on the proper diet is the most pressing issue, yes?

Here he stalkes out a position far to the right of Obama...


Big Food vs. Big Insurance

To listen to President Obama's speech on Wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself - perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed.

No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.

The problems with the health care industry? All caused but those damned people, and their lifestyles. "They" are costing "us" far too much!!


We're spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care.

"My pet foodie cause is not getting the attention it deserves!" Farm policies do not "encourage America's fast-food diet" Capitalism does, marketing does.


But so far, food system reform has not figured in the national conversation about health care reform. And so the government is poised to go on encouraging America's fast-food diet with its farm policies even as it takes on added responsibilities for

covering the medical costs of that diet. To put it more bluntly, the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.

Lies, lies and more lies from Pollan...

Here he wopuld have us belive a few ludicrous assertions. Fist, that the farml obby is more powerful than the pharmaceutical, insurance, and health care industry lobbies. Secondly, that the public is more at risk from a modern diet, and food contamination than they were from the diets of 100 years ago or so. Are we to actually think that the food industry is a greater risk to us than the health care industry?


Why the disconnect? Probably because reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system. At least in the health care battle, the administration can count some powerful corporate interests on its side - like the large segment of the Fortune 500 that has concluded the current system is unsustainable.

That is hardly the case when it comes to challenging agribusiness. Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There's lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.

Free enterprise and the profit motive to the rescue...


But these rules may well be about to change - and, when it comes to reforming the American diet and food system, that step alone could be a game changer. Even under the weaker versions of health care reform now on offer, health insurers would be required to take everyone at the same rates, provide a standard level of coverage and keep people on their rolls regardless of their health. Terms like "pre-existing conditions" and "underwriting" would vanish from the health insurance rulebook - and, when they do, the relationship between the health insurance industry and the food industry will undergo a sea change.

The moment these new rules take effect, health insurance companies will promptly discover they have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to diet. A patient with Type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits.

When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system - everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches - will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn't really ever had before.

Pollan is the worst of the foodies and organic promoters to come down the pike in a long time - an effective self-promoter and persuasive speaker and shameless liar.

So much bullshit, and as usual anything but socialism. All of those 'solutions' but the obvious one, killing the golden calf of capitalism.

http://www.gty.org/files/spaw_upload_images/calf2.jpg

"McDonald's." Let's talk about fucking McDonald's. I am so tired of this shit.

McDonald's has nothing to do with food, nothing to do with people's eating habits. (Poor people intelligently and efficiently and accurately buy the food that gives them - "us" I should say - the most calories obtainable on their meager incomes. It is not their - our - fault.)

The reason why there are McDonald's everywhere is because it is an investment opportunity - it returns the maximum dollars back to the investors. McDonald's is a product of the finance industry, the banking and investing industry, not the food industry.

It is easier to get financing for 10,000 restaurants than it is for one restaurant. Why is that? Because "the food habits of Americans changed?" Because of evil agriculture, using fossil fuel (given that we use fossil fuel, would not food production be the best and smartest place to use it?) Because of bad farming practices? No, a thousand times no. It is because that is the way to line the pockets of investors and maximize profits.

McDonald's is a front for Wall Street, and the goal is maximized profits for investors. It is part of the investing business, not the food industry.

It is Wall Street - capitalism - that drives the bad eating habits, the bad farming practices, and causes the risks to public health, not the other way around, as Pollan would have us believe.

All of this talk about dying - 45,000 killed by that, 2 million might be killed by this - is all about scaring and herding people.

Of course, but in regards to lack of health insurance being directly linked to people dying, it should be stated dying needlessly, it was unnecessary!! I don't get scared by those stats, I get disgusted; we are the only industrialized country where that happens, and we aren't ashamed, we aren't fired up? People get fired up over deaths from dwi's, 18,000 a year, but not over this.

I know it was just your segue into your valid food spiel, just had to say it...

People get fired up over deaths from dwi's, 18,000 a year, but not over this.

This annoys me so much. And all the *outrage* over the couple thousand rich bankers killed when the twin towers collapsed (however it happened aside), yet no outrage over folks being kicked out on the street and winding up in tent cities. No outrage over the millions with no health insurance at all. We need our own damned media, the current one is owned by the filthy rich as evidenced by the "stories" they report.

People get fired up over deaths from dwi's, 18,000 a year, but not over this.

This annoys me so much. And all the *outrage* over the couple thousand rich bankers killed when the twin towers collapsed (however it happened aside), yet no outrage over folks being kicked out on the street and winding up in tent cities. No outrage over the millions with no health insurance at all. We need our own damned media, the current one is owned by the filthy rich as evidenced by the "stories" they report.


We are our own media.

People get fired up over deaths from dwi's, 18,000 a year, but not over this.

This annoys me so much. And all the *outrage* over the couple thousand rich bankers killed when the twin towers collapsed (however it happened aside), yet no outrage over folks being kicked out on the street and winding up in tent cities. No outrage over the millions with no health insurance at all. We need our own damned media, the current one is owned by the filthy rich as evidenced by the "stories" they report.


We are our own media.


We gotta be! the advertisers for the msm include the biggest corporations and industries, including mortgage banks, health insurance, big pharma, McDonald's, as Mike points out, and the military. I recently took a workshop on how to get the word out, number one, even with these industries is face to face word of mouth. McDonald's started taking moms on tours to show them their clean facilities and food stuff so they'd talk to other moms. The military is sending former students who've signed up into the schools to talk up their buddies...word of mouth, face to face, start talking, everywhere.

http://www.seiu.org/2009/09/domestic-violence-victims-have-a-pre-existing-condition.php (http://www.seiu.org/2009/09/domestic-violence-victims-have-a-pre-existing-condition.php)



5:03 PM Eastern - September 11, 2009
Domestic violence is a "pre-existing condition"?
By Maria Tchijov

20090911feature-denied-1.jpgInsurance companies have used the excuse of "pre-existing conditions" to deny coverage to countless Americans. From cancer patients to the elderly suffering from arthritis, these organizations have padded their profit margins by limiting coverage to patients deemed "high risk" because of their medical condition.

But, in DC and eight other states, including Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming, insurance companies have gone too far, claiming that "domestic violence victim" is also a pre-existing condition.

Words cannot describe the sheer inhumanity of this claim. It serves as yet further proof that our insurance system is broken, destroyed by the profit-mongering of the very companies whose sole purpose should be to provide Americans with access to care when they need it most. In 1994, an informal survey conducted by the Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee revealed that 8 of the 16 largest insurers in the country used domestic violence as a factor when deciding whether to extend coverage and how much to charge if coverage was extended.

It is clear that insurance companies refuse to police themselves. It's up to us to call on Congress to take action now to pass health care reform and end discrimination against patients with pre-existing conditions.

* Read more about victims of domestic violence being denied coverage because of their "pre-existing condition" here and here.

UPDATE: The National Women's Law Center has just confirmed that in April, Arkansas actually passed a law prohibiting insurance discrimination against domestic violence survivors. While this is great news, we need to keep up the fight until we pass health insurance reform and wipe out discrimination against patients with pre-existing conditions" once and for all.

go to the link above to find embedded hyperlinks...

Of course, but in regards to lack of health insurance being directly linked to people dying, it should be stated dying needlessly, it was unnecessary!! I don't get scared by those stats, I get disgusted; we are the only industrialized country where that happens, and we aren't ashamed, we aren't fired up? People get fired up over deaths from dwi's, 18,000 a year, but not over this.



I strongly disagree.

There are several false assumptions in your post, and they are assumptions that serve the agenda of those profiting from the health care industry. Think this through a little more.

The public does not get fired up about 18,000 DWI deaths, they get fired up by the potential of persecuting morally inferior people. If it were mostly poor minority people being killed by drunk drivers, no one would be concerned.

Lack of insurance never killed anyone. Lack of income is more like it, but even that does not state the case very well. Capitalism kills people. But even that is not saying much. Capitalism ruins people lives, hour by hour, day by day, corrupting everything they do for whatever length of time they are alive. The health care industry, and "lack of insurance" are relatively minor symptoms of that root cause.

Many things that cause death could not even be treated at all 100 or 200 years ago. BUT what could be treated at that time was more universally available. There are many things that people die from today that may be treatable in 100 years.

"Lack of insurance" is not the cause of death, it is an instrument.

Of course, but in regards to lack of health insurance being directly linked to people dying, it should be stated dying needlessly, it was unnecessary!! I don't get scared by those stats, I get disgusted; we are the only industrialized country where that happens, and we aren't ashamed, we aren't fired up? People get fired up over deaths from dwi's, 18,000 a year, but not over this.



I strongly disagree.

There are several false assumptions in your post, and they are assumptions that serve the agenda of those profiting from the health care industry. Think this through a little more.

The public does not get fired up about 18,000 DWI deaths, they get fired up by the potential of persecuting morally inferior people. If it were mostly poor minority people being killed by drunk drivers, no one would be concerned.

Lack of insurance never killed anyone. Lack of income is more like it, but even that does not state the case very well. Capitalism kills people. But even that is not saying much. Capitalism ruins people lives, hour by hour, day by day, corrupting everything they do for whatever length of time they are alive. The health care industry, and "lack of insurance" are relatively minor symptoms of that root cause.

Many things that cause death could not even be treated at all 100 or 200 years ago. BUT what could be treated at that time was more universally available. There are many things that people die from today that may be treatable in 100 years.

"Lack of insurance" is not the cause of death, it is an instrument.


The facts are that people are dying who shouldn't be; people who, had they gone to the doctor would have been cured.

You are absolutely right about capitalism being the cause and this issue being a symptom, remember that besides the deaths, two thirds of all bankruptcies are caused by medical costs, and three quarters of those people had insurance. Bankruptcy is a major cause of homelessness.

Capitalism is the problem, and the insurance industry is capitalism at its most egregious, profiting on people's health, the unhealthy ones are thrown away.

I know what you are saying, and I agree , but its an action I can do that, I think, chips away at capitalism and is forcing the insurance industry to eat into their ill-earned profits.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/flanders190909.html (http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/flanders190909.html)

A Victory for Single Payer at AFL-CIO Convention
by Jon Flanders

It started with a Single Payer caucus at 8 in the morning where Mark Dudzic, Rose Ann DeMoro, and others brought us up to date on how they saw the day unfolding.

The two-resolution agreement was holding up. The resolutions would be discussed after the Obama speech. The general sentiment of the meeting was that this outcome marked a real milestone in the battle for Single Payer health care in the labor unions. It was nice to see Donna Smith and her husband there. Donna also made a presentation.

Post convention, support for the Weiner amendment and the Kucinich amendment was emphasized. The Troy Area Labor Council handed out a leaflet on the Weiner amendment.

As you might imagine, the security was all over the place today due to the Obama visit. We had to go through metal detectors and be frisked by security. I forgot about my small camera and cell phone clipped to my belt and had them turned on to see if they really were just that.

There was an encouraging tone to the immigrant worker discussion that took place in the morning. This perhaps was the most impassioned so far of the convention. The hostility to immigrant workers and support for raids seem now to be a fading memory for organized labor. At least on the official level.

The other PA Senator, Arlen Specter, showed up, and I used his speech as an excuse to get more coffee and have a good discussion with Jerry Tucker (UAW/retired) about the future for the health care struggle and some interesting talk about the UAW. A Reuther descendant is making a film about his forbears that Jerry is a bit involved with, and I guess the young Reuther is having trouble coming up with an ending.

Then of course came the Obama speech. Suddenly the hall was packed as he got a rapturous welcome. His speech was a stem-winding defense of his administration's actions and policies up to now, and he found lots of sympathy from the dais and the floor, there is little doubt.
Troy Area Labor Council's Mike Keenan Speaks on the Single Payer Resolution
Mike Keenan
Photo by Jon Flanders

After Obama left, the first order of business was resolution 34, the Single Payer resolution. Leo Gerard, President of the Steelworkers Union, presided, and all speakers from the floor supported the resolution. Mike Keenan of the TALC even got a turn climbing the stairs to talk on it. It passed unanimously.

They then passed the resolution that "supports" the administration -- though the resolution's support for the public option and hostility to taxes or fees on the health plans of the employed are likely to be in contradiction to the final product of the Senate and Congress. Gerry McEntee gave an angry attack on the Baucus group in the Senate.
Michael Moore Press Conference for Capitalism: A Love Story at AFL-CIO Convention

So what can we make of this AFL-CIO convention? Held in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, following a serious split in the federation, which left the federation in serious economic difficulties, one can hardly envy the incoming President Trumka

Leaving all that aside, I see the following. The highest body of organized labor in the US just held a gathering that endorsed social universal health insurance, semi-officially allowed a segment of the body to attend, indeed march to, a film that condemns capitalism, and declared its solidarity with immigrant "illegal workers."

For now, I will take that part of what happened here in Pittsburgh as a real step forward for working people, a step that can be followed by ones going on to much higher ground.

* * *

RESOLUTION 34
The Social Insurance Model for Health Care Reform

Submitted by Alameda Labor Council (Calif.), California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, and International Longshore and Warehouse Union

Amended by the Legislation and Policy Committee

The nation once again is focused on the crisis in health care and the American people are looking for a comprehensive solution, instead of the inaction and incredibly ineffective piecemeal approach of the last 10 years.

Nearly 47 million U.S. citizens are uninsured. Tens of millions more worry about losing the coverage they have. Workers fear changing or losing jobs because they are at risk of losing their health care coverage. American businesses that provide adequate health benefits are at a significant disadvantage, competing in the global marketplace with foreign companies that do not carry health care costs on their balance sheets. The same is true for businesses in domestic competition against employers that provide little or no coverage.

As a society, we all benefit from improvements in public health. We are a more creative, vibrant, productive and democratic nation because of it. We are all at risk of illness, injury or poor health, and we all suffer when individuals are denied needed care. The shortcomings of the American health care system -- which ignores these fundamental realities -- strain our nation's social and economic fabric.

The time for talking about this crisis has passed. All families deserve the security of a universal health care system that guarantees access based on need rather than income. Health care is a fundamental human right and an important measure of social justice.

As a nation, we need to exert the political will to enact comprehensive health care reform nationwide. There is strong evidence the crisis can be solved with tools at hand and at a cost that pales in comparison to the toll in human lives the current system exacts.

It is time to mobilize America behind a concrete plan to enact universal health care, and the AFL-CIO commits its full resources to asserting leadership in this historic effort.

Universal health care does not mean mandating that everyone must buy a health insurance policy and then handing them the bills. Meaningful health care reform must be measured by the following tests:

Guaranteed Health Care for All

* Everyone should have health care that meets their needs, without exclusions or penalties.
* Universal health care is a basic human right and moral imperative for our nation that must be funded through progressive financing.
* While the market has an important role to play, our government -- as the voice of all of us -- must play the central role in regulating, financing and providing health care.
* Coverage should be comprehensive.
* Unions and employers should continue to retain the ability to collectively bargain supplemental coverage.

Patient Free Choice of Providers

* Individual patients should have the freedom to choose their physician, hospital or other health care providers.

Financing through Shared Responsibility

* Because everyone faces the possibility of poor health, risks should be shared broadly and everyone, including employers, should share responsibility for contributing to the system through progressive financing.
* A level playing field should be provided for all businesses. Every employer must participate in ensuring health coverage and no employer should be disadvantaged because of the age or health of its workforce

or number of retirees.

Effective Cost Control

* Reform efforts must include effective mechanisms for controlling costs, requiring information on provider performance and enhancing efficiency.
* Investments should be made in systems and technology to reduce medical errors and costs, streamline administration and promote best practices.

Front-line Caregivers

* Employees who are front-line caregivers should have a protected voice in improving health care.

Do No Harm

* Until we have a comprehensive alternative for all Americans, reform efforts should not undermine existing coverage or put people at risk of unmet health care needs.
* Reform must not diminish the hard-fought benefits currently enjoyed by our members, their families and union retirees.

Our approach should be to build on what's best in American health care. At the same time, we should draw from the best experiences of other countries that have achieved universal coverage at a fraction of U.S. health care costs.

Unlike our fragmented and flawed health care system, a successful universal health care system would provide benefits and cost savings for all stakeholders. The leadership to make comprehensive reform possible, then, must come from all quarters:

* Governments will have to forge the tough consensus that commits necessary public funding while paying only for care that is effective and efficient, based on the best science available.
* Employers must provide strong political support for a transition away from the current employment-based system and be willing to provide continuing financial contributions sufficient to responsibly contribute to the new funding requirements.
* Unions and other organizations that represent users of health services must make enactment of comprehensive health reform legislation a top priority and make a long-term commitment to improving health care service delivery.
* Health care providers and practitioners need to commit their leadership and lend their knowledge and experience to achieving necessary improvements in the quality and effectiveness of care, and use their considerable political clout to support the effort.

We will mobilize our members to build support for bold, meaningful and comprehensive reform and work to pass legislation that assures everyone comprehensive coverage.

One concrete plan that meets the test of comprehensive, universal health coverage would build on our nation's successful universal health coverage plan for seniors: Medicare.

In its 40-year history, Medicare has delivered substantial advances for the health care of older Americans and people with disabilities. Medicare has guaranteed coverage, made health care more affordable, included a form of shared financial responsibility, significantly reduced administrative costs compared with those of private plans and has been the largely unheralded financer of America's medical science advances. Medicare also has been a leader in advancing quality care and improvements in health care service delivery in the United States.

Such an approach would require updating and expanding Medicare benefits to fit the working population and children, as well as negotiating prices with physicians and providers that families -- and the country -- can afford. It would encourage innovation in health care services and medical technology. Employers' responsibility for health care financing would be broadly and equitably shared, substantially reducing burdens on all businesses and reducing disadvantages currently faced in the global marketplace. In building on Medicare to move toward a universal program, we can find a practical, achievable and affordable solution to our country's health care crisis.

The experience of Medicare (and of nearly every other industrialized country) shows the most cost-effective and equitable way to provide quality health care is through a single-payer system. Our nation should provide a single high standard of comprehensive care for all.

We reiterate our longstanding call for congressional leaders to unite behind such a plan. There have been a number of single-payer bills introduced in this Congress and previous Congresses, including H.R. 676 introduced by Rep. Conyers and bills introduced by Sen. Kennedy and Reps. Stark and Dingell. The single-payer approach is one the AFL-CIO supports and that merits dedicated congressional support and enactment.

Whatever the outcome of the current debate over health care reform in the 111th Congress, the task of establishing health care as a human right, not a privilege, will still lay before us. We continue to believe the social insurance model should be our goal, and we will continue to fight for reforms that take us in that direction.
Jon Flanders Jon Flanders is a member and former president of IAM LL 1145 and a member of the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

Just for fun...need more of this stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o290x82l_3E

Weiner is pushing, figured the du person earns some recs for posting this: I'll post the video link directly on edit:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/dubo
ard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=378637&mesg_id=378637 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=38
5&topic_id=378637&mesg_id=378637)

here's the direct video link:

Run time: 05:53
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9kLN1CzKDg

http://www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org/

I wish you'd re-register at DU.

"It is Wall Street - capitalism - that drives the bad eating habits, the bad farming practices, and causes the risks to public health, not the other way around, as Pollan would have us believe."

"The public does not get fired up about 18,000 DWI deaths, they get fired up by the potential of persecuting morally inferior people. "

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 09/29/2009

Contact: Lacy MacAuley, (202) 445-4692, lacy@massey-media.com

Katie Robbins, Healthcare-NOW! (330) 618-6379, info@healthcare-now.org

Follow us on Twitter @mob4healthcare

Sit-in today at Aetna office in New York to demand an end to insurance company abuse

19 citizens and health care providers arrested, launching national mobilization for health care for all

New York, NY – Citizens and health care providers today staged a sit-in at the offices of Aetna, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, in New York City (99 Park Ave @40th. The action is part of a national mobilization to end health insurance abuses such as the denial of coverage for lifesaving treatments, and win support for the only real public option – Medicare for all, a single payer plan. The action was part of a Mobilization for Health Care for All campaign that includes actions in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities across the country.

.
VIDEO: View a video of today’s sit-in on our YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/mobilize4healthcare

The 19 participants, wearing T-shirts with slogans that read “Medicare for All” and chanting “patients, not profits!” linked arms and sat down in the lobby of the Aetna building, prompting Aetna employees to step around them on their way into their offices, where insurance claim reviewers are busy looking for ways to deny people the lifesaving treatment that they need. A crowd of supporters picketing outside the building held signs that said "Aetna is the real death panel," and "Single payer now."

Participants in the action demanded that the insurance company immediately approve all doctor-recommended lifesaving treatments in their files, stating that they would not leave until Aetna approved care. Aetna, however, refused to meet with their representative.

“Insurance companies are denying care to people who need it right and left, but that’s not how it should work. Health care is a right, not a privilege,” said Constancia ‘Dinky’ Romily, 68, just before getting arrested. Romily is a retired nurse and a resident of East Village, New York. “I’m putting myself on the line and getting arrested to end insurance abuse and win health care for all,” she says.

The sit-in is part of the Patients Not Profit campaign of the Mobilization for Health Care for All. The mobilization was launched by the organizations Prosperity Agenda, Health Care NOW!, and the Center for the Working Poor. Today’s action has been organized by the Private Health Insurance Must Go coalition, a local New York organization.

"People are dying because these corporations put profits before patients, and the health care bill currently on the floor of Congress fails to address the real cause of the health care crisis – the insurance companies." says Katie Robbins, an organizer with Healthcare-Now! "The only solution to our health care crisis is the real public option, Medicare for All, a single payer plan."

Laurie Wen, 38, a Manhattan resident, is one of the everyday Americans who are fed up with the state of health care in our country, and was arrested today to stand up for the hundreds of Americans who are denied lifesaving care every day, and to call for the only solution for health care for all, Medicare for all. A friend of hers, she says, was recently denied by Aetna for coverage for a bone marrow transfusion to treat cancer for three months, setting his care back for three months.

“We will continue to stage these sit-ins as Congress debates legislation that expands the insurance company stranglehold over our health, our lives, and our government,” says Wen. “We need a better system to end insurance abuse and win health care for all.”

# # #

For more information:

Mobilization for Health Care www.MobilizeForHealthCare.org
Health Care NOW!, www.healthcare-now.org
Prosperity Agenda, www.ProsperityAgenda,US
Center for Working Poor, http://centerfortheworkingpoor.org
Private Health Insurance Must Go coalition, www.phimg.org

For OpEdNews: David Swanson - Writer

Sixteen people were arrested this morning at 99 Park Ave in New York City for entering the lobby of the health insurance company Aetna and demanding that Aetna stop denying healthcare approved by doctors. This was the beginning of a campaign in which over 300 people have committed to nonviolently risking arrest:

On September 29th in New York City, October 8th in Chicago, and in cities across the country on October 15th, over 100 people who have signed this pledge will put our bodies on the line to challenge the real death panels.

We will enter the offices of the major insurance companies and demand that they cover the care they are denying to their members. We won't leave until they do. The companies will have to decide - admit they're wrong and approve the care, or have us arrested and show the world how far they will go to protect their obscene profits. If we're arrested, some of us will even refuse to give our names and be released until the insurance companies meet our demand.

We hope that our actions will save the lives of some of the people who are being denied critical care by these death panels today. But we know we can save the lives of millions in the years to come by putting a spotlight on just why our system is broken and how urgently we need fundamental change. We will go to jail to demand that the insurance companies stop denying care to their members immediately, but our sacrifice will be a call to our entire nation to stand up to these death panels and demand real reform - Medicare for All - that finally ensures that every one of us gets the health care we need.



91239270, Getty Images /Getty Images News

Hey Mary

Here is what I think is a crucial issue in the here and now. Do you know what Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" about? It was about whether immigrants would be covered under health care reform. It is very clear that they will NOT under any circumstance.

Not only is there no good reason for this in terms of dollars and cents (they would pay in just like everyone else) there is also VERY good reason for the left to make it an issue. How can our issue be people who don't have access to health care but then consign an entire group of people to..not have quality health care even under the best of circumstances?

I have heard almost no one talk about this and I don't know why. We have already "lost" on single payer and lost on any meaningful reform that isn't retrograde..so why silence ourselves on one of the most critical issues (solidarity)?

Hey Mary

Here is what I think is a crucial issue in the here and now. Do you know what Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" about? It was about whether immigrants would be covered under health care reform. It is very clear that they will NOT under any circumstance.

Not only is there no good reason for this in terms of dollars and cents (they would pay in just like everyone else) there is also VERY good reason for the left to make it an issue. How can our issue be people who don't have access to health care but then consign an entire group of people to..not have quality health care even under the best of circumstances?

I have heard almost no one talk about this and I don't know why. We have already "lost" on single payer and lost on any meaningful reform that isn't retrograde..so why silence ourselves on one of the most critical issues (solidarity)?


We've talked about it in our circles a lot. You are right, its horrible and should be talked about a lot. We should see every resident regardless how "documented" covered!! Its a horrendous thing that anyone thinks this is ok. My sister spent three days in a Paris hospital with pneumonia (what hospital here keeps people for three days with pneumonia?), not a penny did she pay or did she ask...Healthcare should be a given to all, always...and those not in their native land perhaps even more so... I hate hating....

This is an issue that seems to see humans maligned about more than any other...

I know we have this on our home page, but I just love their stance...



Published on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 by Black Agenda Report
Poll Shows Public Wants Medicare for All
by Glen Ford


Despite the infamous Max Baucus Senate committee's long-anticipated
rejection of even a fig leaf of a public health care "option," public
opinion remains remarkably firm in support of allowing everyone access
to a comprehensive government health plan. A New York Times/CBS News
survey last week provided the best polling evidence in recent months
that most people favor a public option that is a lot more "robust" than
anything the Congress is offering, aside from straight-up single payer.

The poll once again confirms that something very much like single payer
remains an idea whose time has come. After all these month's of the
Obama Administration's attempts to shrivel into near nothingness the
very concept of health care "reform," and despite the mad howlings of
Republicans about the evils of "socialized medicine," two-thirds of the
American people still support a Medicare-like government health care
plan. Unlike some recent surveys, the language of the pollsters'
question was straightforward and unambiguous:

"Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a
government-administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would
compete with private health insurance plans?"

That is the definition of a very "robust" public health care option.
Sixty-five percent of respondents said they were in favor.

It's a pity that the New York Times and CBS News neglected to ask how
the public feels about a full-blown single payer plan, which has for
years commanded strong majorities. But the poll does show conclusively
that Americans overwhelmingly endorse expanding Medicare to all who want
it - and let the private insurers sink or swim on their own.

Still, it is a wonderment that, with all the disinformation from the
Hard Right, and almost a year of backroom dealing, backstabbing and
dissembling from President Obama and other corporate Democrats, who have
mangled reform into a giant subsidy for the privateers, the people still
know what they want: Medicare for all, at the very least.

The tragedy is, none of the bills under serious consideration by House
and Senate committees provides anything close to what the public
desires. As my colleague Bruce Dixon has written, the "robust" public
option does not exist in any practical sense. (See BAR, "The President,
Progressives, and the Myth of the Robust Public Option," September 9,
2009.) A version of Medicare for all does exist, in the form of Rep.
John Conyers' HR 676, the Enhanced Medicare For All single payer bill -
but the measure is anathema to President Obama, who spent most of his
energies marginalizing Conyers and his allies in the early months of the
administration. Obama has consistently (and viciously) tried to depict
single payers and their "robust" fellow travelers as the "extremist"
lefty mirror images of rightwing "tea-baggers." Yet at the end of the
day, the public center of gravity on health care remains situated in the
political realm of the Congressional Progressive and Black Caucuses.
Obama is way off to the Right somewhere, in the general vicinity of his
soul mate Sen. Baucus, whom the president early on empowered as his
health care torchbearer (more like fire-quencher).

The NYT/CBS poll shows the public is not in the least confused about
what it wants from the president and the congress on the health care
front. Rather, they are befuddled about what Obama wants (55 percent say
he has not clearly explained himself), and near-totally up in the air
about what the Republicans want (76 percent don't understand the GOP's
position). The more the people learn about both, the less they'll like
either of them.

Which brings me to the most uplifting aspect of the poll: It is the best
recent evidence that Obama has not succeeded in narrowing public
perceptions of the scope of health care "reform" to fit his own puny,
corporate-vetted positions. The real reform genie is permanently out of
the bottle, and he is quite "robust."
© 2009 Black Agenda Report
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

That is a good article. Meant to post it, but then the trouble started. Thanks.

I wish you'd re-register at DU.

"It is Wall Street - capitalism - that drives the bad eating habits, the bad farming practices, and causes the risks to public health, not the other way around, as Pollan would have us believe."

"The public does not get fired up about 18,000 DWI deaths, they get fired up by the potential of persecuting morally inferior people. "






Thanks hb.

This is a better video of the aetna arrests...Katie Robbins is the young brunette who speaks toward the end...she is one of the original Baucus 8 and a phenomenal activist and organizer (Healthcare-now et al)...and no ego...

Keep an eye on these actions...good sources for brainstorming...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOB1zOBr7IM

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/06-0

Palmisano, the CEO of IBM came out in favor of single-payer yesterday. He was pretty frank about it. He said only a government system will take cost reduction seriously enough to do whole-scale record automation which, no matter how you slice it, will help IBM...

Still, it is a reminder that the interests of the BOOGE are not always the same.

The Booge in the cities of Saratoga and Troy have voted to endorse single payer as it would save on property taxes due to the huge municipal health care bills...many say its fiscally conservative...(in the saving sense...)

BTW, I'd rather trust a corrupt government with the tiniest bit of accountability than any profit driven insurance company myself, (don't think I'm alone) but its the lives saved, the suffering alleviated that matters regardless the cost...Patients not profits:



> 7 arrested in Chicago at insurance co. sit-in
> Published: 10/8/09, 5:06 PM EDT
> CHICAGO (AP) - Police have arrested seven protesters during a sit-in for single-payer universal health insurance in Chicago.
> Police spokesman Officer Robert Perez says the protesters were arrested Thursday on criminal trespassing charges at insurance giant Cigna Corp.'s Midwest sales office.
> Perez says the detainees were among about two dozen demonstrators picketing with signs and chanting "Patients, not profits!"
> Protest organizers including Healthcare-NOW! and the Center for the Working Poor are planning similar protests next week in other U.S. cities, including Philadelphia, where Cigna's corporate headquarters are located.
> The major health reform proposals being worked out in Washington do not include a single-payer plan.
>

If we can get a strong showing of support on the Weiner amendment, it will give the civil actions more power still:


Labor Campaign for Single-Payer

October 13, 2009


To: All Labor Single-Payer /HR 676 Endorsers


Re: Insurance Industry Greed Again Proves the Need for Single-Payer

If anyone in the Labor Movement ever had any doubt that the Health Insurance Industry should be deep-sixed and this country’s health care turned into a “Medicare for All” social insurance program, this week’s threat to jack up premium rates over the next 10 years by the industry’s trade lobby, AHIP, should put those doubts to rest. Below is the response of one the mainstays of the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer, CNA/NNOC, followed by a link to the national AFL-CIO Blog which also condemned the industry’s sneak attack with the words “Lies, Damned Lies…” included in the title line of the Federation’s response.


This outrageous but characteristic behavior on the part of leeches that make money on the denial of health care to millions should be rewarded by a real threat to their existence. A solid vote for the Single-Payer Amendments to be offered in both the U. S. Senate and House of Representative in the coming days will send a powerful signal that their days as merchants of misery may be numbered. That is an outcome we can all look forward too.

Act now to contact your State’s Democratic Members of the House to press them to support the Wiener Single-Payer Amendment in the House. Call your Congressperson and urge him or her to vote YES. Here are the toll free switchboard numbers: 866-220-0044; 800-828-0498; 877-264-4226. Also, insist that the Kucinich Amendment be retained in the current House sponsored legislation. Calls for support of the Sanders Single-Payer Amendment in the Senate can be placed to Senators through the Capitol switchboard # 202-225-3121. The fight for a national Single-Payer Medicare for All Healthcare System will continue whatever inadequate reforms may emerge from the Congress this session. The insurance industry’s naked bottom-line agenda can only help to speed up the process.

In Solidarity,

Mark Dudzic, LCS-P National Coord.

organizers@laborforsinglepayer.org]Labor Campaign for Single-Payer


I'd post this elsewhere (DU?) but won't be around to reply, I'd love it if someone picked this up...

Unions Spurn White House to Oppose Senate Health Bill (Update1)


By Holly Rosenkrantz


Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Twenty-seven U.S. labor unions defied White House
Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and announced their opposition to the $829
billion health-care measure passed yesterday by the Senate Finance
Committee.

The unions say in a full-page newspaper advertisement today that
lawmakers need to make “substantial” changes to the bill or they will
urge their members to seek its defeat on the Senate floor. Emanuel asked
organized labor not to go public in opposition, said Gerald McEntee,
president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees.

“He told us that we really don’t want to be looked upon as the group
that stopped meaningful health-care reform,” McEntee said in an
interview yesterday. “We would love to be on the exact same page as the
White House, but we see ourselves as fighting for our members.”

Sarah Feinberg, senior adviser to Emanuel, declined to comment.

Unions helped elect President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority
in Congress, and have made overhauling the health-care system a top
priority. They oppose elements of the bill approved by the Senate
committee, including a tax on the most-expensive insurance plans. Some
union contracts provide health benefits costly enough to be affected.

The provision will become “a tax on the middle class,” who “through
negotiations or otherwise, have employer-provided coverage,” Randi
Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in an
e-mailed statement.

The measure would impose a 40 percent excise tax on insurers of
employer-sponsored health plans with benefits exceeding $8,000 for
individual coverage and $21,000 for families.

AFL-CIO, Auto Workers

Among groups signing the ad, which appeared today in Washington
newspapers, were the United Auto Workers, the Air Line Pilots
Association, the United Steel Workers and the AFL- CIO, the world’s
biggest labor federation with about 11 million members.

The ad’s headline is: “Our Bottom Line for Health Care Reform.” Calling
for “good, affordable health care,” it says, “We aren’t there yet. The
Senate Finance Committee bill is deeply flawed.”

The unions want Congress to create a so-called public option, a
government health plan that would compete with private insurers, and to
require that almost all employers provide health care or contribute to a
fund subsidizing coverage. Neither provision is in the measure that the
Finance Committee approved, 14-9.

The bill, passed with the vote of one Republican, Olympia Snow of Maine,
clears the way for a full Senate debate over the broadest expansion of
the government’s role in the medical system since the creation of
Medicare in 1965.

Snow’s Vote

The vote by Snow marks the first time a Republican in the
Democratic-controlled Senate or House of Representatives has supported
the health legislation, Obama’s top domestic priority.

Senate and House Democratic leaders must now merge competing versions of
the bills in each chamber and schedule floor debates. If the resulting
measures pass the House and Senate, the two bills would have to be
reconciled.

Unions hope their public opposition will pressure Democrats to adhere to
labor’s goals, McEntee said. Labor will also press its views in private
meetings with lawmakers, he said. “If it reaches the floor in this
manner, we will ask them to vote against it,” he said.

‘Not the Commitment’

McEntee said Emanuel called him and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on
a Sunday last month and asked them not to oppose the legislation while
the Finance Committee was considering it. “We didn’t talk to any
senators about our opposition,” he said.

Emanuel pressed labor again last week not to oppose the bill once it was
approved by the committee, according to McEntee. “That was not the
commitment we made,” he said.

Labor leaders have made clear their distaste toward the committee bill
since it was proposed last month by Senator Max Baucus, a Montana
Democrat and the panel’s chairman. Trumka urged labor activists at the
AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh to make the case against it. McEntee
led the convention delegates in a chant denouncing the proposal as
“bullshit.”

Some labor unions that were included in a draft of the newspaper
advertisement didn’t sign on to the final version, including the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the International Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers.

The Service Employees International Union, led by Andy Stern, didn’t
sign either version of the ad.

Stern said in an e-mailed statement that his union’s 2.1 million members
will work to make sure health legislation “is worthy of their support
and truly makes health care affordable for all Americans.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Holly Rosenkrantz in Washington
at hrosenkrantz@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 14, 2009 09:03 EDT

54 Arrested in Nine Single-Payer Actions

October 16, 2009 by Healthcare-NOW!
Filed under Healthcare-NOW! Updates


The Mobilization for Health Care had a very strong showing in nine cities around the country yesterday. At least 54 people were arrested in the nine cities.

In New York City, the brave protesters were supported by a crowd of 50 legal protesters. We were prepared to start the action with 10 people risking arrest, and 4 more people joined us to stand up to the corporations that steal our money, our health, and our lives.

Our next task on October 28th is to grow the Mobilization. We want to see the number of cities with mobilizations to be at least 15 and well over 100 people risking arrest.

The task now is to spread the word. Let friends, families and others know about the Mobilization and urge them to sign up at www.MobilizeForHealthCare.org. (http://www.MobilizeForHealthCare.org.)

It is our job to create a political environment that makes single-payer the inevitable solution to America’s healthcare crisis. It is obvious that what is happening in Congress will not provide healthcare for all — tens of millions will be without insurance ten years from now under the best estimates — and will not control the cost of healthcare — as the insurance industry if projecting a 111% increase in cost over the next decade of their already overpriced products.

Here’s news coverage from yesterday’s actions (we’ll add more as they come in):
Dozens Arrested at Sit-In Protests at Health Insurance Companies – Democracy Now

Boston, MA
Protest leads to arrest of 11 – Daily News Tribune
11 charged with trespassing at health care protest in Newton – Boston Globe

New York, NY
14 charged in NYC protest at health insurer office – AP

Palm Beach, FL
Sit-in protest at Humana’s office – Palm Beach Post

Washington, DC
Group Pickets Health Care Provider in 9-city Protest – News Channel 8

Thanks again for your participation.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/october/is_there_any_way_out.php

By Leonard Rodberg

Progressives worry that, if President Obama’s health reform plan (the “Plan”) fails to pass, a latter-day right-wing Gingrich movement will take over the Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012. What I have not heard, but what I am increasingly coming to believe, is that if the Plan passes in any of its current forms, things will go just as badly for him. Why is that?

The general reason is that the Plan is a dog. It is a terrible, complex plan that will accomplish almost nothing. Relatively few people will benefit from it, while everyone who has to use health care will continue to experience the mess that is, and will continue to be, the American health care system. And, because of the new requirements built into the Plan, health care finance will become even more complex and confusing.

More specifically:

1. The large majority of people, who receive their insurance from their employer, will see no benefit whatsoever from the Plan. Most will, in fact, find their premiums rising as new requirements imposed by the Plan (e.g., the elimination of lifetime limits) raise the cost of insurance. And, of course, to their undoubted surprise, most of them will not have access to the public option, even if there is one.

2. Most provisions of the Plan will not become effective until 2013. This gives four years for Republicans to criticize the Plan, including (a) its use of cuts in Medicare reimbursements and Medicare Advantage premiums as principal sources of funding, (b) its lack of any real or believable mechanism for containing costs, and © its bureaucratic complexity.

3. The taxes on high-cost insurance plans, the other principal source of funding, will cause those who now have good insurance (called, pejoratively, “Cadillac” plans) to find these plans heavily taxed and their employers given a strong incentive to cut back on their benefits. Instead of reducing underinsurance, this part of the Plan will increase it. (And the rest of the plan does little about underinsurance at all.)

4. During the four years of waiting for the Plan to take effect, costs will continue to rise. By the time the Plan takes effect, costs are likely to be at least 25 percent greater than now.
Even more people will find insurance and health care unaffordable. People will ask “What was health reform about?” The disillusionment will be great.

5. The complexity of the plan, including (a) federal rules regarding what kinds of employer-based insurance plans are “qualified,” (b) new income-tax forms that will be needed to implement the individual mandate, and © the process of determining income eligibility for everyone, will all lend themselves to criticism and even ridicule.

Is there a way out? Not, in my view, as long as Obama sticks with this worthless and unworkable Plan. Only if we were to adopt a much simpler plan that would benefit everyone — a Medicare for All plan — would he be seen as actually addressing the problem and really offering a workable solution. Short of that, he, and all of us, are in real trouble.

Leonard Rodberg is professor and chair of urban studies at Queens College, City University of New York, and research director of the N.Y. Metro Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org).

An Alternative Vision of Healthcare:
The People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project Visit to Venezuela:
An Interview with Netfa Freeman
by Gregory Elich

full: http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/elich211009.html


In June, the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project visited Venezuela in order to assess the state of its healthcare system. The People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project models itself on the Cuban community-based approach to healthcare, and has established a project along those lines in a small neighborhood in Washington, DC. The visit was therefore directly relevant to its own project's goals. Netfa Freeman is an organizer with the organization, and he discusses here what the delegation saw in Venezuela.

Greg Elich: What led the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project to decide to send a delegation to Venezuela?

Netfa Freeman: Well Greg, there are a couple reasons for this. I guess I should start by mentioning that our project is inspired by and modeled after the Cuban healthcare system, particularly their door-to-door approach in providing for people's healthcare needs and how communities are involved in coming up with solutions. A couple of us have been to Cuba before, on unrelated occasions and we do intend to eventually take a project delegation there. But as you know the U.S. government imposes travel restrictions that make it much more challenging for U.S. citizens to go to Cuba. That's one reason. The other reason and probably the main reason is that Venezuela's situation more closely resembles the situation our project is up against, in the sense that Venezuela is still relatively new at their implementation of the Cuban healthcare model. Cuba already has 50 years under their belt and has already solved most if not all of the healthcare problems plaguing the U.S. Also Venezuela has a more industrialized economy than Cuba, with urban and community conditions that more closely resemble those we have in the District of Columbia.

So the direct answer to your question is that we decided to go to Venezuela to see how they were doing in implementing the Cuban healthcare model and to see what lessons there were for us in what we are trying to do with our project.

Elich: I'd like to come back to how the trip ties in with the project a bit later. But, for now, let's jump into the trip itself. What towns and areas did you visit? I assume you stopped in Caracas first. What did you see there?

Freeman: Yes, we actually stayed in Caracas at the Hotel Alba. The Alba is a state-run establishment that was once a Hilton Hotel but at some point the company abandoned it in opposition to Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution and the state had to take it over.

Caracas reminds me a little of downtown Manhattan. During the weekdays it's a very congested city. There we visited the Ministry of Health and met with people from the union of healthcare workers. I'm sorry I can't remember the official name of their union but they gave us a very detailed and compelling history of the movement for socialized medicine in Venezuela, which actually began in 1935. They made a lot of advances in this movement over the years until the so-called free trade agreements under the Clinton administration saw the privatization of things in the healthcare industry. This was followed by a rapid closing of public hospitals and the deterioration of both healthcare conditions and the rights of healthcare workers. Of course people began to organize, and once the new government led by Hugo Chavez came to power, their demands began to get a revolutionary response. This response being the enshrining of healthcare as a human right in the new Bolivarian Constitution, improvements in conditions for healthcare workers, and an invitation for Cuba to come help them with their new socialized system.

The meeting was very enlightening and the spirit and respect of the people we met was inspiring. They were very curious about and supportive of our project and allowed us to talk about the conditions of healthcare in the U.S. and in DC in particular. They treated us like very important people, which we saw as a mutual respect for fellow social justice activists.

We also visited the Dr. Gilberto Rodriguez Ochoa Children's Cardiac Hospital of Latin America, which if not in Caracas is right outside. This was a very remarkable hospital with state-of-the-art facilities. It was opened in 2006 and named after an icon in the movement for socialized medicine, a pioneer in the more recent movement that arose in response to the NAFTA-instigated decline in healthcare. Unfortunately Dr. Ochoa was killed in a car accident in 2002. Now the driving culture in Venezuela is another story, which we hope our sisters and brothers will eventually address. But this hospital was exceptionally clean. There is so much to say about it. In the patients' rooms there were mini sofas that unfolded into visitor beds so that parents could stay with their children in the hospital.

Venezuela has an estimated 4,500 children per year born with heart defects, with about 70 percent of them needing surgery. Even with eight other regional children's cardiovascular centers, only 600 children out of that 70 percent received surgery prior to the opening of the Ochoa Children's Cardiac Hospital. Now the number of those getting the surgery they need has increased by nearly 800 percent.
This includes 45 patients from Saudi Arabia, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gambia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. And in the same spirit of the Cuban healthcare missions, these patients are also treated free of charge, as if they were citizens of Venezuela.

The Ochoa hospital is a very big hospital and there were a lot of young people as technicians and physicians. A young doctor telling us about the blood bank was so enthusiastic and passionate about what he was describing to us. He couldn't have been over thirty years old. It was a humbling experience.

Elich: Did anyone at the Ministry of Health talk about the extent of domestic opposition they faced in undoing the damage done under the neoliberal approach? I imagine there must have been powerful interests that wanted to maintain the healthcare system as a profit-making enterprise rather than one that served the people.

Freeman: They touched on this a bit but the conversations we had with the Venezuelan and Cuban doctors of Mission Barrio Adentro had the most to say. They said that when they were trying to start this new initiative in health, a call was made for Venezuelan doctors to step up and help in impoverished areas of the country. Because most were orientated in the field of medicine from a capitalist framework, they weren't inclined to give their services without substantial personal gain. They described how many Venezuelan doctors become so because it is seen as a profession that makes a lot of money, and not because it is a profession that provides better quality of life for others.

Many people might tell themselves differently but if this were not true there wouldn't have been so few doctors answering the call. They made sure we understood that many Venezuelan doctors did respond but it was not enough to address the health disparities they were up against. So Venezuela turned to Cuba for help. Of course Cuba is very renowned for their healthcare missions in many other countries around the world.

They told us that many of the more capitalist-minded d

octors and medical associations were overtly against the mission and actually organized to oppose it. They even went so far as to try slandering the Cuban doctors and spread talk of them being there to implant "the communism of Fidel Castro." Many people don't know that Cuban doctors actually have a prime directive that forbids them from interfering in the politics of the countries in which they're serving.

Well, the organizing spirit of a people who just fought for their Bolivarian revolution didn't take the opposition to the healthcare mission lying down and in turn began organizing to combat that anti-people movement. Now Venezuela, with the help of Cuba, is training many of their own young people to become doctors and healthcare workers so they can help in their own communities. We visited one class and spoke with the students. They're very enthusiastic. It was very obvious from what they had to say and ask that the education they're getting is not just to teach them medicine but also to imbue them with selflessness as agents of social change. They are very conscious of their mission, not only to change the conditions of the less economically privileged in Venezuela, but also the world. Several of them expressed this. It was incredibly moving to speak with those youth......

full: http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/elich211009.html

20 people rally at MVP Health Care today, 4 arrested

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Chris Swingle • Staff writer • October 28, 2009



About 20 people rallied outside MVP Health Care on Alexander Street at noon today in support of a single-payer health care system.

Chanting that health care is a human right and alleging MVP stands for Money vs. People, the Rochester For H.R. 676 members accused insurance companies of blocking reform.

Betsy Frarey, 49, one of the organizers, said marches were happening at multiple cities nation wide today, some of which planned to include sit-ins. The Rochester activists remained mainly outside on the sidewalk.

Four people who allegedly went into the building to deliver a letter to MVP executives and refused requests to leave were arrested and charged with third-degree criminal trespass, Rochester police said.

Michael Traphagan, spokesman for MVP, commented by e-mail: "MVP Health Care supports health care reform and universal coverage. However, we believe reform must recognize and accommodate the unique role the not-for-profit plans like MVP play in the health care system. Three million upstate New Yorkers get coverage form not-for-profit insurers like MVP, with no exclusion for pre-existing conditions and with small groups being community rated. If the rest of the nation had the same system we have, there would be no need for a public option or single payer plan."


hmmph...

House Health Care Bill: A Death Sentence For My Fellow Breast Cancer Survivors
By: Jane Hamsher Thursday October 29, 2009 10:30 am

I'm Jane, and I'm a breast cancer survivor

I'm Jane, and I'm a breast cancer survivor

There was much celebration on Capitol Hill today with the announcement of the new House health care bill. For myself, as a three time breast cancer survivor, there was tremendous sadness and disappointment in the Speaker.

Nancy Pelosi made a choice with regard to the lifesaving biologic drugs I took when I was in chemotherapy that will cost many of my fellow breast cancer survivors everything they own, and quite possibly their lives.

Jeanne Sather is another breast cancer survivor. In 2007, she wrote on her blog The Assertive Patient:

I love Herceptin, a drug I have been getting to treat my metastatic breast cancer for more than five years now….The main reason I love Herceptin is that it is a targeted antibody, without the side effects of traditional cancer drugs: hair loss, fatigue, nausea, vomiting—you know the list.

The cost of Jeanne’s miracle “biologic” cancer drugs, Herceptin and Avastin, was $300,000 a year in 2006. By the time she switched to another biologic drug, Tykerb, she was within a few months of hitting her lifetime cap of $1 million:

Even with the help of a special state health insurance plan, the 53-year-old freelance writer is struggling to afford the expensive new drugs that are helping her in her battle.

“I’ve been borrowing against my house to make ends meet, and that can’t go on,” Sather says. “I’m so afraid these drugs will cost me my home.”

Jeanne fought. She and others went to the state capital and lobbied to have the cap raised. “Now I am safe for another few years,” she said.

But she is not alone. Biologic drugs also treat rheumatoid arthritis:

Access was the issue for Theresa Manville, 61, of Bay Village, Ohio, who simply could not afford the rheumatoid arthritis drugs she needed. She was laid off from her job as a senior account manager at a public relations firm in 1992, and though she started her own company, she could not get private insurance because her arthritis was considered a preexisting condition.

“Today,” Manville says, “I’m on Medicare disability because I didn’t have these drugs and my RA progressed. My joints deteriorated. My hands are deformed. I used to be a runner, a softball player and scuba diver. Now I need special orthotics in my shoes just to walk. And I’m going to need replacement surgery in my right knee.

“Think of the pressure on the health care system, just from me,” Manville says. “If I’d had the drugs 10 years ago, I could be independent today. I might not even be on disability.”

Medical student Laura Musselwhite tells the story of a patient who was hospitalized with Crohn’s disease:

This patient required hospitalization for a flare that she attributed to not being able to afford the month’s Humira, a biologic medicine used to treat severe, active Crohn’s disease.

The drug is priced by Abbott Laboratories at a staggering $22,000 a year. This patient would clearly have benefited from the availability of an affordable, generic version.

But thanks to Representatives Anna Eshoo and Joe Barton, there will be no generic versions of these drugs. At least not for 12 years, if the House health care bill announced today passes. And because of an “evergreening” clause that grants drug companies a continued monopoly if they make slight changes to the drug (like creating a once-a-day dose where the original product was three times per day), they will never become generics. Instead of the Waxman-Deal amendment that granted much more reasonable terms to biologic patent holders, Speaker Pelosi chose the Eshoo-Barton amendment. And we could all be paying for that choice for the rest of our lives.

Breast cancer boards are filled with women who have been turned down by their insurance companies for Herceptin because they only cover generic drugs, or because they only pay a portion of the $48,000 a year (or more) that the drug costs.

Cheryl, a Stage IV breast cancer survivor, writes:

As my socialized plan has decided to stop paying for my herceptin, I’m now looking at paying “out of pocket”. My insurance won’t cover herceptin. Let’s see, $142K a year. I don’t think my house is worth that much. I was curious about this thread because I suspected herceptin cost about that much but wasn’t sure.

I’m trying not to freak out about this too much. My children need a home and that appears to be my next option.

I think it’s time for me to start sitting on the corner with a tin cup.

Another survivor writes:

Well, I just got my insurance explanation of benefits, and they are treating it as a pharm…which means I have to pay $553. I can’t afford this drug. I’ll try appealing to the ins. co (which means calling between working hours, and I can’t afford any more time off to deal with this.)

I’m not happy.

A man named Karl writes:

My mom is 2+ in ICH and now 3.89 ratio in FISH. The onc said she’ll have 6-8 sessions of chemo and she could take the herceptin while doing chemo or after chemo. Not sure what does 3.89 means or how does it affect the cancer. Another thing that we’re worried of is the price of Herceptin. The price is too high and we’re not sure if we can afford it :(

This is deeply, deeply wrong. It’s immoral for Congress to give endless monopolies to pharmaceutical companies on these cutting edge drugs in this bill. If an AIDS vaccine is found, it too will be a biologic.

These drug manufacturers argue that the cost of developing biologics is so expensive that they need the extra patent time to recoup their investment, or they won’t have any incentive to develop them. Hogwash. A study done by Drs. Joe DiMasi and Hank Grabowski, who are funded by PhRMA, concluded that the cost for developing biologics is $1.3 billion, as opposed to $1.2 billion for conventional drugs.

And as for incentive for development? As bleicher of Blue Mass Group notes, granting endless monopolies for slight changes encourages companies NOT to innovate:

[T]]hey will have far less reason or incentive to invest in patentable new cures, and will have every reason to invest in low risk, incremental development of existing products to reap (without taking risk) the same profitable rewards. In the short term, some of our local companies may like this protection of their products, but over the long term, as we fail to incent investment in new discovery research, our biotechnology edge will decline and the rest of the world will pass us by as they invent the next generation of products.

There is nothing good about this legislation, unless you’re Roche, Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough or any of the other giant pharmaceutical companies reaping huge profits off these blockbuster drugs of the future. About a quarter of new drugs, and half of important new drugs are biologics. This is nothing short of an attempt to sew up the future at the expense of you and your children.

So POP is joining to together with students like Laura Musselwhite and others in the AMSA for a Halloween “treat, not trick” demonstration this Friday at four locations around the country. I’ll be there with medical students in Washington DC at the Russell Senate office building as they arrive ful

ly costumed in their white coats and give out “treats,” urging Senators not to “trick” the nation’s patients with a bad ‘biologic’ medicines proposal.

Please join us:

DATE: FRIDAY, OCT. 30

Washington, DC: Russell Senate Office Bldg, Constitution & Delaware at 3:00 pm

Baltimore, MD: Barbara Mikulski’s office, 1629 Thames St. at 2:30 pm

Raleigh, NC: Senator Kay Hagan’s office, 310 New Bern Ave @ 1:30 pm

Palo Alto, CA: Anna Eshoo’s office, 698 Emerson St, Palo Alto at 2:00 pm

These students are fighting for us, fighting for our future. Please join me in supporting them, and their commitment to being healers who want to give their patients the very best care that they can. They don’t want their hands tied by this bill. I have been helping them organize and they are just so wonderful.

Even if you’re not in close to one of the events, you can help out by joining the POP Facebook Group, Tweeting about the events and donating to POP.

And please call your member of Congress and tell them that this is a terrible bill that will sentence breast cancer survivors and others to financial ruin and death. For the sake of everyone in need of health care in the future, please tell them to vote “no” on this cruel piece of legislation crafted to maximize drug company profits at the cost of human lives.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/10/29/house-health-care-bill-a-death-sentence-for-my-fellow-breast-cancer-survivors/

Post at DU found here about the matter:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6884040

Thanks Chlamor, I got this in an email this morning and went to work despondent...(not unusual :) )... glad you posted it here, I've been neglecting my duties...

Thanks Chlamor, I got this in an email this morning and went to work despondent...(not unusual :) )... glad you posted it here, I've been neglecting my duties...




I'm going to post a few links to DU in this comment. Have you seen the meltdown over there on the shitty health care bill? I'd say it's an opportunity, an opening for us to continue in exposing the fraud that is the Democratic Party. Take care, keep on keepin' on,

Lack Of Insurance May Have Figured In Nearly 17,000 Childhood Deaths In US, Study Shows

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6901744

OK, suppose I'm making payments on my "affordable" mandatory private health insurance

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6900987

The Two Percent Robustness

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6902415

Mandatory insurance--legislatively enacting a permanent jobless recession/recovery

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6895387&mesg_id=6895387

Pelosi's plan leaves 18 million uninsured;public plan will charge higher premiums than avg private

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6894095

Single Payer! Rec to Vote~

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6897073

Public Option: RIP

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6883001

Jane Hamsher: House Health Care Bill: A Death Sentence For My Fellow Breast Cancer Survivors

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6884040

The "Public Option" has been a red herring all along, to divert you from the real issue: MANDATES

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6885731

Sanders to Push for Single-Payer Vote.. DU Vote

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6886604

492 recs on that last one. Interesting to scan the comments throughout those threads.

Thanks Chlamor, I got this in an email this morning and went to work despondent...(not unusual :) )... glad you posted it here, I've been neglecting my duties...




I'm going to post a few links to DU in this comment. Have you seen the meltdown over there on the shitty health care bill? I'd say it's an opportunity, an opening for us to continue in exposing the fraud that is the Democratic Party. Take care, keep on keepin' on,

Lack Of Insurance May Have Figured In Nearly 17,000 Childhood Deaths In US, Study Shows

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6901744

OK, suppose I'm making payments on my "affordable" mandatory private health insurance

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6900987

The Two Percent Robustness

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6902415

Mandatory insurance--legislatively enacting a permanent jobless recession/recovery

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6895387&mesg_id=6895387

Pelosi's plan leaves 18 million uninsured;public plan will charge higher premiums than avg private

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6894095

Single Payer! Rec to Vote~

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6897073

Public Option: RIP

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6883001

Jane Hamsher: House Health Care Bill: A Death Sentence For My Fellow Breast Cancer Survivors

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6884040

The "Public Option" has been a red herring all along, to divert you from the real issue: MANDATES

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6885731

Sanders to Push for Single-Payer Vote.. DU Vote

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6886604

492 recs on that last one. Interesting to scan the comments throughout those threads.


Thanks Chlamor, will read these pronto, working on some street theater ideas, puppet strings, festering body parts, we'll keep on keeping on...can't quit now, have to keep exposing the beasts...

http://antiauthoritarian.net/NLN/?p=698

On the fly here, these go great elsewhere, if someone cares to make it an OP, if not maybe I can later this evening:

on edit: Already there....

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/11/01/what-role-insurance-companie/

What role will insurance companies play in the “public option”?
Posted by Andrew Coates MD on Sunday, Nov 1, 2009

By Kip Sullivan, JD

Executive summary

Both the Senate and House versions of the proposed “public option” require that corporations with expertise in health insurance “administer” the “option.” This fact received no attention until October 24 when the Washington Post reported that the “option” would “likely” be run by insurance companies. Several bloggers attempted to assure readers that this news was nothing to be concerned about. They asserted that Medicare has always contracted with insurance companies to process claims, and then leaped to the conclusion that the role of insurance companies within the “option” will be no more significant than it is within Medicare.

But this conclusion is clearly wrong if the Senate version of the “option” becomes law, and almost certainly wrong if the House version becomes law. This conclusion rests on the widespread belief that the “option” will “look like Medicare,” which is not accurate. The most important differences between Medicare and the “option” are size and the environment within which the programs will function. While Medicare enrolls 15 percent of the population, the “option” is projected to enroll somewhere between zero and 2 percent. While Medicare is a single-payer system, the “option” will function within a multiple-payer environment.

These two differences, plus provisions in the Democrats’ legislation authorizing the federal government to hire private corporations to administer the “option,” create a high risk that insurance companies and other types of corporations will play a role in the “option” that greatly exceeds the limited role they play in the traditional Medicare program. Private-sector firms will probably play a role within the “option” that closely resembles the role that defense contractors play in the production of weapons for the Pentagon. Just as Northrop Grumman, for example, carries out all tasks necessary to create a fighter plane, so private corporations (not public employees) will carry out all tasks necessary to create the “option” health insurance programs. Carrying out virtually all of the tasks necessary to establish and maintain “option” health insurance plans is obviously very different from, and more significant than, merely processing claims.

To comprehend the more dominant role insurance companies will almost certainly play within the “option” we must first disabuse ourselves of the myth that the “option” will “look like Medicare.” Although leaders of the “option” movement have vigorously promoted that claim, the claim has been demonstrably false since at least June when Democrats introduced legislation that would create tiny “option” programs that would, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, insure no more than 10 million Americans.

Once we have determined that the “option” will be tiny, we must then ask whether a tiny “option” can be implemented as easily as Medicare was in 1966. Using just our commonsense and a rudimentary knowledge of the health insurance industry, it becomes obvious the answer is, No, a tiny “option” cannot be implemented as quickly and easily as Medicare was. Unlike Medicare, which was implemented at the national level using a few relatively inexpensive methods (such as press conferences and a public education campaign), the “option” will have to be implemented on a market-by-market basis. The “option” program will have to create one “option” program or plan for the California Bay Area market, another for the upstate New York market, and so on.

Of course, stating that the “option” will consist of numerous local plans and will, therefore, be harder to implement than Medicare was, sheds no light on whether public employees or private corporations will create and run those plans. For information on that issue, we must turn to the Democrats’ legislation. According to bills written by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and by the House leadership (HR 3962), the Secretary of Health and Human Services will be authorized to contract with corporations “for the purpose of performing administrative functions … with respect to the public health insurance option” (as HR 3962 puts it; the HELP Committee’s bill uses nearly identical language). How we interpret the phrase “administrative functions” depends on our understanding of what has to be done to create the “option” program.

To sum up: The tasks required to implement a small “option” are quite different from the tasks required to implement Medicare; the Democrats’ legislation indicates these tasks will be carried out by insurance companies and corporations with similar expertise. When we piece these facts together, we must conclude that private-sector corporations will very likely play a much greater role in the “public option” than they do in Medicare.

Newsflash: Corporations will administer the “option”

On Saturday, October 24, the Washington Post published an article which said in passing that the “public option” will be run by insurance companies. “The public option would effectively be just another insurance plan offered on the open market,” said the article. “It would likely be administered by a private insurance provider, charging premiums and copayments like any other policy.” To my knowledge, that is the first time any media outlet or blog, with the exception of the blog maintained by Physicians for a National Health Program, has warned the public that the “public option” will be run by private corporations, not public employees.

Within hours of this article’s publication, blogger John Byrne at “the raw story” reported that insurance companies will run the “option.” Byrne quoted the Washington Post article and three paragraphs from one of two papers I wrote on this issue. Byrne’s piece generated a minor ruckus in the liberal blogosphere. By Sunday October 25, a half dozen other blogs had posted it, and hundreds of visitors to these blogs had posted comments.

The great majority of the comments expressed outrage over the fact that the “public option” won’t be a publicly run program. But a few sought to minimize the importance of Byrne’s article by assuring readers that Medicare has always had contracts with insurance companies to process claims. For these people, this fact allowed them to jump to the conclusion that the role of the insurance industry in the “public option” would be no more significant than its role in Medicare – insurance companies would be mere claims processors. According to these people, insurance companies wouldn’t create the “option” plans and would not run them. Here are two examples of those comments:

Calm down everyone – let’s unknot those drawers. Private insurance companies have been running the Medicare system for years and years. They are called fiscal Intermediaries. …Please let’s all understand the way Medicare works before going off.

and

…. Medicare is already administered through private insurance companies and it works very well. Those companies already have the systems set up for tracking and billing and they do the Medicare administration for a minimal cost.

On Monday, October 26, Susie Madrak posted a comment on “Crooks and Liars” in which she described Byrne’s article as “news that really isn’t such a big deal.” Madrak said the insurance companies that get contracts to run the “option” will be “third part

y administrators” whose only job will be to process claims for the “option.”

Seduced by the “option” campaign’s misinformation

These comments are mistaken. Their authors have been seduced by the “option” campaign’s constant comparison of the “option” to Medicare. The comparison to Medicare leads the unsuspecting to think the “option” will be a uniform program, administered directly by public employees, like the traditional Medicare program, that is, a program with no insurance companies parked between the federal government and the doctors and hospitals that treat Medicare beneficiaries. It leads the unsuspecting to think that public employees will create and directly administer the “option” and that the role of corporations in the “option” will be limited to the role they play in the traditional Medicare program, which is to process claims.

This excerpt from an April 2009 paper entitled “Healthy Competition” by Jacob Hacker, the author of the modern version of the “public option,” illustrates how aggressively contemporary “option” advocates sell the notion that the “option” will resemble Medicare. Notice that Hacker states clearly that the “option” will not contract with “private plans” and “nonprofit insurers.”

In most discussions of the public plan [i.e., the “option”], the phrase “Medicare-like” is used to describe the new plan…. When people say “Medicare-like,” … they are referring to the traditional portion of Medicare that directly pays doctors and hospitals for care delivered to elderly and disabled Americans. A “Medicare-like” plan is a public health insurance plan that pays providers to deliver care, rather than a government contract with private plans to provide insurance. More specifically, the new public plan should be national (with the same basic terms nationwide for patients and providers), governmental (a true public health insurance plan, not, say, a nonprofit insurer operating under federal charter), comprehensive (providing defined benefits on the same basic administrative platform), and built on Medicare’s infrastructure. … [P]lan offerings and pricing can and should differ regionally, but the public health insurance plan should be a single national plan with its own risk pool separate from Medicare’s that is available with the same benefits and coverage terms in all parts of the nation. (page 7)

But Hacker’s description of the “option” bears no resemblance to the “option” in either the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee or the House bill (it used to be HR 3200, now it is HR 3962). The “options” in these bills will not resemble the traditional Medicare program but will in fact consist of numerous insurance programs (or plans) functioning at the level of individual insurance markets, that is, at the level of states and regions within states. Once you understand this, you begin to grasp what it means to say that private corporations will “administer” the “option” program. You begin to comprehend the possibility that the multiple local “option” programs might actually be owned by, or administered by, privately owned corporations, possibly health insurance companies. You begin to understand, in short, that the role of corporations in the “option” could be much more substantial than that of a mere claims processor.

To offer an analogy, the role of private corporations in the “option” will probably resemble the role that Northrop Grumman, Boeing and other defense contractors play in the production of fighter planes for the Pentagon. Through contracts with these corporations, the Pentagon sets the terms under which contractors are supposed to produce the planes, but the actual production of the planes is done entirely by private corporations. If and when the “option” program as it is now described in legislation pending in Congress is implemented, private-sector control in that program will almost certainly resemble the private-sector control of the production of military hardware for the Pentagon far more than it will resemble the level of private-sector involvement in the traditional Medicare program.

Review of the “public option” bait-and-switch campaign

Prior to last spring, the possibility that private corporations might play a dominant role in the “option” was not obvious. But some time during the spring, and by no later than June, it did become obvious, at least to those with eyes to see. Last spring Democrats took the large original “option” proposal and shrank it down to a tiny program.

As I have explained elsewhere, the original version of the “option” proposed by Hacker and endorsed by advocates of the “option” was huge. Hacker and others predicted it would enroll 130 million non-elderly Americans, or about half of the non-elderly population. It was reasonable to predict that a public program of that size would either possess many of the features of Medicare, including its uniform benefits, or would soon acquire those features as it grew bigger at the expense of the insurance industry. It was reasonable to predict it would grow bigger because its huge size would give it the advantage of lower overhead and lower provider costs and, therefore, lower premiums.

But after the Democrats released their draft legislation in June, it was apparent they had no intention of enacting an “option” program as large as the one Hacker originally proposed. The Democrats’ bills eliminated all but one of the features of Hacker’s original version of the “option” that would have guaranteed enormous size. The features the Democrats struck from Hacker’s original model included the requirements that the “option” be open to all non-elderly Americans, that the “option” automatically enroll all uninsured people and all Medicaid recipients prior to the commencement of operations, and that only enrollees in the “option” get subsidies to offset the cost of the “option’s” premiums.

The initial reports by the Congressional Budget Office released in July made it even more obvious how badly the Democrats had shrunk the “option.” CBO estimated the Senate HELP Committee’s version of the “option” would enroll approximately zero people while the HR 3200 version would enroll roughly 10 million people. CBO is now saying
the new House version of HR 3200 (HR 3962) released by Speaker Nancy Pelosi on October 29 will enroll just 6 million people.

By no later than July, then, representatives of the “option” campaign had no excuses for comparing the “option” to the traditional Medicare program. That didn’t stop them from doing so, however. Hence the great confusion among members of the public, the media, pollsters, and even members of Congress about what the Democrats’ proposed “option” is and, therefore, the role corporations will play in its creation and administration.

When we knew for sure the “option” was going to be tiny, commonsense and a rudimentary knowledge of the health insurance industry should have told us the “option” would not be a uniform program like the traditional Medicare program but would instead be broken up into dozens or hundreds of individual programs or insurance companies, each serving a particular health insurance market, for example, California’s Bay Area or upstate New York. Commonsense would not necessarily have told us that these multiple insurance programs or companies would be run by private corporations. They could just as easily (and for less money) be run by the federal government.

For information on who would run these local programs, we had to consult the “option” language in the Democrats’ legislation. It is there we find evidence that these programs will be run by private firms. I have reviewed the murky “option” sections of the Senate bill and House bill in previous papers. ??In the remainder of this paper I will focus on why our commonsense tells us that a very small “option” has to be a balkanized program consisting of multiple local programs. I believe it is the failure of many people to comprehend this fact that leads

some of them to misinterpret the language in the Democrats’ bills authorizing the federal government to outsource “administrative functions” necessary to run the “option.”

What commonsense and a little knowledge of the industry tells us

In this section I want to discuss the Democrats’ proposed “option” as if we know only three things about it: (1) it must compete with private health insurance companies to sell health insurance to the non-elderly; (2) unlike the Medicare program, which was given 100 percent of the elderly to insure and thus began with a huge pre-enrolled pool of people, the “option” will instead be guaranteed zero enrollees on its first day of operations and will have to compete with the insurance industry for every customer it eventually enrolls; and (3) the “option” is expected to perform on a “level playing field,” that is, it is given no advantages over Aetna and its other private-sector competitors (such as subsidies to its enrollees to purchase the “option’s” product that people who buy insurance company policies don’t get).

Commonsense tells us that this version of the “option” will not resemble Medicare, either in the manner in which it must be implemented or in its final structure. If the “option” really were like Medicare and was given 100 percent of all Americans in a large age bracket, say all kids up to age 19 or all adults age 50 to 64, we would have every reason to predict the “option” would spring up as quickly as Medicare did and flourish as Medicare has. We would also have every reason to think the establishment of such an “option” would be relatively easy. The primary task that would need to be carried out by such an “option” would be to announce its existence with press conferences and an advertising campaign like the one that preceded the establishment of Medicare Part D (the drug program). These activities, easily executed out of one office in Washington DC, would, largely by themselves, achieve nearly universal enrollment of the eligible population and educate doctors and hospitals about how to participate in the new program.

Because this hypothetical version of the “option” would quickly enroll virtually all of the eligible population (Medicare accomplished that task within 11 months), it would have little or no problem inducing clinics and hospitals everywhere to accept “option”-insured patients even if it paid providers at rates below those paid by the insurance industry. It would have little or no trouble because very few providers would want to turn away so many patients and so much revenue. Commonsense tells us this would be true across the country (not just in some parts of the country) because the distribution of any given age bracket is roughly the same across the country.

Medicare’s history confirms this commonsense analysis. No law requires doctors and hospitals to accept Medicare patients, and yet virtually all doctors and hospitals have accepted Medicare patients routinely since Medicare began operations on July 1, 1966 even though Medicare has paid providers 20 percent less, on average, than the insurance industry has (the actual difference between Medicare and insurance industry reimbursement rates has varied over time and by region).

On the other hand, commonsense suggests a very different outcome if the “option” starts out as a program separate from Medicare and is guaranteed none or few of the advantages that Hacker specified for his original version of the “option,” including a large enrollment prior to the first day of operations. Commonsense tells us that if the “option” is instead forced to begin operations without a single enrollee, and must compete on a level playing field with existing insurance companies to recruit whatever enrollees it eventually does get, the “option’s” growth pattern will be quite different from Medicare’s.

And here we come to my main point: The major difference between an “option” that really does resemble Medicare and the little one proposed by Democrats is that the little Democratic “option” can’t be rolled out all at once at the national level. Rather, it must be implemented at the local level market by market – in the Bay Area market, in the upstate New York market, in the Chicago market, in the Iron Range-Duluth market, in the Fort Worth-Dallas market, and so on.

Small size dictates market-by-market implementation of the “option” program

A small “option” must be implemented market by market because wholesale activities at the national level – like press conferences and a public education campaign – no longer accomplish, by themselves, the two fundamental tasks that any successful insurance program must accomplish – the enrollment of a sufficient number of people, and achieving some assurance (formal or informal) that a sufficient number of providers are ready and willing to treat those people. For the tiny “option” promoted by the Democrats, those tasks can be accomplished, if at all, by a work plan that (1) goes beyond mere press conferences and advertising that is (2) conducted at the local level.

In short, those who must implement the Democrats’ tiny “option” will have to behave as if they were executives of an insurance company seeking to break into markets in which the company has no presence. However, unlike insurance company executives, “option” administrators won’t have the luxury of merely buying an existing insurance company in the target market. (Insurance companies never or rarely create insurance companies from scratch any more but instead buy their way into new markets. That fact indicates how difficult it is going to be for the “option” to establish itself in any market in the US.)

Once we accept the fact that the Democrats’ “option” will have to be built market by market, an obvious question arises: Won’t the “option” program or insurance company we build in one market differ in important ways from the ones we build in other markets? The answer to this question is, Yes, the “options” could vary by premium levels, benefits covered, level of out-of-pocket payments (this will be true even if the final “option” legislation sets minimum benefit and out-of-pocket levels), degree to which patient choice of provider is limited, or all of the above.

For those who aren’t familiar with the insurance industry, let me elaborate briefly. Health care markets, and therefore health insurance markets, are local. With the exception of prescription drugs and medical equipment, the great majority of medical expenditures are for services provided by health care professionals to people who live near them, that is, within their market area. The fact that most health insurance companies are multi-state or national doesn’t change the fact that the success of any given insurance company depends primarily on how it performs in the local markets in which it attempts to compete. Since at least the advent of managed care, the performance of insurance companies in a particular market has depended first and foremost on its size.

The reason insurance companies do not attempt to penetrate all markets is that there are barriers to market entry that are expensive to overcome and, in some markets, impossible to overcome. One of the most important market-entry barriers, possibly the most important, is the level of concentration within the insurance market. A market in which, for example, two insurance companies insure 80 percent of the population will, other things being equal, be harder to break into than a market in which the largest two insurance companies insure only 20 percent of the population. The level of concentration within the clinic and hospital sectors will also have some bearing on how difficult market entry will be.

A third important factor affecting the ease of market entry is the extent to which managed care has taken over the market. In markets where managed care practices are widely used, insurers typically limit patient choice of provider. Insurance companies do this because it allows them to funne

l a large number of patients to relatively few providers, and this in turn augments their power to extract discounts from providers and to induce providers to cooperate with the insurance company’s efforts to deny services to patients. Both of these advantages – paying providers less and paying for fewer services – obviously help the insurer keep its premiums down.

Markets differ in the strength of market-entry barriers. In markets where

• one or two insurers insure the majority of the people who live in that market and
• where those insurers impose restrictions on patient choice of provider and, therefore,
• have succeeded in pushing their provider rates way below those of other insurers and
• have induced their providers to deny care at higher rates than smaller insurers have –

in those markets, establishing a new insurance company that can quickly get its premiums down near or below those of the dominant insurers is very, very difficult. On the other hand, in markets where, say, 20 insurance companies each enroll 5 percent of the population and those insurers make limited use of managed-care tactics, entry and long-term survival by new competitors is less difficult.

To sum up: If we know only that the proposed “option” (1) is expected to compete with insurance companies, (2) will be small, and (3) won’t be given advantages that insurers don’t get, we can predict the “option” will have to be built market by market. We can predict, conversely, that such an “option” cannot be implemented with the simpler and less expensive national-level activities that would suffice to implement a large “option” that truly did resemble Medicare. Exactly how small the “option” has to be before we can predict it must be implemented market by market is not clear. But it seems safe to say that the little zero-to-six-million-enrollee “option” proposed by the Democrats falls far below the critical mass required for a publicly financed health insurance program to be implemented with the relatively simple tools with which Medicare was implemented.

Finally, if we reach the conclusion that the Democrats’ “option” must be implemented market by market, then we must also reach the conclusion that the locally implemented “options” will look different from one another. Why? Because the market-entry barriers they will have to overcome will differ from market to market. Such an “option” will be “national” only in the sense that the federal government will be financing the attempt by the “option” program to break into every market in the US, and in the sense that the federal government will set some minimum criteria (such as minimum benefit levels) that “option” programs must meet in each market.

Option advocates offer no information on who will create and run the “options”

Reaching the conclusion that the “option” program will have to be implemented market by market does not necessarily mean individual local “option” programs will be created by or run by private firms. One could imagine Congress passing a law that requires “option” programs to be created and run by public employees.

To shed some light on this issue, it would be helpful if we could find discussions about the implementation of the “option” in documents prepared by “option” advocates, by the staff of the Democrats who wrote the “reform” bills, or by independent consultants who reviewed the “option” proposal. But, amazingly, the available documents contain not a word about how the “option” will be created. The following documents about the “option” say nothing at all about how “option” plans will be established:

* Jacob Hacker’s 2001, 2007, and 2009 papers describing the “option”;
* All three reports on Hacker’s version of the “option” by the Lewin Group (the first two of which Hacker and his allies endorsed);
* Press releases and other documents about the “option” prepared by representatives of Health Care for America Now and of the Congressional Progressive Caucus;
* All five reports by the Congressional Budget Office to members of Congress about the impact of the “option” on the uninsured rate and on federal spending issued between July and September as well as CBO’s latest (October 29) report on the “option” in the House bill.

On October 27, I attempted to induce Jason Rosenbaum, a blogger for HCAN, to explain how the Democrats’ “option” would be implemented. I posted a question to Rosenbaum on an article he wrote for the Firedoglake Website in which he called Sen. Reid’s announcement the previous day (that the Senate version of the “reform” bill would contain an “option”) “a huge victory.” My question, which is presented in an appendix to this post, laid out my best guess as to how an “option” plan could come into existence plus several questions about aspects of my scenario. Rosenbaum declined to discuss my question. “Sorry Kip, not interested,” was the extent of his reply.

Divining the intention of the authors of the Democrats’ legislation

Thus, the only documents available to the public at this date that shed light on the extent to which private corporations will create and run the “option” program are the Democrats’ “reform” bills – the Senate HELP Committee bill and HR 3200, now HR 3962. As I have noted in previously posted papers, both bills clearly authorize the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (the official in charge of implementing the “option” in both bills) to hire private-sector insurance companies and other types of corporations “for the purpose of performing administrative functions … with respect to the public health insurance option” (as HR 3962 puts it at page 212; the HELP Committee bill uses identical language but substitutes “with respect to the community health insurance option”). Both bills state that these “administrative functions” include at minimum the claims-processing functions now carried out by insurance companies for Medicare. Both bills, especially the Senate bill, clearly imply that the administrative functions that will need to be carried out to create the “option” will go way beyond mere claims processing. However, neither bill explains what these non-claims-processing tasks will be.

In my view it is reasonable to infer that the non-claims-processing functions will be all those tasks necessary to create and run “option” programs in every market in the US. I said above that the Senate HELP Committee bill is especially clear about this. That’s because it not only explicitly acknowledges that the “option” will consist of numerous “community option” programs, but because it limits the use of the start-up funds to loans to the “contracting administrators” (the Senate HELP Committee’s name for the corporations the Secretary may contract with). There is, in other words, no language in the “option” section of the Senate HELP bill that gives the Secretary money to hire more public employees to carry out the task of creating “option” insurance programs. The Secretary’s only choice is to outsource all the tasks necessary to create “option” programs market by market to private sector corporations, most of which will probably be insurance companies.

Conclusions

Using our commonsense and a few basic bits of information about the Democrats’ “option,” we can deduce that the “option” will not be uniform like Medicare, but will be a smorgasbord of local plans. When we consult the Democrats’ legislation, it becomes apparent – in the case of the Senate bill, obvious – that the “option” will be created and possibly run by insurance companies and other corporations.

Once we establish that the “option” will consist of multiple local plans, then it becomes obvious the contracting administrators will have to set those up. What’s not obvious, but what seems inevitable, is that (a) the contracting administrators will hire non-public-employees to staff the local plans and (b) the contracting administrators will either eventually retire from the scene and leave those pl

ans in private hands (in which case we can say the local “options” are privately owned and run) or the contracting administrators will continue to play some ownership or supervisory role indefinitely (in which case it would be accurate to say the contracting administrators not only created the local “options” but ran them thereafter).

Thanks in large part to the bait-and-switch tactic employed by the leaders of the “public option” movement, the high probability that the “option” will be a balkanized program created and run by insurance companies is not obvious to the public. The constant description of the “option” as “like Medicare” and “available to all Americans” has created widespread confusion about every aspect of the “option,” including how big it will be, whether it will be uniform like Medicare or balkanized into dozens or hundreds of local programs, and who will create it. Given this confusion, I definitely understand why some people thought Byrne’s article overstated the role insurance companies will play in the “option.” But that doesn’t excuse them. The movement for universal health insurance does not need ditto-heads. We need well informed people capable of playing a role in improving, not diminishing, public understanding of the Democrats’ “reform” legislation.

I want to stress that the issue of whether the Democrats’ tiny “option” is run by public employees or private corporations is secondary to the question of whether the “option” will work as advertised, in particular, whether it will be big enough, efficient enough, and sufficiently immune to adverse selection to seize substantial market share from the insurance industry and force its premiums down. The important issue is the impact the small size of the Democrats’ option will have on its ability to keep its administrative costs and provider reimbursement rates down. The use of private firms to create the numerous “community insurance option” programs will probably add to the total administrative cost of setting up the “option” program, but those additional costs pale in comparison to the higher administrative costs created by the need to build the “option” program on a retail basis, that is, market by market, rather than on a wholesale basis.

Most importantly, if the Democrats’ feeble “option” is used as a fig leaf by liberal members of Congress to throw hundreds of billions of dollars per decade at the insurance industry, and if the “option” fails to have any effect on the insurance industry, serious damage will be inflicted on Americans, both as patients and as premium- and tax-payers. Those who wish to alleviate human suffering in all its forms will care little whether the “option” failed under the guidance of public employees or insurance companies.

Nevertheless, this issue of whether corporations will play a significant role in the “option” is an important one because truthful reporting about it helps educate Americans, including those Americans who hold seats in Congress, about what the “option” is and isn’t. Right now the Democrats’ “option” looks like a tiny little program that will hire insurance companies to create little privately run insurance companies from scratch on a market by market basis. It is extremely unlikely that if pollsters asked Americans what they thought of this version of the “option” that a majority would say they like it. It’s hard to believe a majority of the membership of Congress would vote for it.

fyi

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23922.htm
Why I Voted NO

By Dennis Kucinich

November 08, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.

Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.

But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies - a bailout under a blue cross.

By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal. The Center for American Progress' blog, Think Progress, states, 'since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.' Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that 'money will start flowing in again' to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation. Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy.

During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The 'robust public option' which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks' hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy - in which most Americans live - the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street.

This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America's manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care. America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatized health care system. As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care.

Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America's businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals.


| More

Click on "comments" below to read or post comments

Comments (20)

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. See our complete Comment Policy and use this link to notify us if you have concerns about a comment. We’ll promptly review and remove any inappropriate postings. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.


In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

November 10, 2009
Another Big Bail Out
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill

By ROSE ANN DeMORO

Of all the torrent of words that followed House passage of its version of healthcare reform legislation in early November, perhaps the most misleading were those comparing it to enactment of Social Security and Medicare.

Sadly no. Social Security and Medicare were both federal programs guaranteeing respectively pensions and health care for our nation's seniors, paid for and administered by the federal government with public oversight and public accountability.

While the House bill, and its Senate counterpart, do have several important reform components, along with many weaknesses, neither one comes close to the guarantees and the expansion of health and income security provided by Social Security or Medicare.

By contrast, if the central premise of Social Security and Medicare was a federal guarantee of health and retirement security, the main provision of the bills in Congress is a mandate requiring most Americans without health coverage to buy private insurance.

In other words, the principle beneficiary is not Americans' health, but the bottom line of the insurance industry which stands to harvest tens of billions of dollars in additional profits ordered by the federal government. Or as Rep. Eric Massa of New York put it on the eve of the House vote, "at the highest level, this bill will enshrine in law the monopolistic powers of the private health insurance industry, period."

Further, while Social Security and Medicare, two of the most important reforms in American history, were both significant expansions of public protection, the House bill actually reduces public protection for a substantial segment of the population, women, with its unconscionable rollback of reproductive rights in the anti-abortion amendment.

Why then so much cheerleading by many progressive and liberal legislators, columnists, and activists?

* Passage of the bill was a clear defeat for the Republican opposition and those on the right who have so mischaracterized what boils down to modest reform that looks more like a "robust" version of the Medicare prescription drug benefit or the state children's health initiative.

* Proponents of the bill, starting in the White House and running through the Democratic leadership in Congress, with the assistance and support of many in labor and liberal and progressive constituency groups, have so lowered expectations on healthcare reform that with eyes wide shut they can call this a sweeping victory.

To be sure there are commendable provisions in the House bill that bear note. Among the most important are:

* Expansion of Medicaid to millions of low income adults.

* Reduction of the "doughnut hole" in the Medicare drug coverage law making drug costs more affordable for many seniors.

* Increased federal funding for community health programs, such as home visits for nurses and social workers to low income families.

* Additional regulation of the insurance industry, mostly targeted to people who are presently without coverage rather than those with existing health plans. Those include limits on insurers ability to drop sick enrollees or refuse to sell policies to people with prior health problems, extending the age that dependent children can be on their parents' plan, and repeal of the anti-trust exemption for insurers.

* Extending the same health benefit tax benefits available to married couples to domestic partners.

* A progressive tax to help pay the bill through a surcharge on wealthy earners and required contributions from large employers, in sharp contrast with the Senate proposal to tax health benefits on misnamed "Cadillac" plans, comprehensive coverage available to many union members, for example.

But the acclaim now flowing from some quarters would have been better deserved had these provisions been enacted on their own -- not accompanied by the many shortcomings of the legislation. To cite a few:

* Healthcare will remain unaffordable for many Americans. The bill does not do nearly enough to control skyrocketing insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital costs. Indeed, by various estimates, with no effective limits on the insurance industry's price gouging, out-of-pocket costs for premiums, deductibles and other fees by some estimates with eat up from 15 to 19 percent of family incomes by several accounts.

* No meaningful reform of the rampant insurance denials of medical treatment the insurers don't want to pay for.

* Little assistance for individuals and families who presently have employer-sponsored health plans and face frequent erosion of their coverage and health security. No help for the healthcare cost-shifting from employers to employees.

* Minimal expansion of consumer choice. The much debated public plan option will be available only to about 2 percent of people under age 65, mostly those now not covered who buy insurance on their own (it may or may not be expanded in 2015). Further, no additional plan options for those in the many markets dominated by one or two private plans, and no additional choice of doctor or hospital within existing plans.
* The new limits on abortion extended to poor women.

Ultimately, the combination of the mandate to buy insurance, federal subsidies to low income families to purchase private plans, failure to adequately control insurance prices or crack down on the abuse of insurance denials make the House bill -- and its Senate counterpart -- look a lot like a massive bailout for the private insurance industry.

Don't be misled by the howling from insurance industry which has been spending some $1.4 million a day to steer the direction of legislation. They would have preferred the status quo, but will be more than happy to count the increased revenues coming their way.

As Rep. Dennis Kucinich said on the House floor, "we cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem."

While some people will have improved access, the final accounting will be an even firmer private insurance grip on our healthcare system, with the U.S. remaining the only industrialized nation which barters our health for private profit.

Months ago, the Obama administration pre-determined this outcome by ruling out the most comprehensive, most cost effective, most humane reform, single payer, or an expanded and improved Medicare for all. Single payer proponents were shut out of White House forums, blocked from most hearings in the Senate, and single payer amendments stripped from the final House bill. Yet, through grassroots pressure, single-payer advocates forced consideration by the House of an improved Medicare for all until the very end.

But nurses and other single payer proponents who have heroically fought for this reform for years will continue the campaign, next in the Senate, where single payer amendments are expected to be introduced. The scene will also shift to state capitols, where vibrant single payer movements remain active and will escalate.

Proponents of comprehensive reform will never be silent, and never stop working for the real change we most desperately need.

http://www.counterpunch.org/demoro11102009.html

Thanks! just what the doctor ordered, been battling a very nasty liberal in a discussion group...

Goldman Sachs: Insurance Stocks Would Drop 36% By 2019 With House Public Option
By: Jane Hamsher Friday November 13, 2009 7:36 am


Pretty interesting. Goldman Sachs evaluates the impact of the Finance Committee health care bill, the House bill and no bill on the value of insurance stocks over the next 10 years. They focused on the impact of Wall Street’s biggest insurance stocks: Aetna, UnitedHealth, WellPoint, CIGNA and Humana.

The best scenario for the insurance companies is doing nothing:

The study’s authors advise that if no reform is passed, earnings per share would grow an estimated ten percent from 2010 through 2019, and the value of the stock would rise an estimated 59 percent during that time period.

The second best scenario, which they use as a “baseline” and which they give the best chance of passage, is the Senate Finance bill:

The Senate Finance Committee bill, which Goldman’s analysts conclude is the version most likely to survive the legislative process, is described as the “base” scenario. Under that legislation (which did not include a public plan) the earnings per share for the top five insurers would grow an estimated five percent from 2010 through 2019. And yet, the “variance with current valuation” — essentially, what the value of the stock is on the market — is projected to drop four percent.

Their “bull scenario” is the Senate bill “watered down”:

The next best thing for the insurance industry would be if the legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee is watered down significantly. Described as a “bull case” scenario — in which there is “moderation of provisions in the current SFC plan” or “changes prior to the major implementation in 2013? — earnings per share for the five biggest insurers would grow an estimated ten percent and the variance with current valuation would rise an estimated 47 percent.

According to Jon Walker, “weakening” probably entails having the individual mandate strengthened, community rating range expanded to 1-5 again, transparency elements eliminated, and regulation weakened in addition to removing excise tax on insurance and the Medicare Advantage provisions.

And the worst case scenario? The House version of the public option:

This is, the firm deems, the “bear case” scenario — in which earnings per share for the top five insurers would decline an estimated one percent from 2010 through 2019 and the variance with current valuation is projected to be negative 36 percent.

Goldman estimates the chance of passing some form of health care reform at 75%, which I would guess is probably about right.

If Goldman is right, this means the CBO projections were way off, and Jon Walker’s evaluation of the impact of the public plan in the House bill is probably much more accurate.

Goldman claims that the report “was analytic not advocacy-based.” Which might be somewhat believable were their “fantasy future bill” not included. It’s hard to look at this as anything but advocacy on their part to apply political pressure to weaken and pass the Senate Finance Committee bill, because it’s highly unlikely that no health care bill will be passed.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/11/13/goldman-sachs-insurance-stocks-would-drop-36-by-2019-with-house-public-option/

The house bill is a pretty bad scenario for the people as well; sure would love to see some hurtin' happening to the insurance profit mongers, but, man, hate that bill...

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 11/12/2009 - 3:16pm.

* Dave Lindorff

I never thought I'd find myself thanking the women-loathing, Christian fundamentalist-pandering Democrats in Congress for anything, but here it is: Thank you, Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI), for your outrageous amendment to the House version of the health insurance reform legislation in Congress, which bars any insurance company in the proposed health insurance exchange from offering a health insurance plan that includes abortion coverage.

This amendment, which would actually bar women or families from buying even with their own money and no government subsidy health insurance that includes funding for a medically recommended abortion, was supported by 64 Democrats along with all but one Republican in Congress.

Because it passed and was attached to the House health reform bill, it gives hope to the notion that the disastrous so-called health reform legislation in Congress will die.

And so it should.

Because of an utter lack of leadership from the president, and because of the massive corruption in Congress, which is wallowing in lobbying money from the insurance industry and other parts of the Medical-Industrial Complex, a historical opportunity to finally bring the U.S. out of the dark ages on health care has been blown.

The legislation emerging in Senate and House does not reform the system. In many ways, this makes things even worse than they are today, with unfunded mandates that struggling working people buy insurance or be penalized, with taxes placed on better plans negotiated through long struggle by labor unions, with little in the way of cost controls on doctors, hospitals, and the drug industry, and it doesn't even provide coverage for all.

Way back in 1965, a different Democratic president and Democratic Congress passed landmark health reform that gave the U.S. a pioneering single-payer healthcare program, with the only problem being that you had to live to 65 in order to qualify for it. Today that program, Medicare, while repeatedly shortchanged and underfunded by Congress, is relied upon by over 40 million elderly and disabled Americans, and is widely appreciated for its simplicity and its universality. Sure it could be better. We could do away with the gaps in coverage, and tighten the screws on payments to doctors, hospitals, and the suppliers of tests, equipment and drugs. But it remains a beautiful model of what could be done for the rest of the country.

Instead of drawing on this excellent, time-tested model, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have pretended Medicare doesn't exist. Obama went so far as to say on several occasions, including in his address to Congress on health care reform, that while single-payer plans such as those in Canada and France might work well in those countries (indeed they do, and at much less cost than our insane "system" here!), introducing such a system here would mean "starting from scratch."

Come again Barack? From scratch? Those countries modeled their systems, in part, on Medicare, which we had here first! And Medicare is actually a bigger program than the entire Canadian health care system!

Medicare for all would have been the proper way to reform American health care, and in fact, it could have been implemented right away at a huge overall savings to all of us. This was never admitted by the Democratic leaders in Congress of by the president. In fact, bills in the House and Senate, sponsored, respectively, by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), have never even been allowed to get a hearing or to go to a floor vote, for fear that the public would see what they are being denied.

Medicare for all, while it would certainly would have meant higher payroll taxes for all of us, would have been a huge net savings, because it would have eliminated the need for the Medicaid program for the poor ($450 billion a year), the Veterans Administration healthcare system ($100 billion a year and mounting), and publicly funded charity care by hospitals ($300 billion). It would have eliminated over $150 billion a year in private health industry administrative costs and between $75-100 billion in health industry profits. Add it up -- that is savings of over $1 trillion a year. Since adding the under-65 population to Medicare would only add about $750-800 billion a year to the program costs, that's a net savings of over $200 billion a year, without even counting the fact that businesses and citizens alike would no longer have to pay ransoms to the private insurance industry -- a savings to individuals and employers of close to $1.5 trillion a year!

We need health care reform. 40 million Americans have no access to health care. 40,000 a year die because of lack of access. 30-40 million more have lousy care funded by state Medicaid programs, many of which are underfunded and few of which provide for routine care. The rest of us are indentured to our employers, afraid to unionize, afraid to strike, afraid to speak up on the job, for fear of losing our insurance coverage.

The health care "reform" bill in Congress does nothing to solve these problems. Aside from outlawing a couple of the worst abuses, such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, or pricing such people out of the insurance market, or dropping coverage when someone actually becomes ill, it leaves all the evils of the current system in place, and assures that the crisis will continue and continue to worsen.

But with the ban on abortion coverage, there is a chance that at least some principled members of Congress, backers of a woman's right to unimpeded health care that she and her doctor say she needs, will reject the whole obscene package. If they do, this fraudulent reform legislation will go down in flames.

Then we'll be back to square one, and we can finally demand that Congress and the President give us the reform that will work: Medicare for all.

So again, thank you Rep. Stupak, and all you anti-women's rights Democrats who backed the amendment barring abortion coverage in the health reform legislation. You've given us another shot at real health system reform.

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia journalist. He is author of "Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains" (Bantam Books, 1992) and most recently of "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
Technorati Tags:Technorati Tags: Dave Lindorff