Yes We Can! Long IslandYes We Can! Long Island – Healthcare Committee Mission Statement:
The mission of the Yes We Can! Long Island Healthcare Committee is to promote the general welfare of all. The committee believes that:
1. Access to affordable, quality healthcare is a right
2. Single Payer Plan, is the optimal solution for achieving this goal in the most cost effective manner.
Consequently, the committee will work to broaden access to quality affordable healthcare to all living in the United States through political action and education.
Working for Affordable and Accessible Quality Healthcare
The United States has the world’s costliest healthcare system, yet 47 million Americans, 16 percent of the population, are uninsured. As the economy worsens and unemployment increases, the ranks of the uninsured are likely to grow, as well.
Accessibility and affordability are the watchwords of comprehensive healthcare reform. The Obama Administration believes those goals can be met through a plan that build upon the strengths of the existing system and enable patients to make healthcare decisions with their doctors, free from insurance company interference. Plus, it would save families up to $2,500 per year.
In New York State, taxpayers bear the burden of a Medicaid system that costs 69 percent more, per capita, higher than the national average. And, despite a newly signed law expanding the S-CHIP program, there are still 65,000 uninsured children on Long Island.
Yes We Can! Long Island wants to make healthcare on Long Island accessible and affordable for all.
Fellow Long Islanders, Message Karl-7
If you haven’t done so already, please read this series from the beginning, starting with Message Karl-0, which is just below Karl-1.
The writer of this segment, Jim, is the most generally knowledgeable person I have ever met and totally devoted to “free market” concepts. I do not know how to include his cartoon onto this message.
Neil
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FROM JIM
Wealth Concentration (the Gini index, etc.) gets a lot of airplay from populists and progressives alike. I recall William Jennings Bryan and his “Cross of Gold” speech. (He was so well captured as the cowardly lion in
The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum). It is the age old quest for a fair an equitable outcome, regardless of effort. It sounds good and feels good, even “noble”. But it is a chimera. There is a need to distinguish between wealth as measured by “monetary” scales and wealth by quality of life, happiness, spiritual well-being, etc. ABove the most basic level, Money, in and of itself, has no correlation with the factors that determine what makes a life good and complete. This, fortunately, is as variable as we are as individuals. Given that on a global scale, monetary wealth is even more concentrated than within the USA (if you look at the big picture, the lion’s share of the wealth is in a few countries, and within them a few major industrialied cities) is is accurate to say that ony the “wealthy” 2% of the world’s population is happy? And that they must forcibly distribute their wealth? (Beyond progressive taxation, which already strives to accomplish this.) Some would resoundingly say “yes”! Some, acting on whatever motivates them, do give most of their money to the poor and needy. Interestingly, the IRS data shows that the lion’s share comes from middle and low income people. (But certainly not from Joe Biden when his $900 donated over 10 years was made public; Obama was also pretty tight but that was before he had much money from his books). Some give away their lives to help others. If this were FORCED behavior, would the world be better off? Not sure. One respondent explained that health care in the USA is better because doctors have to
work their rear ends off to become a doctor, and this is because it is difficult and pays well. (You don’t become super rich, but you live well.) Sounds simple but a lot of truth. I think that wealth concentration from ILLEGAL activity (as it is in much of South America,
Africa, Asia and has become an issue in America and Europe now) is the problem. People get upset and revolutionary when there is the perception that wealth is being accumulated ILLEGALLY, not that wealth is accumulated per se. Is anyone complaining about the $161 MILLION contract to CC
Sabathia (NY Yankees baseball pitcher), especially because he is performing well? Did people get upset at Bernie Madoff or Barney Frank or Jeff Skilling and their scams? Yes. I believe that LOVE of money (not money, which is a necessary fiat for exchange) is the root of evil. People should stop emphasizing income inequality and work to strengthen the application of laws to ensure that the playing field remains equal and that we remain a country of laws, not emotional rehetoric. Capitalism is not a moral system, and people who try to look to it for a code of morality will always be disappointed. See attached cartoon! Brgds, Jim
Fellow Long Islanders, Message Karl-6
If you haven’t done so already, please read this series from the beginning, starting with Message Karl-0, which is just below Karl-1.
More interesting questions asked, including “Why the big rush?” It does seem to me that when we are about to make such profound changes in the American way of life there should be a full and complete disclosure and dialogue. Karl’s point about following the money also seems valid. The administratiion gives 16 billion dollars to AIG to bail them out and nearly a billion goes to bonuses for the execs of a company that needed 16 billion for a bail out. How could that be allowed to happen? How much of that billion will come back to those who gave it out?
Neil
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Great, I got your attention Aija,
Your right, we are in terrible trouble, and the government is not the answer, but just follow the money and you will find that those which we call the leaders of our capitalistic system are the same people pulling the strings of government. Don’t be fooled by the crowd in charge changing their hats as they speak to us. Please, please, please follow the money and you will find those claiming to represent free enterprise and those benefiting from government programs are all the same. Doesn’t it just seem such a contradiction that, there are people losing their homes, losing their businesses. Malls empty of retail entrepanures and facing default. Banks closing and 401ks tanking. And yet the stock market is now over 10,000 and PSE&G announces a 20% rate increase and the oil companies are realizing record profits. I’m telling you don’t be fooled the worst is yet to come and it will be the American and world population who suffer. I’ve told the story before. The crowd’s gathered around the winter palace, and the placards they carried called for Liberty against the tyranny of Czar Nikolas. Yes those crowds were sincere, but they ushered in the era of Bolshevism, Communism, and decades of death and misery for millions. Let’s not be so shallow as to allow the same mistake twice. Your right Aija it’s not about, just health care it’s about the fact that Capitalism itself must evolve and reject the concentration of wealth in just 2% of the population. Remember in the 50, 60, and 70′s we had a bell shaped distribution of wealth and we were using free enterprise. Let’s not call what we have now the same, “WHAT HAPPENED & WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE” Critical questions must be asked, and solutions to allow free enterprise to evolve in a modern society where opportunity to share in the American Dream is still Possible. Hundred Million dollar salaries with people standing in bread lines is not the answer………..When you have salaries like that, you concentrate wealth and power in the hands of very few, and you have politicians in the pockets of those same people. Let Congress share the same health plan that we the American public have. I truly am looking for people to start thinking and articulating real solutions. I don’t hear it from the president or Congress.
Karl
Fellow Long Islanders, Message Karl-5
If you haven’t done so already, please read this series from the beginning, starting with Message Karl-0, which is just below Karl-1. So far, the most interesting question I have heard asked is “Who are these 47 million people without health care insurance?” Aija also raises some interesting questions.
Neil
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Karl,
Let me preface by saying, that I have never been involved in any political discussions until recently. Now I attend Tea Parties, Twitter, follow daily Washington’s shenanigans.
I believe I understand what you attempted to achieve by starting this discussion. You raised a lot of interesting questions and topics. However, the health care issue is only a symptom of a disease in our country. Cap & Trade is another fluff to obscure the true dilemma.
There are far deeper problems than health care.
If it had been only health care reform, it would have been warranted. Why the rush to ram it down our throats? Remember, the gov’t wanted to push this through without a debate or having read the bill!
On the corporate front…have you noticed…
Lately, many of our elite have begun to demonize corporations. I sense, that this hatred has been implanted by our power grabbing politicians whose sole purpose is to destroy Capitalism. Why are they doing it? Is it about control?
If anyone has read Saul Alinsky’s blueprint on implementing Socialism, it’s all there! (Alinsky was BHO mentor!) Why the hatred towards corporations? Free enterprise is not part of the plan for Socialism. You must demonize corporations, convince the people that corps can no longer handle the auto industry, run banks, insurance companies, schools, health care. Give power to the people (ACORN, unions) It’s all part of the plan. Make the people grovel for bread…
Of course, there are some bad apples, but most of our major corporations have a way of policing their activity via competition and their shareholders. It has never been the governments job to bail out corporations. True Capitalism allows corporations to grow or fail. Most of them started out as small businesses and grew to prosper into successful publicly held corporations. Without free enterprise, we would not have achieved the prosperity, abundance of jobs, innovations, new products. What is immoral about that?
The same thing applies to affordable health care. We need health care reform, not government run health care. We need Tort reform, transferable policies, Interstate, etc. Doctors and hospitals can police themselves. The insurance premiums would be cut drastically due to competition. Look what happened to Ma Bell and the auto insurance industry. This would cost us nothing!
The government has not been successful in running or operating any agency to date. They have failed miserably. What makes you think they’ll learn now?!
The government has grown too big and has not proven to me that they can handle our money, let alone my health care. Government is the problem, not the solution!
We must all make an effort to have our voices heard. The first Tea Party I attended 3/09 consisted of 25 people. When I went to 912 Rally in Washington DC, there were 1,700,000 people! Of course, MSM barely mentioned it. It is beginning to leave an impact on our officials. We may be able to slow down these “enemies” within our borders before they do too much damage.
I am attending “Audit the Fed” or “End the Fed” rally on 11/22 in NYC. If you would like to attend, let me know and I’ll send you the info.
Aija
Fellow Long Islanders, Message Karl 4
Karl and others may be drifting into more general commentary, but it still applies to the healthcare issue. The following is Karl’s response to the initial comments of others. Karl calls himself a conservative, and would be horrified at the thought of voting for a Democrat, but some of his comments seem like the kind of thing YWC!LI would endorse.
Neil
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FROM KARL
Friends
Your, response to my question is well thought out and logical.
Your assuming I’m arguing Government should run health care, because the
system is broken. Let me assure you that this is not the case. I have
however real questions and reservations as to the role of government within
the context of history, Time, and the human condition. I believe it can be
argued that capitalism through the fault of our own devices has evolved into
a runaway corporatist society. Let me clarify; The economy is no doubt in
trouble, The distribution of wealth is not the preferred bell curve and I
don’t believe it represents those that work hard and take responsibility are
wealthy and those who do not are poor. It also demonstrates that power is
in the hands of the haves, and the lack of influence and justice is
concentrated in the poor. You similarly use classic definitions to enforce
your argument. The mere fact that someone else said it means nothing to me.
However, you do mention that the general health of the population is in the
interest and the welfare of the state or in other words the government. A
population riddled with, polio, anthrax, plague, H1N1….. I gather you
recognize would compromise our status, legitimacy, and international
prestige and as such threaten our very existence as an nation. So again we
can argue that the health of the nation or our population can reflect on our
autonomy in the world community. A decimated, health ravaged citizenry
compromises our status as a strong virulent society, commanding the respect
of others. If we take that logic to the obvious conclusion, that it is in
the interest of the Government, to have a healthy citizenry. I hear the
argument; the government is incapable of administering to anything. The
same argument applies to free enterprise administering to same. We either
fix the government or fix capitalism. The point I’m making is we tend to
answer questions like a swinging pendulum….. either or…..Show me a
solution where a poor person with a brain tamer gets the opportunity to
live, like the wealthy DuPont grand child who hasn’t worked a day in his or
her life but will receive the best care money can buy. Or O.J. who can
walk away from murder because of fame and money. Or the fact that it is
virtually impossible to be a President, Governor, or Senator unless you have
money. I’ll accept any solution as long as it does not imply that because
the other end of the pendulum arc is compromised with inequities that are
obvious, lets blindly choose the antithesis. I need to see some proposals
that legitimately answer my questions or concerns regarding Government
control or those regarding runaway capitalism.
Karl
Fellow Long Islanders, Message Karl-3
Below are two responses to Andrejs’ comments on Karl’s essay, one by Aija, who I do not know, and one by Jim, who I do know. Jim doesn’t say much here but I expect more from him and what he says usually makes a lot of sense.
Neil
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From Jim: “What an excellent, well-reasoned summary, even referencing Thomas Sowell, a favorite author. Thanks very much for sharing and ppulling these thoughts together!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry”
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Andrej,
Excellent! You have summarized it eloquently. Your first paragraph should be mandatory reading by all of our Government officials. Once they agree to abide by our Constitution, we can move forward. “We are a country of laws, not men.”
The outrageous bills proposed have little to do with actual health care or saving our planet. I read most of HR 3200. It’s a monstrosity! These people who wrote it couldn’t care less! The control freaks are in power and they know they must move quickly to push through their agenda while we are in a stupor from all the madness. Unfortunately, this is very divisive and unproductive.
At the same time, it is done intentionally to create chaos. This is only a distraction. How do you think all the world dictators have come to power? Watch what they do, not what they say!
Aija
Fellow Long Islanders, Message Karl-2
This is the first response to Karl’s essay. I do not know the writer personally. He is a 40 year old licensed civil engineer who manages large scale contruction projects in the NYC area for an international general contractor. He makes a number of very interesting points.
Neil
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Karl-
I see you are still grappling with the question of the role of government. I have some 200 plus post secondary school credits under my belt, some of it covering government, public sector economics, politics and philosophy, so I will at least give you a classic definition of the role of government. Government should provide for the safety and security of its citizens from both internal and external dangers (i.e. police fire department, various basic public services required for health…sewers and the like, military). Government should provide regulation and equitable use of public goods. A public good defined as anything in the public domain that can be utilized by a private citizen for free. This spawned all the anti-trust, interstate commerce laws and the like. And finally, the government should uphold the Constitution…at least that is what the President swears to do during his oath to office…basically uphold and enforce the law of the land. I’m not talking about common law or anything relating to God, morals or ethics. Obviously the law of the land has been a work in progress since the founding of this country…but good bad or indifferent…the government makes law, in theory for the good of the public, and they should uphold it.
Everything after that is probably overstepping the bounds of what government should do. Our government often attempt to cross the line into social engineering…changing the behavior of people. This has been the greatest downfall of our government. Government has really botched this from inner city housing projects and misguided infrastructure works to wealth redistribution tactics, taxation in general and the inefficient use of those dollars, disadvantaged business laws, etc. (see the works of Thomas Sewell). The level of basic necessity or entitlement of every citizen (or now non-citizen) is now the debate. Because of cost is an issue, let’s dismantle the current system and start fresh. Government jobs for everybody…we know how hard our public servants work…right?
What interests me about the health care debate is the fact that our elected officials in Washington are not recognizing the “pink elephant in the room.” The current argument has been set up as socialized health care vs. private. Government should take over health care because the “system” is broken. So we have to peel the onion here to get to the heart of the issue. My first question here is why is the general quality of medical care in the US the best in the world? I would welcome a legitimate argument against this, not some isolated example of some tribe of people in the hills of South America which suffer from no diseases. Show me an example of a modern society, large scale where public healt care is anywhere near the quality as the US. None of this type exist. Why do the affluent around the world seek out American universities to get their medical degrees among other degrees in medical fields? The answer is in the reward. It’s lucrative. Many don’t understand why health care and pharmaceutical costs are so high. It’s a two part answer. A. the product and service cost and B. the insurance cost (will dissect this one in the summary). A. the cost to get a medical degree is fairly high to begin with. It may cost $500k over seven years to get tot he point to pass a board exam, plus the opportunity cost for this…add another $200 or 300k for a white collar job over seven years. Doctors want to get some return for this effort and risk. Pharmaceutical companies spend millions developing drugs, going though clinical trials just to get the product to market. They would like to get that money back, some profit and risk reward. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. A doctor owns a mercedes and a condo in Florida. I should hope so after breaking their ass in medical school. Why do universities cost so much these days…well…not to take a stab at left vs. right, but you may want to ask our liberal friends about that one. But here is the real killer, Part B. Malpractice insurance costs and legal battles over frivolous lawsuits. We need some serious tort reform in this country!!! These costs get passed on to the consumer. And everyone wonders why medical and pharm. cost are so high. Our lawmakers in Washington do nothing. Sure, they are all lawyers…why would they want to cut their friends’ legs out form under them. Lawyers do great in this country, because the courts allow it. There is your “pink elephant.” Was the medical system broken a few decades ago?? There certainly is the need for a system that can weed out the bad apples, but the legal system has to bring their cost back down to earth.
So instead of our lawmakers saying that the system is broken and the government should take over, how about fix what is there, with the first task of tort reform. This would go a long way in many industries. Our government doesn’t have the guts to do it, so they point their finger at every other aspect of the problem. Government does not have the ability to properly assess risk, market forces, manage a process, determine adequate cause and effect, properly asses costs (our tax dollars). If our government takes over health care, the effects would be disastrous.
As a side note, I’m still waiting to see a real study of the people that do not have health care in this country. What are the demographics. Do they work? Are they here legally? How many wide/flat screen TV’s do they have in their house. More priorities out of whack. Why should the government facilitate people that mange their finances poorly? If healt care costs $5k or $6k a year for personal insurance…maybe we wouldn’t buy so many foreign cars, becasue that is about the import tax on a foreign car. Enter the debate of entitlement and level of entitlement. Why our representatives in Washingtoin want to give everyone free healthcare on the backs of those who work the hradest in this country. Our boarders will really be over run if we go there. My son was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Paterson nine years ago. We chose this hospital, because we had a choice and because it was the best rated pediatric hospital in the area. It jointly cost my and my wife’s insurance companies about $45k. My wife and child were in the hospital for three days. We did not spend a nickle. I could have bought a small house in the mid-west for that kind of money and had a mid-wife do the honors, but chose not to. St. Joseph’s has a policy of never denying care to anyone that walks into their hospital. I’m sure that cost was part of that bill.
Here are my thoughts, but from an ideological stand point, I’ll never buy into socializing health care. It truely is throwing the baby out with the bath water. It will be doomed from the day such a program is signed into law.
Andrejs
Fellow Long Islanders, Message Karl-1
Shown below is the message from Karl that started the string I am planning to distribute. Karl is in his 60′s and before he retired was the general manager of a small manufacturing and sales operation in northern NJ that produced pollution control equipment.
Karl was born in eastern Europe and came to the US as a child. English was not his first language which is the reason why some of what he writes includes words that sound like what he means to write.
Neil Yeoman
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Health Care
By Karl
Let me reassure all of you. I’m basically conservative, you might even say to the right of Genges Kahn. But, Republicans and Conservatives are missing the boat regarding Obama pushing the pendulum to the left. Corporatist America and their apologists Limbaugh, and Hannity are not helping the cause to permanently discredit the policies Obama, Pelosi and Reed. We have oversimplified who is on the Right or on the Left. If your against Pelosi and Obama that does not put you in the camp of Limbaugh or Hannity and visa-versa. Right and Wrong are similarly not necessarily on opposite sides of the spectrum and lie on the same vector as Left verses Right.
This is a multi dimensional universe and similarly a multi dimensional political and cultural conflict. Linear thinking has the US and for that matter the world polarized and paralyzed with fear. The question we as citizens must all come to terms with is; what do we feel is the role of government. Now to simply say, government’s track record is poor when it comes to administering programs is an incomplete over simplified statement, even though apparently true. Might we ask, can government be made more efficient and effective? Case in point, (the military), we might argue that it’s the government’s role to administer military operations. I believe few people would argue that we should have privet militias that we would hire, or that we would sub-contract a foreign nation to fight our battles abroad or defend us on our own soil. So it becomes clear that we are that which sets us apart from other nations as to how and what our government does for us. Therefore reasonable men and women can disagree, I believe meaningfully, as to what our government should do for us.
We as a leading nation in technology, resources and wealth should be able to administer not just a national militia but a whole wealth of programs that set us apart substantially from other oppressive and niggardly administrated regimes. Or, an option is status quo, where private enterprise administers the social reforms of our nation.
Let’s take Healthcare; under, the controls of the free market, most people have good health care in the US. Having said that, many people I mean legal citizens don’t have health care. You could argue that a nation where multitudes are without care is subject to calamitous cosequenses. I have good health care, because my wife is a teacher and I am covered under her plan until I’m 65 years old. Now if she were a waitress or self employed. I would probably have to spend $8,000+ a year to receive comparable coverage to that which I have now. $8,000+ on a fixed income is a devastating amount for a middle class American. Now of course, I can opt for less coverage and greater deductable. But this is the age where I need health care the most. It’s likely I will need restorative dental care, glasses, or other prostatic devices or equipment. The reality as a Middle Class American is that I will not be able to afford them. A wealthy nation such as ours could opt to protect its citizenry simply because we choose to. Not because it’s a rite, but because as the richest most progressive country on Earth, we choose to.
Most government programs have no basis as a “human rite” they are simply arbitrary. We as a society choose to include the option to better improve or advance our position in the world community. I don’t find anything wrong with that, if the plan is administered fairly and achieves a net benefit overall. I believe there is a moral imperative for a civilization to limit profiteering on human life and health. That’s my simple argument for government to administer health care. Like I said, you can argue government’s track record in administering any program is poor. And in truth you would probably be right. So the argument is not weather government should administer health care but how do we make the administration of same, free of corruption, affordable and fair. Let’s work vigorously as to a system that is repaired and it will spill over in many other inequities we all complain about. I believe this alone will improve the nature of Government and our faith in the System we call Capitalism under Democracy. We owe it to future civilizations.
I welcome commentary, or disapproval of my thoughts. Like I said reasonable people can disagree. All I ask is, let’s keep talking points and emotions under control.
Karl
Fellow Long Islanders,
As food for thought, and with Marvin’s support, I am going to post a series of messages from people whose comments I have been monitoring. I belong to a five person (all former employees of what is now the largest privately owned company in the US) cyberspcae discussion group all of whose other members are to my political Right and for all of whom I have the deepest respect. All have technical educations and all but me have held postions with significant commercial responsibilities. Their names are Karl, Jim, Verne, and Ole. All voted for GWB twice. (I, of course, did not.) The postings will start with a message sent by Karl. He included some people who the others in the discussion group do not know who are his friends. For continuity and convenience I will number the messages. This one I will number “Karl-0.”
I posted messages before on the YWC!LI site, but most of them have been in the Energy and the Environment area. Although my friends in the discussion group think of me as a liberaI, I consider myself a political moderate.
Neil Yeoman
Sounds good Neil.
If you want to compose a full article about these conversations, we would be happy to review it and probably post it on the homepage. Just let Marvin or I know.
The Passing of Universal Health Care Leader Marilyn Clement
The Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign mourns the passing of our dear friend and colleague Marilyn Clement, a long-time New York leader in the fight for universal health care. Marilyn passed away yesterday, August 3rd, here in New York City after a long illness. We extend our heartfelt sympathies to her family and friends. We will sorely miss her vision and leadership to our local health care justice movement.
Marilyn was a long-time champion of a single-payer national health insurance program, most recently serving as National Coordinator of Healthcare Now, which she founded a few years ago. During the 1992-4 Clinton health care reform period, Marilyn led “Health Care, We Gotta’ Have It!”, a New York City-based organization of women, particularly women of color, who advocated for fundamental health care reform. Through her health care justice work, she inspired multiple generations of health care activists through her personal courage, commitment, and passion.
Marilyn led a rich, decades-long career in social justice activism, including civil rights, women’s rights, human rights, and peace. She worked with and through a variety of organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the United Methodist Church, and the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, among other organizations. A full story of Marilyn’s life can is available at http://www.healthcare-now.org. Donations in her memory can be made to the Center for Constitutional Rights or Healthcare Now.
At a recent event honoring her in New York City, Marilyn eloquently spoke about her life’s work – a video of her speech can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYnbqnXKqKQ
The struggle continues in her memory,
Mark Hannay
Director
Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign
One Hudson Square
75 Varick Street, Suite 1404
DC 1707 AFSCME
New York, NY 10013
212-925-1829
212-925-0806 (fax)
metrohealth@igc.org
http://www.metrohealthcare.org
This piece extends the Help Wanted item on YWC!LI’s home page. Here’s what we must be doing:
1) Tell your healthcare story, read your neighbors’ stories, write a letter to the editor, or sign a petition. Go to the Healthcare Action Center for tips and materials: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/health-care-action-center/
2) Make sure people know the truth. Hand out flyers to friends or neighbors, door-to-door, at coffees, or at train stations, public events, or shops. The Organizing for America Groups in our area have voted to support the public option, which is under particular attack by special interests. Pasted at the end of this email is a one-page Public Option Factsheet, assembled by members of Organizing for America Brookhaven. You can also find an excellent general healthcare-reform flyer at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/votercontact/flyers/
3) Anti-Obama, anti-government, anti-health-reform opponents are inundating the Hill with calls, e-mails, and faxes. Our elected officials support meaningful reform, including a public option, but they need to hear from you to know they’re on the right track. Sign Sen. Schumer’s petition for a public option here:
http://ga3.org/campaign/healthpetition?qp_source=hc%5fty
Call our representatives and ask them to continue to show leadership in Washington on real healthcare reform and to more aggressively inform the media and their constituents on these complex issues.
Rep. Peter King
202-225-7896
516-541-4225
Sen. Charles Schumer
202-224-6542
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
202-224-4451
4) Do you prefer volunteering with others? Join with local Organizing for America volunteers who are canvassing, petitioning, and educating their neighbors on healthcare reform. If the group nearest you doesn’t have an activity planned when you’re available, they can connect you with other volunteers or you can work with one of the other groups.
Contact:
OFA Brookhaven (particularly active on healthcare): Jane Cash at JaneCash_6@msn.com
OFA South Fork: Arlene Coulter at arlenecoulter@gmail.com or John Whelan at Johnpaulwhelan@gmail.com
OFA North Fork: Dayannanda Peiris at dayannanda@optonline.com
5) Read the National Coalition on Health Care summary below on the high cost of NOT reforming health care, then talk to friends, family, and neighbors about why we need reform now!
Health care spending continues to rise at a rapid rate and is forcing businesses and families to cut back on operations and household expenses respectively. In 2008, total national health expenditures were expected to rise 6.9 percent – more than two times the rate of inflation.1
Total health care spending was $2.4 TRILLION in 2007, or $7900 per person1. That represented 17 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Spending is expected to increase at similar levels for the next decade reaching $4.3 TRILLION in 2017, or 20 percent of GDP.1
In 2008, employer health insurance premiums increased by 5.0 percent – two times the rate of inflation. The annual premium for an employer health plan covering a family of four averaged nearly $12,700. The annual premium for single coverage averaged over $4,700.2
Our health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management, inappropriate care, waste and fraud. These problems significantly increase the cost of medical care and health insurance for employers and workers and affect the security of families.
National Health Care Spending
* In 2008, health care spending in the United States reached $2.4 trillion, and was projected to reach $3.1 trillion in 2012. Health care spending is projected to reach $4.3 trillion by 2016.1
* Health care spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense.3
* In 2008, the United States will spend 17 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care. It is projected that the percentage will reach 20 percent by 2017.1
* Although nearly 46 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens.3
* Health care spending accounted for 10.9 percent of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.4
Employer and Employee Health Insurance Costs
* Premiums for employer-based health insurance rose by 5.0 percent in 2008. In 2007, small employers saw their premiums, on average, increase 5.5 percent. Firms with less than 24 workers, experienced an increase of 6.8 percent.2
* The annual premium that a health insurer charges an employer for a health plan covering a family of four averaged $12,700 in 2008. Workers contributed nearly $3,400, or 12 percent more than they did in 2007.2 (The annual premiums for family coverage significantly eclipsed the gross earnings for a full-time, minimum-wage worker ($10,712).)
* Workers are now paying $1,600 more in premiums annually for family coverage than they did in 1999.2
* Since 1999, employment-based health insurance premiums have increased 120 percent, compared to cumulative inflation of 44 percent and cumulative wage growth of 29 percent during the same period.2
* Health insurance expenses are the fastest growing cost component for employers. Unless something changes dramatically, health insurance costs will overtake profits by the end of 2008.5
* According to the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance in the United States have been rising four times faster on average than workers’ earnings since 1999.2
* The average employee contribution to company-provided health insurance has increased more than 120 percent since 2000. Average out-of-pocket costs for deductibles, co-payments for medications, and co-insurance for physician and hospital visits rose 115 percent during the same period.6
* The percentage of Americans under age 65 whose family-level, out-of-pocket spending for health care, including health insurance, that exceeds $2,000 a year, rose from 37.3 percent in 1996 to 43.1 percent in 2003 – a 16 percent increase.7
The Impact of Rising Health Care Costs
* National surveys show that the primary reason people are uninsured is the high cost of health insurance coverage.2
* Economists have found that rising health care costs correlate to drops in health insurance coverage.8
* A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that the average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy was $12,000. The study noted that 68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance. In addition, the study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses.9 Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.
* A new survey shows that more than 25 percent said that housing problems resulted from medical debt, including the inability to make rent or mortgage payments and the development of bad credit ratings.10
* About 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs. 11
* A survey of Iowa consumers found that in order to cope with rising health insurance costs, 86 percent said they had cut back on how much they could save, and 44 percent said that they have cut back on food and heating expenses.12
* Retiring elderly couples will need $250,000 in savings just to pay for the most basic medical coverage.13 Many experts believe that this figure is conservative and that $300,000 may be a more realistic number.
* According to a recent report, the United States has $480 billion in excess spending each year in comparison to Western European nations that have universal health insurance coverage. The costs are mainly associated with excess administrative costs and poorer quality of care.14
* The United States spends six times more per capita on the administration of the health care system than its peer Western European nations.14
Notes
1. Keehan, S. et al. “Health Spending Projections Through 2017, Health Affairs Web Exclusive W146: 21 February 2008.
2. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey. September 2008.
3. California Health Care Foundation. Health Care Costs 101 — 2005. 02 March 2005.
4. Pear, R., “U.S. Health Care Spending Reaches All-Time High: 15% of GDP.” The New York Times, 9 January 2004, 3.
5. McKinsey and Company. The McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter, “Will Health Benefit Costs Eclipse Profits,” September, 2004.
6. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey. September 2008.
7. Agency for Heathcare Research and Quality. Out-of-Pocket Expenditures on Health Care and Insurance Premiums Among the Non-elderly Population, 2003, March 2006.
8. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The Uninsured: A Primer, Key Facts About Americans without Health Insurance. 2004. 10 November 2004 http://www.kff.org/uninsured/
9. Himmelstein, D, E. Warren, D. Thorne, and S. Woolhander, “Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy, ” Health Affairs Web Exclusive W5-63, 02 February , 2005.
10. The Access Project. Home Sick: How Medical Debt Undermines Housing Security. Boston, MA, November 2005.
11. Robertson, C.T., et al. “Get Sick, Get Out: The Medical Causes of Home Mortgage Foreclosures,” Health Matrix, 2008
12. Selzer and Company Inc. Department of Public Health 2005 Survey of Iowa Consumers, September 2005.
13. Fidelity Investments, Press Release, 06 March 2006.
14. McKinsey Global Institute. Accounting for the Cost in the United States. January 2007
There’s been much discussion about the poor quality of polling on this issue. If you want accurate polling numbers and information, the best is Kaiser Family Foundation at http://www.kff.org/
We need as much support as possible at this critical time. Please spread the word! Thanks for your help!
Here’s a brief but informative overview of H.R.676 from the Library of Congress:
Title: To provide for comprehensive health insurance coverage for all United States residents, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14] (introduced 1/24/2007) Cosponsors (93)
Latest Major Action: 2/2/2007 Referred to House subcommittee. Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Health.
SUMMARY AS OF:
1/24/2007–Introduced.
United States National Health Insurance Act (or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act) – Establishes the United States National Health Insurance (USNHI) Program (the Program) to provide all individuals residing in the United States and in U.S. territories with free health care that includes all medically necessary care, such as primary care and prevention, prescription drugs, emergency care, and mental health services.
Prohibits an institution from participating in the Program unless it is a public or nonprofit institution. Allows nonprofit health maintenance organizations (HMOs) that actually deliver care in their own facilities to participate in the Program.
Gives patients the freedom to choose from participating physicians and institutions.
Prohibits a private health insurer from selling health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this Act. Allows such insurers to sell benefits that are not medically necessary, such as cosmetic surgery benefits.
Sets forth methods to pay hospitals and health professionals for services. Prohibits financial incentives between HMOs and physicians based on utilization.
Establishes the USNHI Trust Fund to finance the Program with amounts deposited: (1) from existing sources of Government revenues for health care; (2) by increasing personal income taxes on the top 5% income earners; (3) by instituting a progressive excise tax on payroll and self-employment income; and (4) by instituting a small tax on stock and bond transactions.
Requires the Program to give first priority in retraining and job placement and unemployment benefits to individuals whose jobs are eliminated due to reduced administration.
Establishes a National Board of Universal Quality and Access to provide advice on quality, access, and affordability.
Provides for the eventual integration of the Indian Health Service into the Program.
The White House
June 2, 2009
Letter from President Barack Obama to Senator Edward Kennedy and Senator Max Baucus
Excerpt
The meeting that we held today was very productive and I want to commend you for your leadership — and the hard work your Committees are doing on health care reform, one of the most urgent and important challenges confronting us as a Nation.
I understand the Committees are moving towards a principle of shared responsibility — making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and asking that employers share in the cost. I share the goal of ending lapses and gaps in coverage that make us less healthy and drive up everyone’s costs, and I am open to your ideas on shared responsibility. But I believe if we are going to make people responsible for owning health insurance, we must make health care affordable. If we do end up with a system where people are responsible for their own insurance, we need to provide a hardship waiver to exempt Americans who cannot afford it. In addition, while I believe that employers have a responsibility to support health insurance for their employees, small businesses face a number of special challenges in affording health benefits and should be exempted.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/The-President-Spells-Out-His-Vision-on-Health-Care-Reform/
Esther’s Comment: Numerous media reports are proclaiming that President Obama is now open to an individual mandate – a requirement that each uninsured individual purchase a basic health plan. But what did he really say?
He said that if we make people responsible for their own insurance (individual mandate), then we must grant a hardship waiver to exempt people who cannot afford it. But the primary reason that people have not purchased insurance in the individual market is that the plans are not affordable. Most of these individuals will be eligible for the hardship waiver and will remain uninsured.
What else did he say? He said that small businesses should be exempted from the responsibility of supporting health insurance for their employees since they face special challenges in affording health benefits. But for 80 percent of the uninsured, the head of the household is employed, predominantly by small businesses.
So President Obama has endorsed an individual mandate that would expand coverage to everyone – except those who cannot afford to pay for the coverage, and those whose jobs are in small businesses that cannot afford to provide employee health benefits. That is, we’ll cover everyone except most of those who are currently uninsured, nor those who will lose their health benefits as the rate of employer-sponsored coverage continues to decline, especially with a pessimistic job outlook.
The president’s letter is more than a personal communication to a couple of senators. It is a consensus statement, meant for public consumption, on the agreement between the administration and Congress on the most basic fundamentals of the reform legislation to be completed, as the president stated, in the “make-or-break window” before the August recess. Reading the full letter makes you realize how low the expectations are for the final reform product.
Sen. Baucus has expressed remorse for not giving single payer advocates an audience, but he has also stated that it is too late in the process to do so now. However, on June 10, the House Committee on Education and Labor will hold a hearing, “Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option.”
Although single payer legislation has already been introduced in both the House and the Senate, the logistics of lining up the political ducks before the August recess is nigh close to an impossibility. Nevertheless, do not let up on your efforts. In the next couple of months, while health reform is on the front burner, the flames must be stoked with our loud and clear message that we need reform that actually will accomplish the goal of affordable health care for all.
Though we may miss this one, the “make-or-break window” does not close with the August recess. The 2010 election process is already beginning. Individuals and organizations should begin immediately to use strategies and tactics to be certain that candidates understand that they will not be elected unless they support a single payer national health program. That should be the make-or-break litmus test for the 2010 elections.
_______________________________________________
From Esther:
This article below is a blatant example of the attitude of the private insurers. They simply don’t get it. They do not wish to allow small businesses to be relieved of the financial burden of supplying coverage to their employees. It is a major cost, a result of which their prices for goods and services go up, making them non-competitive. Again, the big insurers don’t want this source of major profits to go away. They don’t care if the cost, which is growing every year, is unaffordable. THEY WANT THEIR PROFITS. Do they care about the economy or the health care the whole country needs. As it is one of every six dollars spent in this country is for health care?
This is a good point to make with our representatives in Washington. How can we trust the private insurers to allow any reform?
Esther
The New York Times
June 2, 2009
Health Insurers Balk at Some Changes
By Reed Abelson
The insurance industry says it wholeheartedly embraces a health care overhaul, promising Congress and the president that it will make it much easier for individuals to buy insurance on their own.
Insurers, for example, have agreed to sell policies even to people with pre-existing medical conditions, and to stop basing prices on how healthy or sick someone is.
But so far, the industry has made no such promises about another segment of the health insurance market, one responsible for many people being uninsured in the first place: the market for small employers. By some estimates, about half of the nation’s uninsured are people who are self-employed or work for a small business.
Employer-provided medical insurance remains the bedrock of the nation’s health care system. And yet, while most big employers still provide health benefits, soaring premiums have meant many small businesses can no longer afford to cover their workers. But the small-employer market remains one of the most profitable segments of health insurance, which may be why the industry is not eager to overhaul this lucrative part of the business.
… one of the biggest insurers, WellPoint, opposes changing the way coverage is sold to small employers.
“Those markets generally work today,” said Bradley M. Fluegel, the chief strategy officer for WellPoint, which is a big operator of Blue Cross plans and a major player in the small-business market.
Much of the Congressional talk about health care has not yet focused on what federal oversight, if any, might be necessary for the small-business market. Proposals before the Senate Finance Committee seem to envision the same kind of rules for both the individual and small-business markets.
Mr. Fluegel, the WellPoint executive, warned that if the federal government intervened in the small-business market so that insurance companies could no longer assign the highest premiums to employers with the highest medical costs, insurers would be forced to spread the costs over all their small-business customers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/business/smallbusiness/03insure.html?ref=business&pagewanted=all
Comment: WellPoint/Anthem/Blue Cross has become the largest provider of private health plans through its highly successful business model that has kept their premiums very competitive. How have they done that? In the individual market, they have limited their exposure to risk by medical underwriting – not selling policies to individuals who might need health care. In the small-business market, they also limit loss by increasing premiums to unaffordable levels for any business that has an unfavorable claims experience, causing those firms to drop coverage.
The insurance industry’s offer to agree to guaranteed issue in the individual market is dependent on a mandate to require every uninsured individual to purchase insurance. That would distribute risk broadly even if it doesn’t specify how such coverage could be paid for. Guaranteed issue has been opposed by WellPoint since it is not compatible with its business strategy of selling only to the healthy.
What about guaranteed issue in the small-business market? Since current proposals also would permit the continuation of the employer-sponsored market, insurers such as WellPoint would remain successful only if they could continue to use underwriting and premium flexibility in the small-business market. If they were required to issue coverage to every small business that applied, then they would have to have a mandate for all small businesses to purchase coverage. Though that would distribute risk more evenly in the small-business market, it still would defeat WellPoint’s successful strategy of keeping premiums competitive by selling their products to healthy individuals and only to small businesses with healthy employees.
WellPoint worked very hard to defeat reform efforts in California since it would have destroyed its dominance as the insurer of the healthy. There is every reason to believe that WellPoint likewise will oppose reform on a national level if Congress includes measures that would require private insurers to participate in a regulated social insurance program.
Yesterday President Obama told Democratic Senators that he would like Congress to take broad action before the August recess. Can you imagine Congress creating a program of private sector social insurance by then? Right now I’d rate WellPoint stock a very strong BUY!
____________________________
From Esther:
The “Trigger’, as suggested by the forces of evil, would reserve using a public option only if the private sector could not take care of insuring everyone or some such nonsense. We already have the trigger! The health care situation is so dire already we can forget about a need for a trigger. Just more delaying tactics.
The Public Health Insurance Option: Trigger-Happy?
by Tim Foley
categories: Obama and Congress, Public Plan
Published May 30, 2009 @ 08:01PM PT
New York Times health care policy uber-scribe Robert Pear has a report today on
what’s shaping up not only to be the main fault line in the debate in
Congress. A public health insurance option that would compete directly with
private insurance was part of the Obama campaign plan, is strongly supported in
the House and even more strongly supported in the details that have circulated
of Sen. Kennedy’s plan in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee. The Senate Finance Committee is a different story – they’ve gone
trigger-happy.
The best quote in the piece is from Sen. Charles Schumer, who says, “It’s
pretty certain that Senator Kennedy could not support the Baucus plan, and
Senator Baucus could not support the Kennedy plan.” Such a conflict was going
to be inevitable on some detail or other. The House is considered more
progressive than the Senate, but Kennedy’s HELP Committee is traditionally
very progressive, reflecting the character of its chairman. As I wrote earlier
this week, the details that leaked from the Kennedy draft, “tilts the
emergency health care Congressional consensus away from a watered-down center
and decidedly to the left.” So it was only a matter of time before Kennedy
disagreed with Sen. Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee. Much like its
chair, the Finance Committee tends to be more moderate and more
consensus-focused. One gets the impression that getting a health care bill with
75 votes — or even just one that doesn’t tick off ranking Republican Sen.
Chuck Grassley — is just as important to Baucus as getting the best policy.
The public health insurance option was devised to compete with private
insurance on cost, efficiency, quality, and making its customers healthier,
where now the industry only competes on who can attract patients who are
healthiest, or who can deny costly medical claims the best to create the biggest
profit. With a new player focused on lower costs, better quality and more
transparency, the HMOs will need to either adapt or die.
How do you water down competition that’s specifically designed to address a
major flaw in the current marketplace? Now we come to “the fallback plan” or
trigger option. An idea being floated by Sen. Olympia Snow and flat-out
embarrassingly supported by Sen. Ron Wyden (who has publicly said he’s open to
a public plan) would create a “trigger.” Health care would happen this
year, but the public plan would not. As Pear explains, “the public plan would
be created only if private insurance companies had not made meaningful,
affordable coverage available to all Americans within several years.” All of
these terms – “meaningful,” “affordable” and “several years” –
are as vague as can be. The trigger may be set up so, in effect, it never
happens, similar to the Medicare Part D trigger that would have created a public
prescription drug plan – but never did. The threshold would be low enough
that it could be easily, and superficially, met. Throughout those “several
years,” the insurance plans would receive all of the uninsured who enroll
through a National Health Exchange, pocketing what we can hope are generous
government subsidies, with very few changes to their behavior. And even if
the trigger is met and a public plan created years down the road, private
insurance would have serious “status quo bias” on its side. It’s one
thing to be given a choice between public and private when you don’t have
anything, something else entirely to actively switch your plan (although it
should be noted that 21% of private Medicare Advantage plan holders choose to
leave for the safe haven of public Medicare). So let me get this straight: for
the sake of having a big, feel-good compromise in the Senate Finance Committee,
we’d be willing to take the word of an insurance industry that has made
record-breaking profits on the basis of cherry-picking, denying care, and
setting up tilted, monopolized playing fields such that 94% of the health
insurance markets in this country are deemed “non-competitive” that they can
clean up a mess that currently makes them rich without a competitor to, in the
words of the president, “keep them honest”?
Guns don’t kill good policy – trigger mechanisms in the Finance Committee
do.
I sincerely doubt that the public plan will be the only point of disagreement
between these two committees. We haven’t even scratched the surface of
controversial issues still waiting to erupt, from physician compensation to
employer mandates to tax policy. This is merely the one that makes the best
lead for a news-article, since both pro-reform and anti-reform third parties
have made the public competitor the focal point of their respective arguments.
But, as Howard Dean has said about the public plan, “we’ll be back fighting
for another twenty years before somebody tries again.”
From Daily Koz:
“I would have very strong reservations about [a trigger], but I think we have to
keep talking,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), a powerful subcommittee
chairwoman on the health committee.
Senator Chuck Schumer has insisted that, if anything, “reasonable criteria for
triggering a public plan has already been met.”
While I normally lean heavily towards organizing as opposed to traditional
activism, I figure I should include that option here. Slink would have wanted
it that way. To quote from a previous diary:
Please CALL Senator Max Baucus at (202) 224-2651 with this message below:
Tell Senator Baucus that you WANT him to take the so-called “trigger” or
“fall-back” for the public option off the table, and that you WANT the public
option RIGHT NOW in health care reform, and that it won’t be real health care
reform without a strong, robust Medicare-like public option.
Next up, let’s face it…this won’t be enough. We need to pressure a whole lot
more. Tell them that the only way we’ll get the bogus “trigger” off the table
is to be ready, willing, and able to vote AGAINST this fake “reform”. We want a
true PUBLIC PLAN right now, and we want it without watered down Republican
strings attached.
Please CALL Senator Charles Schumer at 202-224-6542
Please CALL Senator Edward Kennedy at (202) 224-4543
Please CALL Senator John Rockefeller at (202) 224-6472
Please CALL Senator Ron Wyden at (202) 224-5244
Please CALL Senator Kent Conrad at (202) 224-2043
Please CALL Senator Jeff Bingaman at (202) 224-5521
Please CALL Senator John Kerry at (202) 224-2742
Please CALL Senator Blanche Lincoln at 202-224-4843
Please CALL Senator Debbie Stabenow at (202) 224-4822
Please CALL Senator Maria Cantwell at 202-224-3441
Please CALL Senator Bill Nelson at 202-224-5274
Please CALL Senator Robert Menendez at 202-224-4744
Please CALL Senator Thomas Carper at (202) 224-2441
Now…me and slink haven’t always seen eye to eye when it comes to proper
action. I still don’t think calling them over and over will do very much – but
I agree it can have some effect. I personally believe that in person visits and
questions from a member’s constituency to be so much more powerful, it’s worth
extending our effort there.
There are tons of social networking sites out there, and the 6 degrees of
separation game is no joke. I’ll bet that nearly everyone on this site has a
friend of a friend of a friend of a friend who lives in the states of one of the
people listed above (I’m in FL…so Bill, expect a load of calls from FL friends
of mine – votes are ON THE LINE buddy).
CALL them. TEXT them. TWITTER them. FACEBOOK them (is that a term? lol). I
dunno, but try to get THEM involved. If a Senator gets a phone call from
someone who will be voting in the next election – that will go 10x further than
your call will (doesn’t mean you couldn’t do both, btw).
We need all hands on deck here people. Health Care reform IS coming. That’s
the best news we’ve had in a long, long time. Say it again. Health Care reform
IS coming. Now, it’s up to us to fight for the best health care reform we can
get. Let’s move!
Update [2009-6-2 18:40:14 by The BBQ Chicken Madness]:
From the comments, it was requested to explain what the “trigger” option is.
Fair enough, and I apologize for not going into it. I tend to be the one that
says “I’m not going to get pissed off just because you tell me to!” but I am
currently on the other end.
Health care activists lament single-payer snub
Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, May 30, 2009
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Frustrated by the exclusion of government-financed medical care from the debate to revamp the nation’s troubled health system, advocates of a “single-payer” plan are increasingly turning to demonstrations and civil disobedience as a way to get their message across.
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During Senate Finance Committee hearings May 5 and 12 on health reform, 13 doctors, nurses, lawyers and activists stood up to complain that no single-payer proponent had been invited to take part and were arrested for disrupting the proceedings.
On Friday in San Francisco, about 200 single-payer proponents held a rally in front of the Federal Building and headed in small groups to Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office to urge the speaker of the House, who was in China, to back single-payer legislation and give its supporters a seat at the table of the health reform debate. The public appeals were part of a series of demonstrations being held in more than 50 U.S. cities over the next few days to encourage lawmakers to enact a single-payer plan.
Some advocates of a nationalized health plan are calling for activists to become even more militant.
“It’s the only way – direct confrontation with the people who are blocking what the majority of the American people want,” said Russell Mokhiber, the founder of the newly formed Single Payer Action.
“It’s about getting in people’s faces and being serious about the fact that 60 Americans are dying every day because of lack of health insurance,” said Mokhiber, who was arrested at the May 5 hearing and arraigned earlier this week in Washington.
Single payer unlikely
Reforming health care has become a focus of the Obama administration, with the president urging Congress to get legislation to his desk by the end of the year that would cover most of the nation’s 47 million uninsured. Whether that will happen remains to be seen, but whatever Congress passes is not likely to come in the form of a single-payer plan.
In a single-payer system, as envisioned by most advocates, the federal government would pay for basic medical care delivered by public and private health professionals. The money would come from taxes, and medical bills would go directly to a government insurance plan, similar to Medicare.
President Obama and lawmakers have proposed a form of “single-payer lite” – a government-administered plan people could buy into as an alternative to purchasing an individual policy offered by insurers. But single-payer supporters say this option doesn’t go far enough. They want private insurers completely out of the business of covering basic care, which they say could save nearly 30 percent in administrative costs.
That’s clearly not something the health insurance industry supports. Many of the nation’s largest insurers prefer a form of “universal” health care that would cover all Americans, while keeping them in business. They tend to avoid discussing the single-payer option largely because it hasn’t been included in the national debate.
Some statistics show the single-payer concept has grown in popularity as problems in the nation’s health care system have worsened. A CBS News/New York Times poll conducted in January found 59 percent of the 1,112 people surveyed said they supported government-provided national health insurance.
Physician support
Several groups, including the California Nurses Association and Physicians for a National Health Program, call for a single-payer option. While not supported by the American Medical Association, a nationalized health system got the backing of 59 percent of physicians in a poll published last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The California Legislature has twice passed a state-level single-payer bill – in 2006 and 2008 – making it the first state to do so, but both times the effort was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The legislation, authored by former state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, has been reintroduced as by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. Leno’s version is expected to meet the same fate as its predecessors.
Still, single payer has been largely dismissed from serious discussion on the national level as politically infeasible.
“It’s off the table in Washington because of the politics,” said Laurence Baker, associate professor of health research and policy at Stanford University.
Health insurers and drugmakers have contributed millions of dollars to members of Congress. One of the top recipients of that money, said Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group based in Santa Monica, was Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who was running the hearings when the arrests took place this month. He accepted $413,000 in drug and health insurance campaign contributions during that time.
Many single-payer supporters interpret the resistance to the single-payer idea to be simply the result of a formidable lobbying effort by the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, but Stanford’s Baker said the hurdles are more nuanced.
Distrust for government
Americans are clearly frustrated by the health care system. While some polls indicate that a majority of Americans favor single payer, some polls show a distrust of government’s ability to take over health care, he said. In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released in April, just 35 percent of those surveyed expressed support for a government-run health system like Medicare.
As the debate continues, single-payer supporters have clearly ramped up their activity and tactics. The 50 demonstrations have been organized by a variety of groups including Healthcare-NOW!, Progressive Democrats of America and the Green Party.
But not all single-payer groups promote civil disobedience as a way to draw attention to the cause. Don Bechler, chairman and founder of Single Payer Now, a statewide advocacy group in San Francisco that helped organize the demonstrations, said he is more interested in drawing in more supporters than seeing people get arrested.
California nurse DeAnn McEwen didn’t set out to become one of the “Baucus 13,” the 13 arrested at the Senate Finance Committee hearings. She happened to be in Washington for a nurses’ union organizing committee meeting when she learned about the hearings.
McEwen, of Long Beach, a nurse for 35 years, said she felt compelled to speak out about the lack of a single-payer voice at the table.
“At that point, I felt I couldn’t be silent anymore because it was like I was seeing a gag, a hand covering the mouth of a victim,” McEwen said. “There’s therapy for the broken health care system, and any other reform that includes the insurance companies is not going to get us where we need to go in terms of providing equitable and fair coverage.”
Health care proposals
A number of health policy proposals are under consideration as lawmakers work to overhaul the nation’s health care system, but a proposal to have the government pay exclusively for basic health care has largely been left out of the discussions. Here are some of the ideas on the table:
Public plan: Create a government-financed purchasing pool or “exchange” – one that people could buy as an alternative to individual health policies offered by private insurers.
Individual mandate: Require individuals to get health insurance through an employer, the government or on their own. In exchange, insurers would have to stop discriminating against people with medical problems.
New taxes: Tax job-based health insurance benefits, a controversial option that proponents say could help pay for the overhaul estimated to cost some $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Other taxes would come from hikes on alcohol, tobacco and soda.
Reduce health costs: Improve efficiency in the delivery system by upgrading technologies, increasing the availability of generic medications, realigning provider payments to reward quality of care rather than just quantity, and funding efforts to figure out which medical treatments work best.
Source: Chronicle research.
E-mail Victoria Colliver at vcolliver@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
PLEASE COME TO OUR:
Health Care REFORM Organizing Kickoff (Health Care Organizing Kickoff)
Please join other like minded people who know that working from the bottom up really works. The need for health care reform affects everyone of us. It is a matter of life and death for some. This is our time to make a difference. Share your story, discuss your thoughts on Barack Obama’s key principles of health care reform, identify your position and goals, and most importantly Plan A Day Of Action, where we take our cause into the community, where we know from the grass roots we will make a difference. This is a defining moment in our history, and prevailing for the common good our goal. A small donation would to Yes We Can Long Island would be appreciated to defray the cost of any refreshments. Weather permitting we can meet outdoors so please have an extra chair in your car in case it is needed. I look forward to seeing you on June 6th.
Judy Greenberger, Co-Chair,
Health Care Reform Committee,
Yes We Can Long Island
Time: Saturday, June 6 from 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Host: Judy Greenberger
Location: Judy Greenberger’s Home (Merrick, NY)
1981 Bayberry Avenue
Merrick, NY 11566
Maps: Google Maps MapQuest Yahoo! Maps
Directions: From Merrick Road and Hewlett Avenue. Landmarks; Mutts and Butts, Dairy Barn, Citibank, Astoria Federal. Drive south for about 1 mile (8-9 stop signs). Make a right turn onto Bayberry Avenue where you will see a boat yard on your left side and two houses on your right. I am in the first house which is gray, 1981 Bayberry Avenue. There is no left turn on Bayberry Avenue.
Baucus 8 Charged: It’s an Outrage Outdone Only by Their Humanity
May 27, 2009 by Healthcare-NOW!
By Donna Smith -
They arrived on May 26 to the DC courthouse in business dress and on time. The single payer supporters now known as the Baucus 8 who were arrested on May 5, 2009, in your United States Senate hearing chambers came ready to be arraigned on Tuesday morning and to find out what the formal charges against them would be. I witnessed the proceedings the day they were arrested, and I came this day to court to see the process through with these brave Americans who stood for all of us and demanded that a witness advocating for a single payer healthcare system be seated in at least one of the 41 witness chairs filled in recent Senate hearings on healthcare reform.
Just like the breathtaking simplicity of honor and truth I saw on May 5, 2009, as the veil of corporate influence over healthcare reform measures in our Congress was pierced by eight citizens who could take no more of the deceptions, I witnessed at the District of Columbia Courthouse an awesome display of compassion and honesty. And I left jolted once again by the experience.
Other citizens charged with crimes ranging from what sounded like minor incidents to more serious weapons and drugs and assault issues were also lining up in the courtroom hallway waiting for their arraignments.
One of their defense attorneys arrived and began passing around a clipboard with questionnaires for them to complete with the usual mundane information: name, address, contact information and any other personal history the lawyer felt might be needed. The lawyer’s clerk, a young man with glasses, a backpack and the look of an eager and idealistic soul ready to play his part in the day, walked among the Baucus 8 defendants asking questions and gathering information.
But suddenly he collapsed. In what looked like a slow-motion film, he flew backwards and hit his head on the hard floor of the courtroom hallway, and it was clear he was unconscious. While the rest of us stood frozen and stunned, the three doctors among the Baucus 8 floated effortlessly into action – Dr. Margaret Flowers at the young man’s head, Dr. Carol Paris at his side, and Dr. Pat Solomon at his ankles. His vital signs were being checked within seconds.
Across the hallway, the DC courts’ urgent care center offered little help at all. That office was barely opening and only one person poked her head out the door to see what was happening. I thought we were so lucky to have doctors who did not stop to ask if the young man was insured or had a means to pay or was in a facility where his insurance company had decided which doctors could touch him and which doctors could not – and the doctors, the Baucus 8 doctors, sure didn’t have to call and ask permission about how to help him. The Baucus-backing for-profit health insurance companies were not participating this day, thank God.
After what seemed a long time, the young man was eased up to a sitting position and was talking. The doctors stayed focused on him. It was a moment of shared humanity – and a stark reinforcement of professional calling of the doctors and nurses who are often pressed into service while they are also facing their own life issues and stresses.
This day the doctors of the Baucus 8 acted as they always have and always do – they acted in the best interests of the patient. Even though they were facing legal consequences for protesting the lack of a single payer voice in Congress and even though they had their own concerns, they quite literally dropped everything and acted on our behalf.
For me, this evidence of professional integrity and commitment spoke even more loudly to their message about healthcare reform. For Senator Baucus, this is a political process which will feather his cap and pad his coffers ever so comfortably if he keeps the for-profit interests protected and enhanced through this health reform legislative process. His health and his standing in life are safe and secure in ways most of us can only imagine – yet he would deny that health security to all Americans.
For the healthcare professionals Senator Baucus wants to silence, caring for and about patients is what this is all about. And I knew without fail that if it had been any one of us on that floor – unconscious and ill – we all would have been equal in those doctors’ eyes. Everybody in, nobody out. That what it means to fight for healthcare rather than expansion of health insurance profits.
My admiration for those arrested grows – and I hope for them the justice they so openly dispense to others. And next up in the arraignment pool? Some of the brave nurses and more doctors who also stood and were arrested in one of Senator Baucus’ Finance Committee hearings to once again demand a single payer voice at the infamous table of reform options will be arraigned next. Yet, the corporate interests in the for-profit health insurance industry that have doomed hundreds of thousands of Americans to ill health, financial ruin and unnecessary deaths continue to lead every health reform discussion.
My World War II vet dad used to have a word for the way the Senate is moving forward in the drafting of this health reform : “back-ass-wards.”
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.
Yes We Can! Long Island -Healthcare Committee,
Let’s connect with other advocates of Single Payer and get inspired for the work ahead. Please join us for the celebration below!
June 7th Celebrate Marilyn Clement!, Healthcare-NOW!’s National Coordinator
Join us to celebrate Marilyn Clement and her work towards building the movement for single-payer national health care.
Featured Speaker: Congressman John Conyers, lead sponsor of HR 676, the US National Health Care Act.
A leader in the movement for single-payer national heatlh care, Marilyn Clement has struggled against multiple myeloma cancer for the past year. Her work has helped connect activists and organizations nationwide to take up this vital cause. Learn what you can do to work together toward the goal of a truly universal equitable health care system while toasting this amazing person!
PLEASE JOIN MARILYN CLEMENT AND FRIENDS FOR THIS CELEBRATION: Healthcare-NOW, Judson Memorial Church, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, the Women’s International League for Peace an d Freedom NY Metro, and many others who have been a part of Marilyn’s visionary organizing efforts.
Light refreshments and music
When: June 7, 2009, 12:30 p.m. following the 11:00am Services at Judson Church.
Where: Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, New York, New York 10012
RSVP to Beth Borzone at scrivenerb@aol.com
Maybe we should work on our town and county governments, too. Look at what Saratoga County did!
Saratoga Springs backs universal healthcare, HR 676
April 24, 2009 by Healthcare-NOW!
By Andrew J. Bernstein for the Saratogian–
After a vote Tuesday, the City Council threw its support behind universal health care, passing a resolution to back federal legislation to establish a new paradigm for medical insurance.
If passed through Congress, the HR-676 will create a single-payer health care system administered by private entities and funded by the government. The legislation will provide access to health insurance for all Americans.
Numerous members of the public addressed the council to voice their support for the system.
“Where is our sense of moral outrage?” asked Rabbi Linda Motzkin, of Temple Sinai, after noting that members of the public frequently address her, as a member of the clergy, in seeking help to navigate the private health insurance industry. She said “every other western Democracy” provides access to health care for its citizens.
Jane Weihe, a former candidate for commissioner of finance, also urged the council to support the measure, saying it would remove a large portion of the personnel cost from the city’s budget.
Wilma Koss was the only person who urged the council to not support the measure.
“The city should refrain from taking positions on national issues over which it has no jurisdiction,” she said. She further commented that if adopted, the legislation could take health care decisions out of the hands of patients.
In calling for a vote on backing the resolution, Commissioner of Accounts John Franck said he supported the plan as a fiscal conservative, noting that the plan could save government money on many levels, and urged his colleagues on the council to join a growing number of communities backing the legislation.
In the 4-1 vote, Commissioner of Finance Kenneth Ivins Jr. was the only “no” vote.
Tags: HR 676, Single Payer Healthcare, universal healthcare
Here are the Congresspeople supporting HR 676. Notice no Long Islanders! We need to get to work!
http://www.singlepayernewyork.org/HR-676-New-York-Sponsors.php
http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/3198-4049
This is a new website put out by the government to get public feedback on policy.
Please vote for single payer up.
You have to register your e-mail first, but it’s easy.
-Beth
Day of Action in New York City
TWO EVENTS
Healthcare-NOW! and Private Health Insurance Must Go! are marching in solidarity with the Stella D’Oro Factory Workers. Stella D’Oro workers have been on strike for over 9 months against the Wall St. private equity firm Brynwood Partners, which is now viciously trying to bust the union by slashing wages, pensions, holidays, and sick pay. Brynwood is operating the plant with strikebreakers. The strikers are represented by Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. They are on the picket line every day in front of the Stella D’Oro plant, W. 237th St. & Broadway in the Bronx.
When: May 30th NOON
Where: MASS RALLY AT STELLA D’ORO FACTORY! 237 ST./BROADWAY
12 noon–Assemble across from the Target Mall on West 225 St., east of Broadway (#1 train to 225 St.).
1pm (approximately) March up Broadway to the Factory (about 1/2 mile)
2pm (approximately) MASS RALLY at the Stella D’Oro Factory on 237 St. & Broadway.(#1 TRAIN TO 238
ST.)
EVENING VIGIL May 30th
Please join the Private Health Insurance Must Go! Coalition, Healthcare-NOW! and ACT-UP: 8pm at the south end of Union Square / 14th Street (”near the steps”)
Bring single payer signs and candles if you can, but most of all please bring yourself and a friend.
Contact: Beth Borzone @ scrivenerb@aol.com
Some interesting ideas regarding a public option. Maybe the best ideas, combined, would be an interesting paper to send to our legislators.
Esther
3 new pieces that you may want to review.
Jacob Hacker – “Why We Can’t compromise on Public Plan-Choice”
http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009052227/why-we-cant-compromise-public-plan-choice
Joe Paduda – “Medicare for All: The Wrong Answer to the Right Question”
http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009052228/medicare-all-wrong-answer-right-question
Jason Rosenbaum – “The Public Health Insurance Option as a Strong Competitor”
http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009052228/public-health-insurance-option-strong-competitor
Newsday.com
What will universal health care look like?
Saul Friedman
Gray Matters
4:33 PM EDT, May 21, 2009
If you’re wondering what’s going on with health care reform, you’re not alone. The Democratic Congress and the Obama administration seem poised to give the nation some form of universal health insurance, but no one seems to know whether or when it will happen or what it would look like.
What’s more, most of the major players won’t say precisely what they favor. That includes the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the heads of other relevant committees, all of whom pledge to pass health care reform this year.
I’ve tried but failed to get various interest groups to tell me, specifically, how health reform should insure the 50 million Americans who are uninsured. These include the American Medical Association, the consumer-oriented Families USA and AARP. Instead of specifics, AARP appeals to members with generalities, such as “ensuring all people have access to affordable coverage regardless of any pre-existing health conditions. . . . Requiring insurers to provide a standard benefits package.”
The AMA tells us we should: “Make it easier for individuals to choose and own their insurance to fit their needs. Provide low-income Americans with the means to purchase health insurance; establish fair insurance rules that include protections for high risk patients and make individual insurance more affordable.”
And the liberal Families USA, which has been a health care consumer-advocacy group, has surprised its allies by joining with business groups, including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, in an effort to “find common ground.”
All this is important for people on Medicare, which could get caught in the middle of this battle. Baucus, for example, has proposed changing Medicare’s payment structure and suggested that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services may not be adequate to run a new health care program. AARP says Medicare would be endangered by a government-run program.
A friend at AARP explained: “It’s hard to come out for something that isn’t yet introduced or even defined. What would the benefit package look like? What are the premiums? Who governs it and how would it be different than Medicare, which is nitpicked to death by the Congress? I think until we see a proposal, it’s simply not possible to comment intelligently.”
Another, more cynical friend at the New York-based Medicare Rights Center, which champions the extension of Medicare for all Americans, said, “Whatever happens, AARP will say they were for it.” What is clear, however, is that the AMA, AARP, Families USA, the drug companies and the insurance industry oppose a single, publicly financed, government health plan, although it’s widely supported by the American people and health care professionals.
Many liberals in the House and Senate, and leading advocacy groups favor some form of a single-payer system run by the federal government such as the Medicare for ALL proposal (House bill H.R. 676) in which providers – doctors, hospitals and labs – work for themselves.
The benefit would be uniform, and paid for through taxes and premiums, but it would eliminate the need for private health insurance, which is paid by individuals and/or their employers. And it would replace Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and other costly, overlapping federal and state health programs.
Despite furious lobbying by liberal organizations and health care advocates, including the 15,000 doctors of Physicians for a National Health Program, thousands of nurses and health care workers, and most labor unions, Pelosi and Baucus have declared “single-payer off the table,” largely because they believe opposition would be too great from the health care insurance industry as well as the AMA and other business groups and conservatives who mistrust government-run programs.
Obama once supported a “single-payer” plan, and Pelosi acknowledged she personally favors such a plan. But Obama said more recently that he does not favor a European-style health care system, and Pelosi does not believe it could pass. Families USA declined to say why it opposes single-payer. AARP, which says consumers should have private insurance choices, earns nearly $700 million a year from insurance royalties.
As a fallback, advocates and lawmakers who call themselves “progressives,” insist that if a single-payer plan cannot pass, they will not support any health care reform that does not include a strong Medicare-like public plan.
They delivered that warning last month in letters to Pelosi from 77 House members and to Kennedy and Baucus from 16 Democratic senators (including both New Yorkers).
The nonpartisan Center for Medicare Advocacy said, “It is essential that any health care package include a public health care plan. A public plan, standing alone or in combination with an offering of private plans, offers many benefits to the public. . . . A public plan means a plan that is available to all within the designated insured population that is administered by the federal government.”
Republicans, free market conservatives, the AMA and the insurance and drug industries object that a public plan run by the government would only be a subterfuge to move toward a single-payer system because it would be the better, cheaper choice.
Some people are very angry that NBC will be airing a propaganda infomertial on healthcare with false information. Check out link.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/nbc_healthcare/?r=3736&id=4251-105452-kIElbIx
Our own Esther Confino went to Albany to lobby for Single Payer Healthcare. Below is a good summary of what happened that day.
Single Payer New York
http://www.singlepayernewyork.org
Media Release
For More Info: Mark Dunlea, 518 434-7371 xt 1#
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.
he Wall Street Journal
May 26, 2009
More Small Firms Drop Health Care
By Dana Mattioli
Accelerating health-care premiums and sharp revenue shortfalls due to the recession are forcing some small companies to choose between dropping health insurance or laying off workers — or staying in business at all.
About 10% of small businesses are considering eliminating coverage over the next year, up from 3% in 2005, according to a recent survey by National Small Business Association.
That follows earlier declines in coverage, with just 38% of small businesses providing health insurance last year compared to 61% in 1993, according to the trade group. A Hewitt Associates survey found that 19% of all companies plan to stop providing health-care benefits in the next three to five years.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124329442612051953.html
Esther Confino’s Comment: Rampant health care cost escalation is a problem for everyone. In bad economic times the problems are compounded, threatening the viability of employer-sponsored coverage. Small businesses that operate on very narrow margins have no choice but to reduce health benefits by either shifting more of the health care costs to their employees, or by eliminating health plans altogether. The fault lies not with the small business owners, but with the flawed U.S. system of financing health care.
The recent Medicare trustees report indicates that Medicare is facing similar economic challenges. But there is a very crucial difference. Everyone recognizes that the high costs of Medicare reflect the excessive rate of increases in total health care spending, and that runaway costs must be harnessed. The stewards of Medicare would never consider reducing legitimate health care benefits, or worse, eliminating many Medicare beneficiaries from coverage.
The point is that the structure of the financing system really matters. We can have a system in which individuals or employers are forced by economic circumstances to reduce or eliminate the financing of essential health care services, or we can have a system in which the government is forced by economic circumstances to demand greater efficiency by the health care delivery system so that everyone can have the health care that they need.
Unfortunately, members of Congress are moving forward with a model that will leave individuals and employers financially vulnerable for our health care needs – a patchwork of private plans and public programs that grow ever less affordable for most of us.
The model that would work is a single payer national health program. But last week, after a recital of several options that are still on the table, Sen. Baucus finally admitted, “Just to be honest, (single payer) is not on the table because it cannot pass.”
Hmmm… bad policies can pass but good policies can’t? Is there something wrong with the way Congress operates?
Here is the link for the complete report issued by the California Nurses Association on the impact on employment of implementation of HR 676.
It may give Assemblywoman Peoples some encouraging information on job creation.
Best regards,
Esther Confino
http://www.calnurses.org/research/pdfs/ihsp_sp_economic_study_2009.pdf
May 22, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Blue Double Cross
By PAUL KRUGMAN
That didn’t take long. Less than two weeks have passed since much of the medical-industrial complex made a big show of working with President Obama on health care reform — and the double-crossing is already well under way. Indeed, it’s now clear that even as they met with the president, pretending to be cooperative, insurers were gearing up to play the same destructive role they did the last time health reform was on the agenda.
So here’s the question: Will Mr. Obama gloss over the reality of what’s happening, and try to preserve the appearance of cooperation? Or will he honor his own pledge, made back during the campaign, to go on the offensive against special interests if they stand in the way of reform?
The story so far: on May 11 the White House called a news conference to announce that major players in health care, including the American Hospital Association and the lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans, had come together to support a national effort to control health care costs.
The fact sheet on the meeting, one has to say, was classic Obama in its message of post-partisanship and, um, hope. “For too long, politics and point-scoring have prevented our country from tackling this growing crisis,” it said, adding, “The American people are eager to put the old Washington ways behind them.”
But just three days later the hospital association insisted that it had not, in fact, promised what the president said it had promised — that it had made no commitment to the administration’s goal of reducing the rate at which health care costs are rising by 1.5 percentage points a year. And the head of the insurance lobby said that the idea was merely to “ramp up” savings, whatever that means.
Meanwhile, the insurance industry is busily lobbying Congress to block one crucial element of health care reform, the public option — that is, offering Americans the right to buy insurance directly from the government as well as from private insurance companies. And at least some insurers are gearing up for a major smear campaign.
On Monday, just a week after the White House photo-op, The Washington Post reported that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina was preparing to run a series of ads attacking the public option. The planning for this ad campaign must have begun quite some time ago.
The Post has the storyboards for the ads, and they read just like the infamous Harry and Louise ads that helped kill health care reform in 1993. Troubled Americans are shown being denied their choice of doctor, or forced to wait months for appointments, by faceless government bureaucrats. It’s a scary image that might make some sense if private health insurance — which these days comes primarily via HMOs — offered all of us free choice of doctors, with no wait for medical procedures. But my health plan isn’t like that. Is yours?
“We can do a lot better than a government-run health care system,” says a voice-over in one of the ads. To which the obvious response is, if that’s true, why don’t you? Why deny Americans the chance to reject government insurance if it’s really that bad?
For none of the reform proposals currently on the table would force people into a government-run insurance plan. At most they would offer Americans the choice of buying into such a plan.
And the goal of the insurers is to deny Americans that choice. They fear that many people would prefer a government plan to dealing with private insurance companies that, in the real world as opposed to the world of their ads, are more bureaucratic than any government agency, routinely deny clients their choice of doctor, and often refuse to pay for care.
Which brings us back to Mr. Obama.
Back during the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama argued that the Clintons had failed in their 1993 attempt to reform health care because they had been insufficiently inclusive. He promised instead to gather all the stakeholders, including the insurance companies, around a “big table.” And that May 11 event was, of course, intended precisely to show this big-table strategy in action.
But what if interest groups showed up at the big table, then blocked reform? Back then, Mr. Obama assured voters that he would get tough: “If those insurance companies and drug companies start trying to run ads with Harry and Louise, I’ll run my own ads as president. I’ll get on television and say ‘Harry and Louise are lying.’ ”
The question now is whether he really meant it.
The medical-industrial complex has called the president’s bluff. It polished its image by showing up at the big table and promising cooperation, then promptly went back to doing all it can to block real change. The insurers and the drug companies are, in effect, betting that Mr. Obama will be afraid to call them out on their duplicity.
It’s up to Mr. Obama to prove them wrong.
We need your help getting a single-payer supporter into Senate Finance Committee roundtable discussions on healthcare reform.
The Finance Committee (Led by Sen. Max Baucus – MT) is holding three roundtable discussions on healthcare reform in the coming weeks.
The first discussion, titled “Reforming America’s Health Care Delivery System,” on April 21st, had thirteen witnesses.
Aetna was there. Blue Cross Blue Sheild was there. But not one single-payer supporter was invited.
This is unacceptable. We need to make sure our representatives respond to the demands of the people. Together, let’s put the Senate Finance Committee to the test and demand they include single-payer experts at the upcoming Roundtable discussions on health reform.
The next two discussions are on May 5th (“Increasing access to health care coverage”) and May 14th (“Financing comprehensive health care reform”).
Please, contact committee chairman, Senator Baucus at (202) 224-2651, or email him. You can also easily fax him (without a fax machine) here: http://www.1payer.net/campaigns/finance-committee.html
Here is a sample letter or call script: Dear Senator Baucus:
I am writing to you concerning the upcoming Senate Finance Committee (of which you are a member) roundtable discussions on healthcare reform being held on May 5th and May 14th.
I think you would agree that is very important these discussions include all healthcare reform points of view. So I was disappointed to see that the first roundtable discussion on April 21st did not include a proponent of national, single-payer healthcare.
National, single-payer healthcare is the only reform option that will both provide universal coverage, and contain skyrocketing healthcare costs. The majority of Americans and physicians support a national health insurance program like improved Medicare for everyone.
So I’m asking that you please invite a representative from Physicians for a National Health Program or the California Nurses Association to the next two roundtable discussions on May 5th and May 14th. You can call PNHP at 312-782-6006 or email them at info@pnhp.org. You can call CNA at 510-273-2200 or email them at govrelations@calnurses.org.
Single-payer experts from these can provide expert testimony to the effects single-payer will have on both access and financing. These voices must be heard.
Thank you for your time and attention on this very important issue.
Sincerely,
[YOUR NAME HERE]
[CITY, STATE, ZIP]
These campaigns have proven to work. On April 23rd Dr. Himmelstein (PNHP) was invited to testify before the HELP Subcommittee because of public pressure to include single-payer points of view.
PNHP Single Payer Testified to Congress Today
by DrSteveB
Apr 23, 2009
Dr. David Himmelstein, co-founder of PNHP, and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care doctor at Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., testified to the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions today.
Lesser reforms won’t work. Cost control and Universal care impossible without single-payer health system.
Only a major overhaul of the existing system, one which replaces the wasteful, for-profit, private insurance industry with a publicly financed, single-payer program similar to Medicare, can rein in costs while guaranteeing universal, comprehensive coverage.
But don’t take PNHP and other single payer advocates word for this. A recent review article, The Obama Administration’s Options for Health Care Cost Control: Hope Versus Reality by leading independent policy experts in the Annals of Internal Medicine makes the same point:
DrSteveB’s diary
Claims of savings from health information technology, prevention, pay for performance, and comparative effectiveness research are politically attractive. Their political appeal lies largely in the embrace of widely supported goals, including better health and improved quality of medical care. In theory, these reforms—more research, more preventive screenings, and better organized patient data—sound like benign devices to moderate medical spending. For many purposes, such reforms are substantively very desirable. But these reforms are ineffective as cost-control measures.
Similarly, studies in the 1990s by the Congressional Budget Office and General Accounting Office found that single payer was the most cost effective way to get to universal comprehensive coverage. So have repeated analyses by the Lewin Group of both State-based single payer proposals over the past 15 years, and in their recent comparison of congressional proposals for the U.S.
As Dr. Himmelstein is testifying today:
With President Obama and congressional leaders vowing to pass a health reform bill by the end of the year, a prominent Harvard-based health policy analyst warned a House subcommittee Thursday that the leading incremental models for reform, including those patterned after the Massachusetts plan, are incapable of containing skyrocketing health care costs or providing quality, affordable care to all.
“A single-payer reform would make care affordable through vast savings on bureaucracy and profits,” Himmelstein said in his statement. “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 U.S., 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.”
A national health insurance program would slash the enormous paperwork burden on hospitals, doctors and patients, Himmelstein said, resulting in hundreds of billions in savings that could be redirected to patient care.
Half-measures like those proposed by the Obama administration and key lawmakers like Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), many of which mirror aspects of the Massachusetts reform of 2006, can’t match the savings of a streamlined, publicly financed system, he said.
Even if a “public plan option” emerges as part of the House and Senate reform bills, Himmelstein said, it won’t be sufficient to challenge the inefficiencies and wastefulness of a multi-payer system: “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.”
Citing his direct experience with the Massachusetts plan, which is facing critical financial problems, Himmelstein commented: “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.”
While the conventional wisdom in Washington is that single-payer national health insurance is “not feasible” and therefore “off the table,” public opinion polls have shown solid majorities continue to support such an approach. In a survey published by the Annals of Internal Medicine a year ago, 59 percent of U.S. physicians said they favored government action to establish a national health insurance program, a 10-percentage-point leap from only five years prior.
In addition to their pioneering research on the high administrative costs in U.S. health care, Himmelstein and his colleagues have also published other groundbreaking studies, including one that shows medical bills contribute to half of all personal bankruptcies in the United States and another that shows how taxes already pay for more than 60 percent of U.S. health spending.
Full article on Daily Kos
Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman will be discussing healthcare at the next meeting of the North Merrick Community Association and South Merrick Community Civic Association. Weitzman held a health forum with healthcare professionals in Nassau County back in December when President-elect Obama asked for national action on healthcare reform. Weitzman will be discussing single payer and universal healthcare. I invite all interested parties to our meeting at the Merrick Park Golf Course Clubhouse, Clubhouse Road, Merrick on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. Please bring with you any information on healthcare that you feel pertinent to this discussion. I would like to thank Beth for posting Maine’s resolution. I hope you don’t mind that I make copies of it to distribute at the meeting. Our meetings are open to the public. Everyone is welcome to attend. Hope to meet some of you there. Marge: Although we spoke dozens of times, I don’t know if we ever met. Hope to meet you and Fred at the meeting.
Thank you.
On April 22, Rep. Charles Rangel, is beginning to hold hearings on healthcare reform. He has delayed action on this issue. We are urging him to invite single payer universal coverage experts. These hearings must be watched for content and conclusions. Advocates for single payer are urged to call the Congressional phone line to express interest. 1-866-338-1015.
Would like to make contact with Marge Harrison. Are you an active advocate for single payer, part of an advocacy group?
Esther, I am an advocate of single payer and currently I am not part of any particular group working on health care reform.
It seems to me that keeping the single-payer option alive is important because it focuses attention on the heavy burden we all bear due to the out-sized cost of the private, profit-making insurers and the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry. Single-payer captures huge savings that can be plowed into high-quality care for all. Otherwise we are looking at rationing, taxing people’s employment-based health coverage, raising taxes to pay for covering the uninsured, and/or increasing co-pays for those already covered. All of these will only add to the overall social cost of health care and will also risk generating resentments on the part of the those with insurance that they now have to pay higher taxes even while the quality of their own medical coverage comes under challenge. No matter what is passed in Congress, there is a good chance that the on-going fight will always remain the issue of whether profit-making should be a controlling factor in from what should be a publicly-controlled human service.
Sorry, I did not realize that Marge is on the healthcare committee. Will email her. The battle is joined with those who have declared quite openly that any public option that is on an equal basis with private insurance will destroy the private sector’s profits. We cannot hope to reach any viable compromise. Even if they were to be on an equal level with a public option, the added complexities would diminish expected savings. Beyond that Senator Schumer had added entirely new proposals for reform that confuse the issue. Ultimately we will have to consider dismissing unworkable ideas after analyzing their faults. We have little time for this. We must proceed to marshal a huge public movement for the only viable plan.
I hope the New York State Legislature and the U.S. Congress follow the example of the Maine State Legislature.
On April 8, the Maine State Legislature endorsed HR 676:
HP1004, item 1, 124th Maine State Legislature
JOINT RESOLUTION MEMORIALIZING THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND
CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES TO SIGN LEGISLATION THAT ESTABLISHES A
NATIONAL, UNIVERSAL, SINGLE-PAYOR NONPROFIT HEALTH CARE PLAN
your Memorialists, the Members of the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth
Legislature of the State of Maine now assembled in the First Regular
Session, most respectfully present and petition the President of the
United States and the United States Congress as follows:
WHEREAS, administrative costs and profits inherent in our current
private insurance-based system consume 31% of health care spending,
nearly twice that spent by other national health care systems; and
WHEREAS, it is estimated that the cost for the United States National
Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676 would only be 5% of income for a vast
majority of employers and employees; and
WHEREAS, today medical bills contribute to 1/2 of all personal
bankruptcies, the majority of which happen to people who have insurance
when illness occurs; and
WHEREAS, proposed mandatory private for-profit health insurance plans
will be affordable only for those people who choose high deductibles and
minimal coverage, discouraging preventive care and saddling many
families with huge medical bills; and
WHEREAS, over the last 35 years managed care, health maintenance
organizations and private for-profit health reforms have failed to
contain health care costs, which now threaten the international
competitiveness of United States manufacturers; and
WHEREAS, researchers at Harvard University have estimated that more than
$300,000,000,000 per year could be recovered by replacing private
insurance companies with a public single-payor plan, enough to cover the
uninsured and to improve coverage for all those who now have only
partial coverage; and
WHEREAS, the United States National Health Insurance Act would ensure
universal coverage for all medically necessary services, contain costs
by slashing bureaucracy, protect the doctor-patient relationship, ensure
that patients have a completely free choice of doctors and hospitals and
allow independent private physicians to make decisions about needed care
rather than the profit-oriented corporations; now, therefore, be it
That We, your Memorialists, respectfully urge and request that the
United States Congress enact and the President of the United States sign
legislation that is substantially similar to the United States National
Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676, which was introduced in the 110th United
States Congress; and be it further
That suitable copies of this resolution, duly authenticated by the
Secretary of State, be transmitted to the Honorable Barack H. Obama,
President of the United States and the United States Congress and to
each Member of the Maine Congressional Delegation.
HP1004, LR 1092, item 1, First Regular Session -124th Legislature
For the last 10-15 years I’ve heard how healthcare uses up a large part of our GNP. In that time period its gone up from ~ 13% (best I can remember) to 17.6% and is still climbing. As a “Boomer” I believe it’s our responsibility to stem this unsustainable growth before it overwhelms our children and grand children.
I’ve also heard that more than 80% of one’s health care costs are used in the last 1-2 years of life. I believe we need to help establish ethical guidelines that control those costs. From what I’ve seen with my parents, who passed in recent years, the huge medical costs only extended their suffering and provided very little to their quality of life at the end. I don’t pretend to have answers, only concerns that we must address these issues and not pass the same issues on to our children who cannot be expected to make those decisions for us.
Our Founding Convention will provide a great opportunity to discuss the merits of various approaches to providing universal healthcare. I look forward to the breakout session facilitated by Esther Confino (a single-payer plan advocate).
Sunday’s TIMES editorial pointed out that Obama’s plans ‘make a start toward reforming the health care delivery system (he is allowing Congress to develop a multi-prong alternative (Barack favors single-payer ‘if we were to build a system from the beginning; but is too pragmatic to think that will receive Congress’ approval).
The editorial lauds his effort (electronic medical records, preventive care, comparative studies of treatments) focused on reducing cost while improving care. That he is fighting the fight amid a global economic crisis clearly demonstrates his commitment.
Questions raised: required coverage for individuals and children (Hillary), employers paying for coverage, taxing health benefits, forcing pharmaceutical companies to negotiate with Medicare.
I have an additional question that goes to access. Providing health care coverage will not reduce emergency room visits if there is not ready access to doctors. How will universal coverage meet the needs in rural communities whose nearest physician/hospital is two hundred miles away? Where will the doctors be in the major cities when suddenly millions of people have access and need to find a doctor who accepts Medicare? How will they find one who accepts Medicare but whose practice is already overloaded.
So, when we talk infrastructure, it is not only bridges, roads, electrical grids and internet access. Infrastructure for health care is a huge problem in and of itself. Spend all you want, it takes years and a major national commitment to train physicians, lead them into non-specializations, and relocate them to regions of greatest need.
Perhaps some of those future Wall Street wannabees will change their majors with sufficient encouragement.
Inviting your comment:
FACTBOX: Obama’s Ambitious Health Program
Reuters, Mar 2
President Barack Obama on Monday named Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and former Clinton administration health official Nancy-Ann DeParle to lead his ambitious health reform effort.
Here are some facts about Obama’s healthcare challenge and the two officials he has tapped to lead it.
* U.S. government economists predict that public and private health spending will hit $2.5 trillion this year, taking up a 17.6 percent share of Gross Domestic Product.
* Americans spend more per capita on healthcare than any other country at $7,421 per person, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports. Yet studies suggest Americans get poorer care than other industrialized countries that have national healthcare plans.
* Private insurance pays 35 percent of this; Medicare, the federal health plan for the elderly and disabled, pays 19 percent; Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program pays 15 percent; 12 percent comes from other public funds; 7 percent from other private sources; and 12 percent is paid for out-of-pocket by patients.
* The U.S. Census Bureau says 46 million Americans, or 15 percent of the population, have no health insurance.
* Obama says he wants to cover more of these Americans but has not indicated how. Options include expanding Medicare and Medicaid, creating a public insurance pool, tax breaks for employers to offer coverage and requiring insurance companies to cover more people.
* Sebelius, 60, is a former state insurance commissioner who tried but failed as governor to widen state health insurance coverage and pay for it with tobacco taxes.
* DeParle, 53, worked at the Office of Management and Budget and was the director of the Health Care Financing Administration, now the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, from 1997 to 2000