Christmas cheer and health care

Trumka: Senate Health Care bill must change

The health care bill being considered by the U.S. Senate is inadequate and too tilted toward the insurance industry, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.
In recent days, as the Senate has debated health care reform, small numbers of senators have held health care hostage by threatening to block a vote. The new proposal by the Senate puts the interests of insurance companies—and senators who would rather look out for the insurance companies—ahead of real reform.
Trumka said the top priority now is to fight over the rest of the legislative process to fix the bill and make sure we can pass real health care reform:

The labor movement has been fighting for health care for nearly 100 years and we are not about to stop fighting now, when it really matters. But for this health care bill to be worthy of the support of working men and women, substantial changes must be made. The AFL-CIO intends to fight on behalf of all working families to make those changes and win health care reform that is deserving of the name.

The absolute refusal of Republicans in the Senate to support health care reform and the hijacking of the bill by defenders of the insurance industry have brought us a Senate bill that is inadequate: It is too kind to the insurance industry.

Genuine health care reform must bring down health costs, hold insurance companies accountable, assure that Americans can get the health care they need and be financed fairly.

While the Senate’s bill makes a lot of important and necessary changes to our health care system, it falls short in three key areas, Trumka says.

• It lacks a public health insurance option, to offer real competition to insurance companies to bring down costs.
• It fails to make sure employers take responsibility and pay their fair share.
• It’s funded through a new tax on working families’ health care benefits.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The bill passed by the U.S. House is far better than the Senate’s bill on these and other measures. The House bill finances health care through a small tax on the very wealthiest of earners—those who reaped vast benefits from the Bush tax cuts—and it includes a public health insurance plan and real responsibility for employers. Trumka says:

The House bill is the model for genuine health care reform. Working people cannot accept anything less than real reform.

---

Article printed from AFL-CIO NOW BLOG: http://blog.aflcio.org
URL to article: http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/12/17/trumka-senate-health-care-bill-must-change-to-be-real-reform/

Health care - Canada

Tea bagger protests

Dan Lungren Town Hall Meetings

California. Congessional District 3

Saturday, August 22nd 10:30- 12noon
Jackson
Civic Center
33 Broadway
Jackson, CA 95642 View Larger Map

Wednesday, August 26th 7:00-8:30pm
Rancho Cordova
American River Room
2729 Prospect Park Drive
Rancho Cordova, CA 95670 View Larger Map

And, Thank you Barney Frank.

Medicare for All

Medicare for all
The town hall meeting occurring across the country reveal a renewed hard right wing in the U.S.
The health care debate has interest.
I support Medicare for everyone. I am 68. I have had Medicare for 3 years. Prior to Medicare, I had Kaiser. I and my employer paid for Kaiser care.
Now, I, and the Medicare system pay form my Kaiser Advantage system using Medicare. There has been no noticeable to me difference in the care, only a difference in billing for drugs. I get good care, we should all get good care.
So, I think everyone in the U.S. should have health care, we should all have Medicare.
This would save billions each year by eliminating the insurance industry.
Some people want a public option in our health care, Medicare is a public option.
Many people want a Single Payer system to save money. Medicare is a single payer system. Most people have private doctors under Medicare. I prefer an HMO, Kaiser.

So, what can you and I do to advance a sound medical reform other than engaging in a screaming match at a local town hall meeting?

Write letters to the editor of your local publications -- something that's easy to do.
Read news items on line and respond in the comments section with rational, reasonable suggestions.
Submit an editorial column, a more advanced form of advocacy that takes more time to perfect. Newspaper web sites have instructions on how to submit these "op-ed" articles.
Or, read op-ed pieces in your newspaper and respond with a letter to the editor.
Arrange to meet with your members of Congress (both senators and representatives) -- or their staffs, which tends to be easier -- in their local offices in your area.
Just call up an make an appointment, preferably when the member is in town on the weekend or during a Congressional break. If you live in the district, the odds are good that you will get in. Bring facts and material to support your position.

Barack Obama on costs of health care

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Why reformers are losing the health care debate -- and how to win it back

Chris Kromm
We're now two weeks into the Town Hall Uprising that has rocked members of Congress coming home for their August recess. The signs and screeds have been uncannily similar: "Obamacare" will kill your grandma. Bureaucrats will choose your doctors. We're headed towards socialized medicine, a slippery slope towards communism in the USA.


But whether coming from a hot-headed protester or a former governor of Alaska, the rhetorical bombs share at least two things in common: One, they have little basis in reality. And two, they have little if anything to do with real health reform.

Health reform isn't being debated in the country's TV screens and town halls -- it's being swift-boated. And just like the infamous 2004 TV ads by deep-pocketed right-wing operatives had little to do with Sen. Kerry's military honor, the current assault reveals more than anything the ability of powerful interests to fan lingering resentments - especially in places like the South - to serve their bottom line.
read the entire piece.

http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/08/why-reformers-are-losing-the-health-care-debate----and-how-to-seize-it-back.html

Chris Kromm

Why and how health care is stalled

The Real Problem with The Senate's Small-State Bias
by Nate Silver
Five Thirty Eight: Politics Done Right
8/3/2009


As you all surely know, the Senate is not a terribly
democratic institution. A voter in Wyoming -- population
533,000 -- has about 70 times more ability to influence
the Senate's direction than one in California --
population 36.8 million. And the lack of
representativeness can be particularly acute when the
Senate is conducting business at the committee level.
Max Baucus's Table for Six, for instance, which may very
well determine the fate of efforts to reform health
care, is made up of members who collectively represent
about 6.5 million people, or around one-fiftieth of the
country's population.

This in and of itself is problematic for Democrats,
since there is a correlation between the size of a state
and how Democratic it tends to vote in elections for
national office, although the relationship is not as
strong as you might posit (Rhode Island, Delaware and
Hawaii are small states too). The bigger and more
structural problem, however, may have to do with the
ways that small-state senators raise funds, and in turn,
whose interests they are beholden to.

The chart below details the 20 current senators who have
received the highest percentage of their campaign
contributions since 2003 from corporate PACs, based on
data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
This data focuses on corporate PAC contributions and
individual contributions only; other, usually minor
sources of income (self-financing, transfers from other
campaign committees, contributions from ideological and
labor PACs) are treated as ambiguous and are ignored.
Data should be current through roughly May of this year.

What do these senators have in common? All 20 come from
states with below-median populations. In fact, you have
to go to #26 (John McCain) to find a senator from a
state with an above-median population, and #30 (Saxby
Chambliss) to find one from a state with an above-
average population.

The reason this occurs is because individual
contributions are easier to obtain in states with larger
populations. Although some people make campaign
contributions to candidates from outside their states,
most do not, and so a senator from Texas ought to have
an easier time eliciting funds than one from Idaho. On
the other hand, there is no relationship between the
amount of PAC contributions and the population of a
senator's state; PACs know that one senator's vote is
just as good as another.

What this means is that senators from small states tend
to be relatively more dependant on special-interest
money -- it makes up a larger share of their overall
take. Senators from the ten smallest states have
received, on average, 28.4 percent of their campaign
funds from corporate PACs, versus 13.7 for those in the
ten largest. There is a tendency to think of senators
from small states as being populists, and there are a
few instances in which this is accurate -- Jon Tester of
Montana and John Thune of South Dakota, for instance,
are relatively non-dependant on PAC money. But for the
most part, something the opposite is true, and senators
from small states in fact have more incentive to placate
special interests.

It is worth noting, by the way, that the six senators on
Baucus's mini-committee are especially egregious in this
regard. They rank #1 (Mike Enzi), #6 (Chuck Grassley),
#11 (Kent Conrad), #13 (Baucus), #14 (Jeff Bingaman) and
#20 (Olympia Snowe) in the share of contributions
received from corporate PACs (an average of 47.5 percent
of their funds overall).

One can think of several plausible reforms to redress
this imbalance. For instance, corporations might be
restricted from donating PAC money to a senator unless
they do a material amount of business in her state. In
addition, the proliferation of the Internet as a
fundraising tool has probably leveled the playing field
some, making it easier for populist-ish candidates like
Tester or Jim Webb to receive contributions from
activists all over the country.

This goes a long way toward explaining, however, why the
Senate tends to be more protective than the House of
corporate interests -- be they in the form of bank
bailouts, tax breaks, or whatever else (consider, for
instance, that H.R. 1424 -- the second take on the bank
bailout -- was approved with the votes of 74 percent of
the Senate but just 60 percent of the House). We don't
need vague notions about the "cultural" differences
between the two chambers to explain this -- they have
mostly to do with where the money is flowing in from.

A complete list of the source of campaign funds for all
100 senators follows below.

-- Ira Cohen

Health care reform

Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future
Health Care Reform: Time to Go All In


It is time to go all in to support comprehensive health care reform. The stakes have gotten prohibitive. Republicans have essentially bet the House on it. Obama, for all intents and purposes, has wagered the White House agenda. The insurance and drug companies are pouring in dough. This month will be telling. The debate in congressional districts across the country in August will go far in determining what kind of reform we get -- or whether we get any reform at all.
The opposition -- well financed by the insurance and drug companies and by the rabid right -- is mobilizing now to stop reform. Republicans believe that they can replay 1994 when the defeat of Clinton's health care plan (and the fight over NAFTA) led to the stunning elections that resulted in the Gingrich congress. The insurance and drug companies have sought to dilute reform on the inside the process while helping to fund front groups trying to torpedo it on the outside.
Their tactic this August is clear. Run Astroturf campaigns and mobilize the zealots to disrupt congressional town hall meetings, spew anger and invective against the "government takeover" of health care that will "kill your grandmother." Intimidate legislators, cow decent citizens, sow fear and confusion. Legislators learn that if they vote to disembowel reform they'll be amply rewarded with campaign contributions. If they vote to support it, they'll face the fury of the wingnuts and the Astroturf activists. Cynical but effective politics. (For a fact check on the big lies, go to the Campaign for America's Future page here)
Every American has a direct stake in this debate. Every citizen faced with soaring health care bills, every one of the 14,000 who lose their health insurance each day, every one of the millions frozen in jobs for fear of losing health insurance, every family that faces bankruptcy because someone got sick, every one denied coverage or cut off of coverage because he or she fell sick, every parent losing sleep over a child entering the workforce without insurance, every senior gouged by unconscionable prescription drug prices, every worker who simply can't afford adequate coverage for her or his family. If the insurance industry and the Republican right manage once more to frustrate reform, all of us will pay part of the price.
We should make it a personal mission to challenge and counter the opposition's plans. Locate the town meetings that your legislator is having. (Call your legislators' district offices. Health Care for America provides a listing of town halls organized by pro-reform groups here) Attend with friends and family, silence and shame those trying to disrupt the meeting, demand a serious discussion about this fundamental issue. Challenge your legislators to ignore the wingnuts and support real reform, not a watered down substitute.
So what constitutes "real reform?" Amid the foul odors and sordid ingredients of the legislative process, it is easy to lose sight of what is needed to insure the result is nourishing, and not dangerous to our health.
What many of us would favor -- a system of government funded insurance with many alternative plans, a sort of Medicare for all - is not on the table, to the dismay of single payer advocates. But reforms now under consideration include major changes -- all of which have passed through Senate and House committees -- that could make a dramatic difference in people's lives, and begin to mend our broken system. Those elements include:
Choice . if you have insurance, like it, and can afford the increasing costs of it, you get to keep it. Every plan on the table insures that. The charge that this is a government takeover of heath care is simply a lie.
Comprehensive insurance reform. Since most American voters have some kind of insurance, these reforms will have the greatest impact. Every plan under consideration will force a change in the insurance companies' model. They will be prohibited from refusing to cover those who are sick, and prohibited from cutting off those who get sick. Discriminatory prices against women will be banned. Children can stay on family plans until the age of 26, which is vitally important to those like myself, a father of a 23 year old daughter who works at a place that doesn't offer health insurance. Insurance companies will be prohibited from hiking rates and co-pays in the middle of the year just because someone gets sick. They won't be able to gouge small businesses when one of their employees suffers a serious illness.
Shared responsibility. Everyone covered; everyone contributes. Mandates on businesses - beyond small shops -- to provide insurance or pay into a common pot; mandates on individuals to get insurance. This removes the hidden charge -- estimated at $1,100 per person -- we each pay for the 47 million who aren't insured and are forced to use the emergency room as their doctor, often putting off treatment that results in higher costs when the untreated illness becomes critical. If you have health insurance now, you've got a big, personal stake in getting everyone covered.
Affordability. You can't mandate that people get insurance without making it affordable, since cost is what keeps people from getting it. The best legislation coming out of the House would provide subsidies for low and middle income families up to 400% the poverty level (about $43,000 in individual income). The house legislation would also empower Medicare to negotiate lower prices on drugs, and allow the import of drugs from safe places abroad, saving seniors big time. This would remedy the outrageous payoff to Big Pharma in the prescription drug bill that prohibits Medicare from negotiating lower prices on drugs.
Fair financing. Not surprisingly, there's a pitched battle over how to finance the costs of the change. This shouldn't be complicated. In society with gilded age inequality and the wealthiest paying lower tax rates than their secretaries, the most sensible way is to add hike top end tax rates on millionaires. Rep. Charles Rangel has been pushing for high end tax rates. The least sensible way -- floated constantly by the eternally wrong-headed Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee -- would be to tax those who have so called "Cadillac" health care plans now. Too often people with high cost plans are people who suffer terrible illnesses. The insurance companies already gouge them for getting sick; it would be truly outrageous for the Congress to tax them for it. Luckily Obama campaigned against this in his campaign, and should be held to that promise.
Public Option. For those whose companies don't provide insurance -- disproportionately lower wage workers in small businesses -- every plan offers access to an "exchanges" that provides choices in private plans and helps keep prices down. Key to this is a robust public option that can contract with providers at something like Medicare rates. That will drive down the price of private insurance, provide model coverage that they will have to compete with, and help, as the president put it, keep the companies honest. The most obscene part of this debate has been to watch so called fiscal conservatives in both parties seek to oppose or disembowel the public option. This is the corrupting influence of insurance company dollars. If they succeed in prohibiting the public option from pegging its rates to Medicare, it will be as outrageous a subsidy to private industry as the prohibition on negotiating lower drug prices. Legislators in both parties should be challenged to support a real public option.
This isn't as complicated as some in the media try to make it. Cover everyone, curb the abuses of the insurance companies, insure affordability, and send the bill to those who've had the party, use a public option and the power of Medicare to drive lower prices and better practices.
Making the case
In a town meeting or on the phone to legislators' offices, many of us get intimidated. Legislators and aides often are skilled at using detail to dazzle or distract. The right-wing claque hopes to intimidate others. But in fact, you don't need all the facts and figures. Just tell your own story about health care, and express your opinion clearly. Say you want insurance company abuses curbed. That you expect your representative to fight for a public option strong enough to cut costs and force competition. That you want the reforms paid for fairly by higher taxes on the wealthy and a cutback on subsidies to the insurance companies. And make it clear, reform is essential; the right-wing extremists don't speak for you or the district. Don't let them hijack the debate.
These reforms aren't nirvana, but they would make a difference. And committees in both the House and Senate have now passed bills that contain them. If they are passed into law, 
we will have made dramatic changes in our health care system that will benefit the vast majority of Americans. A lot more work will still be necessary to fix the broken system -- particularly on cost. But most Americans will enjoy more secure, more affordable, and more sensible coverage.
Needless to say, this is all contested. The House Energy Committee, held hostage by the Blue Dogs, weakened the public option, lowered the subsidies for middle income workers, and diluted the reforms. We haven't even seen the worst of the bills, whatever comes out of Baucus' Finance Committee. But in the House and the Senate, if liberals stand tall, we've got a real chance to pass the basics mentioned above.
The first question, however, is whether any reform will pass. That is what is at stake this August. Will the insurance companies, the Republicans and the wingnuts sow sufficient fear and doubt to stop any serious reform? Or will citizens demand an adult debate about a broken health care system that must be fixed?
If Republicans are betting the house on this, so is President Obama. As Senator DeMint suggested, the right thinks defeat here will be Obama's Waterloo, that it will "break" his presidency. There is no question that failure to move health care will be treated by the press as a monumental setback, weakening the president significantly. If health care reform fails, then the other reforms on the table -- energy, financial reform, education, immigration, empowering workers -- will face more daunting odds. Many voters dismayed at the failure will stay home in 2010. Failure on health care may well strangle this era of reform in its infancy. That, of course, is what the zealots on the right seek.
But this country can't afford more drift and more stasis. We can't afford another failed presidency. We desperately need to step up to deal with the fundamental changes that can no longer be avoided. This isn't a spectator sport. The abusive tactics of the right are designed to keep the good hearted away, to create fear in the undecided, to cow timorous legislators. We can't allow that to happen. It is time to go all in.
From: The Huffington Report.

Nevada brothel offers free passes to Senators

The Keith Olberman video below is powerful. Please view it.
If Republicans and Blue Dogs are going to sell their souls; they might as well enjoy it.
A famous Nevada brothel is offering free passes to the legislators. This is far less corrupting than taking millions for campaign finance efforts as the Republicans are doing; and several Blue Dogs.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/nevada-brothel-offers-free-passes-to-lawmakers.php

Healthcare and corruption of our legislature

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Keith Olberman

Insurance corporations try to kill health care reform

See: The excellent report on Bill Moyers Journal
Health Care;
The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that you're heading down the slippery slope towards socialism... I think that people who are strong advocates of our health care system remaining as it is, very much a free market health care system, fail to realize that we're really talking about human beings here, and it doesn't work as well as they would like it to... They are trying to make you worry and fear a government bureaucrat being between you and your doctor. What you have now is a corporate bureaucrat between you and your doctor... The public plan would do a lot to keep [health insurance companies] honest, because it would have to offer a standard benefit plan. It would have to operate more efficiently, as does the Medicare program. It would be structured, I’m certain, on a level playing field so that it wouldn’t [have an] unfair advantage [over] the private insurance companies. Because it could be administered more efficiently, the private insurers would have to operate more efficiently.”
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2009/07/assessing_a_public_option_for.html

The “public option” is central to many Democrats’ vision for health care reform, but it has attracted pointed criticism from supporters of the “single payer” model and opponents of federal intervention alike.

Medicare for All

Nurses, Progressive Dems Seek Stepped Up Action for
Real, "Robust" Healthcare Reform

Single-Payer, Medicare for All, as Best Solution to Crisis

WASHINGTON - June 24 - With action heating up in
Washington for enactment of comprehensive healthcare
reform, the nation's largest RN union and professional
association joined with progressive Democratic Party
activists today in calling for the most "robust" reform
of all to repair the nation's healthcare crisis, by
enacting a single-payer system in the form of an
expanded and updated Medicare for all.

In a joint statement, the National Nurses Organizing
Committee/California Nurses Association and Progressive
Democrats of America announced they are stepping up
calls and other lobbying efforts to urge Congressional
leaders to include discussion of the single-payer
option in upcoming deliberations on the healthcare
reform legislation now advancing in Congress.

As President Obama holds several public healthcare
events, major committees in Congress unveil
legislation, and some liberal constituency groups set
to rally in Washington Thursday, NNOC/CNA and PDA said
that a single-payer/Medicare-for-all approach is "the
best way to achieve goals of universality, effective
cost controls, and improving the quality of care for
all Americans."

All other proposals, the groups said, suffer the same
limitations. They:

* Leave the insurance industry, with its emphasis
on generating profits and revenues rather than
providing care, in control of our health. * Fail to
assure financial security of American families by
not cracking down on insurance pricing practices. *
Avoid the strongest cost controls that are achieved
in a single-payer system with one shared risk pool
that covers everyone, elimination of the
administrative waste associated with private
insurers, and use of the power of the public entity
to negotiate lower costs. * Does not protect choice
of doctor, hospital, and other providers, as occurs
in a single-payer system, because insurers can
still limit choice to their own approved network of
doctors and providers.

Even the public option favored by the President and
leading Democrats would not achieve these goals, said
NNOC/CNA and PDA. Private insurers would still be able
to cherry pick healthier patients through their
aggressive marketing techniques, with sicker patients
likely being dumped into the public plan. The result is
the public plan would face higher costs and the
likelihood of having to cut or ration services to stay
financially afloat.

PDA and NNOC/CNA are asking people to continue to call
Congress and the White House to insist that single-
payer, and the single-payer bills in Congress, HR 676
in the House and S 703 in the Senate, be given equal
consideration in the legislative review process this
summer.

The two organizations have worked together since early
last year on a variety of healthcare projects,
including pressing the Democratic National Party to go
on record in "support of guaranteed healthcare for all"
at the national convention in Denver, campaigns on
behalf of single-payer candidates across the country in
the fall, and rallies and forums in cities throughout
the U.S.

"The time is ripe for real reform. For our personal
well-being and for the sake of our great nation, now is
the time to institute a real healthcare system instead
of tweaking the patchwork of corporate non-care that
now envelopes us," said NNOC/CNA Co-President Geri
Jenkins, RN.

Jenkins will be attending the ABC White House Town Hall
meeting with President Obama on healthcare reform
tonight, along with Patty Eakin, RN, President of the
Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied
Professionals and an NNOC/CNA board member.

"As long as a profit-motive is the centerpiece of our
system, as it is and will be with healthcare
corporations calling the shots, we entertain no notion
that a public option will be the fix that so many
Americans desperately need and want," Jenkins said.
"Medicare for all is the only solution to what ails
us."

"Regardless of the claims that the majority of people
want a 'public option,' what most people really want is
a system of healthcare that covers everybody, and they
believe the government can do a better job of it than
the healthcare corporations can. It's time for
Congress to stop nibbling around the edges of reform
and provide real leadership toward enacting healthcare
reform for the people, instead of yet another windfall
for wealthy corporations," said Tim Carpenter, national
director of PDA.

The Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign presses forward
with a "Week of Action for Medicare-for-All - H.R.
676." Participating organizations will make calls to
Congress asking representatives to provide leadership
in the healthcare debate. On July 30, the 44th
anniversary of Medicare will be celebrated with a rally
and lobby day in Washington, D.C. ### The California
Nurses Association, and its national arm, the National
Nurses Organizing Committee, is one of the nation's
premiere nurses' organizations and health care unions.
One of the fastest growing health care organizations in
the U.S., CNA/NNOC presently has 80,000 members in 50
states, representing nurses at scores of hospitals,
clinics, and home health agencies.

__________________

Waiting for health care

Subject: The Waiting Game
Date: July 16, 2007 7:35:58 PM PDT
\The Waiting Game
by Paul Krugman

Published on Monday, July 16, 2007 by The New York
Times, distributed by Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/16/2554/

Being without health insurance is no big deal. Just ask
President Bush. "I mean, people have access to health
care in America," he said last week. "After all, you
just go to an emergency room."

This is what you might call callousness with
consequences. The White House has announced that Mr.
Bush will veto a bipartisan plan that would extend
health insurance, and with it such essentials as
regular checkups and preventive medical care, to an
estimated 4.1 million currently uninsured children.
After all, it's not as if those kids really need
insurance - they can just go to emergency rooms, right?

O.K., it's not news that Mr. Bush has no empathy for
people less fortunate than himself. But his willful
ignorance here is part of a larger picture: by and
large, opponents of universal health care paint a
glowing portrait of the American system that bears as
little resemblance to reality as the scare stories they
tell about health care in France, Britain, and Canada.

The claim that the uninsured can get all the care they
need in emergency rooms is just the beginning. Beyond
that is the myth that Americans who are lucky enough to
have insurance never face long waits for medical care.

Actually, the persistence of that myth puzzles me. I
can understand how people like Mr. Bush or Fred
Thompson, who declared recently that "the poorest
Americans are getting far better service" than
Canadians or the British, can wave away the desperation
of uninsured Americans, who are often poor and
voiceless. But how can they get away with pretending
that insured Americans always get prompt care, when
most of us can testify otherwise?

A recent article in Business Week put it bluntly: "In
reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American
people are already waiting as long or longer than
patients living with universal health-care systems."

A cross-national survey conducted by the Commonwealth
Fund found that America ranks near the bottom among
advanced countries in terms of how hard it is to get
medical attention on short notice (although Canada was
slightly worse), and that America is the worst place in
the advanced world if you need care after hours or on a
weekend.

We look better when it comes to seeing a specialist or
receiving elective surgery. But Germany outperforms us
even on those measures - and I suspect that France,
which wasn't included in the study, matches Germany's
performance.

Besides, not all medical delays are created equal. In
Canada and Britain, delays are caused by doctors trying
to devote limited medical resources to the most urgent
cases. In the United States, they're often caused by
insurance companies trying to save money.

This can lead to ordeals like the one recently
described by Mark Kleiman, a professor at U.C.L.A., who
nearly died of cancer because his insurer kept delaying
approval for a necessary biopsy. "It was only later,"
writes Mr. Kleiman on his blog, "that I discovered why
the insurance company was stalling; I had an option,
which I didn't know I had, to avoid all the approvals
by going to 'Tier II,' which would have meant higher
co-payments."

He adds, "I don't know how many people my insurance
company waited to death that year, but I'm certain the
number wasn't zero."

To be fair, Mr. Kleiman is only surmising that his
insurance company risked his life in an attempt to get
him to pay more of his treatment costs. But there's no
question that some Americans who seemingly have good
insurance nonetheless die because insurers are trying
to hold down their "medical losses" - the industry term
for actually having to pay for care.

On the other hand, it's true that Americans get hip
replacements faster than Canadians. But there's a funny
thing about that example, which is used constantly as
an argument for the superiority of private health
insurance over a government-run system: the large
majority of hip replacements in the United States are
paid for by, um, Medicare.

That's right: the hip-replacement gap is actually a
comparison of two government health insurance systems.
American Medicare has shorter waits than Canadian
Medicare (yes, that's what they call their system)
because it has more lavish funding - end of story. The
alleged virtues of private insurance have nothing to do
with it.

The bottom line is that the opponents of universal
health care appear to have run out of honest arguments.
All they have left are fantasies: horror fiction about
health care in other countries, and fairy tales about
health care here in America.

Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics at Princeton
University and a regular New York Times columnist. His
most recent book is The Great Unraveling: Losing Our
Way in the New Century.

(c) 2007 The New York Times

BTW. The California effort is not much better.

This from Hana Beth Jackson on the California Progress Report blog:


With Senator Kuehl's SB 840, the true reform measure of the year having advanced another step last week, this week highlighted the lesser but still reform-minded bill, AB 8 which is authored by Senate Leader Perata and Assembly Speaker Nunez. After 2 hours and 50 or so witnesses later, the measure passed on a party-line (no surprise there). The bill is being touted as a landmark bill that will overhaul our state's $186 Billion health care system. In doing so, it would extend medical insurance coverage to 3.4 million working Californians by requiring employers without health plans to pay a 7.5% payroll tax to buy insurance for all its workers. Employees would be required to put in 4.5% of their income as a match.

Of course, when all is said and done, it still keeps the insurance industry alive and well and taking out lots of money that would otherwise go to provide health care, not health insurance. But until we're willing to buck up and create a Medicare-for-all type program, this has some legs and hopefully some benefit to the millions of Californians without any health insurance or access to adequate health care. This one will end up in a "Conference" where the Governor will put forward his still orphaned plan. Not surprisingly, no Republicans will support any of these discussions. It's the same old song---just another "job-killer" with the current Republican leadership demonstrating, sadly, that it is only interested in protecting its big corporate owners/donors.

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That is, if you leave the insurance companies in place, as does AB 8, you leave the insurance companies richer and the health care system paying a 30% over cost. Then, if you do this, health care will be too expensive.