OlsonOnline

The latest on single payer

The founders of Physicians for a National Health Program published a study in the August, 2003 edition of the  New England Journal of Medicine contrasting the administrative costs of health care in the United States and Canada.

The results?  Total administrative costs covering six categories --for example, insurance overhead, hospital administration, practitioner administrative costs-- for the United States:

$1059 per capita.

For Canada:

$307 per capita

Conclusion?

"...the difference in the costs of health care administration between the United States and Canada is clearly large and growing.  Is $294.3 billion annually for U.S. health care administration money well spent?"

Hmmmm.  Is the answer .... NO?

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Recently Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America took on Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelley over the issue of single payer health care.  Here's the video:

Fox News, as you would expect, is anti-single payer. Kelly spouts the usual right-wing "talkng points" about long waits in Canada for vital surgeries.  Are they true?

Warren Pease responds to the notion that single payer would "result in long waiting lists for even the most mundane procedures:"

"But, as usual, corporate mass media is lying through its bleached teeth. If that vision of health care hell were true, all other Western democracies would exhibit shorter average life spans, higher rates of cancer and heart disease, higher infant mortality rates, lower birth weights, fewer average healthy years, failing mental health programs and far more serious epidemiological incidents than does the US. Since the opposite is true in all cases, it seems fair to conclude that single-payer, universal-access works, this cobbled together disaster we call a health care system is not getting the job done and that we're being ill served by US media yet again."

Under the for-profit "disaster" that passes for health care in this country, people, even the ones with health insurance like Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year old girl who was denied* a liver transplant by Cigna HealthCare in order "to maximize its profits," actually do die.

*(Cigna did eventually relent, but just hours before young Nataline expired.  Good PR for Cigna.  Not so good for its client.)

'Tough love' for Obama

I consider my frequent critiques of some of President Obama's policies --the misguided ones-- a form of "tough love." After all, I voted for him. And he wants to hear from his supporters, right?

Here's the Progressive Congressional Caucus' Donna Edwards urging progressives to "find their voices."

Here's the line I like:

"As progressives we haven't quite found our voice in terms of offering the appropriate critique of this administration.  And you know what?  He needs us to do it.  And the reason he needs us is because it will make him  a stronger and better President.  It will make him more progressive.  It will make him less likely to have to always bow to the conservative wings not just of the Republican Party but of the Democratic Party. 

Paul Karsh is one progressive who has raised his voice "to let [Obama] know where we need to hear his voice" with this open letter. It reads in part:

"I need your voice to stand up against torture and stand for the rule of law. ...

"I need your voice to do something about service people who have served our country with honor and distinction, and who have skills that our services desperately need, being discharged for being openly gay. ...

"I need your voice to allow the option of single-payer to be part of the discussion of health care reform."

Dick Cheney and "Why they hate us"

'They' being Middle East Muslims, especially those who have taken up arms against the American presence in the region.  In his speech to the American Enterprise Institute (in defense of torture), Cheney explained the roots of Arab resentment:

"They have never lacked for grievances against the United States.  Our belief in freedom of speech and religion…our belief in equal rights for women…our support for Israel… — these are the true sources of resentment."

Not so, says retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern, at least not entirely.   They hate not our freedoms, but our policies, particularly American  "support for Israel."   Cheney, McGovern says, got that part right, a deliciously odd admission coming from the man responsible for undermining so many of our vaunted freedoms and civil liberties.  

Not that those on the left haven't tried to convince the "they-hate-our-freedoms-crowd" of the damage done by American policy on Israel-Palestine.  The complaints of leftists, however, are cavalierly dismissed as rants from the "blame America first" fringe.

Even when terrorist masterminds like Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef explain that their animosity toward the U.S. is almost entirely due to its Israel policy, who takes them seriously?  They're terrorists.

But what if the same policy criticisms were voiced by the U.S. Department of Defense itself?  Would people then sit up and take notice?  Perhaps.  And therein lies the genius of McGovern's piece on Cheney.

McGovern, you see, has unearthed a U.S. Defense Science Board report written just two months after 9-11, and then sent directly to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2004, two months before the fall presidential election.  Here's an extended quote from the report --page 48:

"American direct intervention in the Muslim World has ... elevated the stature
of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

• "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the ... support for ... tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

• "Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that 'freedom is the future of the Middle East' is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.

• "Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination."

Sound familiar?

The report, now declassified, was suppressed by those in charge --and according to McGovern-- by the mainstream media. 

But hey!  We're still in Iraq.  We're still in Afghanistan and bombing targets in Pakistan.  We still support Middle Eastern kingdoms and dictatorships.  And... our policy toward Israel shows no signs of changing.

So maybe, just maybe, the conclusions in the report will, at long last, do some good. 

Worth reading: Albert Einstein on socialism, 1949

Some excerpts:

"...nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called 'the predatory phase' of human development. ... Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future. ...

"Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. ... As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. ...

"I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. ... Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules."

Little has changed since 1949.  The near collapse of Western market-based economies in the last year is evidence of that. 

That leaves me to wonder how the libertarians, objectivists and "teabaggers" would respond to Einstein's carefully crafted defense of what he terms socialism, and his harsh critique of the predatory nature of capitalism.

(Also worth reading is this Monthly Review article, "Albert Einstein, Radical: A Political Profile.")

Lots of Dems, little progress

From Chuck Sheketoff's op-ed in today's Oregonian recommending the suspension of Measure 57 to help solve Oregon's budget problem:

"Oregon already tops all states in terms of the share of general fund dollars devoted to putting people behind bars, and it spends more on prisons than on higher education -- one of only four states in the nation to do so."

Meanwhile Steve Duin writes that Democrats in the Oregon legislature are offering little more than a "tepid response" to the budget crisis.  They've done nothing about the "kicker", failed to raise beer taxes, and have only talked about the possibility of raising much-needed revenue from corporations and wealthy individuals.

And prisons?  Legislators are

"...planning to cut Healthy Start of Oregon by more than twice as much (on a percentage basis) as they're cutting the Department of Corrections... ."

Sheketoff warns cuts to education and the social safety net may backfire:

"One of the bitterest ironies of Measure 57 is that, if implemented, it may end up making Oregonians less safe over the long run."

Let's see.  Oregon has a Democratic Governor and Democratic majorities in both the state House and Senate.  Haven't we been told --repeatedly-- that if we liberals only elect more Democrats to public office, our problems will be solved?

That brings me to Barack Obama and health care.  As a state legislator he pronounced:

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan.

"We may not get there immediately, because first we've got to take back the White House, and we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."

"We" means Democrats.  Well, the President is a Democrat, and both the House and the Senate have been "taken back", overwhelmingly, by the Dems.  Just like in Oregon.

So what's standing in the way of implementing a single payer system of national health care?  The Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, along with scores of other Congressional Dems in thrall to the private health care industry

There's a lesson to be learned there by all partisan Democrats. 

The Constitutional sins of Barack Obama

Charles Krauthammer has it right:

"If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to George Bush. Within 125 days, Obama has adopted with only minor modifications huge swaths of the entire, allegedly lawless Bush program. ...

"As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush's moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy."

The right-wing Krauthammer undoubtedly approves.

Those on the left, however, were "stunned" by Obama's embrace of military commissions --or tribunals-- and even more shocked at his announcement that he would develop a "legal framework" to justify preventive --or prolonged-- detention.

Constitutionally speaking, how is that any different than the Bush administration soliciting legal opinions to justify torture, which Obama seems disinclined to investigate, let alone prosecute, even though torture is clearly a crime both domestically and internationally?

Here's the Center for Constitutional Rights' Michael Ratner:

"The president wrapped himself in the Constitution and then proceeded to violate it by announcing he would send people before irredeemably flawed military commissions and seek to create a preventive detention scheme that only serves to move Guantanamo to a new location and give it a new name."

And the Center's Shayana Kadidal:

"Preventive detention goes against every principle our nation was founded on. ... The new president is looking a lot like the old."

Speaking of torture, The Progressive's Matthew Rothschild writes

"Barack Obama is fast becoming an accessory after the fact to the war crimes that the Bush Administration has committed."

That's true on a number of levels.  But you only hear it from the left.  Or from those well-versed in law, especially Constitutional law.  And therein lies the ultimate irony.

Barack Obama taught Constitutional law.  He knows what passes Constitutional muster and what doesn't.  Yet the "new" tools he says we need to combat the threat of terrorism all apparently involve the undermining of Constitutional rights.  

In short, as the anti-left Wall Street Journal concluded last February, Obama is "...erring on the side of keeping the country safe rather than appeasing the political left." 

"Appeasing the left" is right-wing speak for taking steps to protect Constitutional guarantees of fundamental civil liberties. 

The sins of Barack Obama: Health care

Criticism of Barack Obama's backsliding on "change" has come mainly from the left, particularly from the alternative media and the blogs.

Here's one example which pretty well sums up Obama's ambivalence toward single payer national health care.  Health care is one of the many pressing issues Obama has failed to address in any substantive manner.

Jerry Policoff, a Pennsylvania advocate for single payer, looks closely at Obama's response to a question about single payer at a town hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.  He then deconstructs Obama's rationale, point by point, for excluding single payer from the discussion.

• Single payer would be "too disruptive" to the system.

The system means "employer-based" health care, which Policoff calls a "total failure."  Obama knows this.  He knows that "18% of our workforce" is uninsured.  And that the cost of providing health benefits places a huge burden on American business.  He knows that employers would gladly forgo their roll in paying for employee health care. 

Obama further knows that one reason Americans stay in jobs they hate is the fear of losing their health care insurance

That's hardly a system worth protecting from "disruption."

• American health care is too big a piece of the economy to "tamper" with.

Indeed, health care as currently delivered IS a big part of the economy.  But Policoff says that's all the more reason to switch to single payer:

"...transitioning to a single-payer model would almost certainly radically reduce the currently bloated cost of healthcare in the United States both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP.

"What possible justification could there be to  preserve a system that costs so much and leaves tens of millions of people without health coverage and tens of millions more underinsured?"

The answer to that is self-evident.  The private health care industry pours hundreds of millions of dollars into political campaigns in order to protect its profits.  In short, they literally buy off the legislators in charge of health care reform.

• It would be unfair to deprive people of their current health care if they are satisfied with it.

Policoff calls that "pure disinformation and fear-mongering," a  parroting of the PR "talking points" of private health care interests.   Policoff says,

"The only problem with this seemingly common sense approach is that most people are happy with their current coverage because they have never been in a situation that tested it. ...

"How are we doing people a favor by letting them keep the coverage they are 'happy' with, if down the road that decision may lead to them losing their homes or being forced into bankruptcy when their insurance fails to cover the cost of catastrophic illness that befalls them or their loved ones?"

(The number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is catastrophic illness.)

Policoff maintains that with his high approval ratings, Obama could force Congress to enact true universal health care reform.  Yes, he "could."  But will he?  All indications are that no, he won't. 

And that calls into question Obama's commitment to real health care reform.

UPDATE:  Apparently the health care industry has reneged on its pledge to take steps to drastically reduce the cost of medical care.  And Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has produced ads attacking Obama's health care plan.

What excuses now remain for Obama's defense of the existing system?  We shall see.

Why speaking six languages is NOT an indicator of the quality of one's education

Now that yesterday's non-election* of school officials is in the books, let's turn to another pressing educational issue --Why American schools suck.

The author, Blue Oregon semi-regular contributor Jenson Hagen, may have "studied six languages," but in this post he speaks a language he probably hasn't studied, at least not formally --gibberish!

See if you can make any sense of what he's saying:

• American schools suck.

• We need to change our system.

• But we ignore the European and Asian formats.  "Wholeheartedly."

Hagen doesn't bother to explain just exactly what those "formats" consist of.  One can only infer that languages in Europe are taught earlier.  But what's this about shoving

"...general math and English at kids and expect[ing] them to acquire a capacity for business, engineering or journalism[?]"

As I said, gibberish!

*(The voter turnout in Multnomah County was a whopping 15%!)

UPDATE:  Here's a comment from the always reliable Darrell Plant on Hagen's post:

"Budget cuts over the past 40 years are really what cut into language instruction, not some fantasy about the demands of public school teachers unions."

Vote!

No, not Vote Dammit! which brings to mind Willamette Week and its idiotic endorsements.

But anyway, if you're like me, you wait til the last minute to vote and then walk your ballot over to a local library.  And I know many of you HAVEN'T yet cast your ballots.  So this is a last minute reminder.

If you live in Beaverton, you must vote for Kris Alman for school board.  I wish Kris lived here in Portland, more specifically, I wished she lived in Trudy Sargent's Zone 6 somewhere up on Mount Tabor.  As it stands, write in the name of Moss Drake as a replacement for Trudy.

Also vote for Scott Bailey in Zone 5.  He seems to know a hell of a lot more about school district politics, and what needs to be done to improve them, than his opponent, Pam Knowles.

If you truly want change on the board, don't vote for Martin Gonzales in Zone 4.  Either of his opponents --Rita Moore or Steve Buel-- would likely argue effectively for much needed changes in district policy.  (If you don't want a split vote in the zone containing many of the district's poorest schools, then vote Rita.  She appears to be running the more vigorous and visible campaign.)

Less than seven hours til the drop-off boxes close.  So get cracking!

Blast from the past: Does PPS know what it's doing?

(Thanks to Lakeitha Elliott)

Yesterday I wrote that the last reconfiguration of Jefferson High School had "been no less than disastrous."

Portland Public Schools board member Ruth Adkins agrees, or at least she did three years ago when she co-authored this Tribune op-ed piece bemoaning that newspaper's support for school closures and the dismantling of "successful" small school programs at Jeff:

"As we ... pointed out..., the previous round of reforms and special academic programs were working well including the highest increase in test scores of any school in the city ... . There was no need to throw all this work and dedication out the window and start from scratch.

"Moreover, how do we know the new programs/academies will actually result in increased enrollment... [?]  ... more than 70 percent of Jefferson-area parents who send their children outside the neighborhood were never surveyed as to what would bring them back.

"Unfortunately, it appears that Jeff is headed toward privatization... .Privatization is threatening our district: increased numbers of charter schools, private foundation/grant money influencing major policy decisions, and a top-down 'business' model for our schools."

The piece proved prescient.  Jefferson's enrollment has flatlined.  One of its single sex academies has closed.  Test scores (for whatever they're worth) and graduation rates haven't improved.  Academic offerings are scant.

So much for the reform of Jefferson.

The community at Saturday's gathering realize what's happened.  And that's why they demand a return to a comprehensive* high school like those found in wealthier areas of the city.

The question remains:  Is the district listening?

*(Small schools within schools are not at all incompatible with comprehensive academic and elective offerings.  The key is to allow students in small communities of learning, which typically focus on core academics, access to course offerings within the larger school.)