OlsonOnline

Cutting through the crap on health care reform

From T.R. Reid's piece in yesterday's Washington Post exposing the myths undermining the argument for American health care reform:

"The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage."

In other words, no country with national health care allows private for-profit insurance companies to profit from the provision of basic health care.

Don't you think that prohibition, in and of itself, would slash the obscenely high cost of health care in this country by 20%? 

At least?

The private insurance companies in Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland don't seem to have a problem with the "no profit" rule on basic health care.  Why then should America's private insurers?

So, President Obama, there's your message --get the profit out of basic health care!  Start with that and leave behind the incessant chatter about public options and health co-ops.

Maybe that will break the stalemate in the House and the Senate.

Worth reading --health care, Iran, charter schools

A medical hiatus starting tomorrow means this is my last post for awhile.  So read these, if you please, during my absence.

On health care:

• Dave Lindorrf writes that Obama's "unwillingness to lead" on the issue of single payer health care will lead to his "Health Reform Waterloo."

• Pierre Tristam claims that Obama "...plays into the rhetorical ambushes of reform's enemies..." when he says stuff like this to the American Medical Association:

"...there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well. But I believe ... that it's important for our reform efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States. So when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They're not telling the truth."

In other words, Obama himself conflates "single payer" with "government run health         care."  

• Meanwhile, a New York Times/CBS poll finds that most Americans "support" a "government-run health insurance option."  That means "single payer."

On Iran:

• Most discerning news readers know that the Khamenei -Mousavi stand-off in Iran does not herald the beginning of the overthrow of Iranian theocracy.  Mousavi was, after all, a principal player in the 1979 revolution that brought the mullahs to power. Phil Wilayto offers an economic -and class-- perspective to the conflict:

"Why is there so little discussion of the issue of class in this election? Is it because so many professional and semi-professional commentators on Iran are themselves from the same class as Mousavi's supporters, and so instinctively identify with them?"

What Wilayto means is that Ahmehdinijad appeals to poor Iranians, Mousavi to the wealthier and better educated.  He also points out that Mousavi is for more rapid privatization of the economy, which puts him in conflict with the Iranian Constitution.  It decrees that all "large scale industries", like oil and gas, should be owned by the state, which enables the government to "fund a vast social safety net" for the poor.

On charter schools:

• Another study shows that charters do worse than their traditional public school counterparts in raising the achievement of students.

• And Caroline Grannan, in a comment to my last charter school post, argues that charters, at least in California, serve a much smaller percentage of special needs students than traditional public schools.  And they often get more money per student than the publics.

That's it for now.

Health care on 'The Stump': It's single payer, stupid!

You've heard all the stories about how Medicare and Medicaid are on the ropes, that doctors refuse to see patients from Medicaid because its reimbursements are so paltry, that both programs are essentially being SUBSIDIZED by the private insurers because they spend far more money than they take in, and so on and on and on.

Bottom line, say the critics, is that government-funded health care, a public option or single payer, would give us more of the same --a massive government bureaucracy that would collapse under the weight of its obligations.

Pure and utter baloney. 

There are only two problems with the existing public health programs:

• They're underfunded.

• They serve the poor and the elderly, not the young and the healthy.

That will change --dramatically-- once the for-profit insurers are pushed aside by a far more efficient public entity --think Medicare with a 3% administrative overhead (and NO profits)--  where all Americans, the healthy and the frail, are in the same insurance pool.

How can the cost of health care not go down?  The for-profit health industry skims $350 billion off the top for its investors before any health care at all is delivered!

Dr. Peter Mahr, over at 'The Stump', asks:

"So what do we do with a health care non-system that is a big money maker for insurers, some hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry but leaves one in seven people lacking insurance and most with insurance that is too costly and inadequate? How do we repair a delivery system that is expensive, focuses on moneymaking services rather than primary and preventative care and has little emphasis on evidence-based medicine?"

The answer is simple and straightforward:  Single payer, stupid!

And a few days ago on 'The Stump', Stephen Gregg, a self-described "free marketer", called Medicare a "very sweet deal":

" ...the initial Medicare signals seem favorable, bordering on a breath of fresh air:

--Stable premium increases.
--Ubiquitous access to almost any provider in the country.
...

--Ability to switch carriers, no questions asked, once a year.
--So far, decent public-private customer service throughout.
--Very little uncertainty as to whether I am covered for all the possibilities.

"It's a challenge to argue that Medicare is an inferior alternative to a more responsive and dynamic private sector."

So there you have it.  Both 'Stump' posts, needless to say, brought out the anti-government critics.  But national polls indicate that single payer, or at the very least a public option, have the support of a majority of the American public.

Now its up to the the pols --and Obama-- to see it through.

Dems versus Dems, redux

On Monday I wrote that the "real obstacles" to health care reform are corporate Democrats, not Republicans.

Chris Bowers agrees:

"Stop telling me how bad Republicans are--we don't need a single one to pass the public option. ...

"...until then, I really have grown sick of progressives telling me about the latest stupid thing that fell out of Limbaugh's mouth. He is not the problem right now. Democrats like Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, and Arlen Specter are. If the Democratic leadership is either unwilling or unable to pressure enough of those types of Democrats into passing the lowest bar of progressive governance, then it is time to redirect our activism into less partisan and /or less electoral directions."

Amen!

Maybe we should add Ron Wyden's name to the list of problem Dems on health care reform.

(Speaking of backsliding Dems, what's with Oregon State Senator Mark Hass*?  First he threatens to blow up the legislature's tax increase on corporations and wealthy individuals, then he backs down.  Constituent pressure?  Party pressure???) 

*(Is Hass the new Senator from Nike?  His opposition to the "permanent" tax increases echoes the postion taken by the old Senator from Nike, Ryan Deckert, now head of the Oregon Business Association.)

Dems versus Dems on health care

Who are the real obstacles to overhauling the American health care system?

If you say Republicans, you're wrong.  There aren't enough of them left in Congress to affect the outcome of pending health care legislation.

No, the real obstacles to effective and affordable health care for all Americans are ...Democrats!  Not all of them.  Just the "moderate" or corporate Dems who oppose single payer or even the possibility of a government-backed public option insurance plan. 

The Associated Press says that the two factions are on a "collision course" when it comes to health care reform:

"The conflict between the liberals and moderates is over the contours of a new public insurance plan that's likely to be included in a health care overhaul. ...

"The disagreements underscore steep challenges ahead as Congress rushes to meet Obama's goal of passing a health care overhaul that keeps down costs and extends coverage to 50 million uninsured Americans."

Single payer advocates, who want to take the profit out of health insurance, are skeptical of the public option.  As long as the private insurers are still in business, they say, a government-backed insurance program is likely to attract the least healthy Americans, thereby driving the cost of the program up.  

According to Helen Redmond, that's what happens when you mix private and public insurance programs.  She quotes the founders of Physicians for a National Health Program on the impact of private insurance impact on Medicare:

"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."

Single payer advocates, says Redmond, also object to a public option for other reasons.  Among them:

• It doesn’t make health care a human right that can never be taken away.

• The system would continue to have multiple payers and therefore the complexity and gaps in coverage that are inevitable when there are numerous bureaucracies to navigate.

Speaking of the public option, Robert Reich reports that the moderate Maine Republican Olympia Snow has convinced some Dems, including Oregon's Ron Wyden, to sign on to a plan concocted by "Big Pharma and Big Insurance" for the public plan to "kick in years from now,"  but only if the private health care industry fails "to bring down healthcare costs... ."

Reich says that " 'years from now' in legislative terms means never."  

"Everybody in, nobody out!" Video of Kershner's arrest at single payer protest

"Everybody in, nobody out" is the chanted slogan of the single payer movement.

Opponents of single payer have turned that around to mean everybody (if they're single payer advocates) out of the town hall meeting with Blumenauer and Howard Dean.

But maybe they mean everybody in jail.

Harry arrested at single payer protest

Word comes from my friend Anne Trudeau that Harry Kershner, radical leftist (although he calls himself a centrist in step with the majority of Americans) was arrested at yesterday's single payer health care protest at Portland Community College, Cascade Campus, where Earl Blumenauer and Howard Dean were speaking.  (Or as Harry would say, "lying their asses off".)

Say what you want about Harry, who many view as a dogmatic ideologue.  But never deny that Harry Kershner has the courage of his convictions:

He walks his talk. 

That's more than can be said about most of us who share his views on health care, American foreign policy, and the disgusting timidity of our elected Democratic political leaders.

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?

*************************

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.)

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 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.