Health care made clear

[tvashtarkatena]

Opponents to health care reform have thrown out a lot of obfuscating chaffe to confuse the issue: a standard mis-information tactic. Lt's get a little clearer on what's going on here and how we compare with the rest of the civilized world.

 

Essentially, we have every system out there in operation right here already, so the 'what if' argument is pure shite. We already know. The problem is that we've got the African system (no money? you die) for more than a sixth of our population. Not very civilized, really. Every other developed nation on earth has decided that health care is a basic human right. The sad fact that we're still bickering on that point speaks volumes, and not good volumes, about the state of American cultural humanity.

 

Finally, a clarifying analysis from TR Reid

Edited September 3, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[Pete_H]

I'd have to disagree with your assessment somewhat. If you have no money you call 911 and go to the emergency room a bunch for shit that should be managed by your physician, costing taxpayers much more money than the alternative, and then you die.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Right now health care is rationed. It is also expensive.

 

Whatever the reform it must guarantee that 1) costs do not go up and 2) we are not exchanging one form of rationing while 3) increasing the number of Americans covered.

 

 

[j_b]

Yet, none of this will prevent Obama from giving the finger to the large majority of americans who wants a robust public option.

 

Anyone who can add knows Republicans are not blocking universal health care. The performances of Republican teabaggers at a few town halls notwithstanding, there are just not enough Republicans in the House and Senate to block anything. The president and his party can roll over Republican opposition any time they want to.

 

Blue dog Democrats aren't to blame for blocking the White House health care bills either. The political careers of many House blue dogs are the creation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dispensed them bags of corporate cash to win primary elections against left leaning Democrats. The interests that owned Rahm, and still do, own his successor at DCCC, so the blue dogs are White House puppies it can rein it any time it chooses.

 

Senator Baucus and a handful of right wing senators are not to blame either. Some are Republicans, who simply don't matter. They don't have the votes. And the Senate Democrats with their hands on the bill are all choices of the White House, and all dependent on the good will of that same White House for a percentage of their corporate campaign contributions. Senate Democrats are keenly aware that a sitting president of their own party has literally hundreds of ways to exert pressure on any single legislator. None of them is crossing the White House either.

 

The only obstacle to passage of the president's health care --- or health insurance legislation is the White House itself. Barack Obama knows better than any of us the difference between what he promised and what is about to be delivered. The undeniable difference is dawning on much of the public too, and is reflected in sagging poll numbers for Democrats and the president. The dozens of Democrats who have declared they will vote against any health care --- or health insurance --- bill that does not contain what they call a "public option," are only trying to insulate themselves and protect President Obama from the worst consequences of his own treachery in selling out the vision of universal health care to big pharma and the insurance companies. They aren't blocking the president's bill. They're trying to ensure that there is something in the bill they can defend to the outraged public who elected them to pass health care reform.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/03-11

[tvashtarkatena]

Health care is rationed everywhere in some form. That's an inescapable reality of a limited resource.

 

We choose to ration health care here by simply not providing it to tens of millions of men, women, and children.

 

Our health care costs are twice, per capita, as expensive as other countries. Our administrative costs average 18% versus 5 in other countries. The Japanese more than twice as many doctor visits per year than we do, yet their per capita costs are still much lower.

 

The message is that our clusterfuck is just that: it requires wholesale simplification and the benefits of economies of scale and administrative standardization that result.

 

Here's a nice example for you from personal experience: The over the counter price of Crestor, a highly effective cholesterol lowering drug taken by millions of AMericans, is over $2400 dollars a year. One medication. Pay up or die of a stroke, fucker.

 

Welcome to unfettered capitalism.

Edited September 3, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[tvashtarkatena]

The irony is that overall approval ratings for Medicare and other public health care systems in the US is actually quite high. They work, and people like them...just as they do in every other civilized country on earth.

 

TR Reid recounted that the biggest policy debate insult around the world was a threat to 'go to the American system'. Everyone else knows our little clusterfuck is cruel, out of control, and getting worse.

 

Like your employee sponsored program right now? How sure are you that you'll still like it 5 or 10 years from now? Not worried? You're an idiot.

[j_b]

Beware the bait and switch Obama is cooking up with the republicans: "Senior White House officials, in conversations with reporters today, are floating the idea that President Obama is secretly negotiating with Sen. Olympia Snowe over a health care compromise that would phase in a government-funded health care alternative if private insurance companies fail to meet quality and cost benchmarks over a certain period of the time. The public discussion of the Snowe "compromise" is meant to test the reaction of House Democrats, who will pass a bill that includes an immediate public option added to a new health insurance exchange. The White House hopes that, having voted for a public option, House Dems would accept a "trigger" as part of a conference committee compromise rather than putting the kibosh on the entire health care reform project."

[tvashtarkatena]

Another anecdote: A guy in the rental car line in Cali who owns his own business pays $25,000, that's right, three zeroes, to insure his family. Um...that's an entire annual income for a sizeable part of our increasing poorer population.

 

Nope. No problem here. Move on.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Beware the bait and switch Obama is cooking up with the republicans: "Senior White House officials, in conversations with reporters today, are floating the idea that President Obama is secretly negotiating with Sen. Olympia Snowe over a health care compromise that would phase in a government-funded health care alternative if private insurance companies fail to meet quality and cost benchmarks over a certain period of the time. The public discussion of the Snowe "compromise" is meant to test the reaction of House Democrats, who will pass a bill that includes an immediate public option added to a new health insurance exchange. The White House hopes that, having voted for a public option, House Dems would accept a "trigger" as part of a conference committee compromise rather than putting the kibosh on the entire health care reform project."

 

THis would be an obvious 'no show' maneuver, but I question its veracity. You can read whatever you want in the blogosphere.

 

Any seriously delayed implementation is simply a smoke screen for not doing anything, which is, after all, the GOP agenda.

[j_b]

 

THis would be an obvious 'no show' maneuver, but I question its veracity. You can read whatever you want in the blogosphere.

 

Any seriously delayed implementation is simply a smoke screen for not doing anything, which is, after all, the GOP agenda.

 

it's all over the media. Example: http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/09/white_house_floating_snowe_trigger.php

[j_b]

Bill MOyers on Healtcare reform shenanigans:

 

I don’t think the problem is the Republicans . . . .The problem is the Democratic Party. This is a party that has told its progressives -- who are the most outspoken champions of health care reform -- to sit down and shut up. That’s what Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff at the White House, in effect told progressives who stood up as a unit in Congress and said: "no public insurance option, no health care reform."

 

And I think the reason for that is -- in the time since I was there, 40 years ago, the Democratic Part has become like the Republican Party, deeply influenced by corporate money. I think Rahm Emanuel, who is a clever politician, understands that the money for Obama’s re-election will come from the health care industry, from the drug industry, from Wall Street. And so he’s a corporate Democrat who is determined that there won’t be something in this legislation that will turn off these interests. . . .

 

Money in politics -- you’ve had in the last 30 years, money has flooded politics . .. the Supreme Court saying "money is free speech." It goes back to the efforts in the 19th Century to give corporations the right of personhood -- so if you as a citizen have the right to donate to campaigns, then so do corporations. Money has flowed in such a flood into both parties that the Democratic Party gets a lot of its support from the very interests that -- when the Republicans are in power -- financially support the Republicans.

 

You really have essentially -- except for the progressives on the left of the Democratic Party – you really have two corporate parties who in their own way and their own time are serving the interests of basically a narrow set of economic interests in the country -- who, as Glenn Greenwald, who is a great analyst and journalist, wrote just this week: these narrow interests seem to win, determine the outcomes, no matter how many Democrats are elected, no matter who has their hands on the levers of powers, these narrow interests determine the outcomes in Washington, even when they have to run roughshod over the interests of ordinary Americans. I’m sad to say that has happened to the Democratic Party.

 

I’d rather see Barack Obama go down fighting for vigorous strong principled public insurance, than to lose with a [corporate-dominated] bill . . . . the insurers are winning. Everyone already knows the White House has made a deal with the drug industry -- promising not to import cheaper drugs from Canada and Europe – promising not to use the government to negotiate for better prices -- that deal has been cut . . .

[j_b]

2 excellent Glenn Greenwald columns in which he shows that what has been happening is exactly what the White House wanted:

 

Who’s Driving Reform?

 

Why the health care debate is so important regardless of one's view of the "public option"

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Health care reform without a strong public option is no health care reform at all, that is for sure.

 

No other civilized nation on earth allows its health care providers and insurers to be for-profit companies. They recognized the obvious conflict of interest, and inequity in availability and quality of care between the rich and poor that we enjoy.

 

Obviously the problem isn't the GOP. They no longer matter in the voting game.

[kevbone]

What is a public options? What does this mean?

[JosephH]

Chicago and Illinois is home base to a lot of insurance power - Rahm and Obama have never and will never do the right thing on healthcare and clearly stated as much during the campaign. They only grudgingly even talked about it. Healthcare is exactly why he wasn't my candidate during the primary.

[tvashtarkatena]

A public option means government run insurance, government run care , or a combination of both.

 

Medicare is an example of government run insurance, private care.

 

The VA is an example of both.

[kevbone]

Do only older folks get the option for Medicare?

[kevbone]

Its funny how McCain saying how it is sad that congress and America are experiencing such a high level of bi-partisanship, yet he belongs to a party that is trying to convince their followers that universal healthcare is different than the same way we... pay for primary education, law enforcement, firefighting, ditch digging, etc. I guess having cops paid for by taxes makes us part of the menacing Communists! Run!!!

[ivan]

Do only older folks get the option for Medicare?

from the medicare website:

"The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administers Medicare, the nation's largest health insurance program, which covers nearly 40 million Americans. Medicare is a Health Insurance Program for people age 65 or older, some disabled people under age 65, and people of all ages with End-Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure treated with dialysis or a transplant)."

[ivan]

The VA is an example of both.

and i think the VA is partly what scares some of the nay-sayers, who realize that, though they claim the american fighting man gets the highest level of care when he returns home, that the reality is sometimes spectacularly different

[ivan]

filled out the eligibility quiz for medicare and got this nice response:

 

"You will be eligible for Medicare Part A and B on October 1, 2039. If you are not receiving retirement benefits from Social Security or the Railroad Retirement Board, and you want Medicare Part B to begin at age 65, you must apply for Medicare during the three-month period before you turn 65. If you apply the month you turn age 65 or later, your Medicare Part B start date will be delayed. To apply please visit or call your local Social Security office or call Social Security at 1-800-772-1213. Medicare Part A helps cover your inpatient care in hospitals, critical access hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. It also covers hospice care and some home health care. Medicare Part B helps cover your doctors’ services, outpatient hospital care, and some other medical services that Medicare Part A doesn’t cover, such as some of the services of physical and occupational therapists, and some home health care. Medicare Part B helps pay for these covered services and supplies when they are medically necessary. For more coverage information go to Your Medicare Coverage.

 

Note: You will be eligible for Medicare when you turn 65 even if you are not eligible for Social Security retirement benefits. For more information, please visit our retirement age FAQ."

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Do only older folks get the option for Medicare?

 

Yes, with some weird exceptions, but they shouldn't be the only ones.

 

We already have a single payer program that works and has a high approval rating from patients. Why not open it to all? We also have a federal employee insurance program. Again, same argument.

 

Is this really so hard?

 

No, despite all the horseshit flying about 'Merka being divided' on the issue (um, no it isn't) and end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, it isn't.

 

Guess that would be TOO much socialism, which is really just a 'patriotic' way of saying not enough corporate cock sucking.

Edited September 4, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[tvashtarkatena]

The finger eater's getting a lot of play, though. As usual, the 'debate' centers around the fringe.

[Pete_H]

I'd have to disagree with your assessment somewhat. If you have no money you call 911 and go to the emergency room a bunch for shit that should be managed by your physician, costing taxpayers much more money than the alternative, and then you die.

 

Coincidentally, on-topic article in today's Times.

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2009803106_firefighters04.html

[ivan]

I'd have to disagree with your assessment somewhat. If you have no money you call 911 and go to the emergency room a bunch for shit that should be managed by your physician, costing taxpayers much more money than the alternative, and then you die.

 

Coincidentally, on-topic article in today's Times.

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2009803106_firefighters04.html

great find and rebuttal

 

do you really want your fire-fighters bandaging homeless folks while your house is burning?