Health Care Reform, My Ass...

[prole]

Thanks, profiteering pharmaceutical and insurance companies and dipshit conservative fucktards that blindly follow every press release, "think"-tank paper, and "info"mercial you produce!

 

The public option ain't what it used to be

There's almost nothing left to give away in a healthcare compromise

 

By Robert Reich

 

Nov. 19, 2009 |

 

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a nonstarter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada -- which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

 

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a "Medicare-like plan" that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

 

So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn't be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and ... you know the rest.

 

So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.

 

But even the House's shrunken and costly little public option is too much for private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans and "centrists" in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.

 

It's a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word "public."

 

And yet Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson mumble darkly that they may not even vote to allow debate on the floor of the Senate about the bill if it contains this paltry public option. And Republicans predict a "holy war."

 

But what more can possibly be compromised? Take away the word "public"? Make it available to only 12 people?

 

Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to ... our private, for-profit healthcare system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us.

 

Upbeat policy wonks and political spinners who tend to see only portions of cups that are full will point out some good things: no preexisting conditions, insurance exchanges, 30 million more Americans covered. But in reality, the cup is 90 percent empty. Most of us will remain stuck with little or no choice -- dependent on private insurers who care only about the bottom line, who deny our claims, who charge us more and more for co-payments and deductibles, who bury us in forms, who don't take our calls.

 

I'm still not giving up. I want every senator who's not in the pocket of the private insurers or Big Pharma to introduce and vote for a "Ted Kennedy Medicare for All" amendment to whatever bill Reid takes to the floor. And if this fails, a "Ted Kennedy Real Public Option for All" amendment. Let every Senate Democrat who doesn't have the guts to vote for either of them be known and counted.

[prole]

Oh, and thanks blue-dick Democrats and other assorted spine-less shits for not sacking up and ramming single-payer down the throats of the "opposition". The only way to make reform work and insure a political majority in coming years was to get this right. But no. Peddling your pandering asses to the corporate lobbyists and Cletus, the one-toothed, white supremacist, teabagging cretin has insured your demise. History has shown the only way forward is to shove progress down their throats and let the chips fall where they may. Good riddance and bring on the redneck apocalypse!!!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

...ramming single-payer down the throats of the "opposition". The only way to make reform work ... History has shown the only way forward is to shove progress down their throats and let the chips fall where they may.

 

Where are you digging the pits to dump the bodies, tovarishch?

[prole]

 

Dunno, next to these losers?

 

 

 

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Dunno, next to these losers

 

 

 

you gonna use a samurai sword?

[Fairweather]

Thanks, profiteering pharmaceutical and insurance companies and dipshit conservative fucktards that blindly follow every press release, "think"-tank paper, and "info"mercial you produce!

 

 

You're welcome. But last time I checked, we hadn't yet twisted our collective conservative, freedom-loving heel into this public option nonsense. What happened to you pussies anyhow? Hell, you control Congress and the Exec.

[111]

public option

[Phil K]

Thanks, profiteering pharmaceutical and insurance companies and dipshit conservative fucktards that blindly follow every press release, "think"-tank paper, and "info"mercial you produce!

 

 

You're welcome. But last time I checked, we hadn't yet twisted our collective conservative, freedom-loving heel into this public option nonsense. What happened to you pussies anyhow? Hell, you control Congress and the Exec.

 

Not by a long shot. Bought and sold they be, bought and sold. (you) Teabagging nitwits just give dipshits like Bauccus, Nelson and Joe-Blow some populist cover. The only thing is gonna help is to get the huge piles of corporate money out of the equation, and I don't see that happening. So, yeah, bring on the redneck apocalypse.

[prole]

What happened to you pussies anyhow? Hell, you control Congress and the Exec.

 

Not all political parties are lucky enough to have a 9/11 happen on their watch.

[prole]

You're welcome. But last time I checked, we hadn't yet twisted our collective conservative, freedom-loving heel into this public option nonsense.

 

Yeah, we've seen your freedumb boot before. It always seems to be on the losing end.

 

November 19, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

The Wrong Side of History

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

 

Critics storm that health care reform is “a cruel hoax and a delusion.” Ads in 100 newspapers thunder that reform would mean “the beginning of socialized medicine.”

 

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page predicts that the legislation will lead to “deteriorating service.” Business groups warn that Washington bureaucrats will invade “the privacy of the examination room,” that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor.”

 

All dire — but also wrong. Those forecasts date not from this year, but from the battle over Medicare in the early 1960s. I pulled them from newspaper archives and other accounts.

 

Yet this year those same accusations are being recycled in an attempt to discredit the health reform proposals now before Congress. The heirs of those who opposed Medicare are conjuring the same bogymen — only this time they claim to be protecting Medicare.

 

Indeed, these same arguments we hear today against health reform were used even earlier, to attack President Franklin Roosevelt’s call for Social Security. It was denounced as a socialist program that would compete with private insurers and add to Americans’ tax burden so as to kill jobs.

 

Daniel Reed, a Republican representative from New York, predicted that with Social Security, Americans would come to feel “the lash of the dictator.” Senator Daniel Hastings, a Delaware Republican, declared that Social Security would “end the progress of a great country.”

 

John Taber, a Republican representative from New York, went further and said of Social Security: “Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers.”

 

In hindsight, it seems a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? Social Security passed, and the republic survived.

 

Similar, ferocious hyperbole was unleashed on the proposal for Medicare. President John Kennedy and later President Lyndon Johnson pushed for a government health program for the elderly, but conservatives bitterly denounced the proposal as socialism, as a plan for bureaucrats to make medical decisions, as a means to ration health care.

 

The American Medical Association was vehement, with Dr. Donovan Ward, the head of the A.M.A. in 1965, declaring that “a deterioration in the quality of care is inescapable.” The president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons went further and suggested that for doctors to cooperate with Medicare would be “complicity in evil.”

 

The Wall Street Journal warned darkly in editorials in 1965 that Medicare amounted to “politicking with a nation’s health.” It quoted a British surgeon as saying that in Britain, government health care was “crumbling to utter ruin” and suggested that the United States might be heading in the same direction.

 

“The basic concerns and arguments were the same” in 1935 against Social Security, in 1965 against Medicare, and today against universal coverage, said Nancy J. Altman, author of “The Battle for Social Security,” a history of the program. (The quotes against Social Security above were taken from that book.)

 

These days, the critics of Medicare have come around because it manifestly works. Life expectancy for people who have reached the age of 65 has risen significantly. America is no longer shamed by elderly Americans suffering for lack of medical care.

 

Yet although America’s elderly are now cared for, our children are not. A Johns Hopkins study found that hospitalized children who are uninsured are 60 percent more likely to die than those with insurance, presumably because they are less likely to get preventive care and to be taken to the doctor when sick. The study suggested that every year some 1,000 children may die as a consequence of lacking health insurance.

 

Why is it broadly accepted that the elderly should have universal health care, while it’s immensely controversial to seek universal coverage for children? What’s the difference — except that health care for children is far cheaper?

 

Granted, there are problems in the House and Senate bills — in particular, they falter on cost-containment. In the same way, there were many specific flaws in the Social Security and Medicare legislation, but, in retrospect, it’s also clear that they were major advances for our nation.

 

It’s now broadly apparent that those who opposed Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965 were wrong in their fears and tried to obstruct a historical tide. This year, the fate of health care will come down to a handful of members of Congress, including Senators Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu. If they flinch and health reform fails, they’ll be letting down their country at a crucial juncture. They’ll be on the wrong side of history.

 

[kevbone]

you control Congress and the Exec.

 

 

Money does not see republican or democrat. the dems control congress and the exec about as much as the repubs did a year ago.....

 

FW, its all about money. Dont you get it? The powers that be in the world dont care who is in the white house. They get the same result either way.

[ClimbingPanther]

which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.

Careful with stats, boys and girls, you can make them say anything you want.

 

Which country is the fattest, laziest, most blithely unhealthy and proud of it in the entire world? And which country has the most ridiculous entitlement complex, causing over-testing, over-diagnosing, and over-treating of all the things that should never have gone wrong in the first place?

 

Does it really surprise you that we spend more? There's more to health care than treatment (where the costs show up). Why can't people talk more about making healthy choices and place at least SOME responsibility on the American public for taking charge of their well being?

 

[ClimbingPanther]

Some more fun stats to ruminate on:

Drug/Alcohol use costs society more than $200 billion annually

USA is #1 in drug dependence in the world

Prevalence is highest in the western US, especially urban areas

Left-coast, urban people are Democrats

In conclusion, Democrats are therefore druggies, and the source of our problems

 

Oh yeah, and our deficit got gargantuan this year!!!! Just when the Dem's took control of everything!!!! Ridiculous big-spender communist America-hating Democrats. Oh yeah, and the recession.

 

It's a complicated world out there. Think often, think honestly, and give each other the benefit of the doubt.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

except that, despite enormous amounts of visual, anecdotal evidence, Americans are really no less healthy than citizens of other industrialized nations. The problem is not that 'we don't take care of ourselves'...the usual "blame the victim" conservative tagline.

 

Sooo....how's married life treatin' ya?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Americans are really no less healthy than citizens of other industrialized nations.

 

:lmao:

 

 

 

 

[Choada_Boy]

Don't like the public option? Join the Church of Euthanasia.

[ClimbingPanther]

except that, despite enormous amounts of visual, anecdotal evidence, Americans are really no less healthy than citizens of other industrialized nations. The problem is not that 'we don't take care of ourselves'...the usual "blame the victim" conservative tagline.

 

Sooo....how's married life treatin' ya?

:HC: what better place for a debate about HC (Health Care) than cc.com!

what is your measure of health? did you have anything concrete in your mind when you made that statement? disease rates, death rates, rates of disability/dysfunction due to disease, etc.,

(since heart disease and cancer are #1 and 2, here you go)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-death-from-cancer

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_dis_dea-health-heart-disease-deaths

or maybe instead of the absence of disease, it is the presence of positive indicators of health, such as nutrition, activity level, mood, satisfaction with life, etc.???

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

So, as you can see, we don't die from the diseases we get as often as other countries, but we clearly live much less healthy lives by a fairly wide margin. Sounds like a recipe for balancing unhealthy lifestyles with extra treatment to get the result of spending more for the same life-span.

 

the problem with proving anything is statistics can say whatever you want them to say.

You can find statistics that say a number of other countries have way higher death rates of cancer and heart disease, but is that because the incidence of those diseases are higher, or that treatment is less available, less attainable economically, or is it rationed by a government based on supply/demand or cost/benefit?

So, whatever numbers people dig up to make a point, myself included, should be taken with a grain of rock salt. That's my point.

 

Just because we spend more and live less than some european countries doesn't mean our health care system is 100% at fault. Even if we are just as healthy by some arbitrary measurement, we could still spend more simply because consumers demand unnecessary and expensive treatments that we think we're entitled to regardless of the actual benefit? Maybe doctors over-test and over-treat because of the insane legal climate that exists here in the US? Maybe doctors don't refuse to do unnecessary things because they don't have time to figure out whether it's necessary? Point: it's complicated.

 

"Don't blame the victim" implies an action that victimizes people, and that may be part of the story, but it's not all of it. Your stance that we are purely victims of the system fosters entitlement and reliance on the government, when we really have a part to play for ourselves and you know it. "We're all equally unhealthy, and the soverign will of the malevolent American health care system has predestined us for even poorer health!" Too bad you're an atheist, you'd make an excellent Calvinist

 

I'm not trying to make a fool out of you and put you on the defensive so we can get a rip-roaring internet debate going, I just want people to stop being overly simplistic and look for what we can all do as individuals to contribute to solutions.

 

ps. married life is FANTASTIC.

[bstach]

 

ps. married life is FANTASTIC.

Give it a few years.

[Pete_H]

Even if we are just as healthy by some arbitrary measurement, we could still spend more simply because consumers demand unnecessary and expensive treatments that we think we're entitled to regardless of the actual benefit? Maybe doctors over-test and over-treat because of the insane legal climate that exists here in the US?

 

Or maybe because doc's get paid for prescribing tests and treatment. Capitalism at its finest.

 

I do agree though that med mal conderns contribute too. Plaintiff attorney can be a lucrative business.

[prole]

So, as you can see, we don't die from the diseases we get as often as other countries, but we clearly live much less healthy lives by a fairly wide margin. Sounds like a recipe for balancing unhealthy lifestyles with extra treatment to get the result of spending more for the same life-span...

 

...Just because we spend more and live less than some european countries doesn't mean our health care system is 100% at fault. Even if we are just as healthy by some arbitrary measurement, we could still spend more simply because consumers demand unnecessary and expensive treatments that we think we're entitled to regardless of the actual benefit? Maybe doctors over-test and over-treat because of the insane legal climate that exists here in the US? Maybe doctors don't refuse to do unnecessary things because they don't have time to figure out whether it's necessary? Point: it's complicated.

 

"But freedom tastes good, liberty tastes good..."

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Look, any claim that the American lifestyle is fucking sick and wrecked will get zero argument from me. Our culture is fucked.

 

BUT...you can still be anyone you want to be here. Sort of. Sometimes. In your own mind.

[Bug]

Look, any claim that the American lifestyle is fucking sick and wrecked will get zero argument from me. Our culture is fucking (ibid).

 

25% of US teenagers have an STD.

Thank you God fearing abstentionists.

 

Now we can identify those who are going to hell with a simple blood test.

[ClimbingPanther]

"But freedom tastes good, liberty tastes good..."

 

A post-modern take on Patrick Henry. Give me liberty AND give me death!

[prole]

Live Free and Die Faster.

[Bug]

G