By Stuart Carlson posted at carlsontoons.com
NPR Fresh Air Program [37 min 27 sec] "A 'Shattered' Republican Party?" |
NPR Fresh Air Program [37 min 27 sec] "A 'Shattered' Republican Party?" |
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| Gus Porter, American Legend with Thomas Haden Church from Thomas Haden Church - Video Gus Porter gets mauled by a bear, but he won't let the socialist Canadian health care fix him up, so he'll hike back to America. |
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Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich described Sen. Kent Conrad's (D-ND) reported cooperative health insurance proposal as a "bamboozle" and said that "nonprofit health-care cooperatives won't have any real bargaining leverage to get lower prices because they'll be too small and too numerous. Pharma and Insurance know they can roll them. That's why the Conrad compromise is getting a good reception from across the aisle." [The American Prospect, 6/11/09]Krugman: The "supposed alternative, nonprofit co-ops, is a sham."
In his August 20 New York Times column, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote: "And let's be clear: the supposed alternative, nonprofit co-ops, is a sham. That's not just my opinion; it's what the market says: stocks of health insurance companies soared on news that the Gang of Six senators trying to negotiate a bipartisan approach to health reform were dropping the public plan. Clearly, investors believe that co-ops would offer little real competition to private insurers." [New York Times, 8/20/09]Jacob Hacker: Co-ops are "not going to have the ability to be a cost-control backstop."
In a June 14 post to The New Republic's blog The Treatment, University of California-Berkeley professor Jacob Hacker argued that Conrad "has offered no reason to think that the cooperatives he envisions could do any of the crucial things that a competing public plan must do." Hacker continued:Baucus and his staff forgot to delete the name of the author of the Finance Committee's health plan from the Acrobat version of the document.An easy way to think of the public plan's functions is the three "B"s: We need a national public plan that is available on similar terms in all parts of the nation as a backup. This plan has to have the ability to improve the quality and efficiency of care to act as a benchmark for private insurance. And it has to be able to challenge provider consolidation that has driven up prices to serve as a cost-control backstop.
Cooperatives might be able to provide some backup in some parts of the nation, but they are not going to have the ability to be a cost-control backstop, much less a benchmark for private plans, because they are not going to have the reach or authority to implement innovative delivery and payment reforms. And so Conrad's idea appears to be yet another compromised compromise that cuts the heart out the idea of public plan choice on the alter of political expediency. [...]
A national cooperative would still fall so dramatically short of a public plan that it would only be attractive in addition to a national public plan, not as a substitute for it. Indeed, this point holds more generally. Given the need for countervailing power in the health care market, the federal government should encourage a range of consumer-oriented health plans and state-based public plan options, so long as there is also a national public plan capable of being a backup, benchmark, and backstop. [The New Republic, 8/14/09]
Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.
The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation.
The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable — and that's the good news.
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snippets...Click here to read this concerned parent's letter in full...
. . .Before moving here, my husband and I were both Active Duty servicemembers with the United States Navy, we served proudly for a number of years. During the course of our duty we were faced with the tragedy of September 11th. For me that time was painful and frightening.
. . .My reason for sharing my anecdote with you, was that during this time I never forgot that I had my country behind me. I knew that my government was doing everything in its power to protect its citizen and maintain the greatest country in the world. I knew that the Office of the President of the United States and my Commander in Chief had worked tirelessly to win the position of the most powerful man in the world and that when he spoke, we listened. Not because we always agreed with him but because it was part of the social contract of being a citizen of the United States of America.
. . .After hearing the news that Lewisville Independent School District chose not to televise President Obama's speech to America's school children on the importance of an education and staying in school, I became outraged. As a veteran of the Armed Forces, I am offended that the elected officials who supervise my son's education are disrespecting the Office of the President of the United States. ...I am truly offended by what appears to be a partisan decision that you have made out of fear.
. . .You are robbing my son of these moments that make him American and I will not allow to do so. We will be keeping him home on Tuesday, September 8th so he can witness first hand, the President of the United States address him directly.
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LOWER DRUG COSTSRep. Becerra also released a guide on health insurance reform for seniors — including frequently asked questions and the facts on repeated myths. Download a copy(.pdf) here>>Ending the ‘doughnut hole’ for prescription drug coverage. The reform bill will result in lower overall prescription drug costs for seniors, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Right now, evidence suggests the “doughnut hole” coverage gap reduces seniors’ use of drugs prescribed by their doctor by an average of 14%, posing a real health threat to seniors who simply cannot afford the drugs.FREE PREVENTIVE CARESo you pay nothing on recommended preventive services that will keep you healthier longer. Right now, one in five women age 50 or over did not have a mammogram in the last two years, and 38% of adults age 50 or over have never had a colonoscopy – with costs often a factor.BETTER PRIMARY CAREEnsuring you have access to and can spend more time with your primary care doctor, and making sure your care is better coordinated to ensure you get recommended treatments, particularly for chronic diseases. Right now, about 12 million seniors lack access to a primary care doctor in their community.GUARANTEED ACCESS TO YOUR DOCTOREliminating the 21% pay cut your doctor was facing for Medicare reimbursements, ensuring that these doctors will still be able to care for seniors—especially in rural areas. Right now, without reform, 40% of doctors say they will reduce the number of Medicare patients they treat.IMPROVED SAFETY
Developing national standards on quality measurement and reporting, investing in patient safety and rewarding doctors and nurses for high quality care. Right now, nearly one in five Medicare patients who are discharged from the hospital are readmitted within 30 days—many for preventable reasons.PROTECTION OF MEDICAREExtending the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund by five years, to help ensure Medicare can cover every American as they get older. Right now, the Medicare Trust Fund is projected to be exhausted in just eight years, in 2017, which could cause cuts to services and care.TIGHTER OVERSIGHTFocusing health care dollars on your care and benefits and cracking down on waste, fraud, abuse, and overpayments to enrich private companies. In the last year alone, improper Medicare payments that were discovered and stopped totaled more than $450 million.
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"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology. The idea that schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies; increasing taxes on those who create jobs; and racking up more debt than any other president, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.”If Pres. Obama's message really goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, he wouldn't have been elected president in a near landslide of Obama 365 to McCain 173 electoral votes!
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“Under-insurance is the great hidden risk of the American health care system,” says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who has analyzed medical bankruptcies. “People do not realize they are one diagnosis away from financial collapse.”A national study released this year found that while medical debt contributed to 62 percent of the bankruptcies in 2007, 78 percent of those bankruptcy filers had health insurance but “still were overwhelmed by their medical debt.” No government agency keeps an official count of the under insured.
A 2007 survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based nonprofit that studies health care issues, estimates 25 million under insured Americans can't afford to cover the gap between what their insurance covers and their medical bills demand, up from 16 million in 2003.Tens of millions more Americans may not realized they are under insured by their current private health insurance because they and their family members fortunately have not needed to call on their private insurance company to pay for a serious and costly illness.
Cathy Kerns has multiple sclerosis. The drugs she takes are lifesaving, she says, but they cost more than $5,000 a month -- and she must make a 20 percent co-payment. Her specialized physical therapy costs $600 per half-hour -- and she pays 20 percent of that.
``If I call and plead with the insurance company that I need more therapy so I can walk, they say, `Sorry, it isn't in the policy,' '' she says. ``I'm paying more than $30,000 a year out of pocket. I'm running through my savings.''
Kerns, 60, who is retired and lives in Orlando, represents hidden millions in America's healthcare crisis. She has insurance -- but she is underinsured.
In that category she joins a California woman who was bitten by a rattlesnake, ran up a $73,000 hospital bill for medicine and an overnight stay, and learned her insurance would pay only $3,000 of it. And a Miami woman whose policy won't cover her diabetes because it was a preexisting condition.
The underinsured include the working poor whose employers don't provide full coverage, people who lose their jobs and their employer-subsidized insurance, and those who fail to understand the fine print in policy contracts and end up with less coverage than they expected.
``People often become underinsured because they lose their jobs,'' says Lori Parham, Florida state director for AARP. ``They can't afford to continue the good insurance they had through their employer, so they shop around for cheaper coverage -- policies with low cost, but so many limitations.''
Under the federal law known as COBRA, people who leave their jobs can continue their employer-provided policy for up to 18 months. But they must pick up the entire bill -- so if, as an employee, they paid 20 percent and their employer paid 80 percent, under COBRA they must pay 100 percent.
Kerns, who was a hotel-restaurant marketer in Orlando, left her company in 2000 and went into a COBRA plan that let her keep the insurance by paying 100 percent of its cost. She now pays $14,500 in premiums a year with a $5,000 deductible, and more than $12,000 a year in co-payments for her expensive drugs. ``Premiums keep going up,'' she says. She has been trying to get cheaper coverage, but can't because of her multiple sclerosis.
Although she is sick, she must do what she can for her husband Gary, 69, who survived esophageal cancer but now has congestive heart failure and just entered a hospice.
``It's horrifying,'' she says. ``I'm a human being. I'd like to enjoy what little time I have left.''
Even when people do find less expensive policies, they often come with limits -- higher deductibles, lower maximum healthcare payments, more exclusions for preexisting conditions and other restrictions.
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