Healthcare

Industry Donates To Drug Plan Foes
Lawmakers Funded By Pharmaceutical Companies Are Leading the Opposition to a Health Care Proposal
By Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY via ABCNews.com

Lawmakers who count pharmaceutical companies among their biggest contributors lead the opposition to a health care proposal that would cut costs by allowing generic drugs to compete sooner with pricey biotechnology drugs, campaign-finance records show.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has helped lead Senate efforts to give drug companies 12 years of exclusive rights to sell biotech drugs, rather than seven as proposed by President Obama. Hatch has received nearly $1.3 million from the employees and political action committees of drug and health products companies since 1989, making the industry his largest contributor, according to data compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

In the House, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., whose district is home to dozens of biotech companies, is sponsoring a similar measure. Drug company employees and political action committees have donated $645,000 since 1992 to Eshoo — second only to the computer and Internet industry.

This year, she is the biggest recipient of pharmaceutical money in the House, the data show.

Hatch and Eshoo say the donations have no bearing on policy decisions.

"I've voted against them, and I have been with them," Eshoo said of drug companies. In this case, she said, the 12 years are needed to help companies recoup their investments. Other drugs have five years of exclusivity.

Industries donate "because they agree with the principles espoused by the candidate," Hatch said in an e-mail. " I don't believe they are trying to influence candidate's decisions." Read more.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, from left, stands with House Democratic “leaders” Steny Hoyer, Pete Stark, Henry Waxman, Charles Rangel, and John Dingell to announce health-care legislation on Tuesday. These guys are dumping us. Email or call them NOW!!
Pelosi
Hoyer
Stark
Waxman: 1-800-828-0498
Rangel
Dingell:1-800-828-0498
Email President Obama

Click here for complete list of Congressional email contacts

Ralph Nader: Health Care Hypocrisy
By Ralph Nader | Nader.org

About the only lesson Barack Obama has learned from the Hillary and Bill health insurance debacle of 1993-1994 is to leave Michelle Obama out of his current drive to get something—anything—through the Congress labeled “reform”.

Otherwise, he is making the same mistakes of blurring his proposal, catering to right-wing Democrats and corporatist Republicans, who want an even mushier “reform” scam, and cutting deals with the drug, hospital, and health insurance industries.

His political opponents become bolder with each day as they see his party base in Congress weakening, his polls dropping, and a confused public being saturated with unrebutted propaganda by the insatiable profiteering, subsidized health care giants.

Their campaign-money-greased minions on Capitol Hill and the corporatist Think Tanks and columnists are seizing on President Obama’s aversion to conflict and repeated willingness to water down what he will fight for.

The loud and cruel baying pack comes in the form of William Kristol (“This is not time to pull punches. Go for the kill.”), Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) (“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”), and Charles Krauthammer yammering wildly about medical malpractice and tort law. Krauthammer does not substantiate his claims or mention the many victims of malpractice as he gleefully predicts “Obamacare sinking.”

All these critics have gold-plated health insurance, of course. Read more.

Tell your story! Click here to sign petition.

By Ryan Grim, Huffington Post

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is pressing Democratic leaders to allow a vote on the House floor on a measure that would allow individual states to adopt a single-payer health care system.

"This could end up being one of the most important developments to come out of the bill," Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the sponsor of the amendment, told the Huffington Post Monday night.

A vote on the bill isn't guaranteed, but progressive Democrats are working behind the scenes to make sure the House either pushes it through or puts representatives on record against it.

"If it doesn't stay in the bill, I think it's something that you can count on a lot of us asking that we have a stand-alone vote on," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), co-chair of the progressive caucus.

Health care professionals, patients and health advocates marched into the Rayburn House Office Building on Tuesday behind Dr. Patch Adams of the Gesundheit! Institute in order to announce a new alliance of organizations, including Amnesty International, that are sponsoring Artists for Guaranteed Health Care (AGHC).

Artists for Guaranteed Health Care is an organization comprised of artists, actors, musicians, documentarians, poets, scholars, patients, health care advocates, film-makers and writers working together to create a universal health care system where health care becomes a fundamental civil and human right in America.

A Chance for Clues to Brain Injury in Combat Blasts
By Alan Schwartz | New York Times

An estimated 320,000 soldiers have experienced some form of traumatic brain injury during their service in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to a 2008 RAND Corp. study. Blast injuries have risen in prominence in recent years because improvements in armor and medical treatment allow soldiers to survive explosions, then experience any delayed effects.

No direct impact caused Paul McQuigg’s brain injury in Iraq three years ago. And no wound from the incident visibly explains why Mr. McQuigg, now an office manager at a California Marine base, can get lost in his own neighborhood or arrive at the grocery store having forgotten why he left home.

But his blast injury — concussive brain trauma caused by an explosion’s invisible force waves — is no less real to him than a missing limb is to other veterans. Just how real could become clearer after he dies, when doctors slice up his brain to examine any damage.

Mr. McQuigg, 32, is one of 20 active and retired members of the military who recently agreed to donate their brain tissue upon death so that the effects of blast injuries — which, unlike most concussions, do not involve any direct contact with the head — can be better understood and treated. Read more.

The People's Rally, in DC, at Malcolm X Park, for Single Payer - Part 1

On Sunday, July 26, 2009, in Malcolm X Park, in Washington, DC, “The People’s Rally” for a Single Payer Healthcare system was held. It featured a “Speak Out” by the uninsured and the underinsured; and by patients, doctors, nurses, political and community leaders. The lively event was sponsored and supported by the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer, Metropolitan Washington Council AFL-CIO, Healthcare Now, and the Spirit of Truth Foundation.

By David Swanson

If you support a healthcare bill with a public option in it, chances are many single-payer advocates don’t trust you. If you supported that same bill in exactly the same way and also advocated leaving in it the language that allows states to create single-payer, those same missing passionate advocates might not line up perfectly with you, but many of them would be willing to work together -- or at least have a beer on a picnic table and talk about it.

Findings Show That Skyrocketing Costs, Dwindling Savings, Stagnant Wages and Medical Debt Force Low and Middle-Income Families To Turn to Plastic, Before and During Recession

New York, NY — As the recession continues to squeeze financially vulnerable American households, they are turning to credit cards to make ends meet, according to "The Plastic Safety Net: How Households are Coping in a Fragile Economy," a new report published today by Demos, a national research and policy center.

This is Demos’ second national survey examining credit card debt among low- and middle-income households--those whose incomes fell between 50 percent and 120 percent of local median income. It provides new information about why households are in credit card debt, how long they have carried their debt, and the impact this debt has had on their economic security.

Doctors, media critics demand broader TV debate on healthcare | Press Release

NYC, JULY 28--Between noon and 1 pm, FAIR and local healthcare advocacy groups will deliver a petition signed by over 12,000 people demanding that the TV networks include the single-payer proposal in their coverage of the national healthcare debate. The petition's signatories include Obama's longtime physician, Dr. David Scheiner; filmmaker Michael Moore; former MSNBC host Phil Donahue; actors Mike Farrell, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon; and doctors Quentin Young, Stephanie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program.

The petition will be presented to a representative of ABC News, which disinvited Dr. Scheiner from its recent forum on healthcare reform, where he'd been planning to ask Obama a question about single-payer.

FAIR, Physicians for a National Health Program, Healthcare Now!, the Private Health Insurance Must Go Coalition, Code Pink and the Raging Grannies are taking part in the petition delivery. In addition to the petition, the groups will be presenting a giant prescription--for a broader healthcare debate--to a representative of ABC News at the network's NYC headquarters at 77 West 66th Street.

FAIR communications director Isabel Macdonald commented, "When 59 percent of the public and an equal percentage of physicians say they want a Medicare-for-all type of plan, and that perspective has not been covered at all this year on a major TV network like ABC, one has to wonder what kind of journalism that is."

FAIR's petition, which is available here, reads as follows:

AP sources: Senate group omits employer mandate
By Associated Press | Yahoo! News

• participants were on track to exclude a requirement many congressional Democrats seek for businesses to offer coverage to their workers
• no provision for a government insurance option, despite President Barack Obama's support for such a plan
• considering a tax of as much as 35 percent on very high-cost insurance policies, part of an attempt to rein in rapid escalation of costs
• likely to be included in any deal was creation of a commission charged with slowing the growth of Medicare

After weeks of secretive talks, a bipartisan group in the Senate edged closer Monday to a health care compromise that omits two key Democratic priorities but incorporates provisions to slow the explosive rise in medical costs, officials said.

These officials said participants were on track to exclude a requirement many congressional Democrats seek for businesses to offer coverage to their workers. Nor would there be a provision for a government insurance option, despite President Barack Obama's support for such a plan. Read more.

By David Swanson

Update: photos.

Following a pattern of civil resistance in Washington D.C. and around the country, citizens in Des Moines Iowa on Monday risked arrest to press for the creation of single-payer healthcare, the establishment of healthcare as a human right, and an end to the deadly practices of Iowa's largest health insurance company, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Here's a blog from Digby acknowledging the reduction of the public option from where it started to next-to-nothing. It's not clear whether Digby thinks it would have been smarter to start with single-payer, in order to end up with a better compromise than what you get by initially proposing the weakest plan you'll settle for. But Digby argues that proposing single-payer from the start would not have given single-payer itself any chance of succeeding, and this is proven -- Digby says -- from the fact that the public option is having such a hard time succeeding. I can't prove this is wrong. Everything Digby writes is smart and to the point. But this does omit an important factor or two. Namely: single-payer turns an obscure wonkish policy mush into a clear and comprehensible civil rights issue. Even with it blacked out and shunned by the White House and astroturfing activist groups, single-payer still has people sacrificing and going to jail for it. Nobody goes to jail for a public option. Nobody even knows what it is. Making healthcare a right rather than a legislative policy energizes people, and that potential has hardly been tapped and should not be written out of consideration.

Update: John Nichols gets it.

Update: Video: Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report gets it.

Update: Joe Szakos of Virginia Organizing Project went to jail this week for a public option, but nobody he'd organized went with him.

Why Democrats Will, at the End of the Day, Pass Health-Care Reform
By Ezra Klein | Washington Post

Democrats know full well that there are two plausible outcomes to the health-care reform process. Health-care reform will fail, dealing a huge blow to the Democratic Party and giving Republicans tremendous momentum as we enter the 2010 campaign season. Or health-care reform will pass, and Democrats will criss-cross the country touting the largest legislative accomplishment in decades. Republicans may still attack them on the plan. But attacking a historic legislative success is a whole lot harder than attacking a historic legislative failure. Republicans know that, which is why they want to kill the bill. Democrats know it too, which is why they won't let them. Read more.

Neil R. Hughes: Single-payer health care works | Athens Banner-Herald

A brief letter on the front page of the Banner-Herald's Sunday opinions section decrying the possibility of a public health-insurance option in this country included the admonition, "To find out what government-run health care is all about, look at the U.K. and Canada ... (Random Thoughts, 'Don't touch health care')."

I say "right on," but when you do look, make sure you're looking at the facts and not the gross exaggerations, oversimplifications and downright propaganda about those systems that have been shoved down your throat by the U.S. health care industry and other vested interests for the past 40 years.

I grew up in Canada an insulin-dependent diabetic from the age of 8, and I had excellent care. My parents chose my specialist (still the norm there), I got the most up-to-date care available anywhere in the world (still true), and my parents didn't pay a penny beyond the low quarterly premiums charged by Alberta's provincial government. When I moved to North Georgia in 1986, my diabetes specialist in Atlanta marveled at how healthy I was, considering I already had been diabetic for 23 years by then. Read more.

On Sunday, July 26, 2009, in Malcolm X Park, in Washington, DC, “The People’s Rally” for a Single Payer Healthcare system was held. It featured a “Speak Out” by the uninsured and the underinsured; and by patients, doctors, nurses, political and community leaders. The Rev. Lennox Yearwood performed a hip hop improv for healthcare for all at the rally. He’s the President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus.

Visit the Hip Hop Caucus.

Dr. Margaret Flowers, a leading single-payer, universal health-care-for-all proponent, wrote AfterDowningStreet.org:

We are holding a press conference in Washington this Tuesday. It is sponsored by the Gesundheit! Institute and Amnesty International and will kick off Artists for Guaranteed Health Care's first project: Faces of the Uninsured and Underinsured - a poster project which will put a human face on health care reform. This event will be filmed by a crew from New York who are wrapping up a movie on the underinsured.

We are inviting all health professionals and patients to join us for this event. We will meet outside the Rayburn House Office Building on the Independence Ave side at 9:30 am on Tuesday, July 28th (Map) and march into the building with Dr. Patch Adams. The press conference will start at 10 am in Rayburn 2226 with a panel discussion led by Dr. Adams. Several members of Congress, Donna Smith and others will attend.

We will then attend a hearing in Judiciary Committee on bankruptcy at which the contribution of medical debt to bankruptcy will be discussed. That starts at 11.

We hope that you can join us. Please pass this along.

Dr. Margaret Flowers

"How cute!" my adults would say when they passed a black baby or a small black child. They'd grin approvingly at the baby and smile their acceptance at the baby's mom. Sometimes they'd extend a hand to brush the baby's cheek to prove their gentility. And then they'd walk a bit further, lean into each other and snark the zinger that angered me then and now, "yeah, they're cute now but wait till they get older." There it was. There it is. The not so subtle prejudice I witnessed in my family that millions of impressionable children witnessed in theirs.

As far back as I can remember I was offended by this language. But others in my family, in my generation, were not. Many assumed the attitudes and language of our adults and continued these prejudices into their adulthoods. Some more strongly than others. Some used the "N word." Some used "ditsoon," the Italian pejorative for blacks. In my large extended family, that includes several police, racial insensitivity was the norm.

Single-payer advocates protest Baucus
By Associated Press | KPAX.com

HELENA, Mont. (AP) - Advocates for a government run health care system marched in the streets in several Montana cities Friday to protest U.S. Sen. Max Baucus' leading overhaul plan.

The liberal advocates and citizens say Baucus is ignoring what is known as a single-payer health care system in favor of 1 that props up a complex and costly health insurance industry. They argue that Baucus continues to unfairly give access to companies that are giving the senator big campaign donations.

Baucus says that no one in Congress has a serious proposal for a single-payer system. Baucus says he is intent on hashing out a bipartisan plan with his small working group that will stand the test of time, no matter who controls Congress in the future.

Baucus has not set a timeline for a vote in his Senate Finance Committee.

The health care segment starts at 2:06.

Good Dog? Conservatives Within Obama's Own Party Snarling Health Plan
Dems Expect GOP to Object, But Face Health Care Pushback From 'Blue Dog' Democrats
By John Hendren | ABCNews.com

Rep. Mike Ross's phone won't stop ringing.

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh has fans calling to thank the Democrat for stalling health care reform. Angry liberals -- some prompted by MSNBC's Ed Schultz -- call to berate him for the same reason.

So how did an Arkansas pharmacy owner become a major power broker? He's a member of a rare breed -- a "Blue Dog" Democrat.

"We're a group of conservative, common-sense Democrats that feel like we have been choked blue by the extremes of both parties," Ross, D-Ark., chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition's Health Care Task Force, told ABC News.

President Obama knew he'd have trouble with Republicans when it came to approving his health care reform plan. But it is the 52 Blue Dog Democrats -- led by Ross -- who now threaten to block his health care reform plan. Their main objection is its $1.75 trillion-dollar price tag. Read more.

By Dave Lindorff

Agent Orange, the herbicide used as a weapon by US military forces in Vietnam for nearly a decade to defoliate vast stretches of inhabited forest and jungle in an effort to deprive the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces of both cover and a supportive populace, has long been known to have caused a large number of serious and debilitating diseases, many of them passed on to children of those exposed. But now it also appears to cause a peculiar blindness among American journalists.

Hospital Savings: Salaries for Doctors, Not Fees
By Gardiner Harris | NYTimes

Doctors in the United States are usually paid fees for each service they provide. The more procedures and tests they order, the more money they pocket. There is widespread agreement among health policy analysts that many of these procedures are unnecessary, raising costs in ways that often do nothing to improve patient health.

By contrast, Bassett — like the Cleveland Clinic and a small number of other health systems in this country — pays salaries to all of its doctors. No matter how many tests or procedures are performed, they take home the same amount of money. Medical costs at Bassett are lower than those at 90 percent of the hospitals in New York, while the quality of care ranks among the top 10 percent in the nation, surveys show.

Dr. William F. Streck, the longtime president of Bassett, said the hospital paid salaries that were competitive with the money earned in a fee-for-service setting. Some fee-dependent physicians, though, either by working hard or by providing excessive treatments, can make more, an ability doctors trade associations have long defended.

“Everyone knows that the Bassett model is the right model,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat involved in negotiations over health care legislation. “The question is, How do you get from here to there?”

Read more.

From Jerry Policoff, writing about the "Public Option:"

PNHP’s Kip Sullivan has written a very detailed and thoughtful analysis of the “public option” currently being proposed as part of healthcare reform efforts. It is long, but I think it is a must read because we need to understand what is really being presented and why it is far from the panacea its supporters would have us believe it is. I’ve included some highlights her before the actual article begins, so you can get the gist of it if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, or if you need convincing that this is a “must read.”

Sullivan points out that the “public option” idea grew out of a plan originally developed by Jacob Hacker in 2001 when he was still a political science graduate student (he now is a professor at Berkeley). Hacker proposed a huge Medicare-type program (but considerably larger than Medicare) that would compete with private insurance, but that would be able to offer substantially lower rates because of its lower administrative costs, its size, government subsidies, lower provider payments, and low overhead.

Sullivan does not buy into all of Hacker’s assumptions, “including their assumption that any public program that has to sell health insurance in competition with insurance companies could keep its overhead costs anywhere near those of Medicare,” but the major thesis of this article is that the public option originally envisioned by Hacker and the public option supporters has morphed into a “tiny model” of the original that is unlikely to contain or lower the cost of health care in the U.S. and that it very likely will fail even if it ever gets off the ground.

52 percent of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan diagnosed with TBI | Mainichi Daily News

Some 52 percent of soldiers severely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan who have come to the U.S. Army's largest hospital for treatment have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries (TBI), an internal study has found.

The results of the study, carried out by Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, also showed a steep increase -- from 33 percent -- in TBI cases since the end of 2008.

Diagnoses of TBI are rising steadily as arrangements for TBI checks improve, while at the same time improvised explosive device (IED) attacks -- the primary cause of TBI -- in Afghanistan are intensifying, with 46 U.S. soldiers killed by the homemade bombs so far this year. Casualties from these attacks flow into Walter Reed, which provides treatment to badly wounded soldiers unavailable anywhere else. Read more.