Healthcare

Reprinted From: ‘On Call’ The Journal of the Palm Beach County Medical Society, Nov-Dec, 2007
By Howard A. Green, MD, FACP, FAAD, FACMS

You’ll listen to me because I’m your doctor. I only have your health interests in mind. I have written this article without ‘prior authorization’ from any insurance companies.

By David Swanson

On Friday morning at 9:45 a.m. ET in the House Committee on Education and Labor, the committee members voted 25 to 19 to pass Congressman Dennis Kucinich's amendment to the healthcare reform bill. This amendment, if it survives the full House, the Senate, the conference, and the President, will not alter the federal legislation except to allow states to create single-payer healthcare systems if they choose to. If this change to the bill makes news, it will pass the Senate, because there is no legitimate argument against it, and the support for it is bipartisan.

Dear Friends,
It is 6.30 am on Friday and we have just finished a 20 hour marathon committee markup of the health care bill, HR3200, during which I offered the amendment to enable states to pursue single payer health care plans. A recorded vote on my amendment will occur in the Labor and Education committee sometime between 9:15 am and 10:00 am EST. Your help is needed urgently. Please call committee members now and ask for their vote for the Kucinich Amendment.
Thank you, Dennis

Rep. Dennis Kucinich has proposed a crucial amendment for single-payer healthcare and we urgently need you to call one or more of the 26 Democrats on the House Education and Labor Committee. Our message is simple:

Please support Rep. Kucinich's Amendment today in the HELP Committee to let states create single-payer healthcare systems. The federal government should give states the freedom to fix our health care crisis.

You can call any time and leave a voicemail if no one answers. If you do speak with a staffer, please post their reply here:
http://www.democrats.com/support-kucinich-single-payer-amendment-today

You can also urge your Senators and Representatives to support the Single Payer Health Plan (H.R. 676) by signing our petition:
http://www.democrats.com/single-payer-petition

The Kucinich Amendment would let individual states create single-payer healthcare systems even if Congress fails to create a nationwide single-payer system.

That's exactly how Canada evolved towards single-payer: one province at a time. Given the corporate-funded resistance to single-payer in Congress, the U.S. may have to follow the Canadian path.

Progressive activists in California, Illinois and Pennsylvania are leading the way for single-payer systems and the Kucinich Amendment would remove the legal roadblocks they face.

The fate of the Kucinich Amendment rests in the hands of the 26 Democrats above. Please call as many as you can.

Catch Nicole Sandler's interview of John Dingell.

By David Swanson

The healthcare legislation under consideration in Congress would prevent states from improving on what Congress creates. An amendment is under consideration right now in a House committee that would change that, leaving the federal initiative as is but permitting states to do better. This battle pits states' rights against the much less spoken of insurance company rights. And it calls the bluff of every individual or group who opposes single-payer healthcare at the federal level on the grounds that it is not "viable." That argument would seem to provide no basis at all for denying states the right to create single-payer healthcare or any other solution they see fit.

By David Swanson

The anti-healthcare "patients first" crowd is coming to my town to hold a rally for death and sickness. We're holding an event for life and health. See our announcement below. Try this at home.

Cookout for Healthcare with Cindy Sheehan
Charlottesville, VA
Saturday, July 18, 2009, at noon

Cindy Sheehan, one of the best known peace and justice activists in the United States, will be joined by other speakers in support of public healthcare at a cookout open to the public and the media. Please join Cindy for lunch at noon on Saturday, July, 18, 2009, rain or shine, at 707 Gillespie Ave, Charlottesville, VA, 22902. Cindy will talk about her new book and the need for an expanded public healthcare system.

RSVP: http://afterdowningstreet.org/cindyevent

PNHP has learned that as early as this Friday or Monday (July 17 or 20), Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) will introduce, in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, an amendment to the so-called Tri-Committee health care bill. The amendment would replace the private health insurance industry with a single-payer national health insurance program.

In effect, the Weiner amendment would substitute Rep. John Conyers' (D-Mich.) single-payer bill, H.R. 676, for the proposed Tri-Committee legislation.

The vote on the amendment will take place the same day it is offered - again, most likely this Friday or Monday.

If your representative is a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, please call your congressperson today and ask that he or she support Rep. Weiner's single-payer amendment. A list of Committee members can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/dhxq65

The Congressional Switchboard can be reached toll-free at 800-473-6711.

LEAKED: More Than Fifty House Progressives Privately Commit To Oppose Weak Health Care Bill
By Ryan Grim | Huffington Post

Progressive Democrats are taking a hard stand on health care reform, with a majority committing to oppose any health care reform package that doesn't include a robust public option. On Wednesday, they got an inadvertent assist by an anonymous leak of their "whip list."

A whip list, which is generally tightly guarded, is used by congressional leaders to keep track of the private pledges made by members before a vote. The list is kept private to encourage frank answers from members so that leadership can gather accurate intelligence. Read more.

Health Insurance Whistle-Blower Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried
By Amy Goodman | Truthdig

Wendell Potter is the health insurance industry’s worst nightmare. He’s a whistle-blower. Potter, the former chief spokesperson for insurance giant CIGNA, recently testified before Congress, “I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick—all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.”

Potter was deeply involved in CIGNA and industrywide strategies for maintaining their profitable grip on U.S. health care. He told me: “The thing they fear most is a single-payer plan. They fear even the public insurance option being proposed; they’ll pull out all the stops they can to defeat that to try to scare people into thinking that embracing a public health insurance option would lead down the slippery slope toward socialism ... putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. They’ve used those talking points for years, and they’ve always worked.”

In 2007, CIGNA denied a California teenager, Nataline Sarkisyan, coverage for a liver transplant. Her family went to the media. The California Nurses Association joined in. Under mounting pressure, CIGNA finally granted coverage for the procedure. But it was too late. Two hours later, Nataline died.

While visiting family in Tennessee, Potter stopped at a “medical expedition” in Wise, Va. People drove hours for free care from temporary clinics set up in animal stalls at the local fairground. Potter told me that weeks later, flying on a CIGNA corporate jet with the CEO: “I realized that someone’s premiums were helping me to travel that way ... paying for my lunch on gold-trimmed china. I thought about those men and women I had seen in Wise County ... not having any idea [how] insurance executives lived.” He decided he couldn’t be an industry PR hack anymore. Read more.

Kucinich Opening Statement to Committee on America’s Affordable Health Choices Act | Press Release

WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 15, 2009) -- Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement after the Education and Labor Committee began its markup process of HR 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act. The Education and Labor Committee is one of three House committees involved in examining the bill.

“Medicine in the U.S. is a profit driven market commodity distributed according to the ability to pay rather than a basic human right distributed as a public service according medical need. No wonder that the United States ranks 47th in life expectancy and 23rd in infant mortality. In this profit driven, private insurance based system there are over 1400 manage care organizations and 5000 health insurance plans. We have the most expensive health care system in the world – over 16% of our GDP. Two point four trillion dollars a year goes to health spending and 1 out of every 3 dollars go to the activities of the for-profit system- for corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, and the cost of paperwork. Yet 47 million people remain uninsured and another 50 million are underinsured. I submit that there is a direct relationship between the for-profit health care system and the uninsured and the underinsured.

“We can no longer look the other way as the uninsured and underinsured continue to grow their ranks. We cannot ignore the growing share of all bankruptcies that is attributable to medical bills – now over 60%. We can no longer live with a system that is, by most indications, among the lowest quality in the developed world. And we can’t afford the rising costs.

“Indeed, rising costs are the essence of the problem. Health care stakeholders are sinking more and more money into efforts designed to make someone else pay the bill. It is profitable to do so. Insurance companies, doctors, hospitals and patients are all fighting over who pays. But the insurance companies are winning while they focus on the stock market value, on their financial profits, on their investments in tobacco, on their strategies to restrict or deny service – which increases their profit.

“They have set up massive, redundant and highly profitable bureaucracies that deny care. When we buy their services, we don’t just pay for their infrastructure’ we also pay for a second infrastructure which results in doctors having to hire more staff to fight with insurance companies just to protect themselves.

“Consider that the growth in the number of professionals who actually deliver health care since the 1970s is under 300%. But the increase in the administrators- those who do not deliver care – is upwards of 2400%. The insurance companies have wedged themselves between the doctor and the patient. It is easy to see why our costs have spiraled out of control and the health insurance industry is consistently shown in polls to be one of the least trusted industries in America.

“There are many models of health care reform from which to choose around the world – the vast majority of which perform far better than ours. The one that has been the most tested here and abroad is single payer. Under a single payer system everyone in the U.S. would get a card that would allow access to any doctor at virtually any hospital. Doctors and hospitals would continue to be privately run, but the insurance payments would be in the public hands.

Urgent: Single Payer on the Table in Energy and Commerce on Thursday | Press Release

This Thursday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) will introduce, in the Energy and Commerce Committee, an amendment that abolishes private insurance and creates a national single-payer system that would cover everyone. This amendment would substitute Rep. John Conyers' (D-MI) single-payer bill, HR 676, for the current Tri-Committee Health Reform Bill.

If your representative is a member of the Energy & Commerce Committee, please call and ask him or her to support Rep. Weiner's single payer amendment. Energy & Commerce Committee members can be found here.

Single-payer health care activists have a new video channel. Check it out. Here's one offering:

Why Right Wingers Can't Afford to Let Universal Health Care Succeed
By Time for Change | Democratic Underground

If private insurance fails because it is unable to compete with government health care, then so be it. The US government does not exist for the purpose of helping private insurance companies. It's our government, and we have the right to demand that
In their aggressive opposition to universal health care, whether through government single payer or even a public option of any sort, the Republican Party and their corporate backers in the health care and health insurance industries are in the process of laying bare their utter hypocrisy for all the world to see. Their only weapons for combating meaningful health care reform are lies and hypocrisy. And they are using those weapons to the fullest extent.

So why expose the utter hollowness, corruption, and callousness of their Party just to fight universal health care? The fact of the matter is that they may not have a choice. They are desperate. A successful national health care program could mean not only the end of the Republican Party, but the end also of a great deal of the philosophical underpinning for the RW agenda. Let's consider some of that philosophical underpinning: Read more.

Why the Left Lost Single-Payer Health Care Reform
By Micheal Lerner | Tikkun

President Obama gives great speeches but is unwilling to challenge prevailing ideas in a sustained fight for his own principles. He is temperamentally opposed to ideological struggle: just look at how dramatically he compromised on his economic bailout before the struggle began, imagining that such a compromise would gain him points with Republicans in Congress. But when they unanimously opposed his proposals anyway, he seemed not to have learned a lesson. Instead he continues to present ideas that are ideologically incoherent or contradictory to other parts of his program. He doesn't seem to realize that no matter how much he accommodates their interests (e.g., by protecting them from malpractice law suits), the physicians, insurance companies, and other health care profiteers will oppose any "public option" he supports, label it socialist, and use their media dollars to defeat it.

The substance of the "single-payer" proposal is incontrovertibly the very best plan. Aaron Roland convincingly makes this argument in his op-ed on page 15 of this issue of Tikkun. His article also gives us a good idea of what we should fight for within the context of the actual health care battles that will be fought this summer in Congress. After reading his article, please contact your congressional representatives (particularly your senators) to let them know that you understand the differences between the options, and that you want the ones that are closest to the single-payer proposal: plans that have a serious "public" health care component. Unfortunately, a truly single-payer system has effectively been ruled out by the major players in Washington.

Here are some of the reasons that happened:

1. President Obama Never Supported a Single-Payer System

Obama said on various occasions that if he were designing a health care system from the start he would choose a single-payer model, but he said that since we already have a private-insurance-based system he has decided to reform that one by adding a public component. The logic of his position was always this: let's do what seems "realistic" given the current alignment of forces. He gave no indication of being open to the notion that a new president has the right to fight for a vision that makes sense and should attempt to use his immense popularity for that purpose.Read more.

AMERICA’S TOP EARNERS URGE CONGRESS TO APPROVE TAX ON THE WEALTHY TO FUND NEW HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS | Press Release
Spokespeople from Emerging Network of Business Leaders and High Net-Worth Individuals Available For Comment

July 14, 2009 Washington, D.C. – On Friday the House Ways and Means Committee announced a proposal for a graduated surtax on individuals with incomes over $350,000 to help finance health care reform. The idea was met with praise by a network of business leaders and high net worth individuals who the tax would most directly impact, including corporate executives and small business owners, organized by Wealth for the Common Good. Chuck Collins, the co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good and scion of the Oscar Mayer fortune, issued the following statement in response to the proposal:

“The proposed tax surcharge would impact those of us with the greatest capacity to pay, about one out of 100 taxpayers. That revenue could be used to pay for much needed improvements to our broken health care system, and provide coverage for over 50 million Americans who are uninsured, while protecting employer-provided health care benefits.

Under the Bush administration, the wealthy saw significant tax cuts allowing households with incomes over $250,000 to save more than $700 billion in taxes. Now, as the economic crisis deepens, we need to rebalance our tax code, ensuring that all Americans share in the sacrifices by restoring taxes on the wealthy. It is time for us to reinvest in our country to ensure future prosperity.”

By Jonathan Tasini

Yesterday I was on CNBC on the topic of health care and taxes. While the segment was going on, I kept thinking I heard CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo agree with me that, on the economics, single-payer made sense. But, it couldn’t be, could it? Well, I went back later to watch the video and sure enough...judge for yourself.

I argue for single payer and she says:

1:32 “it’s a very good thought”
3:32: it makes perfect sense....
4:46: what you’re saying sounds like it is the most sensible...

I think this is important to get around: Bartiromo is a visible talking head for the “free market” ideology.

Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccination Alert
By Stephen Lendman

On July 13, a World Health Organization (WHO) Global Alert headlined, "WHO recommendations on pandemic (H1N1) 2009 vaccinations" suggest that universally mandated ones are coming. It stated that on July 7, the pharmaceutical industry-dominated Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization held an "extraordinary meeting in Geneva to discuss issues and make recommendations related to vaccine for the pandemic (H1N1) 2009."

There's no pandemic nor until recently a single death anywhere attributable to Swine Flu. Yet WHO said the virus "is considered unstoppable," while admitting little evidence of spread so far, most cases are mild, and many people recover unaided. Nonetheless, all countries will need vaccines and should follow these priorities as initial supplies will be limited:

By Dave Lindorff

Of course I could be wrong. Congress could turn around and pass some cockamamie scheme to kick the issue of health care reform down the road, offering some kind of minimal insurance coverage to a few million more people, and cracking down on this or that particularly egregious health provider rip-off, and then staging a “mission accomplished” photo op.

But real health care reform of the kind that Democratic candidates were promising during last year’s presidential campaign is dead, killed by the timidity of the promiser-in-chief, President Barack Obama (and by the massive corruption of the Democrats in Congress, who hav e accepted the tainted coin of the health care industry).

Labor Delegation Persuades John Murtha To Co-Sponsor HR 676 - Single Payer Health Insurance | Press Release

The fact that Murtha, from a relatively conservative middle of the road district, signed on as a co-sponsor signifies that the grass roots movement for single payer is growing and opportunities exist to get others from similar districts to sign on.

Johnstown, PA - After meeting with western Pennsylvania labor leaders on June 29, Representative John Murtha agreed to sign on as a co-sponsor of HR 676, national single payer health care legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). Eighty-five House members,
in addition to Conyers, now have their names on HR 676.

Murtha, who has represented Pennsylvania's 12th CD since 1974, is the eighth most senior member of the House of Representatives, and chairs the Defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

'Blue Dog' Democrats: Current health bill not acceptable
By Deirdre Walsh | CNN

"What we are saying is if there is a public option, it can't be based on Medicare rates unless the regional disparity in Medicare rates is fixed," said Ross, who also planned to press for more controls on government spending on healthcare and more savings from changes to Medicare.

House Democrats' push on health care legislation hit a snag Thursday when a group of fiscally conservative Democrats, known as "Blue Dogs," put on the brakes, pressing the Democratic leadership for significant changes to the draft bill.

As the Democratic leaders worked feverishly to finalize details of the legislation for a planned Friday rollout, the Blue Dog Coalition sent a letter late Thursday night saying the bill "lacks a number of elements essential to preserving what works and fixing what is broken."

Forty of the group's 52 members of the group signed the letter, making it clear that a major block of the House Democratic caucus wanted some concessions in order to get their votes. Shortly after the letter's release, a group of the Blue Dogs huddled in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office with other leaders for nearly two hours. Read more.

Can't pay your doctor? Charge it!
By Parija B. Kavilanz | CNN Money

As medical bills pile up, more Americans are paying their doctors with plastic.

Consumer advocates warn that this is a dangerous trend, but industry watchers see a multi-billion dollar opportunity for lenders to offer specialized "medical" credit cards.

"Out-of-pocket health care spending was already increasing in good times," said Bruce Carlson, publisher with health care market research firm Kalorama Information. "Now with high unemployment, consumers have to reach into their pockets even more to fund their health care."

Americans spend an estimated $294 billion on annual out-of-pocket medical costs annually, to cover everything from doctor's office co-payments to surgeries and prescription medications.

About 25% of that -- around $74 billion -- is already being charged to regular standard credit cards, according to Kalorama. McKinsey Consulting expects that $150 billion worth of health care expenses will go on credit cards by 2015. Read more.

PBS' Bill Moyers Journal: Wendell Potter on Profits Before Patients

More resources at PBS.

Part 1

Part 2 - Click "Read more."

JOIN OUR WINOGRAD FOR CONGRESS CONTINGENT - Speak out for Single-Payer Healthcare – Call on Congressman Waxman to order a financial analysis of single-payer. Demand Congress put single-payer on the table!

SATURDAY, JULY 11, 2009 9:30 AM - 12:30 PM

MEET AT NW CORNER OF 3RD & FLORES (8339 W. 3RD ST. L.A.) Map & Details
$2. parking at the Beverly Connection then walk E. on 3rd several blocks to Flores.

RSVP to stefletcher@earthlink.net to say YES, I'll be there to hold Winograd for Congress yard signs & participate in the march.