Healthcare

New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit
By Bill Maher | Huffington Post

If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.

And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves ­-- like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors. Read more.

Twitter Activism Step-By-Step

The Pen wrote:

During his prime time health care news conference, President Obama finally admitted what we have known all along.

"I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is that unless you have a -- what's called a single-payer system, in which everybody's automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual."

There it is folks. Only single payer can fix the ills with our health care system. He also talked about the critical importance of "eliminating waste". Only single payer effectively does that, by cutting out the massive overhead waste (31%) by paper churning insurance industry bureaucrats, who line their own pockets to provide LESS health care with the available resources.

Single Payer Action Page

This is the single payer moment. We have enough Democrats alone to pass it. So why hasn't it been signed into law yet?

You're Appointing Who? Please Obama, Say It's Not So!
By Jeffrey Smith | Huffington Post

The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke.

Here's the back story.

When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply -- the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods -- secret documents now reveal that the experts were very concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried "serious health hazards," and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.

But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn't going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie. Read more.

Listen here.

George Kenney of Electric Politics recently interviewed former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter, former Vice President for Public Affairs at Cigna, one of the largest health insurance corporations. Wendell is now working with the Center for Media and Democracy as CMD's Senior Fellow on Health Care. You can read his blog here.

Click here to listen to Georgy Kenney's extremely informative interview with Wendell Potter about health insurance industry practices, the "public option," and single-payer health care insurance.

On health care reform, the Democrats are trying desperately to avoid a confrontation with the Republicans and Mr. Obama keeps offering an olive branch. Yet the Republicans aren't really interested in compromise -- they want only to kill the reform process. At the same time, the base of the Democratic Party looks like it may revolt if no significant reforms are forthcoming. Something, I think, is going to have to give.

"We Want The Public Option" website. But do we, really?

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Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold
By Kip Sullivan | Physicians for a National Health Program

...if the “public option” wing and the single-payer wing join together to demand that Congress enact a single-payer system, December 2009 need not constitute a deadline.

The people who brought us the “public option” began their campaign promising one thing but now promote something entirely different. To make matters worse, they have not told the public they have backpedalled. The campaign for the “public option” resembles the classic bait-and-switch scam: tell your customers you’ve got one thing for sale when in fact you’re selling something very different.

When the “public option” campaign began, its leaders promoted a huge “Medicare-like” program that would enroll about 130 million people. Such a program would dwarf even Medicare, which, with its 45 million enrollees, is the nation’s largest health insurer, public or private. But today “public option” advocates sing the praises of tiny “public options” contained in congressional legislation sponsored by leading Democrats that bear no resemblance to the original model.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “public options” described in the Democrats’ legislation might enroll 10 million people and will have virtually no effect on health care costs, which means the “public options” cannot, by themselves, have any effect on the number of uninsured. But the leaders of the “public option” movement haven’t told the public they have abandoned their original vision. It’s high time they did. Read more.

More of the Same Is Not Health Care Reform, It's a Placebo
Prepared by Leonard Rodberg, PhD, Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College/CUNY and Research Director of the NY Metro Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program

Summary

There is little reform, and no serious cost control, in the health care reform plans that President Obama and the Congress are proposing:

Most people will continue to get their coverage through private insurance companies and will be forced to buy insurance of questionable value.

Employer-based insurance will continue unchanged, with employers free to change coverage at any time, insurers free to change their physician and hospital networks, and employees still locked into their jobs if they want to keep their coverage.

While the uninsured will be mandated by law to purchase health insurance, the Congressional bills place no limit on what the private insurance companies can charge for premiums or how great their deductibles and co-pays can be.

The structure of health care finance is in no way changed, and no serious cost control measures are built into these plans.

The “health insurance exchange” and its “public option,” the only new structural features of these plans, will affect little more than 10% of the population and will have no significant impact on the overall health care system. Those who receive insurance through their employer are not permitted to access the exchange or the public option.

The “public option” must be self-sustaining and follow the same rules as private insurers. Once set up, it will receive no government funds.

The subsidies for low- and moderate-income individuals and families are completely inadequate. Many will find insurance unaffordable, and underinsurance will continue.

Tens of millions of people will continue to be uninsured.

These plans are not reform; they are little more than a placebo, a detour from the path to true reform of our health care system. Read more.

Both congress members are on with Nicole Sandler between midnight and 1 a.m. at http://www.airamerica.com/listen

And will be podcast tomorrow at http://www.radioornot.com

When: Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 11 AM

Where: 2141 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 (Map and more).

What: Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and co-author of the first nationwide study on medical causes of bankruptcy, will testify next week before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, convened by Rep. John Conyers, on the alarming rise in medically related bankruptcies.

Woolhandler and her co-authors at the Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School and Ohio University recently published a study in the American Journal of Medicine that shows nearly two-thirds of all personal bankruptcies in 2007 were linked to medical bills or illness, and that most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class and had health insurance when they became sick. Between 2001 and 2007, the proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 50 percent. Dr. Woolhandler will present the findings as part of a call for a single-payer national health insurance program, a publicly funded and privately administered national health care program similar to Medicare.

Go here right now:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/live

Maine's Veterans for Peace Chapter Endorses H.R. 676; Proposes Expanding Single-Payer to All Veterans | Press Release

Maine's Herb Hoffman wrote:

I am enclosing material which elaborates the salient points of a single-payer health care plan and its potential relationship to veterans.

It is not too late to continue our efforts to support a single-payer health care plan!!

I sent this material to my Senators and Representative a few minutes ago. I urge you to make your views on health care legislation known to your Senators and Representative and your mailing list. I believe that there is an opening to make a significant change in how health care is funded -- and subsequently how health care is delivered.

MEDICARE FOR ALL!

Peace,

Herb

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The Veterans for Peace Maine Chapter #001 endorses H.R. 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, with the recommendation that veterans be covered beginning with the Act's implementation.

VETERANS, VETERANS ADMINISTRATION AND SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE

In the following paragraphs are some of the features contained in H.R. 676, which is currently before Congress.

Single-payer.

America's patchwork of for-profit, private insurers waste billions of dollars each year on spending that has nothing to do with paying for care. Elaborate underwriting, billing, sales and marketing divert huge amounts of money away from delivering health care. Huge profits and staggering compensation for the insurance companies' top executives and CEOs adds to the cost.

The term single-payer describes the kind of financing system for covering health care costs. It means that one entity handles all billing and payments for health care services and that would be a government agency. Currently, the United States government operates two single-payer health care plans, i.e., Medicare and the Veterans Administration Medical Services.

By Norman Solomon

“I want to cover everybody,” President Obama said at his news conference Wednesday night. “Now, the truth is that unless you have a -- what's called a single-payer system, in which everybody’s automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual. . .”

The same conventional wisdom keeping single payer off Washington’s table has been spinning for various “reform” plans with such accelerated RPMs that at this point the nation’s “healthcare debate” is suffering from a severe case of vertigo.

“I would cut from overseas spending, I would cut from these trillions and trillions of dollars that we have spent over the years and bring our troops home so that we can finance it [health care].” READ THE REST.

Will Ronpaulers join PDA's Healthcare Not Warfare campaign?

Add your name to FAIR's petition to the TV networks!

By David Swanson

President Obama said on Tuesday night:

"Now, the truth is that, unless you have a -- what's called a single-payer system, in which everybody is automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual because there's always going to be somebody out there who thinks they're indestructible and doesn't want to get health care, doesn't bother getting health care, and then, unfortunately, when they get hit by a bus, end up in the emergency room and the rest of us have to pay for it."

Another name for "what's called a single-payer system" would be: healthcare as a human right, not a commodity to be purchased. Many humans have this right. They just aren't Americans.

Obama's mention of single-payer, in passing, as something that would be better than anything else, but something that mysteriously lies out of reach, is typical of the very few mentions of single-payer healthcare in the U.S. corporate media.

The White House has not released visitor logs, has not admitted its duty to reveal anything, has not revealed a full list of health insurance and drug company executives who have visited, but in response to a FOIA suit, Obama has chosen to reveal "voluntarily" before being compelled to which of a list of names asked about did visit. Most of them did. But we have not seen the visitor logs and have to take the President's word for it and guess at the timing of visits.

Congressman John Lewis (GA-05) Hosts Health Care Forum July 27, 9 AM, Ebenezer Baptist Church

DATE: Monday, July 27, 2009

TIME: 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

LOCATION:
Ebenezer Baptist Church
407 Auburn Ave.
Atlanta, Ga. 30312 Map

From the desk of Representative John Lewis (GA-CD5):

From WaPo article purportedly debunking health insurance lies:

"Private insurers have effectively engaged in rationing, so they're doing the dirty work for everybody else," said Jeff D. Emerson, a former health plan chief executive. "It's a thankless job . . . but somebody has to do it or health care will be even more expensive than it is now."

Private insurers might be better situated than the government to do the unpopular work of saying no, said Paul B. Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, because they are less susceptible to political pressure.

There you have it. For-profit companies best serve the public interest precisely because they are not subject to public control. Why? Because the public wants what is worst for the public. And how does the Washington Post know this? It has dinner with all the right people, and charges them for the privilege.

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Candidate Barack Obama told us to judge his first term by whether he delivers quality affordable health care for all Americans, including nearly fifty million uninsured. So why does his proposal not cover the uninsured till 2013, after the next presidential election when Medicare took only 11 months to cover its first 40million seniors? Why are corporate media pretending that no opinions exist to Obama's left? And why has the public option part of the Obama health care plan shrunk from covering 130 million to only 10 million, with 16 million left uninsured altogether?

Read more at Black Agenda Report.

Citing an argument used by the Bush administration, the Secret Service rejects a request from a watchdog group to list those who have visited the White House to discuss the healthcare overhaul.
By Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington -- Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul. READ THE REST.

By David Swanson

UPDATES:

Ask the Energy and Commerce Committee to vote YES on the HR 676 amendment

The silence in the House of Representatives around single-payer healthcare and H.R. 676 will end this Wednesday. Rep. Anthony Weiner, (D-NY09), who has already rankled Republicans and Blue Dogs with his no-nonsense statements before the House Energy and Commerce hearing on H.R. 3200, will move to amend the current bill. His proposal is essentially to replace H.R. 3200 with H.R. 676—single payer Medicare for All.

This exciting and potentially monumental move needs our support. We pushed Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s amendment to victory last Friday, and we can do it for Representative Weiner, too.

The full committee and its five subcommittees are spending the next three days debating the bill and performing their markups. This is the time to act, and Representative Weiner is making his move.

Call or fax the committee members and tell them you want them to support Representative Weiner’s proposal. Listen to his blunt analysis in Friday’s session of what real healthcare reform is made of, and you’ll get some good ideas of what to say when you call or fax. It’s a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners approach to the legislative process almost never heard on the House floor.

Obamacare: A Health Care Rationing Scheme to Enrich Insurers, Drug Companies and Large Hospital Chains
By Stephen Lendman

On February 24, Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress that "we must....address the crushing cost of health care....caus(ing) a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In (each of) the last eight years....one million....Americans have lost their health insurance....Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold....health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

A Village Fairy Tale: Coming From a Pro-Gun State Explains Health Care Opposition
By David Sirota | Open Left

Taking a moment away from my book and column-writing, I just want to make a really important point that we all need to remember about the so-called "Blue Dogs" and "conservative Democrats" who are working their asses off to prevent real health care reform.

The Villagers in the D.C. media (ie. the power-worshiping pundits and journalists who preen around the nation's capital telling the Rest of Us what to think) continue to incessantly claim that "Blue Dogs" and "conservative Democrats" come from "moderate districts," and this is supposed to clearly explain their opposition to health care reform and progressive taxation to pay for said health care reform. If you've turned on a television, radio or computer, or if you are one of the few still reading newspapers, then you've been subjected to this meme repeatedly over the lats few weeks. And this meme is propaganda at its worst - or, propagandists might say, at its best.

Polls have long shown us the country is basically unified in support of progressive economic positions. Indeed, there have been so many polls showing Americans strongly supporting universal government-sponsored health care, more progressive taxation, fairer trade deals, a Wall Street crackdown, and an end to grotestque bailoutism that I'm frankly sick of linking to all of them so much.

If, as the irritating red-versus-blue storyline goes, we are a divided nation at all, we are divided on a few select hot-button cultural issues (guns, god, gays, yadda yadda...we've all heard it before). So sure, when Villagers in D.C. portray a senator like Max Baucus (D-MT) as representing his state's fondness for guns when he votes against gun control, that's an accurate portrayal. But when Villagers depict Baucus, who represents one of the poorest states in the country, as opposing real health care reform because he's from a "conservative state" and is merely forwarding along his constituents alleged desire for insurance-industry shilling, that's a lotta horseshit. And it's the same for "Blue Dog" Democrats from Appalachia and the rural South (and also, by the way, for Republicans from these same regions) - when they differ with Obama on cultural issues, it's probably because their constituents differ with Obama on cultural issues. But when they differ with him on a core economic issue like, say, taking on the health insurance vipers and reforming the system, they are, for the most part, shitting all over those same constituents. Read more

Declare Your Support - "Make Congress and the President Do It!"

President Obama has announced three bedrock requirements for real health care reform:

1. Reduce Costs — Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals and families and they must be brought under control.
2. Guarantee Choice — Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor – including the choice of a public insurance option - but has the single payer option benefits and costs been fully explored?
3. Ensure Quality Care for All — All Americans must have quality and affordable health care.

Now we have to show Congress where the American people stand.

Don't support the current proposals? Tell Obama why not - tell him what you prefer here.

Pssst...Please pass it on! Thanks!

Finally, long-term home health care
By Loretta McLaughlin | Boston.com

With little fanfare, a new public program to help pay for long-term care for adults is moving through Congress. The premium is low and the coverage is good.

Largely geared to personal and health services provided in the home, though it extends to nursing home care as a last resort, the new coverage is built into the emerging formula for national healthcare reform.

The need for home care is immense. More than 10 million Americans receive home care, and the number will rise rapidly as the population ages. Estimates hold that 75 percent of us will need home care at some point during our lifetime.

This kind of medical/social service is of inestimable benefit to the chronically ill, the elderly, the mentally disabled, and to adults recuperating from a temporary illness. Home-based personal assistance would allow many of them to return to work. And it would be a godsend for the 90 percent of Americans who have had no meaningful protection against this medical expense. Read more.

What: DC: Medicare: Made in America – DC Lobby Day and Rally for Single-Payer Health Insurance

When: Thursday, July 30, 2009

Where: Upper Senate Park, 200 New Jersey Ave NW, Washington, DC 20001

Schedule

Rally starts at 1 pm - 2 pm in the Upper Senate Park

9am - 11:30 am Volunteers needed for morning drop to all Members of Congress. Meet in Room 2138 Judiciary Committee Room of Rayburn House Building for materials to deliver to every member of Congress! Email info@healthcare-now.org if you plan to help with the morning lobby visits.

2pm onward - Activists will take to the hill for meetings with Members of Congress. If you need help in setting up a meeting with your Member, please email info@healthcare-now.org. Lobby materials will be available in the Judiciary Committee Room for pick up on the day of the meetings. They will be posted here shortly to download in advance.

Confirmed Speakers at Rally