I’m going to give this its own thread. The panel includes MD Congressional candidate Donna Edwards, CT-Sen candidate Ned Lamont, health care advocate Diane Archer, and CAF co-founder Roger Hickey. Considering how many other sessions are going on right now, there’s a good crowd.
Hickey gets applause for putting forth the principle that at least all people should be offered a Medicare-type plan — and get private plans involved over and above that if necessary. CAF is going to be involved in a campaign to push the principles in its own house plan, put together by Jacob Hacker.
Diane Archer says de-linking coverage from employment would be a positive step. The for-profit health insurance industry is the problem — broken, dysfunctional. It punishes the sick, fails to cover care, it’s uncertain and risky. Insurers make $ by keeping sick people away — not by providing really good coverage.
Solution: Public insurance (not public employment of providers). Medicare should be model: Everyone’s covered; reins in costs; large risk pool; choice of providers; lifetime guarantee; and no profit. 80% fo public want guaranteed affordable health care for all. [And ponies – ed.] Archer clearly believes in going beyond the CA or MA model, and expanding the federal role in paying for health care. All Dem candidates should be pressured to include a public insurance — and we should enlist the support of business.
Lamont: We’re so reckless in our foreign policy — why are we so timid in our domestic policy? We’ve been kicking the can down the road on health care for a long time now. Let’s give people an option. Some people say, “There’s no way Medicare could compete with the smooth efficiency of our private health care system” [laughs]. We’re 29th in longevity, right behind Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In the private sector – What kind of exec do you need for General Motors — an incrementalist? No, you need a bold visionary.
Donna Edwards (who is again challenging SleazeDem Al Wynn in the MD-04 district): Health care came up all the time in the campaign. Speaks of her own health care story — caught walking pneumonia — had to pay thousands in bills. Now insured, her son was made to have a more expensive MRI — at her insurer’s behest! (Weird.) If we can pay for the war, can’t we have health care coverage for all? Says she knows about the system from her own personal experience.
Archer explains a difference between Edwards’ and Obama’s plans: Edwards “health market” pools are regional, Obama’s are national.
Hickey describes MA and CA as the “rightmost” of the new reform plans, where the states are having to discover how much they have to regulate private insurers. All the national plans are talking about considerably more regulation of insurers.
Healthcare system reforms must explicitly aim to GUARANTEE TO EVERYONE comprehensive quality care , not to enact a harmful punative mandate for some to purchase expensive private insurance (read ?The MA Chap 58 law?).
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The French have a successful national model that does this for about $273 per person per month per OECD data as I recall. We can do it too with an expanded (in benefits covered and in people covered!!) Medicare For All model American style. This is the real cure to our terminally sick hc system. Administering this treatment requires a major excision, cutting the greed-driven medical industrial complex out of their dominant position in U.S. healthcare.
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The profiteering insurance industry, big Pharma, for-profit hospital, rehab and LTC chains are bankrupting us. And they are killing and maiming us, seriously folks.
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The issue of unequal access to healthcare, and healthcare security which is an essential ingredient for human dignity, is an unfinished piece of the civil rights movement as illustrated by data on racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare and rates of uninsurance.
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This is some of what I?ll be saying alongside other nurses, patients and physicians when we testify before a congressional panel in Washington D.C. on June 20, 2007, about the hc crisis and the harm that is being done to many people by the MA faux reform law known as Chapter 58.
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For decades most hc justice activists ? tens of thousands of health professionals like myself among them ? have voiced the moral imperative of creating a true universal coverage healthcare system; one that places people and their communities front and center in every policy and program decision and implementation. That goal is most definitely not the situation we have now when hc is treated as a business commodity instead of as a public good and an essential human service.
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The MA Chap 58 insurance mandate law creates another huge obstacle ? and an extremely costly and wasteful obstacle at that ? to achieving the urgently needed fundamental healthcare system reforms.
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This faux reform has us taxpayers saps footing an obscene bill: $25Mil to create a new layer of healthcare bureaucracy called ?The Connector?… Million$$$ to a ?Sub-Connector? firm in Worcester to market the new insurance products… $4Mil to a PR Firm to create manipulative ads… $3Mil to the Red Sox to run the ads on NESN… HUGE sums of $$ to mail intimidating postcards across teh state telling people they MUST buy a private insurance product… etc, etc…
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To learn more and to get involved in the work to create a just and effective — cost effective AND clinically effective hc system — please visit the Alliance to Defend Health Care. You can contact me thru this website. Thank you, Ann E Malone, RN, MSN
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P.S. Take family and friends to see SiCKO, the new documentary film by Michael Moore opening June 29 about the US HC System and the greed-driven individuals and corporations that have created and fight to maintain it.
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Visit http://www.Sicko-Movie.com to tell your healthcare story
and
download Resources for public education on healthcare justice work at
http://www.SickoCure.org to get involved in a national campaign for healthcare justice.
Figure that insurance now (rough numbers, back of the envelope remember) costs about $400 per month.
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Figure with all those extra insurance customers, the cost will drop. You say France does it for like $273 per month or thereabouts. Let’s just say insurance will drop to $300 monthly.
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40 million or about 13.33% of Americans don’t have insurance. Round that to about 13%. That means the 13 people out of 100 who don’t have insurance will have their insurance paid by the other 87 people.
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Do the math. 13 people at $300 per month is $3,900 monthly that’ll have to be paid by someone other than the 13. 87 people must chip in $45 per month to pay for the 13 uninsured folks.
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Brings me back to the George Carlin joke: The poor exist for one reason: to scare the crap out of the middle class.
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BTW, the 87 people with insurance are (i) the poor (they have medicaid and can’t cough up the $45 per month to pay for 13 other folks); (ii) it’s the elderly (they have Medicare. Also, good luck hitting the elderly to pay for the uninsured. After AARP and the grey terrorists get through with the politician that tries it will find a walking cane up his keaster, sonny. Now wipe that smile off your face and fetch me some more government benefits.); (iii) it’s the working middle class.
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So, exclude the poor (say 3 people) from the 87, exclude the elderly (say 15 people) and you have 69 people left. Of those 69 people, about 4 earn more than $160,000 per year (1 of the 4 is superrich), and of course, the rest earn less.
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4 “rich” people and 65 “middle class” people pay for the 13 people who don’t carry or can’t afford insurance.
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Since, there’s now 69 people–not 87–to cover the 13, the cost jumps to $56 per month, per person for each of the 69.
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That is, the 65 middle class working stiffs plus 4 “rich” guys will have to pay for the insurance of the 13 who don’t have insurance.
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Already, the 65 middle class dudes plus 4 rich guys are paying for the poor and for the elderly. Now, the single payer harpies say “and yeah, you can pay for the working poor too”.
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But here is the creeping problem, at least for me.
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The $400 isn’t $400, and hasn’t been for awhile (maybe $400 is for an individual, not a family plan). Anyway, $400 this year is $450 next year, and $600 the year after that. The cost is nrising FAR more quickly than anything else on the financial statements, including revenues. So it is beginning to bite, even for Mr. Satisified With My Plan Guy.
You’re standing on the ledge and the room inside is smoldering. Two stories below is a guy from the Government, with what looks like a safety net.
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It’s getting hotter.
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The guy claims the net is safe.
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The fire sprinkler aren’t on, but they may come on.
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Jump?
barry goldwater !!!! save me !!!!!!!!!!!!
and the big point is that WE’RE ALREADY SPENDING ENOUGH IN PUBLIC DOLLARS ON HC TO PROVIDE ALL OF US COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE. why are folks so scared to fund health insurance the way we fund our public health departments?
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Public budgets are by far the biggest payer of hc bills already. we’re paying many time over folks and getting crap value for our dollar.
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the majority of the so-called “free loaders” or “invincibles” are ALREADY PAYING IN to our tax system and so are already paying their share for huge sums of hc spending.
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Non of us is getting our money’s worth out of the current hc system, it denies needed care to lots of sick people, and and i for one have a huge problem with that.
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incrementalism ain’t gonna be able to fix the ways it’s so broken at present. tinkering could make/ has made it worse.
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a state study by LECG Consulting in 2002 showed that 39% of hc spending in ma is not spent on hc services but on admin, marketing, waste. that 39% amt totalled $12Bil for 2001 spending ($39Bil total)
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2006 total hc spending in MA was $62Bil. 39% of $62Bil is how much? A whole lot
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why aren’t more people, especially our legislators that are faced with a big budget deficit and already making cuts in valuable programs and services, doing something about this?
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hmmm… i wonder….
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get your heads outta the sand, people
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visit this new nurse-run health reform public ed. website and SiCKoCure.org. I hope lots of people will try to see the movie when it opens on 6/29
Because we think the service might suck.
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Right now, we pay through the nose, but our service doesn’t suck. My family has had two kids–one in a high risk pregnancy– delivered at the Brigham for a total out of pocket cost of $10 (excluding the monthly premium) and including the the multitude of check-ups, tests, and exams done during pregnancy. If there was a problem, we would go from one of the best labor and delivery units in the country across the street to one of the best pediatric care units in the country. Paying for parking at the hospital was more than the co-pay.
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What am I supposed to be unsatisifed about again?
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it’s the hundreds of thousands of people across massachusetts who aren’t as lucky or well-positioned as you that are supposed to be unsatisfied.
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and if creating a system that would allow them to participate at a level closer to the one that you and your family enjoy, should we work to create that?
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or should they all just go to hell, because we’ve got ours?
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So, lessee. The wealthy are wealthy, and will be able to afford to pay cash and get the service that they always do anyway.
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The “working poor” (not the poor) who presently pay zero, get better service in return for paying zero, or at least not paying very much.
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And the middle class gets to pay up, AND gets a nice reduction in services, because, well, its only fair that the middle class gets to take it on the chin, they should consider themselves lucky that they can complain about being taxed.
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and about as accurate.
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(you forgot the welfare queens driving cadillacs and spending your tax money to raise a bunch of illegitimate crackheads. who will refuse to speak english)
If you’d actually rebut a point, rather than typing Republican names like a Tourette’s victim, then your point of view might possibly become interesting.
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Single payer and universal healthcare is all about political possibility.
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The system will fail, which cannot guarantee greater than or equal services than those services that the larger population currently receive.
i wasn’t trying to rebut. and i’ll repeat the question;
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if we can work towards a system that would bring the hundreds of thousands of people in massachusetts who don’t have access to the kind of quality care that cmd says he and his family enjoy, shouldn’t we do it?
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your beloved free market has had 7 decades to bring those people into the fold. and it hasn’t done it. should they just continue to pray for rain and throw little offerings at their golden charlie baker statues?
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If you know that Universal health will bring quality care to everyone without reducing the quality of care everyone else has, then yes.
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But, who, other than a fortune teller, can say with certainty, that single payer will be successful?
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There are those who claim Chapter 58 will succeed. There are those who claim there are free market solutions that will succeed and there are those who claim single payer will work.
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But, until the day arrives that the current system is unappealing to the majority–and now, it is not despite the universal harpies’ claims–the majority won’t change to replace the current system with a government run system that may insure more people and also may reduce the quality of service that the majority currently enjoy.
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That’s my opinion.
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but your longstanding contention that most people are completely satisfied with the healthcare that they are getting and paying for has been refuted on this blog over and over again.
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it’s dead horse gary. give it up. respectfully . . . . let it go.
Just so you know what you’ve linked to:
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That’s from the link. It support me, not you.
…from what I have read, Medicaid is not exactly a Cadillac plan.
I think if you qualify for Medicaid– in its welfare form, rtaher than its nursing home form– you qualify as “poor.” Its the folks who are marginally “wealthier”– so that they do not qualify for Medicaid, but don’t have the kind of job that generally comes with a health plan, that are truly in a bind.
The MassHealth (the Mass name for Medicaid) dental is really quite good. The problem is that many, many dentists won’t take MassHealth patients. I guess the rate reimbursements are lower than they get otherwise.
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Imagine if healthcare was a constitutional right. Would the dentists be required by law to take all patients?
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How about doctors? If healthcare was a right, would it be illegal for a doctor to refuse to treat a patient?
since the class sizes at the medical schools would be a heck of a lot smaller
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Fine. Use your number.
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13 out of 100 are still uninsured. Go single payer and certainly you’re assuming the cost will drop. Personally, I doubt it. But, let’s say it’ll drop from $500 to say, $400.
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The 87 will have to pay $60 each to pay for the uninsured 13.
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BTW, AnnEm, why is the average insurance per person closer to $600.
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I pay $412 per month. Seems to be decent. HMO. I’m happy enough with it. Who the heck is paying $600?