Schedule & Topics for Future Forums:
Elections & Ethics Reform – 2/17
Education – 2/23
Civil Rights & Civil Liberties – 2/26
Economic Growth, Jobs, and Worker’s Rights – 3/3
Economic Justice/Poverty/the Social Safety Net – 3/6
Housing 3/10
Environment 3/13
Public Safety & Criminal Justice 3/18
Misc – What Are We Missing? 3/23
I look forward to hearing your thoughts & ideas!
– Jamie
Please share widely!
We oppose the Republican administration’s party’s proposal to impose excessive cost sharing and other burdens on the Veterans Health System.
It’s not that I disagree with things on the list, but dang the document is really long. Perhaps as a result, it gives Democratic legislators more leeway to ignore some of the items; after all they agree with most of them (if only the ones which are really easy to agree with).
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p>I wonder: could the entire document be cut down and more focused? What do we want the Democrats to really accomplish in health care in Massachusetts and/or Federally in the next 4 years? Do we want to expand the number of people eligible for single payer type programs? Do we want to expand the amount of coverage available to those currently in single payer type programs? Do we want to focus solely on cutting costs through efficiency, competition, etc.? I know that legislators can do more than one thing at a time, but there’s only so much room in the social sphere for political pressure. With respect to health care, which items do we want our Democratic legislators working hard on right now?
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p>For me, I want them to expand the number of people who are eligible for single payer type programs. Specifically, I want every single American, regardless of ability to pay, to have 100% coverage for pre-natal, childbirth, post-birth, and child medical up to 1 year old. No co-pay, no deductible, nothing. Private insurers simply drop coverage and the Fed picks up the slack. Everybody’s got a mother, about 1/3 of Americans are mothers, and about 1/3 of us relied on a mother to deliver our child. We all agree that no child should lack health care because of ability or decision making skills of his or her parents. Want to hold adults medically accountable for their actions? That’s fair debate. It isn’t fair to hold newborns responsible. We owe every single baby a fair start in society, and that means ensuring adequate coverage for mother and baby. Insurance companies win too, because pregnancy costs are soaring and the “risk” of a customer becoming pregnant is so dang variable.
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p>I’m an incrementalist, and it seems to me that this plan is pretty hard to argue against, and that it helps lead the way to further expansions in health care. Specifically, once this program is in place and running correctly, why stop at one year old? Shouldn’t all 18 month olds have access to health care too? Slowly, we expand the coverage so that more and more Americans have full single payer coverage.
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p>So, in addition to the constant pressure to cut costs and increase competition amongst drug companies, I’d like to see my lege work on expanding the number of people who are eligible for single payer, and this is the group with which I’d start.
I understand that universal coverage is where we want to go, and I am in full agreement. But as being discussed within the upcoming health care reform, a Public Insurance Option is something that we could lend out support to as well.
…if it was offered as an option during open enrollment. Make it cheap enough and I’m sure a lot of people would opt in.
Last year I could opt out of prescription drug coverage, and my plan was about $260 a month. Then it went up by about fifty dollars some time last year, and now this year I have to pay even more because it has to include prescription drug coverage. What happened between last year and this year that forces me to pay 1000 more a year?
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p>So my request is: less mandated coverage. I don’t want to pay for prescription drugs or IVF or birth control and just want to not be wiped out if I’m hit by a car or have a heart attack or something, which I probably will be on my plan anyway.
Prescription drugs make up about 10% of what we spend annually on healthcare in America. Salaries and overhead consume the majority of spending, then costs of procedures and diagnostic testing account for the rest. Also, prescription drug spending actually recduces money spent on healthcare. In the past, heart failure patients needed to be hospitalized when their breathing became compromised, today they are treated at home with a 3$ a day ace inhibitor. There are numerous examples of drugs saving time and money. Focus on costs of tests, get price lists form your providers, shop and compare. Here you will find savings.
We recognize that the single most impactful thing we can do to ensure the long-term solvency of the government is to tackle the rising costs of health-care. We believe the problem is systemic in large, not small ways. As such, we understand that bold, game-changing policies are much more likely to effect change than minor, timid adjustments to the already failing status quo. Fundamental re-working of our health care system will no doubt be challenging, but this is no excuse for moderation.
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p>OK… very wordy compared to what’s up there now. How about:
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p>We acknowledge that only bold action has a chance to address the health-care cost crisis in any meaningful and sustainable way.
Health care insurers have focus groups and are far faster at scamming than lawmakers are at lawmaking.
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p>Case. Daughter gets married but is pregnant. She attempts to change her name and coverage under that new quailifying life change rule and it told she can not because the 30 days had elapsed. Net result? She is paying for TWO health insurance plans plus looking at a stack of UNPAID bills because United Health Care refuses to handle the change and denied everything.
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p>They are consistent in their scamming.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news…
Regarding health care, it is an essential civil right for all Americans and residents of the Commonwealth.
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p>Taxpayers should not underwrite unchecked administrative and executive costs for commercial insurers. Health care companies that participate in the mandated insurance program in Massachusetts must be expected to restrain administrative and executive costs and be prohibited from slicing provider-patient treatment options.
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p>Differentiation between educational and medical services in public education needs a comprehensive review in the Commonwealth. Costly portions of special education are medical treatment costs placed upon school districts with health insurers denying coverage for the children. Add coverage for medically challenged students requiring specific transportation.
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p>Liability and malpractice costs need to somehow become more manageable for providers.
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p>Thanks, hope the Senate gig is everything you hoped for.
Universal single payer coverage should be progressively financed.
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p>i.e. A rich guy should pay for my insurance. Well it is valentine’s day.
It doesn’t have to be a guy.
Then you can have a clean conscience with regard to that rich guy (or gal)
Gary I think perhaps it would be you who will be paying for someone else’s insurance. Maybe someone who posts here, but I doubt you’ll get a thank you.
As there has to be a fair means of raising revenue to support it.
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p>A few thoughts on how this should be handled:
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p>1. Universal, single-payer health care (more efficient)
2. Revenue from a broad-based National Sales tax plus premiums and co-pays
3. No deductibles, but co-pays (balancing incentives)
4. Sliding scale of premiums and co-pays based on income (ability to pay)
5. Sales tax about 15%, but with monthly exemption payments to make it progressive.
6. No penalty to US corporations vs. imported products for health care costs.
Physical. I have not responded. I am far more paranoid given my most recent experiences with the medical establishment and my aging parents plus that most detrimental possibility that my medical conditions once discovered and documented into the digital electronic grid will in fact be used against me as the simple Google search of the term “zones of privacy” does in fact reveal. Even lamestream media supports the punditocracy of the future of health care.
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p>”I got an insurance policy for a 40 year old “ON BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICATION”.
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p>Given my experiences with government support of the Machiavellianisms in current “health care legislation” I am most inclined to embrace fully the concept of naturopathic/eastern medicine and never seek an allopath again. Diet anything has always tasted like battery acid to me and I take it as a natural dont’ ingest this crap defense mechanism I am grateful for.
Senator Elgridge,I am glad to see that you want feedback from the people because I have been very disappointed in the attitude from Beacon Hill. I cannot afford the “affordable”health insurance and the mandate is a very mean law.I have read news articles in various newspapers that say the State Lawmakers believe everyone in Massachusetts has health care.They are out of touch with their people.I live in Ayer which is your district and I cannot afford the insurance.In my age group,I am 58 years old,and middle income I would be charged double from a younger person.This is discrimination by income and age.I hope my post helps you to understand that to force citizens to buy into exspensive insurance with high dedutables is not the answer.
Health Care isn’t all about insurance–as we’ve begun to discover, getting people insurance doesn’t solve our health care crisis. IMHO, the Democratic Party Platform should have four planks.
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p>First: Insurance. We need to continue working on the system to provide all Mass. residents with real insurance, with real coverage.
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p>Second: Access. Many doctors responded to the advent of widespread health insurance by closing their practices to new patients. We need to support the growth of NPs and PAs for basic health services, whether in retail clinics or as part of medical practices. Doctors won’t like this, but they need to see more complex cases and sicker patients, while NPs do routine work and well care. As part of assuring access to health services, we should expand nursing, NP and PA programs.
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p>Third: Affordability. We should support strict disclosure and controls on payola from pharmas and medical device companies. Doctor conflicts of interest need to be fully disclosed. We need to look carefully at rationalizing the malpractice system to reduce the cost of insurance while maintaining or improving the quality of practice.
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p>Perhaps the biggest item on affordability is the single-rate system, where providers set fees based on the highest fee an insurer will pay. They discount those fees for insurance companies, but do not for individuals. Medicare rules apparently require a single fee system. With the growth of high-deductible insurance plans, a patient with lousy insurance ends up paying a higher price than an insured patient. For example, if a Dr. charges $3,000 for a colonoscopy (about the average cost), Blue Cross may pay $1,500 on the claim, as per the negotiated discount. The patient with a high deductible account, however, pays the full rate until the deductible is reached. Somehow, this seems immoral to me. Democrats should support some kind of negotiated discount (the medicare rate, for example) for patients who must pay large out of pocket costs.
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p>Fourth: Public Health. We pay doctors a lot of money to get sick people well. It would be nice to support measures to keep people from getting sick. Smoking cessation, prenatal care, nutrition education in schools, even measures like phys ed in schools and sidewalks in towns would all support health, hopefully reducing the need for curing the sick.
How much is prescriptions, how much is hospital care, how much is DR. care, surgery, what age groups cost the most… compete transparency on the cost side so effective alternatives can be determined.
… would probably require regulation.
Division of Health Care Finance and Policy collects this kind of information locally and the Feds also have a lot of detail.
Thanks for taking feedback on this!
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p>Can we include something about prevention and healthy lifestyles?
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p>For Urban, Suburban, and Rural folks alike, I think the MA govt has a role in promoting and facilitating exercise and healthy eating. For example, we should be creating walkable communities, building bike paths, and promoting fresh food in school lunches. These are the types of policies that reduce health care costs in the long term. While the platform is probably righly focused on universal insurance coverage, I would like to see some mention of prevention in the document.
More than forty Massachusetts labor leaders have signed onto a letter to President Obama raising concerns that some policy makers in Washington are backing health care reforms based on the state plan adopted two years ago. The Massachusetts plan features an “individual mandate” requiring all citizens to buy private health insurance. The letter, sent today and spearheaded by the Jobs with Justice coalition, states:
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p>”The [Massachusetts plan] is too expensive for many individuals forced to buy health insurance. It has failed to control costs and it has cost the state far more than initially projected. As a result, many critical health care facilities that serve low-income communities are facing huge cuts, while health care premiums continue to rise by double digits year after year. The Massachusetts Plan is widely recognized as unsustainable and now that we are facing an economic crisis, it is even more problematic.”
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p>Instead of individual mandates, the letter urges the President to support HR 676, the national “Medicare for All” bill, as the “most fiscally prudent and morally imperative direction for successful health care reform.”