Archive for the 'Alternatives to Corporate Models' Category
2 Comments March 22nd, 2010 by Matthew Anderson
A letter from Dr. Quentin Young, founding member of Physicians for a National Health Program
March 22, 2010
Dear colleagues and friends,
We have some good news and some bad news.
The bad news is that the president’s health plan, which was drafted by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, will leave about 23 million Americans uninsured and over 100 million Americans underinsured nine years after implementation. Here is how single payer compares with the reconciliation bill soon to be signed and declared the law of the land.
Activists are encouraged to send our information to their local media contacts and physician colleagues.
The good news is that there is growing awareness that the bill won’t work, and, sooner rather than later, we need single-payer national health insurance. As noted by Harvard economist Dr. William Hsiao, the architect of Taiwan’s successful health reform, “You can have universal coverage and good quality health care while still managing to control costs. But you have to have a single-payer system to do it.”
What you can do:
1. Talk to the press. Please forward the following press release, chart, and key PNHP research findings to your local media with a cover note that you would be willing to be interviewed (if you are!).
2. Publish opinion pieces in the medical and lay press. Use the following materials (recycle our prose as you wish!) for letters to the editor, op-eds, and other articles. PNHP communications director Mark Almberg can help with editing and submitting articles for publication. Mark@pnhp.org
3. Deliver grand rounds, or invite a PNHP speaker. PNHP will have new slides on health policy in the Obama era and the reconciliation bill soon. Please contact Dave Howell at Dave@pnhp.org if you would like a PNHP speaker or would like a copy of our new slide set when it comes out.
Because of the enormous power of the insurance and drug companies, we in PNHP have always known that ours is a long-term struggle. Of the women who participated in the Seneca Falls convention, only two survived to see women win the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony was not not one of them, but her final words on her deathbed were “failure is impossible.” We agree.
In memory of the 45,000 Americans who die annually for lack of health insurance, and in memory of the many tireless activists for single-payer national health insurance and health care as a human right who died this year, including Dr. Linda Farley, Dr. David Prensky, Dr. John Shearer, Dr. Bud Goodrich, PNHP staffer Nicholas Skala, and others, PNHP will continue the struggle.
With your help, failure is impossible.
In solidarity,
Quentin Young
Add a comment March 22nd, 2010 by Matthew Anderson
For Immediate Release
March 22, 2010
Contact:
Oliver Fein, M.D.
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H.
David Himmelstein, M.D.
Margaret Flowers, M.D.
Mark Almberg, PNHP, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org
The following statement was released today by leaders of Physicians for a National Health Program, www.pnhp.org. Their signatures appear below.
As much as we would like to join the celebration of the House’s passage of the health bill last night, in good conscience we cannot. We take no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer.
Instead of eliminating the root of the problem – the profit-driven, private health insurance industry – this costly new legislation will enrich and further entrench these firms. The bill would require millions of Americans to buy private insurers’ defective products, and turn over to them vast amounts of public money.
The hype surrounding the new health bill is belied by the facts:
- About 23 million people will remain uninsured nine years out. That figure translates into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually and an incalculable toll of suffering.
- Millions of middle-income people will be pressured to buy commercial health insurance policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering an average of only 70 percent of their medical expenses, potentially leaving them vulnerable to financial ruin if they become seriously ill. Many will find such policies too expensive to afford or, if they do buy them, too expensive to use because of the high co-pays and deductibles.
- Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of their shoddy products. This money will enhance their financial and political power, and with it their ability to block future reform.
- The bill will drain about $40 billion from Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals, threatening the care of the tens of millions who will remain uninsured.
- People with employer-based coverage will be locked into their plan’s limited network of providers, face ever-rising costs and erosion of their health benefits. Many, even most, will eventually face steep taxes on their benefits as the cost of insurance grows.
- Health care costs will continue to skyrocket, as the experience with the Massachusetts plan (after which this bill is patterned) amply demonstrates.
- The much-vaunted insurance regulations – e.g. ending denials on the basis of pre-existing conditions – are riddled with loopholes, thanks to the central role that insurers played in crafting the legislation. Older people can be charged up to three times more than their younger counterparts, and large companies with a predominantly female workforce can be charged higher gender-based rates at least until 2017.
- Women’s reproductive rights will be further eroded, thanks to the burdensome segregation of insurance funds for abortion and for all other medical services.
It didn’t have to be like this. Whatever salutary measures are contained in this bill, e.g. additional funding for community health centers, could have been enacted on a stand-alone basis.
Similarly, the expansion of Medicaid – a woefully underfunded program that provides substandard care for the poor – could have been done separately, along with an increase in federal appropriations to upgrade its quality.
But instead the Congress and the Obama administration have saddled Americans with an expensive package of onerous individual mandates, new taxes on workers’ health plans, countless sweetheart deals with the insurers and Big Pharma, and a perpetuation of the fragmented, dysfunctional, and unsustainable system that is taking such a heavy toll on our health and economy today.
This bill’s passage reflects political considerations, not sound health policy. As physicians, we cannot accept this inversion of priorities. We seek evidence-based remedies that will truly help our patients, not placebos.
A genuine remedy is in plain sight. Sooner rather than later, our nation will have to adopt a single-payer national health insurance program, an improved Medicare for all. Only a single-payer plan can assure truly universal, comprehensive and affordable care to all.
By replacing the private insurers with a streamlined system of public financing, our nation could save $400 billion annually in unnecessary, wasteful administrative costs. That’s enough to cover all the uninsured and to upgrade everyone else’s coverage without having to increase overall U.S. health spending by one penny.
Moreover, only a single-payer system offers effective tools for cost control like bulk purchasing, negotiated fees, global hospital budgeting and capital planning.
Polls show nearly two-thirds of the public supports such an approach, and a recent survey shows 59 percent of U.S. physicians support government action to establish national health insurance. All that is required to achieve it is the political will.
The major provisions of the present bill do not go into effect until 2014. Although we will be counseled to “wait and see” how this reform plays out, we cannot wait, nor can our patients. The stakes are too high.
We pledge to continue our work for the only equitable, financially responsible and humane remedy for our health care mess: single-payer national health insurance, an expanded and improved Medicare for All.
Oliver Fein, M.D.
President
Garrett Adams, M.D.
President-elect
Claudia Fegan, M.D.
Past President
Margaret Flowers, M.D.
Congressional Fellow
David Himmelstein, M.D.
Co-founder
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D.
Co-founder
Quentin Young, M.D.
National Coordinator
Don McCanne, M.D.
Senior Health Policy Fellow
******
Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org) is an organization of 17,000 doctors who support single-payer national health insurance. To speak with a physician/spokesperson in your area, visit www.pnhp.org
1 Comment January 28th, 2010 by Matthew Anderson
By Margaret Flowers, M.D.
January 28, 2010
President Barack Obama|
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama,
I was overjoyed to hear you say in your State of the Union address last night:
“But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.”
My colleagues, fellow health advocates and I have been trying to meet with you for over a year now because we have an approach which will meet all of your goals and more.
I am a pediatrician who, like many of my primary care colleagues, left practice because it is nearly impossible to deliver high quality health care in this environment. I have been volunteering for Physicians for a National Health Program ever since. For over a year now, I have been working with the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care/ National Single Payer Alliance. This alliance represents over 20 million people nationwide from doctors to nurses to labor, faith and community groups who advocate on behalf of the majority of Americans, including doctors, who favor a national Medicare-for-All health system.
I felt very optimistic when Congress took up health care reform last January because I remember when you spoke to the Illinois AFL-CIO in June, 2003 and said:
“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.” [applause] “I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”
And that is why I was so surprised when the voices of those who support a national single-payer plan/Medicare for All were excluded in place of the voices of the very health insurance and pharmaceutical industries which profit off the current health care situation.
There was an opportunity this past year to create universal and financially sustainable health care reform rather than expensive health insurance reform. As you well know, the United States spends the most per capita on health care in the world yet leaves millions of people out and receives poor return on those health care dollars in terms of health outcomes and efficiency. This poor value for our health care dollar is due to the waste of having so many insurance companies. At least a third of our health care dollars go towards activities that have nothing to do with health care such as marketing, administration and high executive salaries and bonuses. This represents over $400 billion per year which could be used to pay for health care for all of those Americans who are suffering and dying from preventable causes.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. You said that you wanted to “keep what works” and that would be Medicare. Medicare is an American legacy of which we can feel proud. It has guaranteed health security to all who have it. Medicare has lifted senior citizens out of poverty. Health disparities, which are rising in this nation, begin to disappear as soon as patients reach 65 years of age. And patients and doctors prefer Medicare to private insurance. Why, our Medicare has even been used as a model by other nations which have developed and implemented universal health systems.
Mr. President, we wanted to meet with you because we have the solution to health care reform. The United States has enough money already and we have the resources, including esteemed experts in public health, health policy and health financing. Our very own Dr. William Hsiao at Harvard has designed health systems in five other countries.
I am asking you to meet with me because the solution is simple. Remove all of the industries who profit off of the American health care catastrophe from the table. Replace them with those who are knowledgeable in designing health systems and who are without ties to the for-profit medical industries. And then allow them to design an improved Medicare-for-All national health system. We can implement it within a year of designing such a system.
What are the benefits of doing this?
* It will save tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of American lives each year, not to mention the prevention of unnecessary suffering.
* It will relieve families of medical debt, which is the number one cause of bankruptcy and foreclosure despite the fact that most of those who experienced bankruptcy had health insurance.
* It will relieve businesses of the growing burden of skyrocketing health insurance premiums so that they can invest in innovation, hiring, increased wages and other benefits and so they can compete in the global market.
* It will control health care costs in a rational way through global budgeting and negotiation for fair prices for pharmaceuticals and services.
* It will allow patients the freedom to choose wherever they want to go for health care and will allow patients and their caregivers to determine which care is best without denials by insurance administrators.
* It will restore the physician-patient relationship and bring satisfaction back to the practice of medicine so that more doctors will stay in or return to practice.
* It will allow our people in our nation to be healthy and productive and able to support themselves and their families.
* It will create a legacy for your administration that may someday elevate you to the same hero status as Tommy Douglas has in Canada.
Mr. President, there are more benefits, but I believe you get the point. I look forward to meeting with you and am so pleased that you are open to our ideas. The Medicare-for-All campaign is growing rapidly and is ready to support you as we move forward on health care reform that will provide America with one of the best health systems in the world. And that is something of which all Americans can be proud.
With great anticipation and deep respect,
Margaret Flowers, M.D.
Congressional Fellow, Physicians for a National Health Program
Please join Dr. Flowers in urging the President to meet with advocates of real reform (improved Medicare for all) by calling the White House at 202-456-1111.
Tell them, “I’m letting you know that improved Medicare for all (HR 676) is better than the health bill proposed by Congress. Meet with Dr. Flowers and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care about why.”
For more information relevant to President Obama’s health care related comments in his first State of the Union:
Going Down the Same Old Tunnel, By Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein
Add a comment January 4th, 2010 by Matthew Anderson
With all the respect that Professor Reinhardt deserves, the question he poses in the New York Times’ Economix blogpost, “Is ‘Community Rating in Health Care Fair”?, is bogus – perfect economic nonsense, morality aside.
His own 2003 paper, “It’s the prices, stupid”, lay out why we have the highest health care costs in the world: it is, critically, because we pay the highest prices on the planet for services and goods that cost a fraction elsewhere. Additionally, as the professor surely knows, another big chunk is wasted by for-profit insurers’ pushing paper around to make sure that they can get away with paying as little for our medical needs as their campaign contributions will afford.
Not to mention the fact that because we are hopelessly divided as a nation into a gazillion pools and plans, we fail to cross-subsidize in publicly useful ways, namely, very broadly and randomly, so that the system can be financially sustainable. Even for-profit insurers cross-subsidize, but in their case they do so to make sure that they enroll the healthier (and cheaper) “customers”, so that they can bring increasingly handsome profits to shareholders. And they dump the sicker and poorer on increasingly strained public plans (and then blame Medicare or Medicaid for their “financial unsustainability”).
So if rather than insisting on “uniquely American solutions”, such as leaving to for-profit insurance the task of financing health care for the majority of Americans, we did what every industrialized nation in the world has done, namely, ban profit from the financing of medically necessary services (yes, even the Swiss, as of 1996, have concluded that “it’s the profit, stupid”), and move to a social insurance system, the scenario, indeed the prices, painted by professor Reinhardt would never occur, so the question would be moot: both group A and B members in his thought experiment would be very happy, I suspect, cross-subsidizing whoever happens to be sick at any given moment, at dirt prices (compared to what we Americans pay), and both groups would likely feel this is fairer than subsidizing health insurance shareholders and CEO’s fat paychecks. No less importantly, they would know that we (or our children) can follow the jobs of our dreams (or even start a business!), rather than limit ourselves to those that include “health benefits” (whose numbers are decreasing as we speak).
Put another way, everybody would benefit from substantially lower health care prices, none of us would see our health care money go to financing wasteful paper-pushing, and cross-subsidization would occur for the benefit of the overall public good, in the same way that it does for any number of other things, such as Fire Departments, public schools, or National Defense. And what is more, we would finally enjoy the freedom to choose what really matters: our doctors or medical establishments, rather than from within those euphemistic lists of “preferred providers”.
Everybody would benefit, that is, except from those who make a living either at the expense of Americans’ health or by sponsoring Orwellian health care debates tantamount to those in the Middle Ages attempting to establish the number of angels that can dance on the tip of a pin.
And do not believe those who tell you that it is your fault because of your unhealthy lifestyles: Britons spend a fraction of what we do — 95% of them never see a medical bill in their lives – yet there isn’t a shred of evidence that they go more often to the gym or eat more broccoli than we do (however recommendable broccoli and exercise might otherwise be). And neither can “technology” or “aging population” be the whole story: if not, ask the Japanese, who use far more technology than we do, visit doctors substantially more often, and are substantially older than we are, yet pay 50% of what we pay.
Finally, don’t believe in those who tell you that social insurance is “politically unfeasible” either: when Otto von Bismarck started social insurance in Germany back in 1883, he did not do so because he was a socialist, but rather to defeat socialism, because he believed that “the social insecurity of the workers makes them a peril to the state”.
We can’t expect meaningful change from politicians or experts:
It’s really up to us.
Add a comment January 4th, 2010 by Matthew Anderson
Last day to register for Lobby Day 2010
Location: Sacramento State University and California Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA
All – Inclusive in Registration Fee:
Registrants from Southern California:
- Roundtrip Luxury Cruiser Bus to Sacramento event
ALL Registered Participants:
- Hotel Suites in Embassy Suites, Sacramento
- Meals (Sunday Lunch; Monday Breakfast and Lunch) — all except Saturday night on the town
- Training Materials and Expert Training in Lobbying and Health Advocacy Skills
- Networking with Health Professional Students from all over CA
- Hearing Exciting Guest Speakers from Health Professional, Medical, Legislative Spheres
- And More!
Relevance to Your Healthcare Career
- This timely event will bring together about 600 health professional students from California to become involved in current healthcare reform and advocate for the coverage of all Californians, directly with our elected legislators in Sacramento, for the fifth year in a row.
- The two-day event includes: Training Day featuring collaboration between health professional student leaders, physicians, public officials and health policy experts to work towards a future of an effective and just health delivery system. On day two, pre-arranged Lobby Day legislative visits put it all into action!
- Enjoy this exciting conference to learn about Single Payer Healthcare and the California Universal Healthcare Act, CA Senate Bill 810 (SB 810).
- See and discuss what SB 810 will do for our future patients and how it will improve the health and financial health for all Californians and us as future healthcare providers.
- We will also educate about current national reform bills, and how SB 810 is relevant within those frameworks. More details to come from our confirmed speakers.
Goals of the Day
- This will prepare you for active participation and leadership of a legislative visit team.
- You will emerge from this CAHPSA Lobby Day weekend as an advocate who is able to do outreach and head advocacy in your community to promote support for Single-Payer Healthcare among your colleagues in your health professional or pre-health professional academic institution, on campus in general, and in your network and community.
- You’ll be prepared to present the facts in the face of organized political opposition to meaningful healthcare reform
Conference Programming
TRAINING DAY: Sunday, January 10, 2010, Sacramento State University, CSUS Union
11:00 – 12:00 Registration and Box Lunch (included in Registration Fee).
12:00 – 12:10 Welcome by Lobby Day Team.
12:10 – 12:20 Martha Penry, CSEA Area Director, “Welcome to Lobby Day”
12:30 - 1:20 Wendell Potter, Former health Insurance Executive, Senior fellow on Health Policy, The Center for Media and Democracy.
1:30 - 2:20 Richard Quint, MD, MPH, Board of Directors for California Physicians’ Alliance, UCSF Emeritus health Sciences Clinical Professor, “Single Payer 101″
2:30 - 3:20 Sara Rogers, Senior Health Policy Staffer to Senator Leno, “All about SB 810″
3:30 - 4:20 William Skeen, MD, MPH, Legislative Advocacy Consultant and Expert, “How to Frame your Argument and Talk to your Legislator”
4:40 - 5:50 Breakut Sessions – “Arguments for and Against SB 810, Planning your legislative Visit”
6:00 – 6:45 Michael Wilkes, MD, Director of global Health and Professor of Medicine, former Vice Dean of Medical Education at UC Davis, Reviewer of JAMA, Lancet, NEJM, “Our Role as Healthcare Providers and Social Responsibility”
7:00pm Dinner at River City and Hardrock Cafe (not included in Registration Fee)
LOBBY DAY: Monday, January 11, 2010, Embassy Suites, and Capitol Building, North Steps
7:00 - 9:00 Sumptuous Breakfast (included in Registration Fee)
9:00 - 10:00 Lobby Day Teams meet for final practice of Legislative Visits.
10:00 – 10:45 Box Lunch (included in Registration Fee)
10:45 – 11:00 Gather outside Embassy Suites for march
11:00 – 12:00 March through Downtown Sacramento to CA Capitol Building Rally
. 12:00 - 1:00 Giant Rally on NORTH steps of California Capitol Building
. 1:00 - 4:30 Legislative Visits with your Senator or Assemblymember in Capitol Building
5:00 Return Home: Buses to Southern California depart from Capitol Building area
Registration Fee: All this for the low fee of only $45.
Registration is open to all Healthcare Professional Students of all disciplines and degree programs, including pre-Health Professional Students, graduates, friends and supporters of CAHPSA and Single-Payer Healthcare Reform.
Locations
Travel arrangements
- Charter Bus from Southern California to Sacramento and return. (included in Registration Fee)
- Carpoolers will have parking on the Sacramento State University campus.
- The closest airport is Sacramento.
- Charter Bus service to all activities within Sacramento area: Night on the Town, March, and return from Legislative Visits. (included in Registration Fee)
Housing
Shared hotel rooms and suites for all at the Embassy Suites Hotel, downtown Sacramento (included in Registration Fee)
Additional Events: Sunday, January 10, 2010 (Optional, not included in Registration Fee):
- Night On the Town in the Capital, including dinner. Please join us for a Capital Special Social at River City and Hardrock Cafe (not included in registration fee) on the evening of Sunday, January 10th. Details to follow.
- Limited scholarships available. If you need financial assistance, please contact CaPA.Fellow@PNHP.org with the following information: name, school, educational program, reason for need and amount you are able to pay.
Questions? Contact the planning team for this conference:
Add a comment January 2nd, 2010 by Matthew Anderson
In closing 2009, the editors at the New York Times make a “case for (health care) reform”. They build their case on the well documented fact that millions in America are uninsured, that the for profit insurance sector is getting richer as more and more Americans go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills, and that the “political timing is right” because the Democrats have the House, the Senate and the White House.
But the question remains, will “reform” Democrats-style save the day? And how exactly will it do it, and on the back of whom?
The best rebuttal of the New York Times position (which in this case reflects the position of the Democrat majority and the White House) that I could find was written by Dr. Don McCanne, senior policy analyst at Physicians for a National Health Program. Dr. McCanne argues compellingly that “the Times doesn’t get it”. It is well worth reading in its entirety.
The only point I can add to this otherwise brilliant analysis of the bill is that it is important to not lump “opponents of reform” in the same bag. And one should be weary of those who talk about “enemies of reform”, using emotionally loaded terms to substitute for good arguments and relevant evidence.
After all, there could be disagreements about whether administering aspirin to a patient is the right thing to do or not, but one person may argue that aspirin is the wrong thing to do because aspirin is never useful, and they would be wrong – it is very useful for some things — while another may argue that aspirin is useless because the patient has cancer, and they would be right – aspirin is useless in the treatment of cancer.
So while Radical conservatives argue that reform Obama/Congress style is bad because it would get “big government” between patients and doctors, the Medicare for All, single payer community argues that the House and Senate bills are bad because they will lock us in the grip of for-profit health insurers for years to come, by making it a federal crime not to buy their products (and even subsidizing with taxpayer money the buying of their products), while failing to control costs, and leaving millions uninsured or underinsured.
So is there another way to think about reform? Of course there is. It is called social insurance and it has been adopted beginning in the late 19th century by every other industrialized economy with the glaring exception of us (yes, U.S.!).
The time to demand real change and to increase the cost on our representatives of not listening to ordinary Americans has come, and it is now.
Health care students in California can still join single payer advocates in Lobby Day, on Monday January 11. For more information and to sign-up for the two-day event click here.
1 Comment December 1st, 2009 by Matthew Anderson
Our colleagues at THE POINT, a South Bronx Community Development Corporation, sent us the following flyer for the South Bronx Food & Film Expo, this Saturday, December 5th (noon to 5PM).
Their announcement reads:
If you are interested in growing your own food, or having better access to healthy food, or getting involved with changing current food policies, this is the event for you! Our expo features groups that can help you do all this and more. Or if you simply want to come sample free local healthy foods, maybe learn a thing or two, and watch a few great films, you are welcome as well!
Rethinking the way we eat
This event will showcase some of the activism around rethinking the way we produce and consume food.
- Urban Farming, one of the sponsors, is an organization that promotes the use of urban spaces to plant gardens. They have developed the concept of vertical farming - “edible” food-producing wall panels mounted on walls of buildings, growing fresh produce (without the use of pesticides).”
- Bascom Catering will be providing free, locally-sourced Vegan lunches.
- Short films from the Bronx will be showcased. As an example, this link shows a shortened version of an urban farming video made at the Point.
- Two feature films will be shown. What’s on Your Plate? and FRESH! What’s on Your Plate? is a documentary that follows two eleven year old NYC girls as they try to figure out how food gets onto their plates. FRESH! focuses on the efforts of activists across the country to “reinvent the food system.”
- An interactive expo will feature groups from the South Bronx and beyond that grow and supply healthy local food, and fight for change in food policy.
Details: This event is free, but there is a $10 suggested contribution. Food/clothing donations are encouraged. Childcare will be provided. For more information, contact: Adam, actionatthepoint@yahoo.com
For more information on local food activism, consult some of our earlier posts on food and nutrition.
posted by Matt Anderson, MD
2 Comments May 15th, 2009 by Matthew Anderson
The following news (brought to my attention by my dear friend Cristina), from today’s Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now radio show, provides a good exercise in critical thinking: finding the flaws in president Obama’s argument (invalid inferences, false assumptions, etc) that ” it is best to build on the health care system we have”, rather than presumably adopt too radical solutions like single payer (I myself could find four flaws in two minutes! For a fuller argument for why it is misguided at best to build on “the health care system we have” read “Not Change We Can Believe In“).
According to the president, “the vast majority” of Americans get coverage from their jobs, and presumably are satisfied with it.
Another interesting accompanying headline is “Health Industry Says Obama Overstated Pledge to Cut Costs” (surprise surprise!). It looks like, after all, companies “never agreed to specific yearly cuts, but only vague voluntary goals”.
For both clips, click here.
Obama Questioned on Single Payer
At a town hall-style event in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, Thursday, local resident Linda Allison asked President Obama why the White House and the Democratic-led Congress have ruled out single payer.
Linda Allison: “My question is, so many people go bankrupt using their credit cards to pay for healthcare. Why have they taken single payer off the plate? And why is Senator Baucus on the Finance Committee discussing healthcare, when he has received so much money from the pharmaceutical companies? Isn’t it a conflict of interest?”
President Obama: “If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense. That’s the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world. The only problem is that we’re not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based healthcare. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their healthcare, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get healthcare from their employers, and you’ve got this system that’s already in place. We don’t want a huge disruption as we go into healthcare reform, where suddenly we’re trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy.”
Obama did not address the second part of Linda Allison’s question about Democratic Senator Max Baucus, who has excluded single-payer advocates from Senate Finance Committee hearings. Allison says she was partly inspired to ask the question after viewing Democracy Now!‘s coverage on Wednesday of single-payer advocates who disrupted Baucus’s hearing.
Add a comment May 13th, 2009 by Matthew Anderson
Advocates of single-payer universal healthcare-the system favored by most Americans-continue to protest their exclusion from discussions on healthcare reform. On Tuesday, five doctors, nurses and single-payer advocates were arrested at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, bringing the total number of arrests in less than a week to thirteen. We speak with two of those arrested: Single Payer Action founder Russell Mokhiber and Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Click here to watch the video [includes rush transcript]
Add a comment May 12th, 2009 by Matthew Anderson
Click here to read the Canadian Health Coalition‘s letter to President Obama. It is worth every word of it.
It debunks an advertising campaign where Brian Day, past Canadian Medical Association president, talks about the “evils” of Canadian Medicare, a universal, single payer system, that, according to Dr. Day, leaves patients “languishing and suffering in waiting lists”.
What the campaign does not say is that while Dr. Day may have complained about Canadian health care, he has also said that “the US system is a poor system to emulate”.
It also fails to say that Dr. Day’s private surgical clinic is under investigation for illegal billing and, according to the Coalition “does not represent the values of Canada”.
The Canadian Health Coalition is “a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting and expanding Canada’s public health system for the benefit of all Canadians. The CHC was founded in 1979 at the Canadian Labour Congress-sponsored S.O.S. Medicare conference attended by Tommy Douglas, Justice Emmett Hall and Monique Begin. The coalition includes organizations representing seniors, women, churches, nurses, health care workers and anti-poverty activists from across Canada”.
Its goals include “creating good health, preserving and strengthening the Canada Health Act (the foundation of Medicare), making the health care system democratic, accountable and representative, providing a continuum of care from large institutions to the home, and eliminating profit-making from illness”. (For a full listing and description of all goals click here).
