Coverage in USA and elsewhere as related to practices of employers in providing for employees’ health needs; Medicaid and Medicare, how budget changes and extensions of drug care coverage under Medicare have affected availability of insurance; monopolistic practices in health insurance system.
HEADLINE
3/25/10
DENNIS KUCINICH MEDITATED IN CAPITOL ROTUNDA, THEN DECIDED TO SAVE THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY AND THE UNITED STATES BY VOTING FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL. In an interview with Esquire, the leader of the fight against the bill explains how he went from self-described "last man standing" of progressives opposed to the bill to falling in line with numerous members of the Progressive Caucus who pledged to vote against a bill without a "public option"---then voted for a bill without a public option.
INTERNATIONAL
Websites:
Analysis & views:
8/15/09
Canadian doctor who operates private health care clinic plays (literally) the role cast him by an Ontario deputy prime minister as the "Darth Vader" of Canadian medicine.
Books:
Video/Film:
Other Media:
NATIONAL
Websites:
Physicians for a National Health Insurance Program: http://www.pnhp.org/
National Center for Health Statistics: Health Insurance Coverage: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/hinsure.htm
Urban Institute: Health Insurance (abstracts of published articles and papers): http://www.urban.org/health/insurance.cfm
Analysis & views:
3/26/10
THE TITANIC BATTLE BETWEEN OBAMA DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICAN TEABAGGERS ON HEALTH CARE REFORM: YEAH LIKE A TV PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING MATCH. As Bruce A. Dixon sees it, the "battle" was between "combatants" actually working for the same boss with the same goal, which was accomplished by the legislation: "fake" reform that would benefit the health insurance and medical care providers industry and leave largely untouched the medical needs of the American people
3/25/10
DENNIS KUCINICH MEDITATED IN CAPITOL ROTUNDA, THEN DECIDED TO SAVE THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY AND THE UNITED STATES BY VOTING FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL. In an interview with Esquire, the leader of the fight against the bill explains how he went from self-described "last man standing" of progressives opposed to the bill to falling in line with numerous members of the Progressive Caucus who pledged to vote against a bill without a "public option"---then voted for a bill without a public option.
3/24/10
HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL SIGNED ON SUNDAY, ON TUESDAY, JOHN NICHOLS OF NATION SAYS ITS TIME TO START REFORMING THE REFORM BILL. The bill is described as but the "first step" toward a true reform like Medicare for All, and progressives should begin immediately to move along these additional steps. Many critics in accompanying comments to Common Dreams reprint of the article question the availabity of a mechanism of this reform when virtually every "progressive" member of Congress put aside his/her commitment to universal and affordable health care to support a measure that fell far short of these criteria of a "reform" bill
COMMON DREAMS
3/23/10
QUIRKY AS USUAL, MICHAEL MOORE REACTS TO PASSAGE OF HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL BY CHASTISING REPUBLICANS FOR VOTING AGAINST IT. He says that Republicans should actually be thankful for the bill, because its passage will produce improvements in medical care that will save the lives of themselves and their families. Numerous Common Dreams commenters take Moore to the woodshed and give him a thrashing for his apparent turn from critic to admirer of the legislation, that skeptics say will produce precious little improvement of health care for Republicans and anyone else.
3/23/10
It "makes no sense" constitutionally, says a Wake Forest law professor, but state level suits against implementation of federal health care legislation are likely to last for many months.
3/21/10
Back from the brink: New York Times reporters help construct an urban legend of how Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi rescue a near-dead health care reform bill to the "historical" one expected to be approved today.
3/16/10
2/3 of state legislatures in the U.S. are preparing for some kind of non-cooperation with features of the health care reform measure now under consideration by Congress.
3/7/10
GOLDMAN SACHS ANALYSIS HAS GOOD NEWS AND BAD FOR PROSPECTS OF PASSAGE OF HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL. Investment firm advises investers to put their money in two mega-corporations in the health insurance industry, citing anticipated large increases in premiums in a market with "weak competition" in which big firms will "walk away" from existing clients to seek better-paying one. This prospect is likely to be the "centerpiece" of Obama administration's final push for passage of the reform legislation. The bad news comes from the G/S finding that employers are still largely skeptical of the "reform" legislation, feeling that in the confused situation, "nothing" (in the way of change) may be better than any "something" being offered
2/28/10
DEMOCRATIC CENTRISTS AND HEALTH CARE REFORM: ANTI-ABORTION + FISCAL CONSERVATISM = NO BILL. Strategists can talk about "conciliation" as a way to get the bill through the Senate by simple majority vote, but the situation is far more precarious in the House, which passed their original version by only a 5 vote margin and several Democrats who voted for it (like Bart Stupak) say they will vote against what amounts to the Senate version of the bill if it fails to limit abortion coverage and/or is as expensive as that version projects. If these "centrist" objections are met to secure their votes, some "liberal" members who voted for the bill may now against it. A legislative Catch 22.
2/26/10
PRESIDENT OBAMA GETS SOME BI-PARTISAN AGREEMENT WITH A REPUBLICAN AT HEALTH CARE SUMMIT. During a daylong televised meeting, he agrees with the proposal of Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn to "use undercover regulators posing as patients to root out fraud by doctors and hospitals." Apart from such agreement, prospects of a comprehensive reform measure remain dim, as no Republicans are won over to the program nor are liberal Democrats who note that single payer has long since been off the table of consideration and its weak sister, the public option, has been dropped us well. What is "bi-partisan" now seems to be bi-partisan opposition to the measure.
2/16/10
THE NATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE ANTHEM: U.S. HEALTH INSURANCE BEGINNING A DEATH SPIRAL. The decision of Anthem/Blue Cross in California to raise its premium rates by 39% sends shock waves through the health care reform debate. Anthem argues, correctly enough, that spiraling health care costs necessitate the increase. But they also bid fair to generate another spiral, that of the health insurance industry itself. As rates rise, more healthy people will find them unaffordable as they deem their risks of illness to be less, leaving fewer and more illness-prone people in a "pool" of people who will have to pay higher premiums to the degree they will find it more economical to stay out of the covered pool, even if they have to pay a penalty for failure to obey an insurance mandate, which penalty would be less than their premiums. This is the "death cycle" in which each escalation of premiums creates diminishment of the coverage pool. Only if, says Joseph Sher, all people are put in one pool with a single payer insurance program can this cycle ever be overcome.
2/12/10
BIG PHARMA'S DEAL-MAKER RESIGNS AS HEALTH CARE REFORM GOES FROM "NEAR INEVITABILITY" TO "DAUNTING CAUSE." Billy Tauzin resigns as head of pharmaceutical industry lobby group. He made the "deal" last year with President Obama that traded industry support for health care reform for an agreement to limit industry losses from cost controls. With the reform bill now on life support as the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate after the MA election, the deal seems to be off as well as the lustre of his prowess as a deal-maker.
1/30/10
WE WILL NOT BE MARGINALIZED. A day after a futile attempt to contact President Obama at the White House to respond to his request to hear a "better approach" to health care reform, Dr. Margaret Flowers makes another attempt along with her colleague, Dr. Carol Paris. As Obama goes into the Renaissance Hotel in Baltimore to "hear" from Republican critics, they hold a sign on the street: "Letting You Know; Medicare for All." As Secret Service and Baltimore police say they must leave the sidewalk which they say is "hotel property" and re-locate across the street they refuse to do so, saying "we will not be marginalized." They are arrested and booked at the downtown police station. It's all video-taped.
VIDEO
1/30/10
THEY WERE MARGINALIZED (BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AT LEAST). As President Obama, inside a Republican "retreat" inside a Balimore hotel, is spending an hour and 22 minutes in a "lively and robust debate" with Republican critics, a different variety of "critics" (doctors advocating single payer health care) are being arrested for trying to hold a sign in front of the hotel. As they stand off authorities for several minutes with their polite but firm refusal, they might have been thought to have created a "newsworthy" event; but the two reporters who reported the "debate" inside with political opponents see nothing "fit to print" in the New York Times of a call from the street for debate from those among his "progressive base."
1/30/10
Higher Medicare co-pays are leading more people to visit hospitals rather than doctors' offices.
1/29/10
BOWLING FOR SINGLE PAYER: JUST MAIL IT IN. In a scene reminiscent of Michael Moore's appearance at the gate of Charlton Heston's home to ask the former NRA head for support of anti-gun legislation after Columbine, a single payer advocate, Dr. Margaret Flowers, responds to a presidential request to let him hear about any "better approach" to health care reform than the one now stalled in Congress. She takes an envelope of material to the gate of the White House and is turned away from seeing the President personally or even having her envelope hand-delivered to him. The gatekeeper insists that she mail in her information (security concerns you know, as if anthrax were never delivered through the mail.)
1/28/10
HEALTH CARE REFORM? THAT IS SO 2009! In his State of the Union address, Obama signals a shift in his priorities from health care reform to jobs creation. While he says his party must not "run for the hills" on his domestic agenda, he effectively starts that trek while belittling himself for some "bad politics" and failure to explain the bill so the America people could understand it, and took some digs at those who demanded special favors in return for voting for the legislation and accused Republicans specifically as being a party of negativity.
1/21/10
OBAMACARE: WHAT A DIFFERENCE ONE SENATE SEAT LOSS CAN MAKE. On the day following the Massachusetts election of a Republican candidate, Obama joins the chorus of those bemoaning that the health care reform bill, already languishing in Congress with House and Senate differences, will need further to be "pared down" in order to draw "bi-partisan support." He says this paring down must preserve American "core values" that he cites as medical cost containment and reform of health insurance "abuses," notably omitting the signature extension of coverage to millions of additional Americans. Even on the two core values, he admits that forcing insurance companies to make reforms (including, presumably, requiring them to cover "pre-existing conditions") would drive up cost of insurance premiums. So one is left to wonder what WILL be left by the time the bill is pared down to accommodate Republican and blue dog Democrats' demands (really a tri-partisan political situation.)
1/20/10
MASSACHUSETTS REPUBLICAN RIDES HIS "PEOPLE'S SEAT" PICKUP TO WASHINGTON, THROWS HEALTH CARE REFORM INTO A TIZZY. The nightmare comes true for Democrats, when an insurgent Republican claims "Edward Kennedy's seat" in the Senate and becomes the chamber's "41st vote," sufficient to sustain a filibuster against the measure.
1/14/10
UNDER HEALTH CARE "REFORM" BILLS BEING CONSIDERED, A FAMILY WITH A $50k INCOME COULD STILL WIND UP PAYING 20% OF ITS INCOME FOR HEALTH CARE. And this is the "best case scenario" for a family able to afford a relatively low premium rate for employer-provided insurance with a generous public subsidy. The drain on family income could become much greater if legislators in the future decide the subsidy program is too expensive and begin to cut back on public subsidies.
1/9/10
CELEBRATE THIS! WILL OBAMA BE ABLE TO JAW-BONE U.S. UNIONS INTO SUPPORTING AN EXCISE TAX ON HEALTH CARE BENEFITS? This is apparently the intention for a meeting scheduled on January 11 between the President and union leaders who, along with most of public opinion, are opposed to this tax which is predicated on taxation benefits to employers that they will supposedly pass along to workers in the form of wage increases. It seems that union leaders will be asked to "celebrate" a reform measure that reforms their members out of quite a bit of disposable (after tax) income.
1/3/10
WILL AN "OPT OUT" PROVISION THAT ALLOWS STATES TO ESTABLISH THEIR OWN SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAMS BE THE "LAST STAND" FOR THAT IDEA? Greg Kaufman thinks this may be the case, noting that the House has the opportunity for its confused and slumbering Progressive Caucus of 81 members to hold out on their support of a health care reform measure that fails to include this waiver provision. Kaufman sees this as a final opportunity to start the process of a truly universal health care system, viewing the history of Saskatchewan as an "incubabor" of Canada's system as a model that could work in the U.S.A. If Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman can alter a measure for their personal preferences in a bill, why not 81 "progressives?"
1/3/10
Texas becomes first U.S. state to require health insurers to cover costs of cardiac prevention screening tests for older residents.
12/29/09
MEDICARE AND EXPANDED HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE: YOU CAN'T SELL THE SAME PONY TWICE (OR CAN YOU?) Senator Jon Kyl uses the "pony" analogy to attack an alleged "double-counting" that helped sell the health care reform bill passed by the Senate. In this view, disputed by the bill's supporters, the "raid" on Medicare's funds to pay for expanded coverage will produce the money that will be counted yet again in the supposed "shoring up" of Medicare trust funds. These accounting intricacies leave "Grandma's" health care still up in the air.
12/27/09
HEALTH CARE REFORM: KILL THE BILL OR PASS IT, THEN IMPROVE IT? Peter Dreier argues that calls for the defeat of a defective health care bill should be replaced by a recognition that a comprehensive health care system can be developed incrementally, with passage of the bill a valuable "first step" toward that ultimate goal. First posted on Huffington Post, the article's reprint on Common Dreams elicits a torrent of comments that severely question the "pass it now, reform it later" strategy.
COMMON DREAMS
12/21/09
"A NATURAL PART OF THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS." Presidential advisor David Axelrod's justification for the inclusion in the health care reform bill of measures designed to benefit particular constituencies of various Senators, as the body hustles to obtain (finally) the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture on the bill, as Senator Ben Nelson comes round and he as well as other reluctant Senators find provisions favorable to their states tucked quietly into the bill. (Wasn't the Obama administration to have introduced a "new way of doing business in Washington)?
12/20/09
THE LIEBERMAN/NELSON INSURANCE REFORM ACT OF 2009 (OR 2010) IS READY FOR PASSAGE IN SENATE. The final piece of the puzzle of how to overcome a threatened filibuster is put in place as yet another "compromise" (to limit abortion service coverage) brings on the 60th supporter, Democrat Ben Nelson, required for passage. Since several pro-choice members of the House have pledged to vote against a measure with this feature, the fate of this "compromised" bill is yet to be determined.
12/18/09
AFL-CIO SAYS HEALTH CARE BILL MUST BE CHANGED..."OR ELSE." Organized labor demands that either the public option or expanded Medicare be restored to the bill now under consideration. As the report of this event is re-posted on Common Dreams, commenters there express deep skepticism about the effectiveness of these demands, since labor leaders have show a proclivity to offer their electoral and other support to the Democratic Party regardless what stances the party has taken in relation to their "or else" demands. (File under Idle Threats?)
COMMON DREAMS.
12/17/09
BRUCE DIXON ON THE "UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE" BILL THAT CONGRESS IS HELL BENT TO PASS BY THE END OF THE YEAR. Dixon says the measure is neither "universal" in its coverage nor does it deliver any better "health care" to the American people. What it does deliver is a bailout for insurance companies, a bonanza of profit to an industry with millions of new customers from people mandated to buy inadequate insurance at rates they can't afford to pay.
12/17/09
"IF WE DON'T DO THIS, NOBODY ARGUES WITH THE FACT THAT HEALTH CARE COSTS ARE GOING TO CONSUME THE ENTIRE FEDERAL BUDGET." President Obama delivers this zinger in his interview with ABC's Charles Gibson. The "this" to which he refers is the health care reform measure which may come out of Congress which, in order to secure its passage, has been denuded of virtually every provision that might actually contain health care costs. Hyberbole 101?
12/16/09
DR. HOWARD DEAN DECLARES HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL DEAD IN SENATE AFTER MAJOR SURGERY BY JOE LIEBERMAN. Majority "leader" Harry Reid accedes to demand of Lieberman that public option as well as expanded Medicare coverage be eliminated from the bill. This effectively kills the measure as a "health reform" bill and converts it into one of "insurance reform" and Dean urges Senators to vote against the bill and essentially to start over, using the House version of the bill as a model. Commenters on Common Dreams comment diversely and at length about the roles in this drama of both Joseph Lieberman and Howard Dean.
COMMON DREAMS.
12/14/09
HO, HO, HO! SENATORS LIEBERMAN AND NELSON HAVE SEASONAL SURPRISE FOR SENATOR REID. As the Majority Leader touts a "compromise" on health care reform that will allow circumventing of a Republican filibuster against the measure, he has relied on additions and subtractions from the bill designed to garner the necessary 60 votes for cloture. On the issue of a "buy in" to Medicare for those 55 and over and on inclusion of a measure barring insurance payments for abortion services, both Lieberman and Senator Ben Nelson indicate they will vote against cloture on the bill. Senator Reid is left not knowing "what to do" about a measure that President Obama has said would pass the Senate by the end of this year.
12/9/09
NEW YORK TIMEs SPINS EFFORTS IN CONGRESS TO CUT HEALTH COVERAGES AS "PROFILES IN COURAGE." Questionable "Democrats" Joseph Lieberman and Arlen Specter join Republican Susan Collins in proposals to deal with runaway medical costs by, for example, reductions of Medicare for home health care. The Times writer, David Leonhardt, takes heart that a few courageous members of Congress are willing to confront the cost issue by painful coverage reductions and deal with the "scare stories" of "medical care denied" that are sure to follow the cuts.
12/8/09
FAKE DEMOCRATS: THEIR BRAY IS AS BAD AS THEIR BITE. Margot Kidder, a resident of Montana, castigates "her" Senator, Max Baucus, and the group of Blue Dog Democrats whom he represents. With the Senate version of the health care "reform" bill firmly in the clutches of Baucus, the Democratic Party needs, Kidder believes, to cure itself by a 12-step program from its addiction to tailoring its policies to the whim of its most conservative elements.
12/1/09
COBRA WITHOUT COBRA SUBSIDY: THERE GOES OUR UNEMPLOYMENT CHECK. Early this year Congress passed a "Recovery" law that allowed for a temporary subsidy which would allow unemployed workers to continue their health insurance coverage under COBRA. With the 9-months duration of the subsidy about to expire and double-digit unemployment rates, millions of Americans face the daunting prospect of having to pay COBRA premiums that, on average, are 80% of their total paychecks (In some states like Florida, the COBRA premium would be MORE than their unemployment checks.)
11/25/09
HEALTH CARE REFORM PROSPECTS ARE "IN THE HANDS" OF HARRY REID. So says Jane Hamsher, noting that Reid "has the votes" for passage of the bill without any Republican and without some blue Dog Democrats' support...if only he were to use a parliamentary called "re-conciliation." This procedure allows circumventing the power of a legislative minority by filibuster, substituting a simple majority for the 3/5 vote required to close debate and vote on a measure. Some commenters on Common Dreams reprint of this article express skepticism about filibuster-busting as good legislative procedure, removing a long-established protection against the "tyranny of the majority."
COMMON DREAMS
11/25/09
CONGRESS IS CRAFTING A "LAYAWAY PLAN" FOR HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA. This is one Republican Congressman's characterization of the fact that tax increases to support health care reform will begin long before the public sees any significant change in their health care, as major components are not scheduled to be implemented until 2013. While "analysts" suggest this is a "good thing" to have the program fully funded ahead of its actual start, look for a public sense that, as in the critique of the "old" system in which they were paying for something they weren't getting, the "new" system is deja vu all over again. If people "forget" that frustration, the Republicans who voted against the bill will be sure to "remind" them at the next election.
11/9/09
HEALTH CARE BILL GOES TO SENATE...THEY SHOOT BLUE DOGS, DON'T THEY? With unanimous Republican opposition to features of the health care reform bill narrowly passed by the House which include a watered-down "public option," Senate Democratic leaders must deal with impending GOP filibuster by holding all 58 Democrats as well as two Independents to the bill's support. With Independent Joe Lieberman already threatening to ax the bill and with an indeterminant number of conservative Democrats unlikely to provide their support, the prospect for the measure is grim indeed
11/9/09
NO SURPRISE HERE: DENNIS KUCINICH DOES THE "RIGHT" THING AND VOTES AGAINST H.R. 3962. Lee Stranahan describes as a "lonely" act of courage that Kucinich was the only progressive member of Congress to vote against a bill which contains a much weakened "public option" and mandates universal purchase of health insurance: provisions that violate President Obama's promises. (Actually a second progressive Democrat, Eric Massa, also voted against the bill.) Stranahan quotes other writers who say that the public option is a "reform" that is designed to fail and that will furnish years of Republican opportunities to assail any signficant health care reform.
11/7/09
ANTHONY WEINER HITS THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF COMMITMENTS FROM DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERSHIP. The Congressman from New York had agreed to withdraw an amendment in House committee consideration that would have replaced single payer health care system for the "reform" bill being considered, in return for a promise from Speaker Pelosi to allow a full vote on that measure in the House. Now, as the vote on the reform measures approaches, Weiner gives up on "cashing" the commitment, saying he will withdraw his amendment to help secure passage of the reform bill. Likewise Reps. Conyers and Kucinich give up on pushing HR 676 "for now."
11/2/09
New York Times writers say that Obama strategy on health care reform is "paying off " as Congress nears passage of legislation to provide health care insurance for "almost all" Americans.
10/29/09
BAIT AND SWITCH: PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS ARE BAITING HEALTH CARE REFORM WITH PROMISE OF A PUBLIC OPTION, PREPARING TO SWITCH TO A BAILOUT PLAN FOR INSURANCE COMPANIES. This is Bruce Dixon's description of the maneuver by means of which Congress hopes to pass and the President to sign a health care "reform" bill. By disguising the distinction between a public option that would be futile in achieving affordable health care for all and a truly "Medicare for all" or "single payer" system, these Democrats are playing on broad public support for a truly comprehensive health care system.
10/26/09
THE PUBLIC OPTION IN HEALTH CARE LEGISLATION: SENATOR REID FIGHTS FOR IT WHILE BARACK OBAMA DROPS IT. Article in Huffington Post describes some of the current state of play on health care legislation as Reid looks for the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster. The White House has apparently abandond the public option as a necessity to gain Republican and conservative Democratic votes. One rearguard rescuing action aims at a "trigger" provision that would activate the public option, but the article's authors say the option have slight chance of ever being pulled, citing a similar trigger on Medicare prescription drug passed in 2003 that has failed to be triggered when drug costs have not declined as mandated.
10/24/09
OBAMACARE IN TROUBLE: AARP RIDES IN TO TRY TO SAVE THE DAY. The nation's largest organization of retired people follows what Stephen Lendman's describes as its "tradition of betrayal" of its members' interest. This tradition was established in 2003 when the organization supported, to the rage of many of its members, a prescription drug coverage addition to Medicare which made drugs more costly for the elderly. Now it supports Obama's agenda of an insurance-friendly health care system "reform" that will deliver much new business to insurance companies, including those operated by AARP itself. Will there be another membership defection as in 2003?
10/22/09
OBAMA'S FIGHT WITH INSURANCE COMPANY HEADS: FULL OF SOUND AND FURY AND SIGNIFYING A TV "WRESTLING" MATCH. According to Glen Ford, the President and the barons of the health insurance industry are putting on a sham show of opposition as the industry "threatens" to withdraw its support from his health care plan and President "threatens" to lift the companies' tax exempt status. It's all choreographed stage combat, as the "fix" is already in, with a plan that will deliver millions of new insurance customers to the companies, their premium payments guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers.
10/21/09
LET US SING THE PRAISES OF HEALTH CARE "COVERAGE." Boston Globe columnist sings this tune in an article describing the results of a public health survey showing that the uninsured are more likely than the insured to be suffering from "undiscovered" illnesses, and uses this fact to argue for the extension of coverage to more of the presently uninsured. Comments on the Common Dreams reprint of this article present a critique of this view, noting that more insurance coverage does not necessarily equate to better health care, if the process of coverage expansion leads to a system of higher insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays that renders insurance as inadequate to pay for the filling of people's health care needs.
COMMON DREAMS:
10/19/09
DEMOCRATS AND THE PUBLIC OPTION: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. As progressive mobilizations continue in support of this endangered provision of the health care reform bill emerging from Congress, Leonard Rodberg of Physicians for a National Health Program issues a stinging critique of the likely effects of passage of the legislation, even if and perhaps especially if it contains the public option provision. By introducing an element of additional complexity (disguised as choice) in the health care system, restricting to a small number those eligible for the public option, delaying coverage until 2013 and doing little if anything to contain health care costs, the legislation would disappoint the "reform" expectations of the public, and allow Republicans extended time to criticize the plan before the 2010 and 2012 elections that could conceivably return political control to the GOP
10/17/09
Two Georgia Republican congressmen, staunch opponents of health care reform, are getting generous campaign contributions from health care industry lobbyists
10/17/09
"THE ABANDONED SON OF THE UNITED STATES." A janitor in the public hospital of Tegucipalpa Honduras laughingly referred to an American reporter on a visit to the country who broke his arm and was treated for free at the hospital (5 years ago) and had to sleep on the hospital floor, where the janitor found him, while waiting for his friends to pick up him up. The reporter surveys the condition of health care both in Honduras and around the word and finds that, compared to other countries, the U.S. does in fact abandon many of its sons (and daughters) to a health care "system" that does not deliver affordable care to the masses of the people.
10/16/09
Fund for Massachusetts state assistance for health insurance for unemployed workers about to run dry as unemployment in state reaches 33 year high.
10/16/09
Insured Houston workers face 10% rise in costs for their medical care next year, as the average worker will pay $4791 for premiums, deductibles and co-payments.
10/13/09
DOMESTIC ABUSE VICTIMS: HEALTH CARE REFORM TO BELIEVE IN. Many people with histories of having been abused by their relatives are denied insurance health insurance on grounds of a "pre-existing condition" that makes them ineligible for coverage. Awareness of this fact makes them reluctant to report abuse incidents to their doctors. The Obama administration and leaders in Congress vow to change this situation.
10/11/09
THE LOBBYISTS ARE WINNING. Special interests (business and labor) are close to derailing any remnants of efforts to curb medical care costs in the U.S., which have doubled in the last 20 years and now constitute 16% of all expenditures by Americans.
10/10/09
WILL A HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL PASS THE SENATE? THAT MAY BE UP TO JOE LIEBERMAN. In the face of a seemingly inevitable Republican filibuster, Democrats will require 60 votes on cloture on debate for the bill to come up for vote. Max Baucus, in rejecting the public option, says he can "count to 60" and the bill won't survive filibuster with that provision. But will it survive without the public option? Those who can count are counting on Joe Lieberman, the "independent" who "caucuses" with the Democrats to support cloture. Will he? As M.S. Bellows sees it, the ambitious Lieberman (whom he calls the Independent from Hartford Insurance) seems to be horse-trading between retaining the committee chairmanship he gains from his Democratic caucusing and what he might gain if he joined the Republican party in next year's off-year elections and secured another chairmanship in what the Republicans hope will be an off-year shift to their re-gaining a Senate majority.
10/9/09
"Mad as Hell" doctor submits open letter to President Obama asking for consideration of single payer health insurance plan.
10/8/09
NOT INVITED TO THE PARTY. 6-minute video of a broadcast from Real News depicting the way in which proponents of single payer health care plan have been consistently barred from participation in any presidential rallies dealing with the issue of health care reform, as "Doctors for Obama" types dominate these affairs.
10/1/09
POLITICS BY WINNEBAGO; MAD AS HELL DOCTORS FROM OREGON COMPLETE CROSS-COUNTRY TOUR FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH INSURANCE, BRINGING THEIR SHOW INSIDE THE BELTWAY. The tour that began September 8 in Portland arrives in D.C. for a rally and (hopefully) a conference with President Obama (maybe on his plane to Copenhagen?) on their demands for health care "reform" that goes far beyond the insurance-industry-friendly health care bill that is now taking shape in Congress.
9/24/09
THERE ARE THREE VERSIONS OF A "PUBLIC OPTION" FOR HEALTH INSURANCE, BUT ONLY ONE HAS A REMOTE CHANCE OF PASSAGE. One is the "robust public option" that would create an effective public insurance alternative, but this never has been seriously considered, but rather the "Obama care" public option that promises to cover no more than 5% of Americans which provides the fig leaf covering to make an industry-friendly bill acceptable to progressives. A truly public option, single payer or Medicare-for-all has been introduced as HR676 but so far its natural supporters in Congress, the Progressive Caucus and the Black Caucus, have failed to rally to its support.
9/23/09
DEAL OR NO DEAL ON DRUG COSTS BETWEEN WHITE HOUSE AND BIG PHARMA? Members of Congress, including some Democrats, seem to be in rebellion against industry support of health care reform in return for promised $86 billion reduction in drug costs. Senator Bill Nelson introduces amendment that would scuttle the deal, and voting may come today on what Senator Schumer calls a "metaphor" of the shape of the bill that is ultimately passed.
9/18/09
THE MAN BEHIND THE BILL: MEET MAX BAUCUS. If the powerful Montana Democrat has authored the "health care reform bill" that is likely to be enacted into law, the public might like a little more light to be shed on the bill's author. One such light-thrower is Joshua Frank, a fellow Montanan who idolized Baucus as a youngster, only to come round to the view that, as much as any member of Congress, he is a creature of servitude to the corporate powers that sustain him in office.
9/17/09
HEALTH CARE REFORM: "ONLY THE WRONGHEADED AND RACIST ARE TAKING ACTION AT THIS CRITICAL TIME." (MARGARET KIMBERLEY) A Republican congressman yells "liar" during Obama's health care speech; tea-baggers carry pictures of Obama as Hitler---the meanest of regressive forces are the squeaky wheel that gets the grease of public attention. Meanwhile progressives are stunned into silence and unwilling to call out Obama and the Democrats on the mendacious character of their so-called "reform" bill.
9/17/09
Health care industry is relatively comfortable with Baucus health care plan, seeing it as the lesser of several evils in plans being circulated.
9/17/09
Attacks come from right and left on health care reform plan issued by Senator Baucus.
9/15/09
Gallup poll in aftermath of Obama speech to Congress about health care reform reveals depth of public skepticism about reform legislation.
9/13/09
MASSIVE D.C. "TEA PARTY" MAY HAVE SEALED THE FATE OF SIGNIFICANT HEALTH CARE REFORM. Largest assembled crowd since Obama inauguration marches down Pennsylvania Avenue carrying pictures of Obama looking like Hitler and captions of "Liar, Liar." It is not only a rally against "socialist" health care but against "big government" more generally, demanding gun rights and lower taxes. The President "sees" the rally from the air from his helicopter as he heads for rallies in Minnesota in support of his health care plan.
9/12/09
HEALTH CARE REFORM: ROBBING PAUL TO PAY PAUL. As the endgame of health care reform legislation approaches, the issue of paying for the changes rises to the fore, with Republicans and conservative Democrats using projected costs as basis of opposition to the bill, while the White House and congressional sponsors become fiscal conservatives and the President says the bill he signs will not "add a dime to the deficit." How to accomplish this with mandatory "insurance for all" and government subsidies for those unable to pay their insurance? With declines in drug costs already "negotiated away," these bill supporters like Nancy Pelosi turn to the assertion that the costs will largely be accomplished by cutting "waste, fraud and abuse" in the Medicare and Medicaid system and some supporters of these programs claim that in fact poor people who most need these programs will see a cut in their benefits to help pay for subsidies for private insurance premiums for the poor. Who really profits in the end? Shh, happens to be the insurance companies delivered a bonanza of new "mandatory" customer: "Whats good for Cigna..."
9/11/09
REWARDING THE WRONG PEOPLE: DENNIS KUCINICH CUTS TO THE CHASE ON HEALTH CARE "REFORM." Interviewed at the floor of the House immediately after Obama's health care reform speech, Kucinich blasts the measure as a "bailout of insurance and pharmaceutical companies," the same agencies that had got the American people into the "mess" of unaffordable insurance. "Mark my words," says Kucinich, if this bill passes, we will be back here in a year or two dealing still with the plight of people who are unable to obtain medical care.
9/8/09
Tax on health insurance companies to pay for coverage who cannot afford to buy their coverage may emerge as new "compromise" on health care reform. 9/3/09
AS PRESIDENT OBAMA FIGHTS FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM, WHOM IS HE FIGHTING? MOSTLY HIS OWN WHITE HOUSE, SAYS BRUCE DIXON. Democrats are blaming every one from conservative Republicans to blue dog Democrats to advocates of single payer for the impending demise of any truly reform measure. Those liberal Democrats who continue to support the industry-friendly "reform" do so by supporting as well a toothless "public option" that will give them an excuse to their constituents for their voting for a measure that does not deliver the universal health care system that they were elected to bring into being.
9/2/09
A GROUP OF PORTLAND, OREGON DOCTORS ARE "MAD AS HELL" ABOUT HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA. Ralph Nader reports on the conclusions of a business expert of massive criminal fraud in the health care industry and the project of several Portland doctors to go on a national "Mad as Hell" tour to promote single payer health care reform and to wind up in early October for a requested visit with President Obama at the White House.
8/29/09
4 of the top 10 congressional districts in percentage of people without health insurance come from the Houston metropolitan area.
8/28/09
WHO IS KILLING THE PROSPECTS OF HEALTH CARE REFORM? LOOK TO THE BLUE DOGS! Reporter for McClatchy Newspapers writes an expose of the heavy contributions by the health care industry to the campaigns that brought conservative Democrats to Congress. Comments to this article on a Common Dreams re-post suggest a scape-goating operation that ignores the contributions to the demise of a genuine "reform" by such agencies at the Senate "gang of 6" who, following on the example of earlier health care forum of Edward Kennedy, are fashioning an industry-favorable version of "reform," the numerous quiet White House meetings between Obama and health industry officials, and even the fact that Obama's Chief of Staff Rahn Emanuel was largely responsible for recruiting and financing the Blue Dogs.
COMMON DREAMS
8/27/09
"YOU'LL HEAR HIS NAME INVOKED QUITE A BIT." A congressional aide suggests that, in his death, Senator Edward Kennedy may continue to have a large influence on the outcome of the health care reform debate in Congress, as many will "invoke his name" for passage of legislation that represented the "passion of his life." Others are more inclined to believe that his death will diminish chances of passage as his ability as a skilled negotiator will be missed.
8/26/09
BRITISH WRITER SEES A "MEAN STREAK" IN AMERICAN RELUCTANCE TO EMBRACE THE OBAMA PROGRAM OF HEALTH CARE REFORM. She notices that the current struggle reflects a political culture whose needle in "normal" times lies a little to the right of where it does in Europe and swings further rightward in crisis times. Her article, reprinted on Common Dreams, unleashes a virtual health care town hall forum on issues of the true nature and dimension of this "streak" and of the role of Obama in relation to the difficulties of reform enactment (check your guns at the door).
COMMON DREAMS
8/25/09
"ANY DEBATE ABOUT HEALTH CARE MUST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE FOR-PROFIT HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY IS THE PROBLEM AND MUST BE DESTROYED." Chris Hedge surveys the status of health care in the United States and the nature of the health care reform now pending in Congress, and says it's actually "robbery, not reform," because it only enables further removals of resources from the American people to that for-profit industry,
8/24/09
WHEN IT COMES TO HEALTH CARE, AMERICA HAS A LOT TO LEARN FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD. T.R. Reid confronts head-on the complaints of health care forum protesters that the U.S. is headed toward "socialized medicine" as reform measures are being debated in Congress. Reid's survey of "myths" about health care systems in other countries shows that, in the first place, health care is not totally "socialized" in many of the countries which deliver better health care than does the U.S.; and in the second, that the movement toward more inclusive coverage has produced societies that are more responsive to the needs of all their citizens.
8/22/09
THE GUN-TOTERS AT HEALTH CARE FORUMS HAVE A "THOROUGHLY RON PAUL-ISH" WAY ABOUT THEM. So says Nation writer Dan Bischoff, as he deliveries a "thoroughly Nation-ish" treatment of ideologically-motivated third parties as a threat to the Nation-approved mantle of national unity projected by the Obama presidency. Not that Paul nor his campaign have encouraged gun-toting, but their libertarian cast that insists on second amendment rights tends to pull the "crazies" out of the woodwork of U.S. politics. And like a Paul campaign, the gun-carrying and shouting crowds at health care forums operate on a "theatrical" principle of doing things "crazy" enough to attract media attention. Bischoff thinks it "all started" when a woman at a health care forum stood up and demanded of her congressman that he deliver a copy of Obama's birth certificate, after which the media implicitly sent out a casting-call for other "crazies" to spice up their daily news coverage of an immensely complicated subject
8/21/09
Health care forum can be a dangerous place for a member of Congress (cartoon).
8/20/09
THE ALLOCATION OF HEALTH BENEFITS IN A LESS-THAN-UNIVERSAL COVERAGE SITUATION: CALIFORNIA MAY NOT BE THE BEST MODEL. Sandy LeonVest surveys the movement in California as well as Texas and a few other states to hire private contractors (one of which is Halliburton in the California case) to determine who will have access to what medical services. An agency in Texas with the misnomer of Total Access Alliance is now under fire for its failure to provide anything resembling total access. These developments do not bode well for for any health care "reform" which leaves out total coverage of all people for all medical services.
8/19/09
ON HEALTH CARE LEGISLATION, WILL DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS ACTUALLY CONDUCT THEMSELVES AS A MAJORITY PARTY? After bi-partisanship effort flounders on intransigence of Republican opposition to Obama health care plan, leading Democrats are starting to say they may "go it alone" to pass legislation without GOP support. The problem with this strategy is that they may in the process lose support of conservative members of their own party and possibly, depending on the details of the legislation, liberal Democrats as well: the "centrist" nightmare of combined opposition from the right and the left.
8/19/09
LANNY DAVIS: HAVE LOBBYIST PORTFOLIO, WILL TRAVEL. Glenn Greenwald describes some of the remarkable career of a consummate lobbyist, as he appears in the middle of innumerable lobbyist operations that include campaigns against the Employee Free Choice Act, in support of the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the Honduran coup and now, as a leading lobbyist (you know, the people who are not "in" the White House) in trying to sell the beleaguered Obama health care plan. He is apparently unencumbered by any principle involved in the causes he supports or opposes: "I agree with whoever pays me."
8/18/09
WHAT IS THAT FUNNY LOOKING THING UP IN THE AIR? Why it's the trial balloon for a national health care co-operative system, now being floated in the air of a health care reform "debate" as a substitute for the "public option" one which is fast losing political air. Problem is, few are able to understand how such a system would work, though some state systems like that in Wisconsin have been more or less successful. The political bottom line on the co-ops seems to be that their inclusion in a health care bill will further alienate liberals and attract little additional conservative support.
8/16/09
THE POLITICAL GUNS OF AUGUST: HEALTH CARE REFORM POINTED TO WITH PRIDE AND VIEWED WITH ALARM. The national "debate" has evolved into what the New York Times calls a "full blown" national campaign as the proponents and opponents fill the airwaves with sound-bite slogans blowing in the breeze of expensive TV ads. While supporters of "Obamacare" praise the prospects of expanding health care for under-served American (for example, coverage of "pre-existing conditions") opponents raise such specters of disaster as "goverment-run" health care, rationing of medical services and "death panels" to decide when elderly and terminally ill should be cut loose from care. (Happy--?--days are here again!)
8/15/09
ORGANIZING FOR AMERICA ISN'T ORGANIZING MUCH SUPPORT FOR OBAMACARE. The turnout of OFA members at rallies and pot-luck suppers is a major disappointment on the hoped-for role of the offshoot of the Obama campaign to create public support for his political agenda. As one woman organizer says: "The enthusiasm is not there like it was a year ago. Most people, when they get to Nov. 5, put their political hat away and it doesn't come out for three years."
8/14/09
CAN TELEPHONE CONFERENCE CALLS REPLACE TOWN BRAWLS AS MEANS OF PUBLIC INPUT ON HEALTH CARE REFORM DEBATE? This is the hope of some members of Congress from California to inform themselves of public views without being "informed" by the shouting and flailing arms that have made "town brawls" of many of the town hall forums held by members of Congress.
8/14/09
ON THE HEALTH CARE ISSUE, CAN OBAMA SUPPORTERS TURN OUT FOR THE "LONG SLOG OF POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT?" Katha Pollit hopes so, as she would like so much to "mobilize" for support of Obama's health care plan if only the millions of Organized for America folks (or anybody) could tell her as well as the rest of the public exactly what this plan IS. Like what really, is the "public option?" Like really, what is the new trial balloon, the "health coop?" She has questions, does the OFA have answers?
8/13/09
Anger at "big government" is focus of citizen protests at health care forums.
8/11/09
DAVID LINDORFF'S INJUNCTION TO PROGRESSIVES ON THOSE HEALTH CARE TOWN HALL FORUMS: LET'S HEAR A LITTLE NOISE! In a ringing indictment of those "forums" which he sees as efforts of members of Congress to burnish their fraudulent credentials as "reformers" of health care, Lindorff proposes that supporters of true reform help the right-wing hecklers in running the forums "out of town." The disruption he supports is not on behalf of "Obamacare" which he sees as fraudulent itself, but on behalf of a "starting over" of the reform process, which will hopefully yield the "single payer" approach which is the only equitable and workable reform, though it is not yet on the congressional and presidential "table." The noise should demand that it be put there and made the main course of the health care reform meal.
8/8/09
MEMBERS OF CONGRESS GO HOME TO HEAR THE VOICE (MAKE THAT THE SHOUT) OF THE PEOPLE. At health care forums sponsored by members of Congress across the country, opponents of Obama's plan are turning out in mass, disrupting meetings into which they are admitted and chanting "let us in" if excluded. These "actions" are encouraged by right wing talk shows and other conservative organizations. With the Senate just now going into recess, White House aides hold a luncheon with Senators to prep them for confrontations with these "mobs," saying that they must "punch back" when they are challenged. Videos from some of this week's forums accompany the New York Times article.
8/3/09
HEALTH CARE REFORM: TAKING THE FIGHT OUTSIDE (THE BELTWAY). As Congress this week goes into August recess, Americans can look forward to a hot month of campaigning on the issue as members of Congress "take the pulse" of their constituencies on the issue. A more apt medical analogy might be that citizens will be attached to IV machines as both sides try to push into their bloodstreams the contrasting "meds" of attack on the insurance industry and re-assurances about the "plan" through a series of town hall meetings and---in the other IV bottle---a heavy dosage of "anti-socialism" rhetoric on the airwaves and perhaps hostile appearances at the town meetings. How knows what shape the combatants will be in as they return to D.C. in September?
8/2/09
"KILL GRANNY": ANOTHER NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL? A provision in the bill to allow Medicare re-imbursements for "end of life counseling" by physicans raises the ire of an element of the pro-life community which sees the provision as an effort to reduce medical costs by "encouraging" aging and ailing people to die. Proponents see the provision as a miniscule part of a complex and much larger package of health benefits under the bill, and the campaign against the provision as yet another pretense for right wing opposition to the total health care reform proposal.
8/1/09
IS THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE DEBATE "TOO BORING TO BROADCAST?" Trudy Lieberman finds this to be true, with a few honorable exceptions of radio and TV stations who manage to find relevant and interesting aspects of the debate to air. Commenters respond to a comments suggestion that the sponsors of the legislation may have made it deliberately boring (and confusing) to divert public attention and preparing the same for public acceptance of a defective bill---or none at all.
7/30/09
AMERICANS WANTED AND VOTED FOR HEALTH CARE FOR ALL; WHAT THEY ARE GETTING FROM "HEALTH CARE REFORM" PROPOSALS IS THE PROSPECT OF MANDATED "JUNK INSURANCE" THAT WILL LEAVE OUT CARE FOR MANY AND BE LONG-DELAYED FOR ALL. Bruce Dixon cuts through the fog of proposals now going through the congressional meat-grinder to provide a citizen's guide to "who is doing what to whom," much of which can be boiled down to: they are doing very little for anyone other than a health care industry that is licking its chops over the prospects of much fatter bottom lines for themselves.
7/26/09
"REFORM" OF U.S. HEALTH CARE SYSTEM MUST START WITH FRANK ADMISSION OF THE NATURE OF THAT SYSTEM AS IT "ACTUALLY EXISTS." Carl Ginsburg gives a lurid description of the American health care system as it "actually exists," a system dominated by a totally-corrupted health care industry that produces enormous profits for the CEOs of private insurance industry, and a miserable product of inferior health care for the people. White House and congressional deliberations will never arrive at "reform" when they accept as a starting point of the "new" system the corrosive features of the "actually existing" one.
7/25/09
BLUE DOGS, BLUE BLOOD AND A BAD CASE OF BLUE FLU FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM. Donna Smith, of California Nurses Association, adopts this colorful language to describe the current impasse in Congress on health care reform. Smith, like CNA, is a passionate supporter of a single-payer system, but any impetus toward a truly sensible solution to the nation's health care needs is sidelined by a combination of the country's wealthy (Blue Bloods) in resistance to any form of progressive taxation to support truly universal health care; and their allies in Congress in the form of fiscally conservative Democrats (Blue Dogs) who join with the natural Blue Blood allies, the Republicans, in opposing reform. The appropriate remedy for the resulting Blue Flu of a stalled health care reform is the simple if radical imperative for debaters to "tell the truth," the truth being that single-payer is NOT an unaffordable system but to the contrary it "controls costs" by removing the "overhead" of a costly insurance system and the uncontrolled greed of health care providers.
7/23/09
Message of Obama health care plan: Wait until 2013 if you are going to get sick -- better still, make that 2018.:. In a Bruce Dixon examination of the issue of whether the Obama health care plan is "better than nothing," he emphasizes this little known fact that much of the insurance coverage of the plan will not be implemented until at least 2013. Even then, the result will not be a plan for health care but for promoting health care insurance, and the much-touted "public option" is a bogus liberal-sounding feature that is designed to make single payer advocates think they are getting "something" at least from an industry-focussed program---when in fact they and the rest of the American people will be getting less than nothing.
7/19/09
14 U.S. States have defied budgetary slumps and found funds in support of increasing health insurance prgrams for children. Increased funding under federal CHIPS program requires that states make their own contributions to the program. Calling the roll of honor of the 14 which have stepped to the plate on this : Washington, Oregon, Montana, Colorado, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Alabama. Several of the 36 MIA states offer "excuses."
7/18/09
Dennis Kucinich may offer ray of hope for single-payer health care system.:. An amendment to the House version of a health care reform bill allows individual U.S. states to set up their own single payer systems, absent such a system at the federal level. With "Massachusetts" and other "models" of health care distribution in existence, the idea may not be so far-fetched. While the idea is described by Joshua Holland as "gathering steam" in Congress, it has not been endorsed by the Senate and may not survive the "sausage-grind" of further congressional deliberation.
7/17/09
Massachusetts health care commission proposes that doctors and hospitals be "put on a budget" with maximum allowable fees for medical services.
7/16/09
Job losses and rising insurance premium rates expected to increase by 58,000 the number of residents of Utah without health insurance.
7/15/09
Massachusetts "model" for universal health care is developing some unsightly wrinkles:. While its 3-year-old "universal health care" program has produced a low rate of uninsured people in the state, that performance is now challenged as it is based on subsidy for coverage of those unable to pay for the mandatory coverage. With the state now facing severe budget deficit, it turns as solution to a program of subsidized coverage for 30,000 legal (green card) immigrants, as the legislature threatens to remove that coverage over the Governor's objection. Will the national "health care reform" program, with Massachusetts as its "model," follow this pattern of exclusion from coverage of the most politically vulnerable parts of the population? (when Uncle Sam runs out of money and maxes out his "credit line?")
7/7/09
Horse trading at the health care reform corral. The White House has trumpeted the voluntary medical care "cost containment" offers of one after another health care industry groups but those like Mike Baucus who are brokering the deal that is hoped to bring these groups on board as promoters of the Obama health care plan are tight-lipped about the concessions they have made in order to obtain those promises. Before approving the "deal," some members of Congress want to know exactly what has been dealt away in response to industry demands.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/health/policy/08health.html?th&emc=th
6/19/09
The inadequacy of a health care system: It;'s not just about coverage...or even affordability.:. Michael Bader notes that moves toward progressive reform should go beyond these issues to embrace as well the need for improved quality of that care. Even those who have adequate insurance or can afford to pay for expensive care suffer along with those who cannot afford it with shoddy and non-caring medical practices that are all-too-typical of the way medical practice is carried on today.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/140765/when_we_talk_about_health_care%2C_we%27re_forgetting_one_important_group%3A_the_already_insured/
6/18/09
Many Americans, unable to pay for needed but expensive medical treatments, are resorting to bartering services they can offer in exchange with medical providers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/70252.html
6/10/09
Health care reform: How are you going to pay for that? Fiscal conservatives, including a group of "Blue Dog" Democrats, are expected to have a major say on the details of any legislation that passes, as the Democrats are already floating "watered down" versions of their plans for compulsory insurance as well as a "public option" insurance carrier. President Obama is making vows to "pay-as-we-go" on the program, and one Blue Dog says he is "serious as a heart attack" about it.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/69770.html
6/7/09
“A nuclear minefield on the road to universal coverage." As proponents of the "public option" in Obama's health care reform plan hope that a government-provided insurance option will evolve into a single payer system, conservative opponents like those in Heritage Foundation fear that this will be the result as private insurance options will be unable to compete with the public one, and that the health care system will "evolve" as it has in several states like North Carolina in which the "public" system has required bailouts to survive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/health/policy/07plan.html?th&emc=th
4/8/09
A kinder, gentler approach to health care management: Taking the "M" out of HMO.: In an evolving version of "health care reform" being developed by Democratic lawmakers and the nation's new "health czar," Nancy-Ann De Perla, people's health care will be provided by a "medical homes" with "primary care physician" whose function is not so much that of a regulator/manager as that of a "navigator" who can guide patients through the maze of speciality medical services that are the heart of the U.S. medical system.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/04/08/medical_home_approach_brings_back_managed_care/
3/26/09
THhe Massachusetts model for health care reform: It has failed in the Bay State, will fail in the entire U.S.: So argues Bruce Dixon, and documents his assertion by citing a Harvard study of the failure in Massachusetts of an "individual mandates" model of insurance coverage. Dixon accuses President Obama of "hypocrisy" on the health care issue; Obama asserts throughout his political career that he is a proponent of single payer insurance, if only we could "start from scratch" in designing a health care system. In maintaining the impossibility of doing this "for now," he ignores the conclusion of health care forums across the country that have advocated single payer, and he ignores as well the economic stimulus potential of a truly universal health care system that could put millions of shovel ready medical professionals to work.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/barack-obama-hypocrite-health-care-hater-single-payer
3/20/09
"A ROGUE'S GALLERY OF PROFIT-SEEKING, PRICE-GOUGING, HIGHLY COMPENSATED CORPORATE CRIMINALS FROM THE INSURANCE AND PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES." Helen Redmond's unkind characterization of the cast of "characters" who assembled for the recent White House "summit" on health care. Of the 120 invitations issued, only 2 of these were for single-payer advocates. Even those 2 were invited only under intense public pressure and it already was and remains true that President Obama and Congress have taken single payer, the solution to the health care crisis most favored by the American people, "off the table" for political consideration.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/03/left-out-from-obamas-health-care-summit/
3/7/09
"If I were desiging a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.": , Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, made this statement last August at a health care forum in New Mexico. This week, his administration's version of "scratch" should have been the starting point for the "design" of any such system. Instead, only progressive "pressure" won even a seat at the "table" for single payer advocates the likes of John Conyers and the Physicians for a National Health Program, that table was dominated by heavy hitters from the medical and pharmaceutical providers and insurers industry, and the President himself spoke of compromising and dealing with various stakeholders in the controversy. Where's the scratch?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/06-1
3/6/09
Obama is open to compromise on health care reform:. At the White House Summit on the subject, he says that there might be a way found to accommodate both those wanting health care to continue to provided by the free market in medical services and those wanting more government involvement and regulation of the system; provided that increased coverage and lowered costs could be sustained from either of these approaches. The New York Times article reporting the Summit quotes several "stakeholders" who insist that built into the system there must be a "mandate" for people to purchase health insurance, as in the Massachusetts model of "universal" health insurance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/us/politics/06web-health.html?th&emc=th
3/5/09
Will single-payer health insurance advocates have a seat at upcoming White House summit on health care reform?: Corporate Crime Reporter says no, indicating that Obama has effectively told single payer supporters to "drop dead." Huffington Post says otherwise, citing assurances from a White House official that uneasiness about this would be "put to rest" by having John Conyers and at least one other single payer organizaton present at the summit. Drop dead:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/03-15
HUFFINGTON POST:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/04/obama-will-have-single-pa_n_171994.html
3/4/09
Health care "reform": Do we really want to leave insurance company foxes in the henhouse of medical care for Americans?: Dr. Daniel P. Wirt says this is exactly what will happen if proposals for mandated coverage and subsidized premiums prevail in making the failed "Massachusetts" model for "universal" health care the policy of the nation. These policies will certainly fatten the "foxes" but will further erode both the affordability and quality of medical care for the "hens," effects that could come only from a variation of a single-payer "Medicare for all" health insurance system.
http://www.counterpunch.org/wirt03032009.html
3/4/09
Meet your new health care czar: Nancy-Ann de Parle.: The new head of the White House Office on Health Reform works for a large firm that is a "private equity underwriter" (peu) one of whose affiliates is helping to buy up former non-profit community hospitals to convert them to "for profit" ones. These and many other involvements of De Parle with entities in the health care industry raise questions about her ability to manage a strong program of government investment in improved U.S. health care. She and President Obama say, of course, that she will "divest" herself of these involvements, but can she divest her mind from issues of profitability for that health care industry (as opposed to affordability for sick Americans)?
http://stateofthedivision.blogspot.com/2009/03/white-house-health-care-reformer-is-peu.html
2/17/09
General Motors tries to give its workers a dose of shock therapy:. UAW is put in a vise by the companies, as workers are told that they must accept heavy cuts in health care benefits for retirees as a condition for obtaining the "life line" of a government bailout, without which the company is likely to go under and the workers will lose their jobs
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/business/economy/17auto.html?th&emc=th
1/30/09
Senate joins House in approving bill to expand child health coverage:. In what Democrats describe as a "step" toward universal coverage, the bill extends coverage to 4 million U.S. children; while Republicans, all but 9 of whom voted against, decry just this "step" toward a much-feared program of government-operated (single payer) insurance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/us/politics/30health.html?th&emc=th
12/12/08
Opinion: Obama and Daschle should opt for single-payer health insurance . So says Rose Ann De Moro, executive director of the California Nurses Association. As Daschle is announced as Obama's designee for Secretary for Health and Human Services, he makes the obligatory statement about the U.S. having the highest costs and some of the worst health care in the world. De Moro says only a single payer (Medicare for all) approach, not the "piece-meal" approach preferred by CNA's "parent" union, the Service Employees International Union, can solve this problem, and she urges all Americans to send Obama and Daschle this "message."
http://www.progressive.org/mp/demoro121108.html
DASCHLE'S STATEMENT:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/12/11/sot.obama.daschle.health.cnn
11/12/08
Maryland health care advocacy group planning to propose a "universal health care" plan for the state with a $15 billion price tag.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-md.health12nov12,0,3298714.story
10/6/08
While financial system gets an attempted $700 billion bailout, the U.S. health care system is "quietly dying.": So says columnist for The Nation, citing rising health care premiums and declining use of increasingly expensive medical services. She uses McCain's statement about the necessity of making medical costs responsive to the "free market" for medical services as in direct contrast to the acknowledgment from the bail-out that the free market could not deal with the situation in the case of the financial system.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081020/demoro
10/6/08
Many Masschusetts lower-income people, who received subsidized health insurance under state's mandate requiring coverage, still use expensive emergency room facilities because they are unable to find primary care providers, who are in short supply in the state.
http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2008/10/06/costly_er_still_draws_many_now_insured/
8/24/08
"Universal health care" system in Massachusetts leaves thousands without insurance:. Many are terminated from coverage because of "mistakes," either their own or those of the state's health care administrators.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/08/23/errors_leave_some_without_insurance/
8/9/08
D.C. doctors say new Medicaid prescription drug guidelines are harmful to the health of their patients.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/08/AR2008080803421.html?wpisrc=newsletter
7/18/08
A U.S. health care reformer: "When did we become a nation of people who settle for the possible?" She asks this question in observing the tendency of leaders of both major parties to adopt an "incremental" approach to expanded health care policy, which she sees as simply a "pabulum" to pacify public demands from leaders who recognize the superiority of a single payer insurance system, but doubt that it is politically "possible" to obtain this ideal situation. This (of course) leaves the health care system in the hands of the corporate medical establishment which benefits so mightily from the current system or any likely "incremental" reform. (Did we mention that this "system" heavily funds the campaigns of candidates of both major parties?)
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/17/10435/
6/18/08
Health care forums in Kansas show that the public wants and is willing to pay for more extended health insurance coverage than lawmakers had assumed to be the case.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/story/668583.html
5/9/08
Massachusetts trying to shore up its mandatory health insurance program by assistance to the 30 to 40 thousand who cannot afford to buy it.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/05/09/state_agency_seeks_to_cover_30000_more_uninsured/
5/4/08
"The kid isn't that sick. His temperature is only 102 ." Many Americans, even those "covered" by health insurance, faced with higher medical costs and increased premiums and deductibles, are avoiding all but the most "necessary" visits to the doctor. Yearly premiums have doubled in many cases, from about $2,000 to $4,000; as one man says "that's a month's pay."
\http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/business/04insure.html?th&emc=th
4/30/08
John McCain's health care "plan" throws money into an "ownership" society of subsidizing premiums for those who can't afford insurabce: The "reasoning" is that moving away from employer-based insurance to individual ownership will foster competition and drive down health care prices. Where did JM takes his Economics 101?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/us/politics/30mccain.html?th&emc=th
4/19/08
War between the states and the White House over SCHIP warms up: . A report of GAO offers its opinion that President Bush's veto of congressional legislation allowing the states the right to provide supplementary coverage for children's medical care under MEDICAID and MEDICARE is a violation of "policy" that requires congressional approval. White House persists in implementation of the rule as MEDICAID and MEDICARE officials say they are still bound by the President's decision.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/washington/19health.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1208596031-hGk3Pgru0XKm0Pk94Q1jUA&oref=slogin
4/14/08
God is my co-payment:. The devil in the details of programs of "expanded health insurance coverage" without price controls on insurance costs is shown in the fact that health insurance carriers have recently begun to charge higher co-pays for more expensive drugs: a percentage of the drug's market cost rather than a flat co-pay amount. Since such drugs are not usually available in generics, patients who need these drugs are required to pay $300 a month for drugs for which they previously paid $20, and they may need to pray to God to be able to come up with their co-pays; or do without the drugs and very likely die
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/us/14drug.html?th&emc=th
3/7/08
It happens every four years in America: During presidential campaigns, candidate trot out their heart-rending stories of people unable to pay their medical bills because of the high cost of medical care and their lack of health insurance coverage. They routinely call for "universal health insurance," but their plans and their policies if they are elected call far short of that goal, based as they are in mandatory purchase of insurance (unaffordable to many) or to "managed care" schemes controlled by insurance companies that don't "manage" costs. While the rhetoric is inspiring, reality in 08 as always is that both parties' candidates are heavily dependent on Wall Street and insurance companies for campaign funds. Vincent Navarro, a former policy adviser to Jesse Jackson, says this will change only as major policy changes usually occur in this country: by relentless mobilization of popular movements on their behalf. The motto should be Cesar Chavez' "Yes we can!"
http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro03062008.html
3/3/08
Whose health care plan is better: Obama or Clinton? Hard to tell, but what is obvious to health care analysts is that neither plan remotely deals with the escalating cost of health care, most notably of Medicare and Medicaid costs. With numbers of the poor and especially of the elderly growing rapidly, any plans to ration health care are politically unpopular in an election year. Any proposals to reduce payments to providers or restrict the prescription of medical devices runs against the interests of the lobbyists of the medical services industry who are major contributors to all presidential campaigns.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/us/politics/03qhealth.html?th&emc=th
2/7/08
Governor's task force on reform of Minnesota's health care system recommends mandatory purchase of health insurance, Governor disagrees.
http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_8179366?nclick_check=1
1/4/08
Remember Ronald Regan's rhetoric about governmnet helping only the "truly needy?" It's deja vu with the Bush administration. Having denied states the right to expand income level eligibility for public provision of medical care for children (SCHIP), it is now applying the same policy to federal support of state Medicaid programs, saying such funding should be available only to the truly needy (very poor).
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/washington/04health.html?th&emc=th
1/1/08
In Massachusetts, when we say universal health insurance coverage, we mean universal: As 2008 dawns, state residents who do not purchase "compulsory" medical coverage face stiffly increased penalties for their "free loading" behavior.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2008/01/01/penalties_to_rise_for_shunning_insurance/
12/22/07
Los Angeles teen-ager dies hours after her insurance carrier reversed itself to allow coverage for a procedure to deal with the condition from which she died.
http://www.courant.com/news/custom/topnews/hc-liver1222.artdec22,0,5718024.story?coll=hc_tab01_layout
11/20/07
Large gap in dental coverage for children in Colorado leaves many children in a state of poor dental health.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_7510475
11/10/07
Politics is the art of the possible and single payer health insurance is just not "politically possible" say the Governors of Illinois, California and Pennsylvania in putting forth different versions on an employer-based insurance system. Though AFL-CIO leaders give lip service to single payer, they support these proposals as being politically "realistic."
http://www.counterpunch.org/ccr11092007.html
10/19/07
House fails to override Bush's veto of S-CHIP:. By vote of 273-156 (2/3s vote required), House fails to overturn veto of State Children's Health Insurance Program. 2 Democrats (Marshall, Young) vote to sustain veto, 44 Republicans (including only Bill Young of Pinellas County among Florida's Republicans) vote to overturn. Reid and Pelosi denounce the vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/washington/19health.html?th&emc=th
THE VOTE:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll982.xml
10/19/07
Hillary Clinton says her proposed "universal health care" program is for "Americans only": The proposed program would exclude illegal immigrants who, although they would get "better" treatment than they are now getting, don't "deserve" the level of coverage of Americans who are legally in the country.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071019/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_health_care
10/6/07
"No health care for us, no more photo-ops for you"... vows a child narrator in a one-minute video ad prepared by Campaign for America's Future, a response to President Bush's veto of SCHIP. The ad features numerous appearances of Bush with children in support of his political agenda, and the accompanying article includes a form letter to members of Congress urging them to over-ride the veto.
http://ga3.org/campaign/SCHIPvideo/w87wdb64r7n7xem3?
10/6/07
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid says there will be "no compromise" on SCHIP in the effort to secure an over-ride of President Bush's veto.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100507B.shtml
9/27/07
Federal law is being used to limit states in their ability to regulate employers' contributions to health care plans for their employees
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0927/p03s01-ussc.html
9/26/07
S-CHIP passes Congress, but will it ever become law? By 265-159 vote (including 45 Republican votes) , House passes a measure which extends federal funding to states for their cash-starved programs of child health insurance, with the Senate expected to pass the bill by an even larger margin. President Bushes threatens to veto it, however, as he claims that it "federalizes" a big component of health care in the country. The margin of passage in the House is not "veto-proof" (requiring about 290 votes), and Speaker Pelosi warns that Bush will suffer severe political consequences from his veto.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/washington/26health.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190798127-KFS7xE3MFBX+hrVuKZ7UZw
THE VOTE:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll906.xml
9/18/07
If Hillary Clinton's newly unveiled health care reform plan bears close resemblance to the "Massachusetts miracle", it's not good news for Americans needing health care: The Bay State's much-touted "universal health care" program is doing little to expand the number of state residents who are covered by health insurance, as employers are abandoning coverage for their employees and the "near poor" suffer the most: those who can't afford high premiums for health care policies and who are not poor enough to qualify for free ones.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/17/health_reform_failure/
9/14/07
Healthy San Francisco. A project of that name aims to expand universal health care for all uninsured adults from a trial run in two Chinatown clinics to the whole city.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/us/14health.html?th&emc=th
8/21/07
Bush Administration has a CHIP on its shoulder about child health care. New rules issued from Washington limit the ability of states to extend benefits under Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to children in families with incomes far above federal poverty level.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/washington/21health.html?th&emc=th
7/27/07
Wisconsin state senator criticized for loaning money to herself for her campaign after she and her husband decided to forego health insurance purchase to demonstrate for importance of universal health insurance coverage.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=638813
7/8/07
Can a muckraking movie and a handful of militant nurses spark a movement for univeral health care?: Alan Maas says that might happen, as Michael Moore's "Sicko," with the aggressive support of the California Nurses Association and other labor organizations and with HR 676, co-authored by a current Democratic presidential candidate, already introduced into Congress and a substantial majority of Americans favoring such legislation. But it will be difficult, because "majorities of Americans" do not elect leaders or pass legislation in our "democracy."
http://www.counterpunch.org/maass07072007.html
7/7/07
Michael Moore releases an e-mail, sent him by a whistle-blowing employee of Blue Cross/Blue Shield, in which the company official notes with alarm the effectiveness of the movie and furnishes employees with "talking points" in countering Moore's accusations against the U.S.health care system in general and BS/BC in particular. Moore challenges the executive to a face-to-face debate. An interesting thread of comments by readers accompanies this posting.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/06/2344/
7/6/07
New York Times takes universal health care off the table for '08 election: An article by Robin Toner indicates that Democratic presidential candidates will offer a variety of proposals to "overhaul" the nation's system of health care. By limiting these proposals to "major" candidates, it manages to avoid entirely the possibility of the kind of single payer "national health service" approach advocated in Michael Moore's Sicko and apparently endorsed by most Americans. Since Dennis Kucinich, a co-author of HR 676 to implement such a system, is not deemed a "major" candidate, his views are not mentioned. Moore has congratulated Kucinich for his running for President as a way of keeping single payer on the table in the presidential debates. With the establishment media ignoring his (and most Americans') views and the Democratic Party expected in Florida at least to limit the presidential debate to the "major" candidates, there is much to suggest that the "table" will be barren of any opportunity for voters to express their views about health care.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/us/politics/06health.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
7/2/07
Commentator says most reviews of Michael Moore's SICKO "miss the point" that it's not only the profit motives among insurance carriers that afflict the country, but the unregulated motive as well in the pharmaceutical companies that rake in the profits from our expensive health care system. And that's not even to mention the assaults on public welfare of the same motives for the energy industry, for munitions manufacturers, etc.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/01/2226/
7/1/07
Iin Massachusetts, their "universal" health care system is still a little "sicko": As the state's system which requires all citizens to maintain health coverage becomes effective today, there are still some 130,000 people who have yet to enroll in the program, as officials speak of "phasing in" the system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/health/policy/01insure.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&adxnnl=0&emc=th&adxnnlx=1183286280-l+hvcJIQ/VT3xz+cjHO14Q
7/1/07
Michael Moore's "Sicko": An "editorial-umentary" on the US health care system: A Christian Science Monitor movie reviewer so characterizes Michael Moore's SICKO, giving the film high marks for dramatic quality but notes its one-sided attack on the health insurance industry and its questionable use of foreign health care systems as models for America. Specifically, the reviewer cites the authority of a Cuban emigre doctor (!) that the Cuban regime waits for foreign visits like that of the Moore film crew to stage a "moment" of great health care that is not available to the great majority of the Cuban people. The good doctor doesn't bother to comment on the hard facts of greater longevity in the Cuban population.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0629/p15s01-almo.html?page=1
6/30/07
The Nation's review of "Sicko": It's less partisan and more ideological than Moore's other films: It doesn't demonize people or organizations as Fahrenheit did Bush or Columbine did the NRA, but it promises to be far more effective as a strike for social democracy and a collectivizing of medical services. Moore as Captain Ahab may be closing in on the white whale of his career-long search for the Reagan Democrats who followed the Great Communicator into an era of starving the beast of government, as his film portrays Reagan's pre-presidential role as a "shill" for health insurance industry.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070716/hayes
6/30/07
After the medical horror stories in "Sicko" or on Oprah anbd YouTube,the real challenge for "universal" care is for the "little" medical problems: It's one thing to hear of the "horror" of a man who can get medical coverage only for the re-attachment of pnly one of two severed hands; another to think of a truly universal system that, by removing medical care from the cash market place, levels the playing field and allows the security of people knowing that can get help when the baby won't stop spitting up.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/29/2182/
6/23/07
At a preview showing ahead of nationwide June 29 opening of Michael Moore's film advocating a single payer health insurance program, some liberal Democratic legislators (Barbara Lee, John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich) endorse the movement, but all the "leading" Democratic candidates are conflicted between the strong appeal of the idea to their "liberal" base, and the fear of unpopularity of same in the wider electorate. All these "leaders" advocate for health care reform that represents more of a "mix" of private and public sources of support.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/22/2022
6/17/07
Bureaucratic snarls in medical insurance system illustrated by a Maryland woman who had to have a valid ID to obtain a birth certificate but had to have a birth certificate to get a valid ID.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.medicaid17jun17,0,4676212.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
5/26/07
Colorado woman who submitted to Michael Moore a "horror story" about her family's struggle to get needed medical treatment in the U.S. is aboard a ship at Biscayne Bay, Miami, on its way to Havana with Michael Moore and several sick 9/11 first responders. Their mission to Cuba was in connection with filming of Moore's new documentary, Sicko, on U.S. health care system to open the end of June. The woman manages a brief conversation with Moore that demonstrates her pain and the bravery of both herself and Moore in dramatizing the tragedy of a health care system gone astray.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-smith/the-moon-and-the-sun-over_b_49248.html
5/10/07
In Massachusetts, the plan under the state's new health care system to charge fees to employers who fail to provide employees with medical coverage isn't working, as the state has failed to collect any of these fees.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/05/10/mass_has_yet_to_collect_fees_from_firms_for_healthcare/
4/10/07
Proposal for universal health coverage in Connecticut is set back when legislators experience "sticker shock" when its cost is revealed.
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-universal0410.artapr10,0,7789870.story?coll=hc-headlines-home
4/6/07
Maine's Governor proposes a "universal" health care system much like the controversial one in Massachusetts: the requirement of health insurance for all residents of a certain income level, a "play or pay" system requiring employers either to provide health insurance for employees or pay into a state insurance fund for the uninsured.
http://www.bangordailynews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=148323&zoneid=500
3/25/07
Good things are happening in movement for single-payer health care system in U.S. Marilyn Clement catalogs a number of these "good things," congratulates health care activists for these successes, and offers many suggestions for additional activism.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=108&ItemID=12406
2/13/07
U.S. businesses, led by Wal-Mart, are advocating for a reform in the health care insurance system in which they will shoulder increased responsibility for employees' insurance, accompanied by an increased contribution of both governments and individuals.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0213/p01s01-usec.html
1/31/07
Maryland Governor pushes for large expansion of medical insurance in his state, using a variety of strategies including tax breaks for employers offering insurance to workers, penalties for those who can afford coverage for not buying it, and a heavy cigarette tax to help finance.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/30/AR2007013001862.html?referrer=email
1/28/07
Ridiculous and unworkable? Marilyn Clement, head of Health Care-NOW, so characterizes President Bush's "health care reform" proposals in the State of the Union address, suggesting in a "conspiracy theorist" way that the projects suggested were designed to fail to help destroy Medicare and transfer all medical financing into the hands of his Wall Street friends.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/24/bushs_health_care_conspiracy.php
1/27/07
Unaffordable premiums and barebone coverage for middle-income residents of Massachusetts are described as the result of the state's year-old "universal" health insurance program.
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/4198
1/24/07
Health insurance that won't help those who need help: This is Paul Krugman's verdict on Bush' proposal to provide "incentives" (tax breaks) to people to purchase insurance and taxation on those who choose "gold plated" insurance plans. If you're poor and uninsured, you don't need incentives to buy but insurance that you can afford to buy. If you can afford it (don't need the tax break) then you'll get the tax break...another tax break for the wealthy.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012207F.shtml
1/20/07
Massachusetts' "universal health care" plan will cost average of $380 per month and have high deductibles.
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2007/01/20/sticker_shock_for_state_care_plan/
1/19/07
250 million Americans in need of health care: With the plight of 47 million Americans lacking health care insurance well publicized, how about the quarter-million others who have insurance coverage but who pay a major part of their earnings for that coverage and find that the carriers use every conceivable excuse to avoid paying their claims? No wonder so many Americans go to countries with "socialized medicine" to mooch off the drastically lower medical costs in those countries.
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0117-32.htm
1/17/07
Opinion: mandatory health insurance coverage, as instituted in Massachusetts, is just as "bad" an idea when California's governor proposes it for that state; it just produces a bonanza of profit for the very private medical and insurance agencies that created the "mess" in the first place.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/16/arnoldcare_is_a_bad_deal.php
1/10/07
Where did I put the baby's damned birth certificate? Major dropoff being noted in numbers of children with Medicaid coverage since a new law was implemented requiring presentation of proof of citizenship and identity for qualification. Although this legislation was designed to curb "abuse" of the health insurance system by undocumeted immigrants, a Kaiser Foundation report suggests otherwise, that many children lack coverage simply because their parents are unable to produce the relevant documentation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070110/ap_on_he_me/medicaid_citizenship
11/30/06
Pennsylvania Supreme Court revives a languishing case of a suit against a Philadelphia Blue Cross agency sued to return some of its more than $1 billion surplus to provide premium reductions for health insurance policies.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/16126954.htm
8/17/06
"Universal" health care in Massachusetts as far from "free," as plan being considered for lower income workers to contribute 6.6% of income to the program, a higher rate than for higher income people.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/08/17/panel_sets_rate_plan_for_health_coverage/
8/17/06
Many Democrats are "running against" Wal Mart in a "strategy" of using the corporate giant as a stand-in for general dissatisfaction in the country about low wages and inadequate health insurance. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/washington/17dems.html?th&emc=th
8/10/06
Comparison of child health care coverage in two states. In blue state Washington, 1 in every 51 people is an uninsured child (115,000 children); in red state Florida 1 in every 27 people in an ininsured child (600,000 children).
Washington:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/280729_uninsured10.html
Florida:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-kidinsure1006aug10,0,4767135.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state
8/3/06
Low cost health insurance, promised to all Massachusetts citizens by October 1, will probably be available by that time only for those people living at or below the poverty level. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/03/thousands_face_delay_in_healthcare_enrollment/
7/27/06
Opinion: a Maryland court having invalidated the state law requiring big box operations like Wal-Mart to pay a "fair share" of their employees' medical insurance costs on the ground that it violates federal laws, Congress should move forewith to enact national legislation requiring this of employers of many workers. http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0727-25.htm
7/1/06
New requirement of identification for Medcaid recipients, to take effect today (July 1) , threatens to deprive millions of coverage; not just illegal aliens (who may produce counterfeit identification), but those in nursing homes, mentally handicapped, etc.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/063006F.shtml
6/14/06
The American Medical Association is urging the government to make buying health insurance mandatory for all Americans:
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/06/14/insurance_for_all/
5/31/06
Americans in their 20's are the fastest grwoing group of uninsured in the country:
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2006-05-30T154559Z_01_INSURANCE-DC.XML
5/13/06
Target Corp. may scrap its traditional health care insurance plan for its employees in favor cheaper ones charging higher deductibles:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-bz.target13may13,0,7942586.story?coll=bal-health-headlines
5/11/06
Double standard on deadlines? Bush rejects extension of deadline for Medicare drug prescription enrollment: "Deadlines help people understand there's finality and people need to get after it." For the same reason, why wouldn't a deadline for Iraqi withdrawal help all concerned to "get after it?" http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/09/bush.ap/index.html
5/8/06
Opinion: America's health insurance system is broken, and is literally killing the working poor:
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=605080317/1050&template=currents
5/8/06
Small business owners and full-time workers are swelling the numbers of Americnas without health insurance:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12684149/
4/26/06
A rising proportion of American middle income people, now over 40%, lack health insurance coverage, putting great pressure on emergency room facilities and hospital profits: http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-na-uninsured26apr26,1,6010104.story?coll=la-headlines-business-careers
4/19/06
Michigan autoworkers, faced with loss of employer health coverage, line up for elective procedures before their coverage expires: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/19/business/19health.html?th&emc=th
4/13/06
Federal "clamp down" on illegal immigrants leads to new requirement for the presentation of a passport, birth certificate or other identification as condition of eligibility for Medicaid:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041206E.shtml
4/12/06
Critics of Massachusetts' "universal" health care plan are now calling it a "universal facade." http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3050/continued/301#continued
4/7/06
Massachusetts Health Care Reform bill called a "false promise" of universal health coverage, relying on a tried-and-already-failed market-driven system of "affordable" insurance, when a single payer system is needed:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0406-35.htm
4/7/06
Devil in the details: Massachusetts must now develop a plan that will implement its program of nearly universal health insurance coverage: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/business/07health.html?th&emc=th
4/6/06
Massachusetts set to become first state to provide nearly universal health care system for its residents:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040506N.shtml
3/22/06
Observing how confused are U.S. seniors with new medicare drug prescription plan, Pentagon decides to confuse Iraqi insurgents with mass drop of Arabic language version of the plan (satire): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11945021/site/newsweek/from/RSS/
3/13/06
Pharmacists complaining to White House about loss of income under new Medicare prescription drug program:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/13/politics/13medicare.html?th&emc=th
3/1/06
Some Medicare recipients caught in a maze of complexities when two different drug plans are involved:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/national/01medicare.html?th&emc=th
2/26/06
Bush defends troubled Medicare drug program
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-02-25T152004Z_01_N241079US-BUSH.xml
2/26/06
Medicare proposes limiting choices in drug plans after problems
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/5532.html
2/26/06
Wal-Mart moves to liberalize health insurance coverage for employees in response to state legislation dealing with the issue:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13319
2/23/06
Medicare Numbers at Odds with US Claims: Fewer volunteers for new drug plan
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0223-01.htm
2/23/06
Wal-Mart to offer improved health benefits after criticism
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=1654164
2/21/06
Less than 1/4 of seniors eligible for Medicare prescription drug coverage have enrolled for the program: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/20/AR2006022000977.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email
2/13/06
Opinion: tax breaks for health savings account represent extremely regressive tax policy: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/12/AR2006021201151.html
2/10/06
Medicare Part D a windfall for HMOs and drug industry, a burden to sick patients: http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0209-12.htm
2/7/06
Health care savings accounts are tax shelters for the wealthy disguised at health care reform, will increase number of uninsured: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_gene_c___060206_tax_shelters_disguis.htm
1/15/06
Wal-Mart to fight healthcare ruling
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1373158.cms
1/14/06
Maryland law requires large employers (e.g. Walmart) pay larger part of employees' health care coverage: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002736974_walmart13.html
1/10/06
New Medicare drug coverage won't help seniors: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10792
Books:
Video/Film:
Other Media:
FLORIDA:
STATEWIDE
Websites:
Analysis & views:
3/21/10
IS FEDERAL LEGISLATION REQUIRING ALL AMERICANS TO PURCHASE HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE UN-CONSTITUTIONAL? Top prosecutors in Florida and South Carolina are expected to file a lawsuit making this claim, if the U.S. Congress passes a version of health care reform that carries a mandate that all must purchase insurance. These officials are Republicans, Democrats say the projected lawsuit is "frivolous."
1/17/10
Effects on Florida of national health care reform legislation likely to be a focus of attention in state legislature.
12/1/09
FLORIDA LAWMAKERS TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN IN PUBLIC FINANCING OF THEIR HEALTH INSURANCE. Even as many cry poverty about the state's inability to pay for insurance for the poor, the Governor and other state officials have a fully-funded medical insurance program in what Crist calls one of the "necessary compensations" for public service.
9/17/09
Florida legislators are delivering in public meetings their plan to introduce plan for constitutional amendment to void health care reform as applied to Floridians.
9/8/09
SOME FLORIDA REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS MOUNT UP IN A TOUGH CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE TENTH AMENDMENT OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION. Conservative lawmakers are preparing for legislative action a series of "Freedom Bills" that will, among other things, allow Florida to "opt out" of any federally mandated health care program and preserve the rights reserved to states under the 10th amendment. These warriors admit that this won't be easy as it will require the vote of 60% of legislators and 60% of voters in a referendum on state constitutional change
8/26/09
"Tea parties" opposed to health care reform are showing strength across Florida.
8/23/09
FOR ALL THE TEA PARTIES IN SOUTH FLORIDA: THEY'RE "FED UP WITH SOCIALISM." Opponents of Obama's health care plan turn up at rallies across south Florida, many carrying signs reflecting their fear that the program is a precursor to socialized medicine and the further erosion of personal liberties.
8/20/09
FLORIDA POLITICOS BOAST OF STATE-RUN HEALTH CARE PROGRAM FOR CHILDREN, OPPOSE GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE FOR OTHER CITIZENS. Governor Crist and Lt. Governor Kottkamp running, respectively, for the offices of Senator and Attorney General, tout the 50,000 Florida children enrolled in state-operated KidCare program but, saying that children are "different" from adults, offer for the latter a "Cover Florida" program which gives people "affordable" insurance that in fact doesn't "cover" very much and for which only a handful of Floridians have signed up.
8/8/09
AS CONGRESS IS SET TO DEBATE AMENDMENT TO HEALTH CARE PLAN TO PROVIDE A STATE OPTION FOR A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM, TWO FLORIDA STATE SENATORS HAVE ANOTHER IDEA. They plan to try to initiate a state constitutional amendment that would forbid the state from participating in any federal-mandatory health care system. (Apparently they aren't even considering the possibility that Florida itself might create any such health care "system.")
7/31/09
WHEN IT COMES TO HEALTH CARE, FLORIDA REPUBLICANS ARE GETTING RIGHT "TERRITORIAL" ABOUT THE TENTH AMENDMENT. House Republicans introduce "memorials" that would have Florida exercise its "state's rights" by "opting out" of participate in a health care reform that is now making its way (or losing its way) through Congress. One of the proponents of such a memorial cites the example of a signer of the Constitution, who "warned" the country about a national health care system.
1/30/09
Health care coverage in Florida may increase, but costs also expcted to increase:. Report by Florida Public Interest Research Group indicates that premium and co-pay costs may be doubling even as federal and state money for insurance coverage is increased.
http://www.flanews.com/?p=4026
12/22/08
Governor Crist's "Cover Florida" plan for health care coverage won't, well...cover Florida. . Health care experts note that the plan will provide little coverage for Florida's uninsured beyond the low-cost health care plans already available at a comparable price through private insurance carriers. The one significant difference is that, unlike the private carrier plans, the state one will allow people coverage who have been rejected because of "pre-existing conditions."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/health/orl-coverfla2208dec22,0,4499181.story
12/11/08
After January 5, poor Floridians can get their bare bones covered with health insurance:. 3.8 million, including those without coverage for the last 6 months, can obtain coverage at a low premium rate but with minimal coverage and will be helpful primarily for those with chronic illnesses. The Cover Florida plan is described by Governor Crist as bringing Florida "a step closer" to universal coverage.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/custom/consumer/sfl-flrxinsure1211sbdec11,0,2414874.story
10/10/08
24% of Floridians under 65 have no health insurance coverage, compared with 17.2% nationwide (and of course it's worse for blacks and Hispanics).
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/EastVolusia/evlEAST01A101008.htm
5/22/08
Florida's new health insurance law "doesn't cost the taxpayers a dime." Governor Crist so touts the state's extension of coverage, joining the national trend of providing "stripped down" benefits for which some critics would extend the monetary analogy and say it isn't worth a "plugged nickel."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/us/22crist.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin
12/31/07
If you're fat, it's your own fault:. Insurance industry in south Florida and elsewhere is reluctant to pay for gastric surgery procedures, supposedly on grounds of lack of evidence of safety and ability to eliminate obesity, but apparently reflecting as well the attitude that people made "choices" that were responsible for their condition. Some surgeons note that the industry does not similarly limit their assistance to HIV-AIDS patients or lung cancer victims who are smokers
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/health/orl-insurance3107dec31,0,6412410.story?coll=orl_tab01_layout
7/28/07
Florida legislators and governor admit that changes need to be made in the state's KidCare program for child medical expenses, but say that to address changes to increase access to the program would be expensive and, lacking a legislative "consensus," is unlikely to be taken up in the legislature's special September session.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-flfkids0728nbjul28,0,5566970.story?coll=sofla_tab01_layout
6/29/07
The Miami Herald runs a pre-emptive review piece on Michael Moore's "Sicko" doc in which it quotes mostly conservative critics of the movie's premise of a failed health care system, complaining with these critics that the film is "anecdotal" in its presentations of the situation and not as dependent as it should be on interviews with "health experts." It even manages to mention that Moore is fat and somehow he failed to include the health prescription of "eat your vegetables and take a walk." The links to the article contain show places and times for south Florida.
http://www.miamiherald.com/103/story/154881.html
9/30/06
Elder abuse? Florida seniors, already confused with a Medicare drug program offering a choice of services from 41 stand-alone carriers, will see this number increase to 58 in 2007.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-rxmedicare30sep30,0,800554.story?coll=sfla-business-front
4/12/06
State legislature has big surplus, but can't find money to fully fund KidCare: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14320960.htm
2/14/06
Modeled on Maryland's "Wal-Mart law," union-backed bill would require 9% employer payroll contributions to employee health care: http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060213/APN/602130977&cachetime=5
2/14/06
Seniors protest Medicaid changes at state capitol: http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060214/NEWS02/602140320/1011
2/11/06
Florida Medicaid restores drug subsidies for cancer and transplant patients: http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBE3LFGJJE.html
Other information sources:
FLORIDA LOCALITIES
Websites:
Analysis and views:
Tampa:
3/21/10
Member of Congress from Tampa gets more than an earful of passionate local opposition, at the "forum" she organized, for health care reform measure for which she plans to vote today.
Orlando:
9/3/09
Plight of an Orlando woman's inability to pay medical bills bills from her castastrophic illness illustrates the problems of millions of "under-insured" people throughut the U.S.
Jacksonville:
8/27/09
Conservative group holds health care town hall meeting which is orderly but filled with many negative emotional reactions to "reform" measures.
Jacksonville:
3/5/09
"Reform" in Florida Medicaid system expected to hit hard the poor of Duval County (Jacksonville) who depend on Medicaid for health care treatments.
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-03-05/story/care_providers_worry_over_cuts_for_medicaid
Palm Beach Co.:
2/13/09
Required for the first time to furnish documentary proof of existence of people claimed as dependents, employees of Palm Beach FL County school district drop 1500 claimed dependents.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/02/12/0212dumped.html
Tampa:
12/20/08
Tampa area residents have chance to attend "health care reform forum" of type urged by Obama's HHS-designate, Tom Daschle.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/dec/20/na-health-reform-on-tap-today/news-metro/
Broward Co.:
4/20/08
Post-retirement health benefits coverage for former city employees is becoming an issue in Broward County as costs escalate
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-flbbenefits0420sbapr20,0,2656293.story
Hollywood:
10/1/06
Seniors in south Florida, faced with the "doughnut hole" of Medicare prescription drug coverage, are taking it out on Republican Clay Shaw and making his seemingly inevitable re-election to the House a little less certain.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000963.html?referrer=email
Tampa:
5/10/06
President Bush stumps Sun Center City on behalf of his Medicare prescription drug program. As usual, the ticketed event drew a "largely supportive crowd" but more than a few "dissidents" did slip into the proceedings.
http://www.tampatrib.com/MGBCYG821NE.html
Ft. Lauderdale:
3/25/06
Parents in South Florida say developmentally disabled children in Medicare plan being denied medical services by HMOs:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-rxmedicaid25mar25,0,7051846.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
Gainesville:
2/26/06
Alachua County's CHOICES program of public assistance for health care of uninsured workers flounders: only 66 or orginally-projected 14,000 eligible workers have been certified: http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060226/LOCAL/202260362/1078
Participants want others to know about the program: http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060226/LOCAL/202260343/1078
Other information sources
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