Hi Scarecrow! Am I #1?

Kewl!!!!!! I think we should have medicare for all. With prescriptions. And eliminate medicaid.

You’d think that a politically astute Administration would figure out how to use the obvious enthusiasm shown in the President’s rallies for a public option. It’s obviously an asset, rather than something to ignore and diminish, since people readily understand and approve its purpose.

The fact they are not doing so is quite telling.

You’re always #1, Cassie.

Funny how all the polls showing 70%+ support of the public option seems to have escaped him. And Mr. Pear call himself a reporter…a reporter of what?

It is suprising that even in the House and Senate HELP bills, Democrats continued the distinction between Medicare and Medicaid, the latter of which has all kinds of problems with uneven coverage (state to state), limited benefits, etc. It would have been simpler and faired to rename the under-65 programs “Medicare II,” make the coverage comparable and then expand coverage, all under federal funding.

If I can’t have the public option, can I emigrate to France?

you are the Zedaroo Cassie!!
We must have a Public Option if we are to survive as a nation!! We are going down a road of self destruction as more and more companies can no longer provide health insurance! And we all know in the current system buying on your own is just too expensive for the average American to afford!

I can’t figure him out; he seems to track a lot of what’s going on, has his name on lots of health reform stories, but then he writes stuff that looks like he’s new to the beat. He’s not as bad as other Times reporters, though, and a couple of them are just hacks. The most insightful Times person on health reform has been a business columnist. The editorial board has been very good, and when they all get together to compile summaries/comparisons, they’ve been excellent.

No. Rep. Joe Wilson had Bad Max insert language into the bill that no other country can provide health care to any American that leaves the country.

Funny how all the polls showing 70%+ support of the public option seems to have escaped him.

But the “sophisticated” attitude that reporters take when confronted with this is to say
that of course it all depends on how the question is worded – without bothering to
look at how the question is worded.

awwwwwww thanks scarecrow!

Did you hear that Wilson actually voted to give health benefits to illegal immigrants?

Linky : http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/?p=23428

Quite the poll, Scarecrow.

I often wonder how many small business owners know the chamber of commerce is not on their side at all in situations such as health care?

Yeah, the guy’s a real softee.

The Times piece on health care in other developed countries references this article. Here’s the abstract (the rest is behind a paywall)

We compared trends in deaths considered amenable to health care before age seventy-five between 1997–98 and 2002–03 in the United States and in eighteen other industrialized countries. Such deaths account, on average, for 23 percent of total mortality under age seventy-five among males and 32 percent among females. The decline in amenable mortality in all countries averaged 16 percent over this period. The United States was an outlier, with a decline of only 4 percent. If the United States could reduce amenable mortality to the average rate achieved in the three top-performing countries, there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths per year by the end of the study period.

I really don’t know what Chambers of Commerce are for. Maybe to tell people it’s okay to go in the water, even when there are sharks, or something.

Wow.

mas- on the “illegals” argument, I’ve been thinking that it probably makes economic sense to encourage them to purchase insurance in the exchange. After all, the whole idea of the mandate is to create a larger pool to share risks and lower average costs for some. If the illegals are on the low-risk side, then their participation would tend to lover average costs and premiums. If they are on the high-risk side of the average, then their participation might raise the average, but at the same time, they wouldn’t resort to the emergency room as much. And since they’d be high-risk — i.e., more prone to have serious illnesses that need emergency care, even that situation could mean their participation in paying premiums would help lower total system costs. If all that is true, then it’s stupid to be forbidding their participation; we should encourage it.

Anyone seen any analysis/data on this?

My husband pays our company bills and gets p*ssed about any talk eliminating the public option. He feels public option is the only way to keep prices down and services up.

Here’s the argument for giving insurance.

If someone is here from England (or some country we like), and they stay one day past when their visa ends, and they get hit by a bus, should we just let them die? Cause now they’re illegal aliens.

Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

how can our congress decide whether another country provides insurance to americans?

They can’t. I was teasing masaccio. Sorry.

Nicely written. Thanks.

Basing reform on the continuation of employer-based insurance coverage would seem the height of futility. The only thing employers are shedding faster than pension plans and employees is their health care coverage. It is stemming the tide with a tea cup and risks taxpayer rejection owing to overload. It would tar the Dems with an unworkable, expensive, Luddite reform. Is that by design or the result of blind Rahmian triangulation. Or is it Rahm’s desire to stick with his rapacious insurer supporters? That would be rather like suckling from a vampire sow.

As you say, it would be better for Dems if they hitch the government’s step into health care via the public option, implemented through existing Medicare administrative resources and move on to tackling health care costs – beyond insurance itself – in Stage Two. If Dems must make the public insurance itself in stages, obvious pools are those 55 and over, those currently uninsured, those below XX times the poverty level. The goal is to make it available to anyone who prefers it over what the privates sell as a “health insurance contract”.

One step along the way that can’t be far ahead is also to more tightly regulate what constitutes such a “health insurance contract” and who can issue it. The soundness of the contract, what it covers, how rationally it must be administered cannot be ignored. So, too, with AIG as an example, the prudential requirements for who can issue such policies must also be raised.

As with regulated life and auto insurers, no policy is any good if it’s full of holes, honored only in the breach or issued by a player addicted to high risk and low capital operations and which won’t be around when it comes time to pay off. Unlike life and auto insurance, the odds of needing to pay handsomely on health insurance are quite high.

thanks for explaining that gently. my tired genes are highly activated tonight.

Pear’s piece sounded extremely thick, stupid beyond belief, and I say this without regard to where I stand on the issues. It was thick on policy considerations, thick on the role moneyed interests have played, thick on popular sentiment, and thick on the number of progressives in the House, who can kill any bill that includes a mandate but no option.

He’s not a total idiot so he must have made a calculated decision to hand his pen over to those in Congress whose campaign funding and long-term career prospects turn on their killing off the public option.

Pear managed to come off like an idiot, however. He put on his jester suit to write this one. He’s earned my vote for the Judith Miller Award for Excellence in Journalism.

I haven’t seen any data, but your thinking is sound.

I did a sabbatical in Italy and France one summer, and part of obtaining a permisso di soggiorno was a requirement that I have health insurance. It wasn’t expensive, but it was a buy-in to the Italian and French systems.

Last summer with the elections in full swing the BS was laid on thick. Of course with the choice coming down to four more years of Republican rule which G.W.Bush and Dick Cheney had fully revealed to be truly reckless and heedless or Barack Obamas “Yes We Can!” Americans voted for the least offensive pack of lies.

Here in 2009 we are learning more about the choice we made last November of 2008.

We did get a pack of lies and entrenched and vested interests are working very hard to pull off another hijacking of any purported or rumored American healthcare reform. There will be no reform. None.

Barack Obama is either not on the right page and has been blindsided in ways which make him look now like a idiot or fool or he has been in on the bait,switch and scam job from the start and is just doing the performance art politics required to get to and past the 2010 elections. Hoping lots of political amnesia sets in by 2012 and the Republicans field a terrible alternative to four more years of a Barack Obama run WH. Or at least where Barack is the front man for whatever Rahm and the Clintonites want to do.

Somehow one must get the point here that this so called reform of American healthcare is about doing little more than make it more unsustainable and inequitable. How Social Security or Medicare get submerged while government and good governance get mugged while for profit forces in American healthcare line up new mandated business and government subsidies.

Barack Obama is head of his party. His party is selling lots of Americans out ( 70 plus percent want Federal government healthcare coverage option ) for what or who again and he can not do anything about it?

This mandated forced join/pay in BS is going to come back to punish the Democratic Party plain to see. The Republicans are going to ride that blowback wave like South Cali surfer dudes.

I hope the people who thought shanking American healthcare reform again was good politics get what they have coming.They will have earned it.

Crazy. Depressing. Pixellated. The whole damn thing. Maybe our only hope now is the damn teabaggers.

Scarecrow, please be careful w/ your teasing! Things have gotten so extreme and so bizarre that any wild statement must be considered possible! Great article, Keep it up.

Whew! I was already getting ready to dial congress in the early AM!
Now I know why you are called Scarecrow!

It’s the state religion

In this country almost all of us, and all but a tiny minority of the class of people who get to be Senators, believe with a touchingly pure faith, that the ability to make a whole lot of money is proof, is really the only proof possible, of competence in practical affairs.

So, sure, Olympia Snowe gets a lot of money from the folks who have proven their ability to make boatloads of money at the health care insurance racket, and yes, that sure gives her plenty of motive to listen to what they have to say about health care reform, certainly more than, say, the ordinary voters in her state who can’t match the contributions of the industry. But if it were just the money she gets from them, if it were just that she’s a dishonest sell-out, you would think that she would recognize that this is a good time to turn coat and sell her former paymasters so far down the river that they’ll never be able to fund anyone running against her. Single payer would get the industry out of her hair forever and completely. Sure, no more largesse from them, but there’s other industries to milk, and turning the insurers in, when that would save the voters the 20-30% in premiums that the industry skims off the top, would create such goodwill from the voters that you’ld think it would well repay the effort Snowe would have to make to line up new sources of campaign cash from other industries.

But neither Snowe, nor any of the other “centrists”, are going to turn on the industry, because they aren’t dishonest. If they were, if they would only not stay bought, they would seek that better deal down the street and we’ld get a better result in health care reform. They will stick with the industry because to them it is inconceivable that anyone else but the folks who make billions at the game would know how to fix the crisis in the industry. This is the exact same logic that had us entrust the clean-up after the meltdown Goldman-Sachs types caused — to Goldman-Sachs types. More importantly, the voters will not react with the anger you would expect from people who see Senators, who are supposed to work for the people, the voters, accepting money on the side from folks that their putative servants then let write the bills that become our laws. Gee, who would you want writing our laws: people who are competent enough to make billions in the industry, or DFH bloggers like Scarecrow, or God forbid, really-DFH-pensioner-mere-blog-commenters like gtomkins?

Were it not for the state religion, Snowe, most of the rest of the Senate, and the industry’s executive echelon would all be in jail for bribery. But this whole country is instead heading over the cliff, blindly following the lead of an industry whose failure has caused the crisis we are in, simply because we cannot imagine that anyone but the industry machers could possibly steer the damn vessel.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
A. Einstein

Every legislator needs to absorb this quote and put it to work.

The Congress is back in session and doing the dirty work for the Medical Industrial Complex.

mcconnell $3.3M, hatch $2.9M, baucus $2.8M, grassley $2.7M,
lieberman $2.6M, burr $2.4M, ensign $2.4M, cornyn $2.2M, kyl $2.1M,
conrad $2.1M, cantor $1.8M boehner $1.7M, coburn $1.2M, j wilson 800K
were paid by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Health Care Reform.

Citizens for Tax Justice pointed this out. The tax legislation enacted under President George W. Bush from 2001 through 2006 will cost $2.48 trillion over the 2001-2010 period. This includes the revenue loss of $2.11 trillion that results directly from the Bush tax cuts as well as the $379 billion in additional interest payments on the national debt that we must make since the tax cuts were deficit-financed. Over the upcoming decade (2010-2019), the costs of the health care proposals approved by three committees in the U.S. House of Representatives are projected to be around $1 trillion and deficit neutral(that means they’re paid for). In 2010, when all the Bush tax cuts are finally phased in, a staggering 52.5 percent of the benefits will go to the richest 5 percent of taxpayers. The Bush tax cuts were deficit-financed, which increased the national debt and resulted in greater interest payments on that debt. They never even tried to pay for their tax-cuts. So, for the price of bush’s tax-cuts for the wealthiest 5%, we could have had Health Care for every American. Instead Americans got bupkus and cheney/bush’s republican buddies got filthy rich off of the Blood Money from No-Bid, Cost-Plus Federal Contracts.

12 Million Americans were denied Health Care Coverage by the Medical Industrial Complex because they had a Pre-Existing Medical Condition. 12K Americans lose Insurance Coverage everyday. Over 18K Americans die each day because they lack health insurance. (Source: WaPo Article 05′ by Harvard Prof. E. Warren)

Follow the Money: Link

Call Congress and demand, Single-Payer Health Care for All!

Sign Single-Payer Petition: Link

Don’t let the Medical Industrial Complex steal your Health Care from you and your family by donating huge sums of money to Crooked Politicians in order to maintain the Status Quo. Keep up the good fight.

SEMPER FI!

Great post. Hammer meets nail. Love the way you call Pear’s reporting.

Good summary, but it leaves out the fact that the Bush administration, in addition to turning a $128 billion budget surplus into a $500 billion deficit, added close to $5 trillion dollars to the national debt. And despite adding all this money, the economy was still a shambles. The reason for this is, as you point out, that the money, around $6 trillion, didn’t go into the economy but into the pockets of the richest 5% — the “have-mores” as Bush laughingly called them.

Second, there is the fact that while this money would have provided health care for everyone, the lack of government provided health care gives European manufacturers an advantage over Americans. European government-provided health care is paid for by taxes on the citizens who are entitled to this care. That means that, unlike the US, businesses do not have to pay for health care for their employees. This means that European manufacturers can produce superior products at lower cost, thus pushing American products even out of their own market. Thus, through their taxes Europeans are subsidizing their manufacturing base, but they are getting health care out of it. Amercans, on the other hand, through their staggering debt are subsidizing the military-industrial complex and the plutocracy but aren’t getting diddly-squat out of it. Thus American jobs go to Asia so American manufacturers can reduce costs while European jobs stay in Europe.

You’d think that someone, say the media, would be able to explain this to the D-baggers but no one seems interested in doing this — perhaps because the media are owned by the military-industrial complex and the plutocracy?

European government-provided health care is paid for by taxes on the citizens who are entitled to this care.

“Europe” is slightly bigger than the British Isles and Scandinavia.

The editorial board has been very good…

My assessment has consistently been rather different.

NYT & White House have been corrupted by our Executive Corporate Field

Marshalls. You preach cornball like Dick Armey, keep people mis-

informed, and scared of the future with know nothing pundits & news

readers.

“Europe” is slightly bigger than the British Isles and Scandinavia.

Yes, and “America” is slightly bigger than the US and the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. So what’s your point?

There’s a built in assumption that they want to engage in the practice of solving problems; I’d start with the dubiousness of that claim when deconstructing why Congress doesn’t seem to be able to accomplish anything of significance for the public-interest.

My point is that, aside from the British Isles and Scandinavia, European countries don’t have “government-provided health care [that] is paid for by taxes”.

If God wanted me to have health insurance he would have made me rich.

The radical wrong keeps working on the folks who vote against their own self interest

When you have a government regulatory structure that requires everyone to pay for insurance, that the insurers be non-profit and simply administer the provider payments without exclusion and provide standardized products defined by government regulation without exclusion, and that part of the funds to cover the costs flows through the government (via subsidies), then the distinction between that “European” system and a government-sponsored insurance system paid by taxes starts to lose meaning.

Seems to me there is a set of regulatory functions and revenue collection/payment mechanisms that have to be in place no matter what — and I suspect we’d find the government defining/overseeing all of them throughout Europe.

So, are insurance companies in a jurisdiction that demands motor liability insurance with a certain coverage for every car owner part of the “government”? Are those insurance premiums “taxes”?

Sometimes simplifications go too far, and rob words of their meanings.
“Defining” and “overseeing” are different concepts than “providing” and “doing”.

By virtue of having an enforced legal framework for commerce (contract law, business law, copyright, etc) the government generally defines/oversees the whole economy. That is still a far cry from a state run planned economy.

My point is that, aside from the British Isles and Scandinavia, European countries don’t have “government-provided health care [that] is paid for by taxes”.

Ah, I see. It is a reading comprehension problem. What I said was:

European government-provided health care is paid for by taxes on the citizens who are entitled to this care.

This does not mean that all Europeans get government-provided health care. What it means is that Europeans who get government-provided health care pay for it with taxes.

But even in European states that don’t provide government-run health care, the government picks up part of the tab for health care or health insurance and the part that the government picks up comes from taxes. The part that the government contributes varies from country to country but it cannot be said that Europeans do not subsidize health care with their taxes. In most countries they may not subsidize all of it, but I don’t know of a state in Europe in which the government is not involved in health care in some way.

Your argument was:

Thus, through their taxes Europeans are subsidizing their manufacturing base

But the competitive advantage of VW over Ford isn’t that the German government picks up two (2) percent of the budget of the sickness funds with tax money, it’s that VW doesn’t have to pay the profit of health care insurance companies.
Because the sickness funds are non-profit.

Lack of huge profit margins on an essential commodity is the key difference, not some minor government subsidizing with tax money.

A “state run planned economy”?? No one is talking about that.

Medicaid is a government sponsored insurance program. But it functions by having large private insurance companies handle plans — it’s mostly an adminsitrative function that has to be done no matter what. The dollars flow through the state and federal tax system to the insurers to the providers. so is this a government insurance system or a private insurance system?

When you categorize European (or any) health care system, I think it’s important to focus on how the funding is done, who defines the products and imposes the mandates, and only last, who administers the accounting system. Even in systems that rely on “private insurance” can be more closely defined as governmental functions rather than strictly private markets. And when you see a system that is universal — everyone covered — you know the government is providing that assurance, because a private market would not, cannot, achieve universal coverage. By definition, it will ration by price/income and thus some will not be covered.

Hey you commie, pinkos, socialist, leftie, God forsaken crazies. When will you folks get it If God had wanted everyone to have health care he would have made you rich…or you would have been born in France.

thanks for all you do Scarecrow…writing, calling, my Reps AGAIN

The dollars flow through the state and federal tax system to the insurers to the providers. so is this a government insurance system or a private insurance system?

That is a government insurance system exactly because “[t]he dollars flow through the state and federal tax system”.

Contrast that with most continental European systems were the premiums/contributions are strictly separated from the general budget/tax revenue, and the executive branch has no real control over that money.

I think it’s important to focus on how the funding is done, who defines the products and imposes the mandates

Again, I think you paint with a too broad brush (at least from an European perspective): government has (at least over here) quite an influence over the housing market with zoning, building codes, tax incentives, regulations on renting, and so on.
But to say that landlords are really part of the government and that rents are really “dwelling tax” is obfuscation, not simplification.

A “state run planned economy”?? No one is talking about that.

No, of course not. That businesses are regulated by the government doesn’t mean that they’re “government-provided”. That would be silly.
Just as silly as calling my contributions to my sickness fund “taxes”, and saying that my sickness fund is part of the government.

Robert Pear has been a shill for Baucus and the Gang of Six. He is the Michael Gordon of healthcare.

The problem with your analogy is that you don’t have to own a car and pay insurance. You can take the bus or walk.

I am perplexed by how you think FICA works and how you think Medicare/Social Security is administered in this country.

So because I’m obliged to be a member of a sickness fund, that makes my sickness fund part of the government?

I am perplexed by how you think FICA works and how you think Medicare/Social Security is administered in this country.

Actually I don’t think I’ve made any assumptions how any of that works, because I don’t have a clue how your American system works. FICA?

All I’m trying to do is correcting Franklymydear’s opinion on how my (European) system works…

But the competitive advantage of VW over Ford isn’t that the German government picks up two (2) percent of the budget of the sickness funds with tax money, it’s that VW doesn’t have to pay the profit of health care insurance companies.
Because the sickness funds are non-profit.

Lack of huge profit margins on an essential commodity is the key difference, not some minor government subsidizing with tax money.

Yes, I grant you that percentage-wise the effect of taxpayer subsidy in this case is negligible. But as you might say, European manufacturing is slightly bigger than VW (although, again, I grant you that VW has a leading share of the European auto market). Besides, comparing German automobile manufacturers with Detroit is like comparing F-16s with Spads.

But profit margins on health insurance don’t account for Nokia’s ~40% market share (although its share of the US market is abysmal) and I don’t think product superiority does either.

In any case I’m quite willing to stipulate that there is more than one factor involved in the US’s manufacturing slump. And whether it revolves around government-provided health care or profit margins on health insurance, European manufacturers have an advantage over the US that revolves around health care in one way or another. It is also reflected in the fact that European health care costs tend to be around 10% of GDP while the costs in the US are almost 16%.