Health Care Reform

And a real death panel decision.

As long as you give health insurance companies your money

They are fine with covering you. It's when you actually try to use it that they get mad at you. And drop you. After years and years of paying into the program.

The money is for health care for the CEOs, not for you.

Isn't greed a pre-existing condition?

Update: Robert Reich on the public option:

Wendell Potter

A man with a conscience:

Until I quit my job last year, I was one of the leaders of that army. I had a very successful career and was my company's voice to the media and the public for several years.

It was my job to "promote and defend" the company's reputation and to try to persuade reporters to write positive stories about the industry's ideas on reform. During the last couple of years of my career, however, I became increasingly worried that the high-deductible plans insurers were beginning to push Americans into would force more and more of us into bankruptcy.

The higher I rose in the company, the more I learned about the tactics insurers use to dump policyholders when they get sick, in order to increase profits and to reward their Wall Street investors. I could not in good conscience continue serving as an industry mouthpiece. And I did not want to be part of yet another industry effort to kill meaningful reform.

I explained during the press conference with Rep. Slaughter how the industry funnels millions of its policyholders' premiums to big public relations firms that provide talking points to conservative talk show hosts, business groups and politicians. I also described how the PR firms set up front groups, again using your premium dollars and mine, to scare people away from reform.

What I'm trying to do as I write and speak out against the insurance industry I was a part of for nearly two decades is to inform Americans that when they hear isolated stories of long waiting times to see doctors in Canada and allegations that care in other systems is rationed by "government bureaucrats," someone associated with the insurance industry wrote the original script.

[snip]

So the next time you hear someone warning against a "government takeover" of our health care system, or that the creation of a public health insurance option would send us down the "slippery slope toward socialism," know that someone like I used to be wrote those terms, knowing it might turn many of the very people who would benefit most from meaningful reform into unwitting spokespeople for the industry.

Why the public option sucks

Click to embiggen.

"Hold the insurance companies accountable,"

Reads a strategy memo distributed to members of the House Democratic caucus.

Remove them from between you and your doctor. No discrimination for pre-existing conditions. No dropping your coverage because you get sick. No more job or life decisions made based on loss of coverage. No need to change doctors or plans. No co-pays for preventive care. No excessive out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles, or co-pays. No yearly or lifetime cost caps on what insurance companies cover.

As long as health care is made to be for profit and for pocketbook, we will not have health care that cares about people.

Kill all the white folks!

They always knew Obama had a secret agenda!!



(h/t to JJ of Unrepentant Old Hippie)

Democrats casting old people out into the streets to die!!.... But what is this? A Republican governor secretly cutting 500 million more from the state budget? Which will cast old people out into the streets to die? Oh. Well. At least he's keeping us ... ah... um... safe?

Reporting from Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday signed a budget plan sent to him by lawmakers to close the state's monumental deficit, using his veto pen to impose nearly $500 million in additional cuts.

The new reductions will affect child welfare and children's healthcare, the elderly, state parks and AIDS treatment and prevention, going beyond the dramatic cuts that were part of the deal Schwarzenegger negotiated with legislative leaders.

[snip]

The extra cuts the governor made Tuesday -- $489 million -- took nearly $80 million that pays for workers who help abused and neglected children; $50 million from Healthy Families, which provides healthcare to children in low-income families; $50 million from services for developmentally delayed children under age 3; $16 million from domestic-violence programs; and $6.3 million from services for the elderly. Among other reductions was $6.2 million more from parks, which could result in the closure of 100, rather than 50, of California's 279 state parks.

In addition, Schwarzenegger effectively gutted a program that provides local governments with funding to encourage property owners to preserve open space and to use land for agriculture.

Hell, this is California! Gropenator Arhnold is being even more even-handed and tossing children along with the elderly out into the streets to die! Go for the weak people, Governor! They can't fight back! They are girly men!

Hope this won't upset you so much that you can't smoke your stogie while soaking in your jacuzzi, Governor.

Quote of the Day

From the movie Bulworth:

Bullworth: Yo, everybody gonna get sick someday / But nobody knows how they gonna pay / Health care, managed care, HMOs / Ain't gonna work, no sir, not those / 'Cause the thing that's the same in every one of these / Is these motherfuckers there, the insurance companies!
Cheryl and Tanya: Insurance! Insurance!
Bullworth: Yeah, yeah / You can call it single-payer or Canadian way / Only socialized medicine will ever save the day! Come on now, lemme hear that dirty word - SOCIALISM!

(thanks to Steve for the link!)

Do you have an answer, SIR?

No... he does not!

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich absolutely tore it up today on Capitol Hill. In this video he is questioning Dr. David Gratzer of the Manhattan Institute. One need only read the title of Gratzer's new book, "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Healthcare" (complete with forward written by Milton Friedman) to know what side of the debate he was on.

Blog sprinkles

Returning to the good ol' days when men were men and races wuz pure and wimmen knew their place....

Public Option Enemy No. 1:

Rick Scott ran a hospital company guilty of epic fraud. Now he wants to tell you how to fix the health care system.

Researchers Find Possible Environmental Causes For Alzheimer's, Diabetes:

A new study by researchers at Rhode Island Hospital have found a substantial link between increased levels of nitrates in our environment and food, with increased deaths from diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson's. The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (Volume 17:3 July 2009).

Led by Suzanne de la Monte, MD, MPH, of Rhode Island Hospital, researchers studied the trends in mortality rates due to diseases that are associated with aging, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and cerebrovascular disease, as well as HIV. They found strong parallels between age adjusted increases in death rate from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and diabetes and the progressive increases in human exposure to nitrates, nitrites and nitrosamines through processed and preserved foods as well as fertilizers. Other diseases including HIV-AIDS, cerebrovascular disease, and leukemia did not exhibit those trends. De la Monte and the authors propose that the increase in exposure plays a critical role in the cause, development and effects of the pandemic of these insulin-resistant diseases.

Here's an unbelievable headline:

Michael Jackson to be buried without his brain

Oh noooooo! Will they have a funeral for this, too?

Iraq suffers more terrorist attacks.

Even when it's proved the detainees weren't the worst of the worst, some still say they should be locked up because it's obvious they were the worst of the worst or why were they locked up in the first place and besides they might become terrorists when they get out because they were locked up as if they were the worst of the worst... or even worse, tell everybody what happened while in the hands of the government while they were being treated like they were the worst of the worst. So there.

Left a really nasty scar: New Mexico Teen Girl Tasered In The Head By Police Chief

A Cat-erpillar:



Are men now extraneous?

LONDON (AFP) – A team of British scientists claimed Wednesday to have created human sperm using embryonic stem cells, in a medical first that they say will lead to a better understanding of fertility.

Researchers led by Professor Karim Nayernia at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI) developed a new technique that allows the creation of human sperm in the laboratory.

Arctic ice is thinning:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thick older ice shrinking by the equivalent of Alaska's land area, a study using data from a NASA satellite showed.

Coleman for governor?

Sign of the end of days: Peeps get their own store.

And you guys call yourselves DEMOCRATS?

Straight from information provided by Howard Dean, TPM:

So you know where to direct your angry calls and letters, here's a breakdown of members of the Democratic caucus who either openly oppose the public option or haven't indicated their position clearly. Needless to say, zero Republicans have any chance of supporting it. Most of this information comes from Howard Dean's website.

Openly opposed to the public option: (2)

*Mary Landrieu, D-LA
*Joe Leiberman, D/I-CT

Can't make up their minds: (20)
*Ben Nelson, D-NE
*Bill Nelson, D-FL
*Blanche Lincoln, D-NE
*Byron Dorgan, D-ND
*Diane Feinstein, D-CA
*Evan Bayh, D-IN
*Harry Reid, D-NV
*John Tester, D-MT
*Kay Hagan, D-NC (though she recently said she would support the public option)
*Kent Conrad, D-ND
*Maria Cantwell, D-WA
*Mark Begich, D-AK
*Mark Pryor, D-AR
*Mark Udall, D-CO
*Mark Warner, D-VA
*Max Baucus, D-MT
*Michael Bennett, D-CO
*Robert Byrd, D-WV
*Ron Wyden, D-OR
*Tom Carper, D-DE

If Howard Dean's info is to believed, there are 38 Senators on board already. So assuming no Republican support, every one of these members needs to be convinced to achieve 60 votes.

I don't understand. Democrats are for the disenfranchised, the common folk, the person on the street.... WTF are they thinking?

It will take more than a sternly worded letter to Congress

To get them to move on health care reform, but Krugman helps shove them along:

Now, about those specifics: The HELP plan achieves near-universal coverage through a combination of regulation and subsidies. Insurance companies would be required to offer the same coverage to everyone, regardless of medical history; on the other side, everyone except the poor and near-poor would be obliged to buy insurance, with the aid of subsidies that would limit premiums as a share of income.

Employers would also have to chip in, with all firms employing more than 25 people required to offer their workers insurance or pay a penalty. By the way, the absence of such an “employer mandate” was the big problem with the earlier, incomplete version of the plan.

And those who prefer not to buy insurance from the private sector would be able to choose a public plan instead. This would, among other things, bring some real competition to the health insurance market, which is currently a collection of local monopolies and cartels.

The budget office says that all this would cost $597 billion over the next decade. But that doesn’t include the cost of insuring the poor and near-poor, whom HELP suggests covering via an expansion of Medicaid (which is outside the committee’s jurisdiction). Add in the cost of this expansion, and we’re probably looking at between $1 trillion and $1.3 trillion.

There are a number of ways to look at this number, but maybe the best is to point out that it’s less than 4 percent of the $33 trillion the U.S. government predicts we’ll spend on health care over the next decade. And that in turn means that much of the expense can be offset with straightforward cost-saving measures, like ending Medicare overpayments to private health insurers and reining in spending on medical procedures with no demonstrated health benefits.

So fundamental health reform — reform that would eliminate the insecurity about health coverage that looms so large for many Americans — is now within reach. The “centrist” senators, most of them Democrats, who have been holding up reform can no longer claim either that universal coverage is unaffordable or that it won’t work.

C'mon, Congress! You really can do this thing, become true statesmen and actually help your constituents! Or... you can go with the huge insurance corporations, go with the flow, which means you are a dead fish (to quote a recently exxed governor...)

Obama is Spock

"Why would it [a public option] drive private insurers out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government — which they say can’t run anything — suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical." - Barack Obama, June 23, 2009

The health care stories

With desperate calls for Health Care Reform and the public option.

Millions of American citizens can see the system is broken, why can't our elected officials?

We are all uninsured now....

If those who didn't have insurance wore these:



Those who are comfortable in their denials about the need for health care reform would be stunned.

A petition and a swift kick to the posterior

(Not from California but still want to kick your elected official's butt? Try this link and put in your own state, otherwise you will find this petition on the righthand column under Take Action: Tell your senators: Support Obama on health care.)

Subject: Tell Sen. Feinstein to Support the Public Health Care Option

Dear Friend,

Instead of fighting for the change we need, Sen. Feinstein is putting the brakes on reform when it matters most.

President Obama is fighting an uphill battle to convince Congress to do what 72% of the American people want: provide a public health care option similar to Medicare for any American who wants one.

Yet Sen. Feinstein has refused to declare her support for the public health care option that millions of Californians desperately need.

Even more astonishing, Sen. Feinstein went on CNN last weekend to question whether the President has the votes in the Senate to pass his health care agenda.

Right now we have a chance to take bold steps to reform health care. The question of including a public option in health care reform is one of the most important policy battles in modern American history. So why isn't Sen. Feinstein on the right side of the issue?

Sign this petition today to tell Sen. Feinstein to stop pandering corporate interests and get on board with a reform supported by the President and an overwhelming number of Californians: a public health care plan.