Aug 13 2009

Can Obama’s Healthcare Reform Save Louisiana Healthcare from Jindal’s Cuts?

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Script follows the break.

Here is the script:

Can President Obama's healthcare reform plan save Louisiana healthcare from Governor Jindal's budget cuts?

Louisiana healthcare has been in decline for a long time, but Governor Jindal's recent budget cuts are going to make things a lot worse a lot quicker.

Louisiana residents have a high incidence of chronic diseases — heart disease, diabetes, cancer. But more Louisianans die from these diseases than do folks in the rest of the country. The reason is that these diseases go untreated until the problems get too bad to ignore.

The basic problem is lack of access to affordable healthcare. People don't go to the doctor because they cant afford it.

Our state has one of the highest percentages of adults without health insurance in the country.

Reaching affordable care — frequently LSU Hospital — can involve long drives and even longer waits to get treatment.

When things get really bad, the uninsured get treatment but it is more expensive by then and the costs they cant pay are spread across those who can, namely those with health insurance.

The Department of Health & Hospitals recently announced how it would implement Medicaid cuts made necessary by Governor Jindal's refusal to back a tobacco tax increase to stave off the cuts.

You might believe that Medicaid cuts will affect just the poor. You would be wrong.

The Louisiana Hospital Association says that the cuts will mean the loss of nearly 2,000 jobs at private hospitals over the next year. They also warn that Jindal's cuts will mean higher insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibles for those still fortunate enough to have health insurance.

Things will only get worse next year with the state facing an even larger deficit. Realistic solutions to Louisianas healthcare challenges will again fall victim to the Governor's national political ambitions.

Viewed in this light, President Barack Obama's healthcare reform program offers the only real hope to save Louisiana healthcare.

Healthcare reform will invest millions in Louisiana hospitals, clinics and doctors offices, to update technology, expand access to care and improve the quality of care. The administration has already provided new funding for community health centers, health information technology and for training of new healthcare professionals in our state.

The President's plan will improve existing insurance by making companies end the practice of denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. And, companies will no longer be able to revoke coverage once a disease has been diagnosed.

The President's plan will bring new competition into the health insurance marketplace through a public plan that will sell coverage at affordable rates. Private health insurance companies will have to either compete on price or on coverage. Either way, consumers win.

Expanded coverage will mean more paying customers for doctors and hospitals, improving their economic viability. It will also mean that those Louisiana citizens suffering from chronic diseases will be able to get access to affordable treatment earlier, giving them a better quality of life.

President Obama's healthcare reform program will break the cycle of ever-rising costs that force Louisiana businesses to abandon coverage for their employees and that put Louisiana families at risk of financial ruin if serious illness strikes.

Governor Jindal's ideology and national political ambitions have locked him into a plan to continue cutting public spending on healthcare that will have dire consequences for private sector providers and those with health insurance.

President Obama's healthcare reform program is the change we need to fix what ails our state's healthcare delivery system.

To learn more about President Obama's healthcare reform program, visit any of these websites:

• Healthcare Reform Myths

• The Wonk Room

• Stand With Dr. Dean

• The Service Employees International Union Healthcare Pages

6 comments

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  1. It’s true in California where Gov. Schwarzenegger has reduced Medicaid (here called Medi-Cal) payments by 10% and eliminated Medicaid coverage completely for all sorts of ‘ancillary’ proceedures such as hearing, vision, and dental care.  

  2. currently under consideration, as Dave Lindorff, points out:

    A Few More Thoughts About Single-Payer and Medicare

    8-13-2009

    Some critics have written, in response to my article calling for extension of the single-payer plan called Medicare to all Americans, that actually Medicare is a badly flawed program that leaves America’s elderly without coverage for many important health services, and which requires them to pay for supplemental insurance, or to go on Medicaid, too.

    These critics are correct. Medicare is great as far as it goes. It is simple for people to use, allows them to go to the doctors of their choice, covers 80 percent of their care, and is liked by nearly all who use it. But it doesn’t pay for needed tests, only lets seniors buy mediocre medical devices like hearing aids, and most importantly, it has been requiring more and more contributions by the elderly year after year. Today, Americans over 65 and the permanently disabled pay a greater percentage of their income for medical care than they did in 1964 before Medicare was established!

    But having said that, I have to say that it has nothing to do with whether or not it makes sense to expand Medicare to all Americans as a way to solve our health care crisis–as Rep. John Conyers’ bill, HR 676, would do.

    The reason Medicare is inadequate is because the Republicans and the conservative Democrats–the very “Blue Dog” vermin who, engorged on health insurance, hospital and pharmacy bribes and campaign donations, are undermining and destroying the already lousy health care “reform” plan of President Barack Obama–have been underfunding it, and performing a slow “privatization” of the program, chipping away at its benefits, adding increased self-pay requirements, and raising the Medicare tax on all workers. . . . .

    The so-called “reform” bill that is going to emerge from the current process is going to be the legislative equivalent of road kill, barely recognizeable either as health care or as a “reform.” It will be a Christmas present for the insurance industry, the hospital industry and the phramaceutical industry, all three of which struck secret deals behind closed doors with the White House.

    It will set back health reform in America a generation, will require everyone to buy inadequate and overpriced insurance, overpriced drugs and to go to overpriced hospitals. And the cost of healthcare to individuals, businesses, and the nation as a whole (already the highest in the modern industrial world), will continue to soar.

    This is not a case where the right thing to do is push for any bill, and then try to move on. This is a case where Obama and the Democrats have whored themselves out to the greedy industry that is causing all the problems, and are pushing a plan that is worse than nothing.

    We should all be working to kill this whole thing and start over, with HR 676.

    If Congress won’t do it, we need to start working for a new Congress in 2010 that will.

    No Democrat running for House or Senate in 2010 who isn’t solidly for expanding Medicare to all should get a single vote.

    Unfortunately, I think there is so much truth in Lindorff’s analyse of the proposed healthcare reform, as it is so called.

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