Category: Health Care

Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies

By Theresa Tamkins — CNN, June 5, 2009

This year, an estimated 1.5 million Americans will declare bankruptcy. Many people may chalk up that misfortune to overspending or a lavish lifestyle, but a new study suggests that more than 60 percent of people who go bankrupt are actually capsized by medical bills.

Bankruptcies due to medical bills increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007, and most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class, well-educated homeowners, according to a report that will be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

1.5 million Americans x 60% = 900,000 Americans

that’s about 2500 more people per day

… going bankrupt from medical bills, which were NOT covered by our broken Health Insurance system

From Michael Moore via email:

Keith Olbermann to Expose Congressional Opponents of Universal Health Care Tonight!

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

We’ve just received an advance transcript of tonight’s Special Comment by Keith Olbermann on his MSNBC show. It is nothing short of brilliant — and if all of America were to hear what he is going to reveal tonight, we are certain the vast majority of Americans would be on the phone to their elected representative immediately, calling for an end to the private, for-profit, rip-off health insurance companies who have wrecked our country.

Here’s a brief section of Keith’s editorial tonight:

An amendment introduced by representative Anthony Weiner, which would have created national single payer, has been traded in for a vote on the House floor in September, as a part of the deal between liberal and conservative members of the Democratic Party. The case – in support of single payer – made by some Democrats during the mark-up echoed the speeches given at a rally, which took place in the Upper Senate Park on Thursday, July 30th. That same day a number of members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus held a press conference on the Capitol Hill where they announced their intent to fight for a robust public option. The Real News spoke to David Swanson from Democrats.com who attended both the rally and the press conference.

Real News Network – August 3, 2009 – 9 minutes

Some members of Congress are going to fight for a robust public option and a single-payer amendment

David Swanson is the creator of ImpeachCheney.org, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com A writer and organizer, Swanson has worked for ACORN, the International Labor Communications Association, Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign and many others.

They say that even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day (or at least it did back in the primitive analog era), and in his recent comment regarding the health care debate being Obama’s Waterloo, Senator DeMint (R-Mordor) proves “them” correct.  DeMint is using the famed 1815 battle as an analogy for a loss in an epic final stand, and while this may be enough to make him appear “smart” in Republican “intellectual” circles, it turns out that upon further inspection, there’s actually some depth to the analogies that can be drawn from the scene of Napoleon’s final defeat.

So join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll take a hair-raising ride through Analogy-Land!  See the president play the role of a French emperor, the Public Option as a well-defended farmstead, and we progressives as the Imperial Guard.  The battle isn’t over, and we don’t yet (and may never) share their fate, but regardless, now is the time to learn what could’ve been done to alter the outcome of the fighting.

In light of recent enthusiasm for a “robust public option” on Big Orange I thought it apropos to suggest other “robust public option” solutions to the routine denial of necessities offered Americans by their beloved capitalist system.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

The following Associated Press article was entered into the national discourse earlier today, Sunday, August 2, 2009 — http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…  

This writer would submit that the views advanced in that article might be worthy of further examination and discussion.  My initial intent was to include each two-part segment, entitled “CLAIM” and “THE FACTS”, followed by my commentary, but soon discovered that discussion of the first item was extensive enough to comprise an entire essay in and of itself.  

Should there be sufficient interest in this exercise, it is this writer’s intent for this to be the first of a series, following by subsequent discussions of other “CLAIM” and “THE FACTS” pairings described in the above-referenced article.  

CLAIM: The House bill “may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia,” House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said July 23.

Former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey said in a July 17 article: “One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years … about alternatives for end-of-life care.”

THE FACTS: The bill would require Medicare to pay for advance directive consultations with health care professionals. But it would not require anyone to use the benefit.

Advance directives lay out a patient’s wishes for life-extending measures under various scenarios involving terminal illness, severe brain damage and situations. Patients and their families would consult with health professionals, not government agents, if they used the proposed benefit.

Former CIGNA Exec Wendell Potter, says Michael Moore was right!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

WENDELL POTTER: I thought that he hit the nail on the head with his movie.

But the [Insurance] Industry, from the moment that the Industry learned that Michael Moore was taking on the health care industry, it was really concerned.

BILL MOYERS: What were they afraid of?

WENDELL POTTER: They were afraid that people would believe Michael Moore.

The Speaker of the House, took a break from serious legislation, to spell out their plan for Messaging …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Nancy Pelosi:

You see CEOs of these Industries making millions of dollars a year — indeed many of them a million dollars a month — for their ‘Leadership’ in withholding benefits, to people in NEED of Health.

let the Drum beating, begin …

NB: I don’t know if this is allowed or not, so if it is not, someone please let me know and I will delete.

David Swanson wrote an excellent diary late last night at dkos. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/31/232625/243  It disappeared with about seven comments and I think it is well worth reading so am transplanting it over here.  I doubt David will mind.  

I think there is a lot to take away from this, but I’ve highlighted what I see as the key graphs.  What really impresses me is David’s ability to strategize and see the forest through the trees.  Rather than gloom and doom, he sees an upside and possibilities (although he titled his diary “Downside to Weiner’s Deal”).  I think we can moan and groan and say that we are likely to end up with something worse than we already have or we can continue to fight.  I saw some great energy in that press conference and I was moved to tears when I heard them use the language we have been using. I got the sense that the Progressive Caucus gets it – even if they are compromised by dint of the fact they serve in Congress – and I think they get it because we have been shoving it down their throats.  

If you haven’t been calling or writing, please push like hell during August so that we drown out the other side.  I acknowledge that I can be a bit of a Pollyanna, but I think at times it comes from being engaged.  Calling Reps’ offices this week and getting into discussions with press persons made me realize how critical it is that we make the calls and create the message because we sure as hell aren’t going to get MSM coverage to do it for us.  I was happy to see each of the reps I called standing in solidarity at the press conference or at least a signator on the letter.  As David says in so many words below, we are all in this with the same goal and it is and can make a difference.  As buhdy says in so many words and so eloquently, YELL LOUDER!  So now we have to YELL EVEN LOUDER in August.

Friday evening in in the House Energy and Commerce Committee health care markup session, Anthony Weiner (D-NY) extracted a promise from Nancy Pelosi that the full House will debate and vote on a single payer plan after the summer recess.

The promise was made after Weiner agreed to withdraw a proposed amendment to H.R. 3200, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s version of a health care reform bill, which the panel passed by a vote of 31 to 28 late Friday, to create a universal Medicare system for the entire nation.

According to the New York Daily News:

“The Brooklyn-Queens Rep. looked a little surprised when Chairman Henry Waxman said Pelosi would allow that vote, and made Waxman repeat the deal to be sure it was clear and on the record. It’s an especially big deal for advocates of a single health care system – who see it as cheaper and simpler than the complicated measure being drawn up – because they have been complaining that they have not even been able to get an airing of their position.”

as reported on Rachel Maddow’s Thursday show:

Congressman Weiner’s bluff-calling, put-up-or-shut-up amendment to the House health care bill (H.R. 3200):

Really Republicans, don’t like Publicly run Health Care?

Would you care to put your Vote where your rhetoric is,

to eliminate a very successful Public Health Care Program — Medicare?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

So what happened?

Will Medicare be relegated to the “junk heap of history” as another “failed idea” of the Liberal Agenda? … well in a word, HARDLY!

Crossposted from Antemedius

Economist, Author, and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Richard D. Wolff, well-known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology and class analysis, Yale University Ph.D. in Economics, and Professor at The New School University in New York City, talks with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the current health care debate and the challenges or barriers standing in the way of a national U.S. single payer plan.

Wolff suggests keeping in mind some basic facts – the U.S. spends far more for far less health care “product” than any other advanced country in the world, and suggests a return to the the old American prideful mindset of “if we’re not producing the best quality at the lowest price we should go and find out who’s doing that and replicate their experience“, and points out that the number one thing standing in the way of doing this is the lack of will to challenge the status quo and to do what everyone already knows needs to be done: spend less to get more.

In other words, Wolff opines, Obama must “mobilize or accept the status quo” and “make his party vote for real health care reform“, instead of making the lame this is the best we can get excuses that may very well destroy his presidency along with screwing millions of Americans out of proper health care.