Category: Health Care

Welcome to the eleventh installment of “Considered Forthwith.”

This weekly series looks at the various committees in the House and the Senate. Committees are the workshops of our democracy. This is where bills are considered, revised, and occasionally advance for consideration by the House and Senate. Most committees also have the authority to exercise oversight of related executive branch agencies.

This week Considered Forthwith will examine the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The Committee is also commonly referred to by its acronym, The Senate HELP Committee.

I settled on a different committee than I planned because there The HELP Committee has a major hearing scheduled this week.

The New England Journal of Medicine article at this link http://content.nejm.org/cgi/co… discusses more fully the points listed below.

I believe these stipulations have been generally agreed to by those who post health care essays. I have beat the drums for universal single payer but that conflicts with item 2 which keeps the employer in the system. That seems like a good idea as the employer can declare no smoking zones (give me a break smokers, I been there and done that), provide incentives such as paying for sick days not taken, etc.

Before I get accused of over copying, let me admit it. The way I see it now is not the time for niceties. I don’t think there is a penalty for copying a copy so cut and paste anything you find useful. Comments, corrections and additions welcome.  

President Obama, in a pivot from some of his harshest campaign rhetoric, told Democratic senators yesterday that he is willing to consider taxing employer-sponsored health benefits to help pay for a broad expansion of coverage.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Obama expressed a willingness to consider changing the existing tax exclusion. The decision would probably anger liberal supporters such as labor unions, but such a tax change would raise enormous sums of money as Congress and the White House are struggling to find the estimated $1.2 trillion needed to pay for health-care reform over the next decade.

“Yeah, it’s something that he might consider,” Baucus told reporters after the meeting between Obama and Democratic lawmakers. “That was discussed. It’s on the table.” Obama had summoned about two dozen senators to the White House to keep up the pressure to enact a comprehensive health-care overhaul this year. –snip–

What is it that Baucus and his cronies just don’t get?  

well, sort of … in a letter, at least …

msnbc.com

President Obama issued a public letter to Sens. Ted Kennedy and Max Baucus, the two Democrats seen as most key to the design of potential health-care legislation.

June 2, 2009

Dear Senator Kennedy and Senator Baucus:

[…]

In short, the status quo is broken, and pouring money into a broken system only perpetuates its inefficiencies. Doing nothing would only put our entire health care system at risk. Without meaningful reform, one fifth of our economy is projected to be tied up in our health care system in 10 years; millions more Americans are expected to go without insurance; and outside of what they are receiving for health care, workers are projected to see their take-home pay actually fall over time.

We simply cannot afford to postpone health care reform any longer.

[…]

I agree that we should create a health insurance exchange market where Americans can one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose the plan that’s best for them, in the same way that Members of Congress and their families can. None of these plans should deny coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition, and all of these plans should include an affordable basic benefit package that includes prevention, and protection against catastrophic costs. I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.

[…]

Sincerely,

BARACK OBAMA

(emphasis added)

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…

Strong Words, need to be followed up with Stronger Actions.

(kind an inconvenient time for a Presidential road trip, eh?)

Part 2 of our ongoing “If you build it” new coalition activism series. (WWL version)

Docudharma Version here

In our effort to make a list of DEMANDS rather than suggestions, that can be brushed aside as “not feasible at this time” today we will address Health Care.

Let me repeat the Mantra:

A person and their doctor walk into a room. They decide what avenue will best keep that person healthy and alive. No bean counters. No multiple referrals. No putting it up for review with a bunch of multiple churches. They GET the care necessary.

The term “single-payer” confuses most Americans anyway. It makes it sound like THEY, a single individual must pay, a term probably chosen as a way to create a Pavlovian rejection, even while it is in people’s best interests.

Gottlieb suggested, “While single payer is the goal, I suggest we start with something achievable and that is “the public option” plan. The Public Option is the vehicle which can grow into single payer.” but I don’t agree. Any compromise we make will be used to stall and to thwart the process in the interests of the Healthcare Profit Industry to continue to make profits as “insurance” companies. (Sorry darlin, but we must commit to this)



If we could turn factories overnight into tank and bomber factories with 1940’s technologies, this too can and SHALL be done.

Our commitment must be in stone.

    HMO’s, Big Pharma and other special interests have made America a place where getting sick equals getting poor for the massive majority of our citizens. While we struggle to pay for prescription medicine and health insurance that does not cover our needs, the wealth CEO’s and their political allies are fighting harder than ever to deny us the most basic of human rights, the right to see a doctor.

    Why? So they can make a bigger profit, of course.      

The Congress continues to struggle with PAC donations from insurance, pharmaceutical and the American Hospital Association –or whether or not to they tell them that our system is broken.    Which do you think is winning?

More under the flip

Note: This essay turns Orange around 8 p.m. Sunday. It will also be on Congress Matters and is posted on my own blog.

Welcome to the ninth installment of “Considered Forthwith.”

This weekly series looks at the various committees in the House and the Senate. Committees are the workshops of our democracy. This is where bills are considered, revised, and occasionally advance for consideration by the House and Senate. Most committees also have the authority to exercise oversight of related executive branch agencies. If you want to read previous dairies in the series, search using the “forthwith” tag. I welcome criticisms and corrections in the comments.

This week, I will examine the House Energy and Commerce Committee. There is a lot going on in this committee, including speed reading to neutralize a GOP stalling tactic.

Hai humanz, I’m Dr. Casey. I helpz answer yer questions about Swinez Flu.  So doan panick! I haz the answers u needz.

My first recommendation is that you hidez in a cat food box for the next 3 months:

(Be sure box haz lots of food inside.)

Doan worry, k?

I travel a lot. I see preparations being made to deal with a pandemic at airports and in different ways by different governments. I asked colleagues who work in epidemiology what we were dealing with and how much I should worry. Here’s what they said:

• This flu, which they call H1N1, not Swine Flu, is what they call a novel virus, in that it is new and have never been recorded or analysed before this outbreak.
• A novel virus is unpredictable in that there is no built up immunity in populations and, therfore, it can spread quickly.
• The current H1N1 is sensitive to (can be fought with) Tamaflu and Relenza.  That’s the good news.  It is not sensitive to two other antivirals, which can be a problem if it mutates to become Tamiflu or Relenza resistant.
• The current working theory about its origin is a Smithfield Foods (American hog factory farm company) affiliate outside Mexico City.  The suspected patient zero was a boy from a nearby village where almost half were stricken earlier this year.  What is significant is that the villagers had been complaining for sometime about open hog waste ponds where ducks were present and biting insects fed.  One possibility (not proven) is that the ducks had bird flu which mingled with swine flu.  The biting insects picked up both and infected people who already had human flu, as February is Mexico’s flu season and very few people are inoculated.  
• The World Health Organization (WHO) is upping their alert level to 5.  This is significant.  6 is a full blown out of control pandemic.  This will release measures to deal with the problem across borders and means they’re concerned about countries that don’t have the measures in place that we do in the developed nations.

What you can do to protect yourself below the fold…

Cross-posted from www.Progressive-Independence.org

I was perusing a certain kind of ideological web site when I came upon the following article by Nicole Colson.

ONE AFTER another over the last month, the reports of terrible incidents of violence kept coming:

— A Vietnamese immigrant in Binghamton, N.Y., increasingly paranoid about police and upset after losing his job, kills 13 people at a center for immigrants before committing suicide.

— An Alabama man who had struggled to keep a job kills 10 people in a shooting spree before committing suicide.

— A Pittsburgh man, recently unemployed and afraid that the government would ban guns, opens fire on police responding to a domestic disturbance call, killing three.

These are just some of the recent eruptions of violence to make the headlines in U.S. newspapers. In the 30-day period between March 10 and April 10, there were at least nine multiple shootings across the U.S., claiming the lives of at least 58 people.

The individual motives and stories differ widely, but there’s a common thread among these incidents–the worsening economic crisis is becoming a factor in pushing some people who are already on the edge over it.

It seems nearly everyone is concerned with the ever-shrinking middle class, but almost no one is willing to discuss the social class those middlings are being tossed into: the POOR.  The platform, speaking for the poor, that John Edwards ran on during last year’s presidential election primaries resulted in his marginalization and eventual banishment from the public discourse as the elite weeded out those candidates who dare point out the disease of poverty.  But just because the messengers were silenced does not mean the larger problem went away; it continues to fester, with disastrous social consequences.

The essay abstract.