Thursday, April 29, 2010

what happened

over the next months, we sall analize what happened in healthcare at monthly meeting.



Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Krck *Em when they are down

Amazing that some want to kick around single payer healthcare after the sham health bill is law:

http://www.congress.org/news/2010/04/19/the_10_most_hopeless_bills?p=9




The 10 most hopeless bills
By Kristin Coyner

H.R. 676: United States National Health Care Act or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act of 2009

Sponsor: Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.)
Cosponsors: 87 Democratic representatives
Introduced: Jan. 26, 2009
Status: Jan. 26, 2009, read twice and referred to House Energy and Commerce, House Natural Resources and House Ways and Means committees

This bill is Conyers' fourth attempt at expanding Medicare for all citizens. In effect, the legislation would outlaw most forms of insurance.

The legislation would provide for free medical care for all Americans through the United States National Health Care Program and would prohibit any institution from providing care unless it were a government entity or nonprofit.

Conyers' co-sponsors represent the Democrats' liberal health care block. This wing was balanced with the moderate Blue Dogs as the overall health care package moved forward.

The bill would truly implement a single-payer system. And as an 87-member block would suggest, it's not just the Michigan lawmaker who wants the expansion: In 2005, the late-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) proposed including all Americans in the federal program.

Liberal stalwarts such as George McGovern, the Democrat's 1972 presidential candidate, have also proposed such an expansion.

Aside from the obvious pushback from insurance companies, which would see their business dry up because the need for premiums would be bypassed, expanding Medicare for all is largely deemed unfeasible across the ideological spectrum.

Such a change would necessarily raise taxes and severely disrupt the health care delivery system.
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note: 676ers might be down, but we are not out!

Thursday, April 15, 2010

a few flaws

this is a short list of flaws in new healthcare bill


Healthcare-NOW! is most aggrieved about the following aspects of the bill:

■About 23 million people will remain uninsured nine years out resulting in an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually. One-third of these will be undocumented immigrants who will be excluded from purchasing private insurance.
■Millions of people who are not eligible for public health insurance programs Medicaid and Medicare will be pressured to buy commercial health insurance policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering an average of only 70 percent of their medical expenses, potentially leaving them vulnerable to financial ruin if they become seriously ill. Many will find such policies too expensive to afford or, if they do buy them, too expensive to use because of the high co-pays and deductibles.
■Those remaining uninsured will be fined up to 2.5% of their income.
■Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of their shoddy products. This money will enhance their financial and political power, and with it their ability to block future reform.
■The bill will drain about $40 billion from Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals, threatening the care of the tens of millions who will remain uninsured.
■People with employer-based coverage will be locked into their plan’s limited network of providers, face ever-rising costs and erosion of their health benefits. As the cost of insurance grows, they will be taxed on their benefits.
■Health care costs will continue to skyrocket, as the experience with the Massachusetts plan (after which this bill is patterned) amply demonstrates. The industry lobbying group, American Health Insurance Plans, came just short of announcing the industry’s next rate increase in its brief statement in response to the bill: “The access expansions are a significant step forward, but this legislation will exacerbate the health care costs crisis facing many working families and small businesses.”
■The much-vaunted insurance regulations – e.g. ending denials on the basis of pre-existing conditions – are riddled with loopholes, thanks to the central role that insurers played in crafting the legislation. Older people can be charged up to three times more than their younger counterparts, and large companies with a predominantly female workforce can be charged higher gender-based rates at least until 2017.
■It allows insurers to expand so-called wellness programs that let insurers penalize subscribers by hundreds—and even thousands—of dollars for not meeting certain ‘wellness targets,’ such as a particular cholesterol number, blood sugar measurement or body-weight target.
■Women’s reproductive rights will be further eroded, due to segregation of insurance funds for abortion from all other medical services.
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more to come