Healthcare

Rep. Weiner withdraws single payer amendment | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

Representative Anthony Weiner | November 6, 2009

Rep. Weiner Withdraws Single Payer Amendment from Current Health Care Debate |Press Release

Today, Representative Anthony Weiner (D - Brooklyn and Queens), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, released the following statement on his decision to withdraw his single payer amendment to H.R. 3962, the House health care reform bill:

“I have decided not to offer a single payer alternative to the health reform bill at this time. Given how fluid the negotiations are on the final push to get comprehensive health care reform that covers millions of Americans and contains costs through a public option, I became concerned that my amendment might undermine that important goal.”

“I am going to continue to press the case for health care reform in every venue I can. And I also will continue to press for a smarter, less-expensive, more-comprehensive alternative to the employer-based health insurance system we have today.”

"I've discussed the issue with Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Waxman, and agree with them that the health reform bill is so close it deserves every chance to gain a majority."

And...

Kucinich: Why is it we have Finite Resources for Health Care but Unlimited Money for War? | Press Release

Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement:

“Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for war?

“The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer’s money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive.

Capitalist Health Insurance for All
By Terry J. Allen | In These Times

"What!" you say. "By using captives, parent companies undercut the free enterprise system and deprive businesses of the right to compete in the market. That sounds like socialism!"--except that when corporations do it, no one screams that Sweden is taking over.

We could capture the same sweet deal if we cut out the middleman and insure ourselves. Single-payer health insurance, or at least, a public option, is the counterpart to captive insurance for us peons who get cancer instead of billion-dollar bonuses and $2,000 co-pays for ambulance rides instead of junkets on corporate jets. Under a public option, the government would act as our own wholly owned subsidiary--our nonprofit, low-overhead captive insurer....Instead of calling public health insurance pull-the-plug-on-granny socialism, we could take a page from the corporate handbook, and call it captive.

Here's what corporations know, but don't want you to find out: Private insurance is for suckers.

Armies of healthcare industry flacks, lobbyists and bought-and-paid-for legislators rant that nonprofit, public insurance is a slippery slope to socialist hell, will limit your choice of physicians to Doc Watson and Dr. Kevorkian, and bankrupt the country. But, in fact, most U.S. Fortune 500 companies wouldn't touch private insurance with a 10-foot colonoscope.

When they need to insure their financial health against fire, terrorism, and liability lawsuits sparked by defective products and polluting factories that kill people, they don't call State Farm. Instead, corporations routinely insure themselves by creating a "captive" insurance company as a wholly-owned subsidiary. "The parent company is insuring its own risk," says Sandy Bigglestone, of Vermont's Captive Insurance division.

But when we the people need health insurance against the high cost of staying alive, we, or our employers, pay private insurers--corporations that are more devoted to protecting their profits than our health. The premiums we pay go not only for our pills and treatments, but also for lobbyists (on whom the health insurance industry currently spends $1.4 million per day for the U.S. Congress alone), campaign contributions, stratospheric executive salaries, private jets, lawyers hired to fight legitimate claims, and, of course, profits. Read more.

By David Swanson

Congressman Weiner has agreed with Nancy Pelosi not to have a floor vote on his Medicare for All bill. A press release from Congressmen Kucinich and Conyers opposing it helped tip the scale. But Weiner did not ask Pelosi to include in her bill the Kucinich Amendment to allow states to create single-payer. Pelosi made clear that President Obama opposes that, and used the bogus excuse that providing everyone with comprehensive free healthcare would deprive them of the right to pay ever increasing rates for uncertain health "insurance."

Kucinich, Single Payer Co-author, Raises Questions about Stand Alone Vote on National Single Payer | Press Release

Washington D.C. (November 5, 2009) – Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), co-author of HR 676 with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), today made the following statement about the House health care plan:

“The Book of Ecclesiastes says ‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven...a time to plant, a time to reap.’

Congressmen John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich, the two principal co-authors of the Conyers single-payer bill, wrote ADS about tomorrow's House vote. Here is what they are asking of you:

We are now asking you to join us in suggesting to congressional leaders that this is not the right time to call the roll on a stand-alone single payer bill.

Now, here's the rest of their letter.

Dear Friends,

We thank you for your continued devotion to the cause of health care for All Americans. We have worked together for many years to write, promote and campaign for HR676, a single payer, not for profit health care system. Your work, in communities across America, has been instrumental in helping at least ten states create single payer movements, with many more states to come.

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is scheduled consider a single payer bill. As the two principal co-authors of the Conyers single payer bill, we want to offer a strong note of caution about tomorrow's vote.

The bill presented tomorrow will not be HR676. While we are happy to relinquish authorship of a single payer bill to any member who can do better, we do not want a weak bill brought forward in a hostile climate to unwittingly accomplish what would be interpreted as a defeat for single payer.

The Next Phase of Healthcare Apartheid
By Norman Solomon

In Washington, “healthcare reform” has degenerated into a sick joke.

At this point, only spinners who’ve succumbed to their own vertigo could use the word “robust” to describe the public option in the healthcare bill that the House Democratic leadership has sent to the floor.

“A main argument was that a public plan would save people money,” the New York Times has noted. But the insurance industry -- claiming to want a level playing field -- has gotten the Obama administration to bulldoze the plan. “After House Democratic leaders unveiled their health care bill [on October 29], the Congressional Budget Office said the public plan would cost more than private plans and only 6 million people would sign up.”

Kucinich: The Insurance Companies are the Problem not the Solution | Press Release

Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement about the House health care plan:

“Before we celebrate the new health care legislation, keep in mind that the American people will be required by law to buy private insurance and that they will pay a penalty if they don’t.

“That insurance companies will be subsidized by the government.

“That insurance companies have had double digit increases in premiums in the past four years.

“That we are locking in a for profit structure.

Health Care Bill Linked Here With Majority Leader's and Speaker's Statements

Manager's amendment posted.

Boehner substitute amendment officially filed.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md) released the following statement on the filling of the Manager’s Amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act:

“With the completion of the Manager’s Amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, we are now in the final stage of moving this critical bill through the House. We pledged we would make this amendment available for 72 hours before a vote. Now that the Amendment is posted, the clock has started.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2009) — Nearly half of all American children will reside in a household receiving food stamps at some point between the ages of 1 and 20, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

By David Swanson

Word is that the full House will vote on national single-payer Medicare for All on Friday. This vote is a cover for the removal of an amendment that was in the House "healthcare" bill until Pelosi stripped it out. That amendment would have made it easier for states to enact single-payer, and still would if a conference committee is persuaded to reinstate it.

Tomgram: Barbara Ehrenreich, Why Your Child May Not Get a Swine Flu Shot Soon | TomDispatch.com

Tom of TomDispatch.com wrote:

I wouldn't mind knowing whether on the unreleased [White House] visitors' lists for these last months lurked Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, or Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella (or their lobbyists), not to speak of other Big Pharma types. Did they make it to the White House, and if so, how many times? I'm curious because Barbara Ehrenreich identifies their companies as the ones screwing up the production of the swine flu vaccine, and somehow they did manage to get a modest infusion of $2 billion from the Obama administration to do a less than magnificent job of this. I wonder just what deals might have been broached with them in the people's name.

In the spirit of Ehrenreich's remarkable new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America -- which I've recommended before -- I'd like to exhibit a little positive thinking and hope that some enterprising reporter digs up this info for the rest of us, and soon. In the meantime, do check out Ehrenreich's book (as well as the audio interview she did for TomDispatch to go with today's piece). It admittedly won't make you more optimistic, or even healthier, just a lot wiser and far more irritated. Tom

The Swine Flu Vaccine Screw-up
Optimism as a Public Health Problem

By Barbara Ehrenreich

If you can't find any swine flu vaccine for your kids, it won't be for a lack of positive thinking. In fact, the whole flu snafu is being blamed on "undue optimism" on the part of both the Obama administration and Big Pharma.

Optimism is supposed to be good for our health. According to the academic "positive psychologists," as well as legions of unlicensed life coaches and inspirational speakers, optimism wards off common illnesses, contributes to recovery from cancer, and extends longevity. To its promoters, optimism is practically a miracle vaccine, so essential that we need to start inoculating Americans with it in the public schools -- in the form of "optimism training."

But optimism turns out to be less than salubrious when it comes to public health. In July, the federal government promised to have 160 million doses of H1N1 vaccine ready for distribution by the end of October. Instead, only 28 million doses are now ready to go, and optimism is the obvious culprit. "Road to Flu Vaccine Shortfall, Paved With Undue Optimism," was the headline of a front page article in the October 26th New York Times. In the conventional spin, the vaccine shortage is now "threatening to undermine public confidence in government." If the federal government couldn't get this right, the pundits are already asking, how can we trust it with health reform?

But let's stop a minute and also ask: Who really screwed up here -- the government or private pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and three others that had agreed to manufacture and deliver the vaccine by late fall? Last spring and summer, those companies gleefully gobbled up $2 billion worth of government contracts for vaccine production, promising to have every American, or at least every American child and pregnant woman, supplied with vaccine before trick-or-treating season began. Read more.

By Dave Lindorff

It would be easy to read too much into the few statewide races that were decided last night, but I think it’s fair to say that the results in New Jersey and Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidates won--in New Jersey’s case knocking off a well-funded Democratic incumbent--that the results were a blow to the Barack Obama/Rahm Emanuel strategy of playing to the right, of avoiding confrontation in Congress and of ignoring the progressive voters whose enthusiasm and effort back in the 2008 campaign put Obama in office.

By Dan Hodges, Chair, Health Care for All-California

Around 3PM this afternoon I was one of 12 single payer activists who were
escorted from the reception area of Nancy Pelosi's office in the San
Francisco Federal Building and arrested by members of the Federal Protection Service of U.S. Homeland Security.

Just before noon we went to Pelosi's office to ask Dan Bernal, the district director, make a phone call either to Pelosi herself or Terri McCullough, Pelosi's chief of staff in Washington. We wanted to directly communicate two demands: that the Kucinich amendment be included in the health care bill that will soon be brought to a vote in the House and that the Weiner amendment be voted on by the House, as previously promised by Pelosi.

The Honorable George Miller
2205 Rayburn House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Miller:

On behalf of the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party, it is my painful duty to inform you of a motion and vote taken on a resolution this past August as it relates to the current national Healthcare debate. My name is Karen Bernal and I am the elected Chair of the caucus. We apologize for the lateness of the news; we feel however, that it couldn’t be more timely and germane than for you to learn of the action now. The Progressive Caucus, comprised of over 700 active members, is the largest caucus in the State Party. At a statewide two-day summit this past August, the Caucus met to discuss and organize around issues that are of concern to us, both inside and outside of the caucus and Party. As you can imagine, the issue of Healthcare was a dominant issue the entire weekend.

Kucinich Continues Fight to Restore State Single Payer Amendment | Press Release

Washington D.C. (November 3, 2009) –Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement about the House health care plan on the floor of the House of Representatives:

“Even though insurance companies make money not providing health care, the so-called reform bill gives so much power and money to the insurance companies that we are giving far too much for the few benefits which the bill may confer.

“The insurance companies get at least another 26 million customers.

“They will receive at least an extra $50 billion in new revenue.

“They will be able to raise premiums 25%, even though in each of the last four consecutive years the industry has raised premiums by double digits.

Health Care Premiums Also Used for Lavish Salaries, Luxury Items, Underwriters
West Virginia Democrat Wants Transparency in Insurer Health Care Spending
By Kate Snow, Elizabeth Tribolet and Suzan Clarke | ABC News

A significant portion of health insurance premiums go not for actual medical care but for private jets, generous CEO salaries and underwriters who decide when to drop patients who become too expensive, according to a Senate committee report.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, wrote to 15 of the biggest health insurance companies in August, asking them to provide information on how much of policyholders' monthly premiums was spent on medical care versus the amount that went to administrative costs and company earnings.

Such figures are known in insurance industry-speak as "medical loss ratios." But when insurance companies balked, saying the information was confidential and proprietary, Rockefeller's investigators went digging through public documents and found that much of policyholder premiums was going to nonmedical costs.

The insurance industry has long pointed to federal data that says about 87 percent of every dollar that people spend on premiums goes toward actual medical care, but Rockefeller's investigators found the average for the top six insurance companies is closer to 82 cents on the dollar for medical care.

That five-point difference represents billions of dollars.

And when investigators broke down the information by insurance type, they found that people who buy individual insurance from those companies rather than being part of a small or large business, get the least bang for their buck.

On average just 74 cents of every premium dollar for individual coverage goes to medical care. Read more.

By Robert Parry, http://www.consortiumnews.com

When the U.S. health care debate began last spring, the insurance industry and its congressional defenders fretted over the prospect that 119 million Americans might defect from private insurance to a public option, thus devastating the business model of wealthy insurance companies.

Since then, however, the industry has won so many concessions that the threat from the surviving public option has shrunk to about five percent of its feared effect. In assessing the House leadership’s health reform bill, the Congressional Budget Office projects that only six million Americans could or would sign up for the bill’s version of the public option.

And, to make the picture even prettier for the insurance industry, many of those six million would be the chronically ill, customers that the private insurers don’t want anyway.