When Your Health Comes Between The Insurance Industry And Its Profits : (

[BLUSH]

[wellstone dem]

1. excellent,deserves a kick

[Laelth]

2. k&r for exposure. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[ashling]

3. As to the first one, 2 things:

1. I thought the AMA was now on board with the Obama plan

2. The BC/BS guy is too cute

:rofl:

[BLUSH]

6. Not sure we should trust the AMA's sudden "epiphany" and conversion ...

AMA Straddles the 'Public Plan' Option

Doctors' Group Remains Wary of Government-Based Health Care Option

The American Medical Association did not ring up a "no sale" on President Barack Obama's public plan option in his proposed revamp of the United States health care system, but neither did it sign on the dotted line.

The AMA initially considered -- then rejected -- a resolution from the Kansas State Medical Society that asked it to oppose the Medicare-like coverage plan for Americans of any age, the so-called public plan option.

In its place, the delegates were urged to support this substitute resolution a substitute resolution stating that the AMA supports " 'public option' alternatives that are consistent with AMA principles of pluralism, freedom of choice, freedom of practice, and universal access for patients."

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HealthCare/Story?id=7866178&page=1


AMA: Obama Reception Warm But Wary

Obama tried to sell the idea of a new public insurance plan to a group of people who have, by in large, been against it.

Some AMA members said they fear a public plan would be too much government-interference in their medical practice.

As former AMA president John Clowe, M.D., a retired family physician who practiced in New York, put it, "The AMA doesn't approve of government-run medicine. We want independence."

But Obama promised the public option was not his secret scheme to turn the U.S. system into a single-payer system.

Last week the AMA began to signal its opposition to a public plan and immediately found itself enmeshed in controversy as other organized medicine groups criticized the position.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AMA/14714


The AMA’s 63-year about-face

Why then is the AMA suddenly backing legislation that will produce the controversial “public option” that would put a governmental insurance program in direct competition with private insurers? In an editorial entitled “What’s Up Doc’s?” The Wall Street Journal yesterday questioned the AMA’s motives for promoting the HR 3200 by pointing out the proposed Democratic legislation will repeal the “sustainable growth rate formula,” or SGR, a government-placed limit on the size of payments made to physicians through Medicare and Medicaid in case bottom-line spending for such programs increases. Essentially, the Journal asserts, the AMA is supporting the House plan—even with its public option and greater government control—with the promise that in the short term doctors and hospitals will see a rise in payments once the restrictor plates are removed from the Medicare/Medicaid checkbook. However the AMA’s folly, the Journal contests, is that in the long run it’s “sign its members to be civil servants” and that cooperation with Washington is threatening to break up the 162-year-old organization.

http://www.examiner.com/x-17205-Chicago-Healthcare-Policy-Examiner~y2009m7d20-The-AMAs-64year-aboutface

[Earth Bound Misfit]

4. K & R n/t

[bain_sidhe]

5. Another teeeny tiny kick!

These should be on t-shirts!!!

[BLUSH]

7. Insurance Industry goes to war this month

Two Sides Take Health Care Debate Outside Washington

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: August 2, 2009

WASHINGTON — With Republicans mobilizing against the proposed health care overhaul, President Obama, Congressional Democrats and leading advocacy groups are laying the groundwork for an August offensive against the insurance industry as part of a coordinated campaign to sell the public on the need for reform.

The effort will feature town-hall-style meetings by lawmakers and the president, including a swing through Western states by Mr. Obama, grass-roots lobbying efforts and a blitz of expensive television advertising. It is intended to drive home the message that revamping the health care system will protect consumers by ending unpopular insurance industry practices, like refusing patients with pre-existing conditions.

“I think what we want to communicate is that this is going to give people who have insurance a degree of security and stability, the protection that they don’t have today against the sort of mercurial judgments of insurance bureaucrats,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, adding, “Our job is to help folks understand how this will help them.”

Revamping health care is the president’s top legislative priority, and people on all sides of the debate agree that August, when lawmakers leave Washington to take the pulse of constituents, will be crucial to shaping public opinion. With Republicans making headway by casting the legislation as a costly government takeover, Democrats have decided they must answer the question on the minds of those now insured: “What’s in it for me?”

That has led to a campaign of increasingly harsh rhetoric against the insurance industry, which says it favors an overhaul but is working to defeat Mr. Obama’s call for a government-run insurance plan to compete against the private sector. On Friday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, promised a “drumbeat across America” to counter what she termed a “shock and awe, carpet-bombing by the health insurance industry to perpetuate the status quo.”

The tough talk, however, has risks. The industry trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, is urging members to confront Democrats at public meetings, and the rising tensions could make it difficult for the president to keep insurers at the negotiating table.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8566186

[BLUSH]

8. Pharmaceuticals / Health Products: Top Recipients

Pharmaceuticals / Health Products: Top 20 Recipients

Rank Candidate Office Amount

1 Burr, Richard (R-NC) Senate $48,500
2 Murray, Patty (D-WA) Senate $41,050
3 Eshoo, Anna (D-CA) House $36,000
4 Mikulski, Barbara A (D-MD) Senate $35,724
5 Specter, Arlen (D-PA) Senate $33,050
6 Reid, Harry (D-NV) Senate $32,900
7 Clyburn, James E (D-SC) House $32,500
8 Isakson, Johnny (R-GA) Senate $28,000
9 Blunt, Roy (R-MO) House $26,000
10 Kirk, Mark (R-IL) House $24,250
11 Portman, Rob (R-OH) $22,200
12 Cantor, Eric (R-VA) House $21,500
12 Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) Senate $21,500
14 Meek, Kendrick B (D-FL) House $20,400
15 Bayh, Evan (D-IN) Senate $20,000
16 Fleming, John Calvin Jr (R-LA) House $18,900
17 Sessions, Pete (R-TX) House $18,500
18 Matheson, Jim (D-UT) House $17,500
19 Wyden, Ron (D-OR) Senate $17,000
19 Hill, Baron (D-IN) House $17,000

METHODOLOGY: The numbers on this page are based on contributions from PACs and individuals giving $200 or more. All donations took place during the 2009-2010 election cycle and were released by the Federal Election Commission.

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2010&ind=h04

[jeanpalmer]

9. Why would the insurance companies be upset

They've won. They're getting 80% of what they want, thanks to Obama and the "Democrats." Now they're going for the full 100%. My money says they'll get it.

[BLUSH]

10. That's why it should have been single payer from the beginning

But it's not Obama and the Democrats.

It's the BLUE DOG Democrats and the GOP who will protect the insurance industry and big pharma.

[BLUSH]

11. What's so great about private health insurance?

Michael Hiltzik:

What's so great about private health insurance?

August 3, 2009

Throughout the heroic struggle in Congress to provide a "public option" in health insurance, one question never seems to get answered: Why are we so intent on protecting the private option?

The "public option," as followers of the debate know, is a government-sponsored health plan that would be available as an alternative to, and in competition with, the for-profit health insurance industry, otherwise known as the private option.

--snip--

For if the insurers have proved anything over the last 15 years as the health crisis has gathered speed like an avalanche roaring downhill, it's that they're part of the problem, not the solution.

The firms take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into the system at every level. Your doctor has to fight them to get approval for the treatment he or she thinks is best for you. Your hospital has to fight them for approval for every day you're laid up. Then they have to fight them to get their bills paid, and you do too.

One Wendell Potter reminded a Senate committee in June that health insurance executives had assured Congress in 1993 that they would work to secure universal medical coverage and end denials of coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Then they moved heaven and earth to kill reform.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik3-2009aug03,0,6650122.column

[BLUSH]

12. GOPers, Blue Dogs, and the health insurance industry that owns them

GOPers, Blue Dogs, and the health insurance industry that owns them

by Jed Lewison
Aug 04, 2009

Keith Olbermann, raring to go after a returning from his vacation, delivers a blistering special comment on Republicans -- and Blue Dog Dems -- who have become wholly-owned subsidiaries of the health insurance industry:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/4/761744/-GOPers,-Blue-Dogs,-and-the-health-insurance-industry-that-owns-them