It keeps on happening.. We've GOT to change the message

[SoCalDem]

Susie for president commercial was just run here.. and of course "she" is for 'affordable' insurance for all children"

It's NOT about the INSURANCE or even the AFFORDABILITY (since we all know what a CROCK that is)

It's about GETTING THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY OUT OF THE WHOLE ARGUMENT.

We need national Health CARE...not INSURANCE.

Most people are stretched to the limit as it is, and NO new insurance bill would be "affordable" to them. and even if it were a "cheap" premium, the co-pays & deductibles would eat them alive.

Anyone with half a brain knows that the insurance companies are salivating at the very thought of this "bold new plan"...just like big pharma did cartwheels at *²'s drug plan.

Requiring everyone to HAVE insurance is a lot different from a national health care system where every citizen is ENTITLED to health care (*as a right though their citizenship)

If a country/state is an entity, and the people IN it are citizens who pay taxes, what do THEY get out of the whole "deal"?

You get money in trade for your labor, and you send a portion to the state/country to do what?

start wars you don't approve of?
pocket the cash for themselves?
pay off all their cronies?
stage endless campaigns?

or

is the money we send them supposed to be for the common interests of ALL the people?
and to provide services on a large scale?

what is MORE important than a healthy populace?

[Lars39]

1. Wish I could recommend this more than once.

You have a gift, SoCalDem. :thumbsup:

[babylonsister]

2. A dead one?

:shrug:

I guess it depends on who you're asking...

[baldguy]

3. A whole industry is set up to deny people insurance benefits

WHICH THEY PAID FOR!

We live in a sad, sick society.

[Demeter]

4. Not Sure How To Get Through The Autism

and it is autism, just like what I have to deal with my daughter--no capacity to take in a new model of reality.

[hfojvt]

5. those two lines are excellent

"We need national Health CARE...not INSURANCE."

and

"Requiring everyone to HAVE insurance is a lot different from a national health care system where every citizen is ENTITLED to health care (*as a right though their citizenship)"

We have been taught to think of the brand 'health insurance' instead of 'health care' as the media talks about people with no insurance. It's like thinking of Kleenex instead of facial tissue. Health Care! Health Care! Health Care!

I might say the right is for BASIC health care. Universal health care might still bankrupt us all. I know a guy who has gotten $1 million worth of care for his son, and his son is only 7 or so.

[SoCalDem]

6. BUT, there are millions of others who are NOT using a million

That's what makes it cost effective.. For every person who USES a LOT, there will be MANY more who do not.

The insurance comapnies USED to use large groups but now they chisel way the ones who need it the most, in order to offer el-cheapo rates for people they KNOW most likely won't even use the coverage..and the sick ones? well too bad for them..

If you essentially have a 'group plan' with 300Million people, everyone can get medical care..

of course there might be less "war-money" left over :eyes:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. Darned right

no need of insurance--great need for health care. Glad to give the 5th R.

[Joanne98]

8. The best way to deal with this is to give the people a "choice"

People who want private insurance can have it and people who want government insurance can have it. Frame it that way and then will see who wins the debate.

[warren pease]

19. Won't work

A mix of public and private will inevitably result in a two-tiered system -- one for the rich and one for everybody else. Which is sort of what we have now, with insurance covering those with good jobs or the means to pay insane premiums and the rest either going without or using the ER as their primary care facility.

And a two-tiered system would inevitably mean that doctors, being victims of the need to operate profitably, would try to cater to the rich because they could make more money that way. Kind of like now with fewer and fewer docs accepting Medicare patients.

And the best docs, at least those with the best reputations, would be sought after by the rich. Their appointment calendar would be booked by the rich and, even if they actually wanted to deal with those on a national health care system, they probably wouldn't have the time.

So, no. A two-tiered system will inevitably fail. Last time I looked, Health Canada had anticipated just this type of problem and dealt with it by banning private insurers from doing business in that country. However, there's been an infestation of conservatism in Canadian politics lately, so that may be old news.

wp

[Joanne98]

22. At least let people buy government insurance for basic checkups.

Blood tests, ex-rays, broken bones, stitches, heart tests, lung tests, things that you don't need excellent doctors for. If more people could just get basic check-ups for free, if would save a lot on chronic diease costs down the line..We don't need doctors to give stitches or papsmears.. Let the nurses do it.

[warren pease]

23. Nope. No "insurance" whatsoever

I'm all for an equitable, progressive tax whose revenue goes into a pool to fund a universal access, single-payer system. This money would be separate from the general fund so the Pentagon can't loot it every time they want to kill a few million more people.

But insurance is out of the question. Health insurance companies have had ample time to demonstrate any value they could add to the current system, and they've proven to most people's satisfaction that they're simply money sucking parasites who exist solely to increase profits and shareholder equity while doing everything they can get away with to hinder access to medical care.

Why would you go to all the trouble to design a new, universal access health care system and then invite the participation of the single most destructive element in the current system?

And why would these baseline services you mention not be included in a single-payer plan? Why do you advocate insurance for procedures that should, and would, be provided for free by single-payer?

I fail to see how forcing the rich to avail themselves of a system that's good enough for everybody else is a bad thing. If they want a new face lift or tummy tuck or nose job or posterior liposuction, I'm sure there will be hundreds of specialists practicing on a fee-for-service basis who will be glad to take their money. Those of us who choose to live with the faces and bodies we've got won't have that problem.

Does this seem sensible to you? And if not, why not?


wp

[Spiffarino]

29. I tend to agree with the idea of choice but for one detail

They pay their share of the cost of a national health system. If they want liposuction for their triple chins or even brand-name drugs over generic so be it, but - as you put it so well - no insurance whatsoever. Strictly cash and carry.

[warren pease]

30. Yeah, I think we agree...

Medically necessary procedures, including preventative measures that might help people avoid the root cause of certain diseases, must be free and available to all. Then there's a whole rats nest of arguments over what gets covered beyond baseline stuff.

For example, is it a good use of taxpayers' money to give an 85-year-old man a heart transplant when that same money could be used to pay for hundreds or thousands of kids' vaccinations? Is it a good idea to give the same 85-year-old man a new hip, when meds could be used to control the pain instead at far less cost?

I don't know the answers because nobody elected me god, but these are issues people are going to have to deal with when and if single-payer ever makes it to this country. I'd be interested in finding out how other countries with single-payer make those decisions.

I think it's a given that the rich will always be able to buy their way to the best possible health care, even if that happens to be in Japan or China. Which is fine, I suppose. After all, they won the class war a long time ago and that's one of the spoils of victory. But they must be taxed to support single-payer just like everybody else, whether they use it or not, and at a rate commensurate with their wealth. And we absolutely must avoid setting up a parallel private insurance-based system. Then the rich can go get their fat asses reduced at some liposuction clinic on their own dime.


wp

[SoCalDem]

26. "Choice" means choosing to exclude people.. that's what we have now.

Insurance IS available to EVERYONE, and of course, for a PRICE, we could all have it, but "some people" choose to pay their rent, and buy food, so there is no "left over" money to pay for insurance that may or may not actually pay if they get sick..

[mzmolly]

9. Gosh, you mean most Americans don't have one of them handy dandy health savings accounts?

:sarcasm:

Thanks for keeping us focused on this issue Socaldem.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

10. kick

[bonito]

11. HEALTH insurance NO! HEALTH CARE YES!

I love it! boy am I going to spread this around. :-)

[MN ChimpH8R]

12. Great post

What people either ignore or fail to realize is that the "competition promotes efficiency" argument is bullshit on stilts. What is always excluded are the externalities at the micro level, or to put it plainly, .
the consumer level.

How is an average person supposed to evaluate two different insurance policies? I have an Ivy League law degree and can't make head or tail of stuff like this. Gathering information is incredibly costly for the average person and ultimately futile; the contracts themselves are written in a purposely obfuscatory manner that is designed to cover the insurer's ass and screw the consumer. Furthermore, insurers make it impossible to succeed in challenging them when there is a dispute. They lawyer you to death and crush the opposition.

The villain in all of this is clear: the for-profit insurance industry. Its primary purpose is not to serve its clients, it is to make obscene amounts of money to be distributed to top management, who are responsible for these anti-customer policies, and fat-cat shareholders. People are scared so they spend a fortune for insurance that is purposely compromised and inadequate. The insurance companies are making their money the old fashioned way - extorting it from the peasants at the point of a sword. They have no incentive whatsoever to actually provide the coverage they are supposedly providing. Insurance is essentially a piratical scam for all but the wealthiest.

A friend of mine moved to France a few years ago. He recently had a minor cardiac episode. When the ambulance arrived at his house there was an MD in the ambulance. My friend is recovering nicely and received no bill of any significance. EVERY OTHER industrialized country provides health care as a right because it's the moral and decent thing to do. Why can we learn nothing from them?

One word: GREED.

[sasha031]

13. Dennis Kunich is the only one who say's

Health Care is not a commodity.

All I see on this board are people talking about Hillary and Obama.

If you want real change look in the other direction!

[Spiffarino]

28. Dennis, Bobby Kennedy Jr, Mike Papantonio, Thom Hartmann...

...and a few others are all onboard that insurance is at the core of the healthcare crisis. This is the crux of our argument about forming a national health system for every citizen.

[Gelliebeans]

14. Ding ding ding....

You are so right on this. It is aggravating to watch them lie about this.

This is the same tactics that the right and corporate interests have used for years. They scream social security is in trouble and and that they are united to save it. The one thing that is hidden in their speeches are the facts that they want to privatize it in order to save it. They manipulate the language and the meaning.

We need to expose the fact that they aren't interested in health care instead they are lobbying for insurance and the companies that benefit by keeping health care decisions out of patient/doctor's hands. They want to to disguise their "concern" for health care with the alternative of more policy holders for private insurance companies.

[cosmicdot]

15. agree knr

It does keep on happening ...


How to get Democratic 'leadership', especially those who get the air time, to change their message when speaking of what Democrats want regarding health care? They market insurance within the terminology they use when discussing health care; and, if 'affordable health insurance' is repeated enough, they hope people will buy it.

I can't stand TV ad offers of 'affordable health insurance' (smiling faces saying how much money they saved, and not how much money they spent), and hit the mute button whenever one comes on ... so, I certainly don't care to hear similar advertising in Democratic rhetoric ... 'access', 'affordable', 'insurance', 'affordable insurance' ... I want a Party platform committed to: "What Democrats want is universal healthcare. Health care is a human right and not for profit. It's time we put people first by passing H.R. 676."

"Access to affordable health care" doesn't sound universal nor insurance company-free. "By improving and building on our current health care system" doesn't sound like getting rid of the insurance companies nor a plan for fixing our crisis.

Talk of 'frivolous lawsuits' sounds like Rush Limbaugh, George Bu$h and the Republican Party.


Nancy Pelosi answers Raw Story reader questions
`````````````````````````````````````````````````
RAW STORY
Published: Saturday March 25, 2006
```````````````

Question: Do you think America should adopt a national health care system? If so, what kind specifically?

Will
Medford, OR

Pelosi:

"All Americans should have access to affordable health care whether they lose their job, change jobs, get sick, or just grow old. By improving and building on our current health care system, we can reach that goal.

Democrats want to provide a tax credit to help small businesses offer health coverage to their employees and create new health insurance options to help working families. We want to lower health insurance premiums by combating frivolous lawsuits, and providing direct assistance to communities that have a shortage of health care providers. Democrats want to give states the option to allow middle class families of children with disabilities to purchase Medicaid coverage, helping parents care for their children while continuing to work. We want to allow older Americans who have lost their jobs, whose employers have dropped their retiree health benefits, or who have lost their insurance coverage, to buy into the Medicare program.

Democrats also want to fix the flawed Republican prescription drug plan by giving Medicare the authority to negotiate drug costs, allowing for safe re-importation of prescription drugs, allowing beneficiaries to change plans and to get their drug benefit directly from Medicare.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Nancy_Pelosi_answers_Raw_Story_reader_0325.html


'Fixing' Bu$h's Medicare Rx (Part D) doesn't include getting the insurance company and its premiums out of the equation? I have Medicare. Why am I writing a monthly check to UnitedHealthcare to get my prescriptions? So former HHS Secretary and UnitedHealth Board member Donna Shalala can get her annual retainer fee?


Rep. Dennis Kucinich Tackles Healthcare
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-scheer/rep-dennis-kucinich-tack_b_35182.html

DK: "...I went to the Democratic platform committee in 2000...where I offered a presentation that the Democratic Party take a strong stand on universal healthcare. My proposal, unfortunately, was rejected. I brought the same proposal embodied in the Conyers/Kucinich bill to the Democratic platform committee in 2004. Once again, the plan was rejected. Both times the plan was rejected because of the unfortunate influence of corporate interests upon the Democratic Party hierarchy. And so it is urgent that the American people are aware that our political system has frustrated the emergence of healthcare for all because of the tremendous influence which the insurance companies and the drug companies have on our political process. It doesn't mean that this influence is fatal, but people need to know that it exists."


opensecrets.org

Health:Long-Term Contribution Trends
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=H

Health: Top 20 Recipients - 2006
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?Ind=H&cycle=2006

Health: Top 20 Recipients - 2004
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?Ind=H&Cycle=2004&recipdetail=A&Mem=N&sortorder=U

[Jcrowley]

16. Kick and Rec n/t

[puebloknot]

17. The "insurance for all children" meme is such a crock.

Yes, all children should have health care. But they have parents who also need good health care, and can't care for those children if they are sick. The only requirement for comprehensive health care in any civilized country should be that you are a citizen drawing breath.

Years ago, I was an insurance agent, for a time. I remember the propaganda they fed us about how the insurance company didn't really make money off of health insurance premiums. Health insurance was just kind of a gratuity to the people, and the insurers made money off of *life* insurance, not health insurance.

And I remember arguing about the evils of the old, and still-existing "pre-existing conditions" clause they use to avoid paying claims for a period of time. And the other means of avoidance is just to put a permanent rider on policies for anything occurring prior to issuance. I heard a lot of defense of the insurer's right to maintain fiscal balance, but not a word about taking care of the people.

I once belonged to a self-employed Blue Cross group in California, and felt "right proud" that I was doing something to take care of *myself*! And then when the claims ratio rose for the group, they canceled the whole group policy, and offered coverage to those in the group with pristine health histories. They couldn't legally cancel individuals, but they could and did cancel the group's coverage.

I'll never forget the day when a "fellow" insurance agent (she was a "sister," actually), a woman born and raised in Israel, said: "It is ridiculous that a country as rich as America can't seem to organize itself to take care of the health of its people." For the first time, listening to her, the concept of the *right* to good health care was born in my well-washed American brain.

We are conditioned to go about feeling deep gratitude to insurers that are willing to take us on, in spite of our many little health problems -- sure signs that we are not right with the great insurance god in the sky, and that we are inferior beings -- and never mind the effect on our health of all kinds of pollution, and the general stress of just trying to survive in this great country of ours.

Here's how I came to understand the concept of health insurance, years ago: "A teacher's group somewhere in the country decided to form a cooperative to take care of each other, in the event of catastrophic illness. Each person contributed a certain amount of money and, statistically, it was known that out of a group of, say, 100 people, only a small number would actually get sick. It was the first Blue Cross group. So you might say that a lot of those people paid premiums for years for nothing -- they didn't get sick; they didn't collect anything. But they had the peace of mind of knowing that if anything unexpected happened, they and their families were protected."

I'm not an actuary, so I can't expand on that simple idea, but it's my understanding that the basic principle still applies, and that the figures cranked into the formula are higher, owing to more costly modern medical techniques, and the monthly premiums likewise have had to rise to take that into account.

If you listen to people like Dennis Kucinich, who tell us we can spend no more than we are right now on national health care, but just take the profit out of the situation for the insurance companies, and see that the money paid is actually used for health care, not eaten up with administrative costs and huge profits, it takes away that feeling of deep gratitude that an insurer is willing to take care of your medical problems (while robbing you blind), and replaces it with a feeling that we've all been led down the primrose path for lo, these many years. A lot of people are scared that the above idea smacks of ""socialized medicine." We certainly do need to demand the right to a choice of doctors, as well as truly meaningful *preventive* and "alternative care" (read that herbs, acupuncture, etc., and not necessarily the latest pill we see advertised while watching Pride and Prejudice on television) and education about how to find and maintain good health. A one-payer system might actually allow someone with a low social status into a high-society hospital (the shock of it all), but we would have a population that could sleep at night without worrying about losing everything they've worked for over just *one* protracted illness in a family.

I am also quite aware and concerned over the matter of keeping administrative entities out of the relationship between doctor and patient, and leaving medical decisions firmly in the hands of physicians. Doctors spend years of their lives and go deeply into debt to become the caregivers we all depend on. They richly deserve to be compensated lavishly, I think, for what they do for us. The "pork" that needs to be removed from our current medical care paradigm is the waste and the administrave costs engendered by the insurance companies.

If Dennis Kucinich is correct that we can do infinitely better with our health care system, with just the money we are already spending/wasting, think what we could do with just a tiny portion of the budget for the war in Iraq!

I recently landed in the emergency room of the hospital here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I enjoyed the bliss of some great drugs to kill off the pain of a kidney stone. While so blissed out, I'm pretty sure that a conversation I recall was real; :) to wit: A Native American man with a long braid running down his back, from one of the pueblos nearby, was visiting his girlfriend, who was in the same state I was. We entered the emergency room about the same time, but I got attention long before she did. I don't know if it had to do with the degree of my pain, or the matter of which insurance company was paying (or whether she was, perhaps, receiving indigent care).

In talking to this man, he explained to me that he depends on his pipes and his songs when he is ill. "I don't believe in doctors," he told me. But what was not discussed was that doctors do not believe in him in this part of the country; Pueblo peoples have a hard time getting medical care. And I read an article not long ago outlining the fact (I haven't researched this; I'm just the messenger) that the land on which is built the University of New Mexico hospital was received from native peoples here, in exchange for health care for their whole community, in perpetuity. "Perpetuity" seems to have run out, and the tribe's people are desperately struggling to find needed health care. (Yet another broken treaty, it appears.)

We the People, of all colors and creeds, have a right to good health care; we need to demand it! We're sick and tired and we're not going to take it anymore! (Are we?)

(Disclaimer: My handle at DU, "Pubelo Knot," is not an indicator of membership in any of Northern New Mexico's pueblos.)

[tomp]

18. "what is MORE important than a healthy populace?"

profit. duh.

[warren pease]

20. Health insurance companies are not in the health care business...

They're in the business of making money, and paying medical bills is the very last thing they want to do with their money. And, as I've written so many times I could do it blindfolded, that is exactly what they should be doing under the most basic SEC mandates for for-profit, publicly traded companies.

Public companies' sole obligation is increasing value for their shareholders. That's it. They don't have to do anything else.

The concept of "loss ratio" illustrates that fact perfectly. The loss ratio is the percentage of annual gross income that goes to pay claims. Which is to say, the money they have to spend performing their alleged function is considered a "loss," and the lower the loss ratio, the better Wall Street likes them.

A 69 percent loss rate is fairly typical in the health insurance scam. That means 31 percent of gross revenue is spent on things that don't have anything to do with paying medical bills. Things like executive salaries, perks and platinum parachutes. Like sales and marketing and advertising. Like dividends on publicly held stock. Like obsessive paper shuffling. Like real estate investments. Like paying an army of snoops to pry into your medical history in hopes of finding some little nugget that will enable them to deny your claim.

These are the characteristics of a real single-payer system:

One nation, one payer.

Everybody in, nobody out.

No denial for pre-existing conditions.

No bills from the doctor.

No bills from the hospital.

No deductibles.

No co-pays.

No in network.

No out of network.

No corporate profits.

No threat of bankruptcy from health bills.


Anything that doesn't meet these criteria is bullshit.


wp

[donkeyotay]

21. Yep, it's another corporate rape, because when was the last time our government

did a damned thing for the people of this country? But on the other hand, I want to know where I can get me some of that ass fragrance...

Anyone with half a brain knows that the insurance companies are salivating at the very thought of this "bold new plan"...just like big pharma did cartwheels at *²'s drug plan.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. To quote Kucinich

we need to take the profit out of health care... PERIOD

[kaygore]

25. Y E S !!!!! That's one reason I can't support Hillary:

She can't think outside the lobbyist-controlled box!

I have met universal health care and while it is not perfect, it sure beats anything that the insurance companies touch.

[Uncle Joe]

27. I believe you hit the nail on the head

Thanks for the thread SoCalDem

Kicked and recommended

[warren pease]

31. Kick because this deserves to be on page one n/t

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

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