Anyone Remember Health Insurance "Reform"?

[SHRED]

Well here ya go:

Articles of Interest
These articles highlight many of the health care related stories in the news–ranging from single-payer op-eds by PNHP members to reports by newspapers on corporate health care.

I HAD A DREAM
Posted on Monday, July 19, 2010
By Charles Mathews | Cap Scan, the journal of the Capital Medical Society (Tallahassee)
I was troubled and sleep-deprived by these past several years of frustrations and struggles to achieve a seemingly simple straightforward goal for this great Republic, namely health care for all, Medicare-type coverage, cradle to grave, such as all other advanced countries provide their citizens. Enacting legislation, single payer, has lain in the congressional hopper for years, where it is kept buried by the powerful lobbyists of the health care oligarchs.

Single-payer cuts costs
Posted on Friday, July 9, 2010
PETER MAHR, MD | Letter to the Editor | The Oregonian
Oregon faces a $577 million deficit, and state leaders propose cutting state services, slashing jobs and reducing funding for schools. I would like to point out that the United States' failure to enact a single-payer national health insurance program directly affects our current state budget problems.

New federal health care law falls far short of being a real reform
Posted on Friday, July 9, 2010
By Richard C. Dillihunt, M.D.The Portland Press Herald
Health care costs remain a major concern of all Americans. Inflation in such costs has become increasingly important in our fragile economy. Expanding alarmingly, much faster than that of the economy in general, these costs are dipping deeply into the ballooning budgets of middle Americans.

Medicare for all is best system
Posted on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Quentin D. Young, M.D. | Letter to the Editor | Chicago Sun-Times
The solution, favored by a solid majority of the American people and physicians, is an improved Medicare for all -- single-payer national health insurance. Such a program would cover everyone, without exception, and give us the cost-control tools we need to deliver high-quality care over the long haul.

Right-Wing "Think" Tanks and Health Policy
Posted on Thursday, July 8, 2010
By Nicholas Skala. Updated by Chris Gray
The PNHP National Office has identified 20 right-wing think tanks that employ full-time health policy "scholars" to oppose national health insurance and advocate for health care privatization, deregulation and market-based reforms. These groups are funded with millions of dollars from wealthy far-right foundations such as the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, the John Olin Foundation, the Adolph Coors family’s Castle Rock Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundations, which share an ultra-conservative social agenda.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/articles-of-interest

[NightWatcher]

1. They were going to sign the lackluster bill and get to work to "Fix it Later"

Those of us from the "fix it first" crowd knew they'd give customers to the broken system, throw a couple of tokens in for the kids, then forget about fixing it.

[Name removed]

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[unblock]

10. well, sometimes it does: see civil rights acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1968

admittedly change can take a long time and sometimes you get to take one step and stop dead in your tracks.

but sometimes you do see a series of improvements.

[Name removed]

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[eridani]

17. True, but all of those things started out being GOVERNMENT programs

HCR is nothing of the sort.

[Scuba]

2. Thanks for this...

... we should not forget that a) real healthcare reform is still needed and that b) a majority of physicians want single-payer national health insurance, despite what the scare-mongers on the right tell us.

[Name removed]

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[Gravel Democrat]

18. Which party does Max Baucus, the Senator that had Doctors and Nurses *Arrested* belong to?

is it "scare mongering" to silence advocates for single payer when they wear a (D) after their disgusting name?
How about having them Fucking Arrested? How about if one of Bushs lackeys did that? What then? Would you call that "scare mongering"?

"Baucus’s Raucous Caucus: Doctors, Nurses and Activists Arrested Again for Protesting Exclusion of Single-Payer Advocates at Senate Hearing on Healthcare

Advocates of single-payer universal healthcare—the system favored by most Americans—continue to protest their exclusion from discussions on healthcare reform. On Tuesday, five doctors, nurses and single-payer advocates were arrested at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, bringing the total number of arrests in less than a week to thirteen. We speak with two of those arrested: Single Payer Action founder Russell Mokhiber and Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program. (includes rush transcript)..."
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/13/baucus_raucus_caucus_doctors_nurses_and




I hope people think this thing can be Orwelled into the land of never-happened.

Because that isn't going to happen.

edit: link

[T Wolf]

3. Health Insurance "Reform" - just a dream some of us had. Progress was sold out by the

Dems in DC - at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The cons were really wasting their money fighting the Dems on this. It was not necessary. The party that should be on the people's side does enough damage on its own - taking anything positive "off the table" to placate the enemy.

Or was the result what they wanted in the first place?

[DrDan]

11. I think you hit it on the head . . . campaign dollars ruled the day

what we got is what they wanted . . . all of them.

[dionysus]

4. must be a slow news day, if you have to recycle old outrage.

[PufPuf23]

8. Apologists recycle too and some never say anything of substance.

Example: The Health Insurance Entitlement (Oops Health Care Reform) Bill.

[Javaman]

9. Yeah, because being continually angry over a system that still isn't fixed

is just so stupid.

:eyes:

[Marr]

16. So in other words, "get over it, move on". Somehow, I just knew that would be

the other end of the "we'll fix it later" pitch.

[Bandit]

5. "Change you can believe in"

:shrug:

[DrDan]

12. well . . . I think you can argue that there was change . . .

this time it was the D's putting it to us instead of the R's.

[bvar22]

14. Thanks....THIS needs to be kept on a Front Burner.

K&R

[Hydra]

15. Good reminder

Some of us would like the others to forget that "We had to pass the bill now, but they'll fix it later..."

Riiiiighttt...

[nc4bo]

19. "The check is in the mail" followed by "I'll believe it when I see it":

No one in my family has or can afford health insurance after Health Insurance Reform. What a joke!

We could still lose everything if any of us becomes seriously sick or injured, we still have to scrape enough money together to pay for medical services and totally depend on the "yellow paper" list of cheap 'scripts from Walmart to get our drugs from. God forbid one of us needs a drug that isn't on that list and God help us if the drug is used to treat a chronic disease.

Fun times like no other for those of us walking the low/middle class tightrope.

[Hydra]

23. I'm on the pray-go system

And have been for years now. If ANYTHING happened to me that would force me to go to the doctor, we'd starve.

We just COULDN'T have single payer or the public option, though- profits before people, and personalities over lives.

[Vinca]

20. Bottom line: people still do not have access to care and people are dying.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

22. Costs are still rising and healthcare will still be bankrupting families AFTER reform

Premiums, co-pays and deductibles will still eat up a way too large percentage of our wages.

We will still pay much more than the rest of the world.

So no, this battle isn't over, not by a long shot.

Someday perhaps we'll have leaders more interested in the welfare of the citizens than in preserving private for-profit delivery systems.

[sendero]

21. Oh don't worry...

... at least Obama is consistent. The financial reform bill is equally lame, when the correct answer (full blown Glass Stegall) was known to every player and ignored just the same.

Our government is owned outright by business interests, they don't even try to hide it any more.