All Posts Tagged With: "Health Care"
Fixing The Health Care Bill
Ezra Klein has an idea…
Health reform, remember, is a long game. The Senate Finance Committee will not write the health reform bill. They will just write their version of it. Then it will merge with the HELP Committee’s version. Then it will be amended on the floor of the Senate. Then it will be merged [...]
Why Delaware Needs Health Reform
Health Care facts and figures, from HealthReform.gov (thanks, HHS Secretary Sebelius!)
DELAWAREANS CAN’T AFFORD THE STATUS QUO
Roughly 575,000 people in Delaware get health insurance on the job, where family premiums average $14,579, about the annual earning of a full-time minimum wage job.
Since 2000 alone, average family premiums have increased by 108 percent in Delaware.
Household budgets are [...]
Psssttt…Jay…We’ve Been Telling You This For Months
Jay Rockefeller is “getting it.”
On Thursday, Rockefeller admitted he expects little bipartisan support.
“There is a very small chance any Republicans will vote for this health-care plan. They were against Medicare and Medicaid [created in the 1960s]. They voted against children’s health insurance.
“We have a moral choice. This is a classic case of the good guys [...]
Ho Hum, Another Private Health Insurance Scam
Truly shocking news.
Health insurers have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers themselves should have paid, according to a report released yesterday by the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee.
And health insurance companies claim they can’t compete with a public option… seems to me they can’t compete without cheating.
Obama Reminds Republicans Of Their Free Enterprise Mantra
This has to hurt. But I guess having your own words used against you never feels good.
Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, [...]
Funny What We Can “Afford”
Via Balloon Juice.
Yes, the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary cost estimates for Senate plans were higher than expected, and caused considerable consternation last week. But the fundamental fact is that we can afford universal health insurance — even those high estimates were less than the $1.8 trillion cost of the Bush tax cuts.
Krugman
And then there’s this: [...]
Health Care: Why Is A Public Option Considered Controversial?
There are new polling results out from the New York Times that show an overwhelming majority of Americans support a public, Medicare-like option for health care reform. In bad news for Republicans, only 18% trust Republicans to reform health care while 57% trust Democrats. According to this poll even a majority of Republicans [...]
22Jun2009 | Unstable Isotope | 8 comments | Continued
The Bought Off — Health Care Edition
See the details here. Make sure to look at the entire thing — there are great spreadsheets and other data here.
But as you listen to the back and forth of the health care discussion, be familiar with the Bought Off and treat their commentary accordingly:
TOP 10 SENATE RECIPIENTS:
McCain, John (R-AZ) $251,834
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) $200,200
Baucus, [...]
Comment Rescue — Why Not Single Payer?
Friday, Geezer asked a very good question that I didn’t have time to get to in the Frank Luntz thread. His question: Why should we be for a non-single-payer “reform” plan?
Before I get to that and ask you guys to weigh in, I want to put up some resources to look at and [...]
Public Option Health Care – It’s On!
Kudos to the House!
The Democratic Party showed on Friday what it’s capable of when led by the majority of its members rather than its conservative wing. In stark contrast to Senate Democrats, who spent the week backpedaling on reform, unified House Democrats unveiled a draft health care overhaul bill jointly endorsed by three powerful committee [...]
Frank Luntz Tells Them What to Say — Health Care Edition
Everyone who has paid attention to politics since Bill Clinton knows the name of Frank Luntz. He is a GOP pollster whose specialty is messaging. As in finding the words that either make it easier for people to emotionally engage on a position. Key to this effort is that truth or accuracy [...]
19Jun2009 | cassandra_m | 27 comments | Continued
The Bankrupt Rhetoric of Rationing
Health care rationing that is.
David Leonhardt at the NYT has another Must Read article detailing all of the ways that health care is rationed in the US.
Today, I want to try to explain why the case against rationing isn’t really a substantive argument. It’s a clever set of buzzwords that tries to hide the fact [...]
Health Insurance Companies Always Win
Which is the basic problem, since insurance is really legalized gambling. Whether it’s your house, health or car, you’re paying (betting) money in the hopes you never cash in on your investment. Insurance companies are betting on the same thing, especially since they get your money up front. And once they have your money they [...]
18Jun2009 | pandora | 10 comments | Continued
Some Statistics on Health Care
I found these statistics in this great diary at Daily Kos. Mitch McConnell compared our health care system with Great Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Below is how we stack up against these 3 countries, all of which have some form of universal health care.
First, let’s look at per capita health care spending [...]
U.S. Health Care Doesn’t Measure Up
Can we please drop all this We’re #1 nonsense when it comes Health Care. Seriously, we have nothing to brag about.
Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This report—an update to two earlier editions—includes data from surveys of [...]
Give the People What They Want
Another very interesting poll is from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. (Excerpts below the jump are from the full report in pdf at the link.)
16Jun2009 | cassandra_m | 10 comments | Continued
President’s Town Hall Meeting on Health Care
President Obama went to Wisonsin this week to conduct a Town Hall discussing efforts to fix the health care system. This is abit over an hour long, but worth watching if you’ve only seen clips (the one where he gives the young woman a note for school seemed to be the news):
I hope he does [...]
Call Carper’s Office
Getting good healthcare reform is going to be one helluva fight. The “public option” is one of the most difficult parts of the plan. A good public option will help reduce healthcare costs by bargaining with providers and the for-profit companies are already mobilizing the opposition.
So they’re pulling out all the stops — [...]
One Medical Condition Away From Bankruptcy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard [...]
Pop Quiz
The chart below shows the demographics of uninsured Americans. Can anyone tell me which age group has the best coverage, and why? Hint: This group also has the most health care needs.
(h/t Yglesias)
The next chart I want to see is the one that compares Americans to members of Congress.
The Cost Culture of Health Care Delivery
This is a Must Read article by Atul Gawande at the New Yorker is worth spending some time with today. It is really difficult to excerpt anything here, but it is just that good. He gets at many of the real policy and practice questions that need to be thought about as we [...]
31May2009 | cassandra_m | 5 comments | Continued
Delaware Ready for Medical Marijuana?
State Sen. Margaret Rose Henry has introduced legislation to provide for the controlled distribution of marijuana to relieve chronic pain in people suffering from serious medical conditions. Ginger Gibson writes in today’s News-Journal article:
Under Senate Bill 94, residents would be allowed to have up to 6 ounces of marijuana, considered a month’s supply, Henry said, [...]
Stating the Obvious
Blue Cross/Blue Shield is gearing up to fight fixing Health Care – again. Fortunately, Paul Krugman exposes their nonsense with a simple question:
“We can do a lot better than a government-run health care system,” says a voice-over in one of the ads. To which the obvious response is, if that’s true, why don’t you? Why [...]
It’s All About Competition Until They Have To Actually, You Know, Compete
When It comes to health Insurance… health insurance companies have no incentive to offer a good product at a fair price. Not only do they see nothing wrong in peddling crap, they want us to defend and protect their right to peddle crap. How they wrap gouging in the American Flag while screaming socialism escapes [...]
17May2009 | pandora | 13 comments | ContinuedFOLLOW DL
