Obama says: Let's keep our eyes on the Health Reform prize

So, Americans, what's the big deal?  What's at stake?  Here's from the Man at the top, his take:

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Healthcare Reform (don't miss the train!)

Dear friends & colleagues,

Health Insurance/Healthcare reform has come a long way, and it's not too late to learn what it's all about (esp. with the holidays coming up, so that you'll be able to converse about healthcare with others back home), and more importantly, to make a difference by adding your uniquely influential voice as a medical student/future physician.  For an easy & quick way to learn about/add your voice to this reform that will significantly affect us all, check these out:

1. Doctors for America is a grassroots group of 16,000 physicians and medical students.  I've pasted their latest email update for you to see (below).  Within it is this fantastic link to a poll of the "6 key reforms," which, when you click on each reform's "see how the bills address this," will give you a very clear & succinct synopsis.  Joining their listserve is easy, and the resources on their website are just as user-friendly & informative: http://drsforamerica.org/

2. Sign on to the American Academy of Family Physician's "Connect for Reform" group.  You must first register here (free for medical students) to become an AAFP member.  Then after you register, go to http://www.aafp.org/ and click on the "AAFP Connect for Reform" button to sign on.
    •    receive periodic emails with the inside scoop on Health Reform, and easy ways that healthcare professionals and students can join to help.
    •    Connect with other members, and add your voice to advocacy actions.

3. If you have any other ideas/suggestions/links for how students can join the conversation and help, or if you'd like to write any kind of healthcare-related article yourself, please email me and I can post onto DownstateCafe.blogspot.com .

Best,
Abe

from: Vivek Murthy MD, MBA
to: abraham.young
date: Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 1:18 PM
subject: Moving Forward
Abraham -

Need your input: What's most important to you in this health reform bill?

Rank Your Priorities

 So we can take a stand together

After a whirlwind week in the health reform fight you might be wondering what all the developments mean for reform, whether a bill is still worth supporting, and what our community of physicians should fight for at this moment.

What happened:

This week, the public option and its substitute (the Medicare early buy-in provision) were both dropped from the Senate bill as Senate leadership worked to win 60 votes for the overall bill. This was quite a disappointment to our members after working for a public option for many months and considering it to be an important component of successful reform.

Aside from the public option, the Senate - unlike the House - has not included provisions to address defensive medicine. The Senate also does not include a permanent fix to the flawed Medicare payment formula (SGR); there is currently only a one year patch of the SGR.  The bill is certainly far from perfect.
 
What didn't happen:

Health reform isn't over and the final bill hasn't been written. Moreover, a lot of very important provisions are still in both the House and Senate bills. And that's because time-after-time we've spoken out for the issues we care about - expanding coverage, strengthening primary care, making premiums affordable, investing in prevention and improving quality.

As it stands, the current bill will cover 31 million more Americans, establish the strongest restrictions on insurance companies in history, and invest substantially in improving our health care delivery system - all while reducing the national deficit over 10 years. (See below for more details).

What now:

This brings us to this moment. The ultimate success of health reform depends on what we do in the next few weeks. The Senate is working to secure the 60 votes necessary to stop a filibuster on the Senate floor. Once they do so and pass a bill, the Senate and House bills will then be merged. 

While there are provisions in the bill that help doctors and patients, any of these can be weakened or stripped altogether from the final bill. So your voice is as important now as ever.  As the Senate hammers out the details over the next 24-48 hours, tell us:

We have identified 6 key reforms which are at risk. Please rank these issues according to what you believe is most important.

Your efforts have brought us to the brink of history and we hope that you will continue to fight with us to enact health reform for all Americans.

Thank you for all that you've done.
Vivek Murthy MD, MBA

President
Doctors for America

Overview of the Senate Bill
Key Element of the bill:
    •    Cover the uninsured: Expands health insurance coverage to 31 million previously uninsured Americans.

    •    Regulate the insurance industry: Prevent insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, dropping individuals who become ill and imposing caps on health care spending. 

    •    Help people afford insurance: Subsidize insurance premiums on a sliding-scale for small businesses and the middle class.

    •    Support primary care: Investments in physician workforce expansion, including new loan forgiveness programs, scholarships and National Health Service Corps funding - for primary care.

    •    Payment reform: Payment reform that rewards value in health care delivery through new pilot programs for the medical home and accountable care organizations. 

    •    Investments in prevention and public health: Establishes fund of $7 billion dedicated to prevention and public health related activities. 

    •    Control Cost: Multiple cost control mechanisms with the potential to reduce national health care spending by $683 billion over a decade.
Reasons to keep fighting:
... to make insurance coverage affordable for all Americans.
... to ensure that enough doctors are there to take care of the newly insured.
... to secure fair pay for the hard work physicians routinely do.
... to create a truly fair insurance market via increased regulation.
... to cultivate innovation and efficiency in health care delivery.

For more information about the Senate bill and how it affects doctors, seniors, children and women – visit the DFA resource center.

--
Doctors for America is a grassroots group of over 16,000 physicians and medical students in all 50 states. Together we are committed to building a health system that works better for us and better for our patients. To contact us please e-mail info@drsforamerica.org

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Dr. Neil Calman, president/founder of the Institute for Family Health, blogs about talking with Downstate medical students

(To read the full post & other invaluable writings of Dr. Calman, visit http://neilcalman.blogspot.com/)

"On a rainy and blustery evening last week, I had the pleasure of speaking to an amazing group of first and second year medical students at Downstate Medical School in Brooklyn... My message was that patients are increasingly demanding primary care as a trusted way of negotiating an otherwise incredibly confusing and fragmented health care system. I stressed that primary care physicians must stay focused on the needs of their patients above all else and that our loyalty and responsibility towards our patients must always remain first and foremost in our minds and actions – unfettered to the maximum extent possible – by advertising and loyalties to our hospitals or peers.

...A tougher question came from a young man in the front of the room who asked how our community health care system could survive financially taking care of the number of uninsured that we currently cared for.

...I stood there proud that our organization – the Institute for Family Health – had been able to accomplish this.

Yet I missed a real opportunity to underscore the fundamental reason we need health reform in this country. People need health insurance. Our country cannot depend solely upon health centers like ours as the safety net for everything patients who are uninsured need for their care. They must have coverage to pay for all the essential health care services they need. Primary care is the front end of an entire health care system which must provide access to people for diagnostic services, treatments, hospitalizations and medicines. With people of color 2 to 3 times more likely to be uninsured in New York City providing insurance for everyone is an absolutely essential step towards eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes. And with primary care providers already struggling to create viable practice models in underserved areas, only full insurance coverage of the people who need these providers can sustain these practices and attract new doctors to these areas. 

I am sorry I missed the opportunity to explain more to the students in Brooklyn last week about the failings of our current health care system. But I am not worried that their education will be lacking for very long. Soon the students will begin their clinical rotations in the hospital and there they will no doubt experience, first-hand, the failings of our current system to provide health care for all our people. They will see people suffering the effects of poorly treated chronic diseases – losing their legs and their kidneys to long-standing diabetes. They will see people with cancers that would have been curable if only they had been detected earlier. They will see people with advanced infections that have gone untreated for days or months and now require prolonged hospitalizations. These lessons will hit hard and perhaps some of them will understand and will choose to become the next generation of primary care physicians and the new champions for needed change in our health care system."

(To read the full post & other invaluable writings of Dr. Calman, visit http://neilcalman.blogspot.com/)

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Welcome to Primary Care Week @ Downstate!!!

 (**Speaker Bios below)
Tuesday, November 10th - Primary Care 101

When: Noon to 1 PM
Where: Student Center Main Lounge
FREE Food: Heros/Kosher Sandwiches
Speaker: Dr. Michael Gusmano, Research Director for Alliance for Health & the Future (Dr. Gusmano will be speaking about the growing need for primary care physicians and about public health policy)

Wednesday, November 11th - Faces of Primary Care

When: 5:30 PM to 7 PM
Where: Student Center Main Lounge
FREE Food: Italian/Kosher Sandwiches
Speakers:

Dr. Margaret Golden, Pediatrics Clerkship Director at Downstate

Dr. Heather Paladine, Director of Women's Health at Columbia University Medical Center
Anthony Accurso, 4th Year Medical Student at Downstate

(This is more of a Q&A session - a great opportunity to ask the panelists about their personal experiences in primary care)

Thursday, November 12th - Future of Primary Care

When: 5:30 to 7 PM
Where: Student Center Main Lounge
FREE Food: Thai
Speakers:

Dr. Neil Calman, Family physician and President/CEO of the Institute for Family Health, NY

Lauren Hughes, National President of AMSA

(Dr. Calman will be talking about the future of primary care and how PCPs contribute to the community)

So, come learn more about the unsung heroes of medicine! Hope to see all of you there!!!  (We will also be giving out PRIZES! If you would like Kosher food to be served, please e-mail Regina Finan at Regina.Finan@downstate.edu.)

**Speaker Bios: 

Neil Calman, M.D.
Neil Calman, MD, is president and co-founder of the Institute for Family Health, developing family health centers in the Bronx and Manhattan.  In 2002, the Institute became one of the first community health center networks in the country to implement a fully integrated electronic medical record and practice management system, improving both preventive and chronic care treatment outcomes. In recognition, Dr. Calman received the 2006 Physician's Information Technology Leadership Award, presented annually by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.  Dr. Calman serves on the Primary Care Health Information Consortium, the NYSDOH's Information Technology Stakeholder Group Planning Committee, is the Chair of the Clinical Committee of the Community Health Care Association of New York State. He has also been appointed to the Health Policy Roundtable of the Aspen Institute, a group charged with delineating the values and principles on which the United States must base its future health care system.

Heather Paladine, M.D.
Heather Paladine, MD, attended Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.  She then completed a residency in Family Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University and went on to do a fellowship in Maternal and Children's Health Care at California Hospital in Los Angeles.  After working in Washington, Oregon, and California, she recently returned to New York City to become faculty at the New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Family Mediciine residency program, where she is Associate Residency Director and Director of Women's Health.

Michael Gusmano, M.A., Ph.D.

Dr. Michael Gusmano is the director of research for the Alliance for Health & the Future and co-director of the World Cities Project at the International Longevity Center-USA. Dr. Gusmano's work has focused on comparing the health status and use of health and social services for older persons. His other research interests include politics of healthcare reform, Medicare, Medicaid, and comparative welfare state analysis. Dr. Gusmano was a senior research associate in the Division of Health and Science Policy at the New York Academy of Medicine.

Margaret Clark-Golden, M.D.
Associate Professor at Downstate Medical Center
Pediatrics Clerkship Director at the Children's Hospital at Downstate

M.D. - Duke University School of Medicine

Residency: Cook County Hospital (Pediatrics) and Michael Reese Hospital Medical Center (Pediatrics)

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Taking Action with Doctors for America

Doctors for America
"As physicians and medical students, we can make the difference and make sure we get strong, effective health reform this year! Here's how:

1. Get informed.
2. Take action.
3. Help others do the same!

Visit our Action Center to learn more."

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The Economist: "His is a bold ambition indeed; but this week the president looked a bit closer to fulfilling it."

I've posted an article once before ("4 emails debating health reform!") from the magazine, The Economist.  Their editorials are (I believe) usually thoughtful and objective, and here's what they had to say this week about Obama's health-care speech.  For the wonkier/wonkiest, below that are snippets from a 2nd article that goes into much more detail explaining the significance of this speech where "Mr Obama also unveiled the main elements of his own centrist reform plan for the first time." Click on the link to read the full article at economist.com. 

The art of the possible

A fine, measured piece of oratory from the president. But there is still tough work to do

“I AM not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.” Thus Barack Obama, late in the day, took his quest to reform America’s expensive and flawed health-care system to the floor of Congress with a mighty speech that will surely stand as one of the defining moments of his presidency, whether it leads to eventual triumph or disaster. His is a bold ambition indeed; but this week the president looked a bit closer to fulfilling it.

Politics, as everyone knows, is the art of the possible; and there have been times over this ill-tempered summer when the idea of tackling a system that costs almost twice as much as any other rich country’s, yet yields substandard results and leaves tens of millions of people with no health insurance at all, has seemed simply impossible. Mr Obama has to find a package of policies that is fiscally and politically moderate enough to win over a vital few Republicans to his side (and also prevent the defection of nervous conservative Democrats). But at the same time he has to keep the support of the leftish Democratic Party base, which wants to see a more expansive and costly set of reforms. He may well fail. But on September 9th the president for the first time laid out in some detail what such a plan might look like. Cleverly borrowing good ideas from both sides of the party divide, his proposals at least look like a plausible basis for agreement (see article).

The plan obliges everyone to take out health insurance while creating a tapering subsidy for poorer families to help them afford it. It also requires insurance companies to end various nefarious practices, such as refusing to insure people with existing conditions or cancelling their coverage just when they need it most. To pay for these long-held liberal goals (the cost is put at $900 billion over ten years), the president has committed himself to several policies that Republicans, if only they could remove their partisan spectacles, should applaud.

There is, for instance, a tax on insurance companies that offer “Cadillac” plans to richer individuals; since this will inevitably be passed on to consumers, it is a useful step towards making individuals aware of the cost of their coverage. He has made a cast-iron pledge that he will not sign a health bill that increases the deficit, and has promised automatic spending cuts if savings do not materialise. He wants to set up a new technocratic committee that could mandate changes to the hugely expensive Medicare system of health care for the elderly (an idea that cleverly takes such difficult decisions out of the hands of politicians, who have displayed a lamentable failure to grapple with them). And the president also promised conservatives reform of America’s mad tort system. The risk of being sued pushes up costs, obliging doctors to practise “defensive medicine” in the shape of needless tests and procedures.

Give me public options, but not now

Still up in the air is the trickiest question of all: whether the government should create a “public option”, its own insurance provider, which people could use if they dislike what the free market has to offer. Medical insurers and most Republicans say a public plan would enjoy unfair advantages and destroy competition. Liberal Democrats say the insurers will not cut prices without it. Both sides have a point. This newspaper still thinks the best solution would be to keep the public option as a threat: to set up a formal provision in the bill whereby a public plan would be introduced in, say, five years’ time if certain targets were not met. In his speech Mr Obama hedged his bets, sticking with the public option but signalling a willingness to compromise. This may come back to haunt him. But overall, this performance was a big step forward.

Fired up and ready to go

As Congress returns to work, two big bills before it may determine the fate of Barack Obama’s presidency—and he knows it. First, health care

“THE time for bickering is over. Now is the time for action.” With those fiery words, delivered to a special joint session of Congress on September 9th, Barack Obama made his case for reforming America’s troubled health system....

The speech was a success on several measures. It was passionate, which is essential if he is to win over a sceptical American public and energise his liberal base....

....Reading from a letter he had received from [Senator Edward Kennedy] posthumously, as his widow listened from the gallery, Mr Obama made the moral case for change: “At stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”

During this passage, he cleverly reminded Americans that leading Republicans currently hostile to Democratic efforts at health reform—including Senators Orrin Hatch and John McCain—had worked hand-in-hand with Mr Kennedy on earlier, smaller efforts at health reform. That points to the second reason to think that Mr Obama’s speech may yet succeed in kick-starting reform this autumn: it managed to position the president as a reasonable and moderate adult in a room full of petty and partisan ideologues....

...He also announced a surprising idea to use executive authority to encourage state-level experiments in curbing malpractice abuses.

Mr Obama also unveiled the main elements of his own centrist reform plan for the first time. He wants to expand coverage to some 30m Americans without insurance, principally by introducing an individual mandate for cover, insurance exchanges, subsidies for the less well-off and heavy regulation of insurers. He also accepted an important proposal to tax the most lavish of insurance plans.

Crucially, he made it plain that he would not accept a health-reform bill from Congress that raises the deficit—not now, not ever. He also vowed that most of the $900 billion his plan will cost—again, the first time he has given a firm figure for his initiative—will come not from taxes on the rich, as the current bills in the House envision, but from internal savings to be realised within the health system.

He offers two reasons to suppose that this claim is not complete bunk. The first is the White House’s support for empowering an independent panel of experts to cut costs in Medicare and other government health schemes. This matters, because Congress has shown it is incapable of making such difficult cuts. More impressive is his vow this week that any final bill must include provisions for mandatory spending cuts that would kick in if budgeted cost savings do not materialise.

Will this speech be enough to get the president’s reform agenda back on track? It just might be. One reason to think so is the deft way Mr Obama signalled a willingness to compromise on the “public option” this week. The left has insisted on a government-run insurance scheme, but this ill-founded idea is strongly opposed by the health-care industry and by Republicans. It also has no hope of passing the Senate, as Max Baucus, the head of its Finance Committee, confirmed this week. Mr Obama voiced theoretical support for the idea, but by also supporting other options—including, crucially, the idea that such a plan could be triggered only if necessary later—he has, in effect, dealt it a death blow.

Several committees in the House have already passed versions of health bills, but all contain the public option and are seen as too far to the left of the Senate—and now, it is clear, of where Mr Obama stands. So all eyes are now on the Senate Finance Committee, where a “Gang of Six” led by Mr Baucus has been working to forge a moderate bill that could provide the backbone for any final health law this year. Mr Baucus this week unveiled his own $900 billion proposal (also a moderate approach without the public option), and announced plans to finalise a bill next week.

Earlier this week that effort seemed to be flagging, as two of the Republicans in the gang, Charles Grassley and Mike Enzi, appeared to be undermining its efforts. That leaves Olympia Snowe, the free-spirited Republican from Maine, as the most courted legislator in recent memory. Mr Obama’s speech and sensible proposals, which are similar to those drafted by Mr Baucus, and his openness to the trigger option favoured by Ms Snowe, can only boost efforts at compromise.

Whether it is enough to keep Ms Snowe and perhaps one or two other Republicans firmly on board remains to be seen. But even if it does not, the next few weeks could yet produce a bill that is better than anything seen thus far and which would be worth passing. He was not the first president, Mr Obama said, to take up health-care reform; but he was determined to be the last.

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Hear me out: This is the time for all of us in health care to act. It will take you 1 min.

Obama did a good job in his speech making clear why we--as individuals & as a country--must succeed on health reform now.  But since most people already understood that urgent need... even more importantly, his speech succeeded in eliciting exactly what this reform means for 3 categories of people--which together include all Americans:

1. people already w/ health insurance (majority),
   
2. Americans without health insurance (~30 million folks), and
   
3. (the following category overlaps onto category #1) those who currently pay the rising bills for the uninsured when they get sick.
   

Take a look at the speech yourself:
[jump ahead 5:00 min to skip the monotonous clapping]

As I watched the speech together with a friend--and noticed that in one after another of Obama's statements, precisely 1/2 the chamber stood up and clapped, while the other 1/2 sat stoically across the aisle--she said, "OH that's why I hate politics!" 

Agreed.  It's as if these Representatives and Senators whom we all elected to act as leaders during this crucial time can't even think with their own brains once in awhile, instead they stick to "party lines" as if those lines were the only hardwired neuronal pathways they owned in their cortex.

Here is 1 suggestion I have to every single person in the health care profession, including myself as a student.  The simple fact of our profession not only gives us & those we will serve a bigger stake, personally, in the outcome of health reform; but it also truly bestows upon us an added credence when we have something to say (I've seen the special attention paid by politicians to a doctor or nurse at a phone banking or rally for health care; also, see the YouTube below of the ER doc in the audience at a recent town hall).  And what we can say, what we all can absolutely agree upon--but this still is in danger, not because of merit but merely because of political games--is that WE STAND BY THE NEED TO PASS HEALTH REFORM NOW, THIS YEAR.  (Click here if you are willing to make this simple statement to your representatives, it will convince hesitant politicians that the will is there, and it will only take you 1 minute)

Aside from the 1 Senator who wants to block health reform because "it will break" Obama, every single leader and expert of all persuasions knows that achieving health reform is crucial for America's health, economy, and sustainability in the very near future.  We are on an exponential downward path if we keep our current system and don't act now.  And this is another thing Obama got right in emphasizing tonight: that 80% of the components within Health Reform already has bipartisan support (and these include drastic positive reforms such as outlawing insurance companies from denying care based on "pre-existing conditions"--see the last 2 paragraphs of my letter on "Where'd all the fear come from?" below).  However, this crucial national effort is still on the verge of being sabatoged by people like that shameless Senator who wants to "break" Obama by breaking health reform. 

What I respect about some of Obama's big speeches to date is that he (or his speechwriter) gets the precision to tweak out at the exact point of confusion, of our paralysis, the truer narrative of what has really been happening on a national landscape (he did this in his "Reverend Wright/Race" speech, and he did this to some extent here on health reform): "I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it." 

Agreed.  Whatever your political persuasions, whichever your thoughts on the remaining 20% of health reform still in debate, or even if you don't have opinions on either, let's get ALL OF OUR political leaders to work on improving the health care plan and get it passed, rather than kill it.

Click here it'll take you 1 min.

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Feisty!, fiery!, a.k.a. Anthony Weiner's health care town hall

[Below is an essay published here written by a med student... Read what he now thinks about the impracticality of private insurers, the (un)free market of healthcare, and the 3 words that mock anti-Government conservatives.  Enjoy!]

My name is Cameron Gibson, and I'm an MS1er here at Downstate, and a bit of a closet political junkie.  I spent much of my summer abroad, so when I saw on the news Americans yelling and screaming about something, I assumed that the Yankees had just lost a pivotal game.  When I found out that in fact people were yelling and screaming about health care reform, my interest was peaked.  I couldn’t learn much from the regular media sources (who can?) about these “town hall meetings”, so I thought I should experience one for myself.  So, with my white coat in hand and a bottle of anti-anxiety pills at the ready, I set off to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s town hall meeting last Tuesday.  Suffice it to say, I had to down the entire bottle by the end of the night!...
...and through it all I sat quietly listening to what Rep. Weiner and the audience had to say.  It was exciting, it was scary, but most of all, it was eye-opening.  
Read Cameron Gibson's full essay...

My name is Cameron Gibson, I’m an MS1er here at Downstate, and a bit of a closet political junkie.  I spent much of my summer abroad, so when I saw on the news Americans yelling and screaming about something, I assumed that the Yankees had just lost a pivotal game.  When I found out that in fact people were yelling and screaming about health care reform, my interest was peaked.  I couldn’t learn much from the regular media sources (who can?) about these “town hall meetings”, so I thought I should experience one for myself.  So, with my white coat in hand and a bottle of anti-anxiety pills at the ready, I set off to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s town hall meeting last Tuesday.  Suffice it to say, I had to down the entire bottle by the end of the night!

Now, I feel I must point out the author’s inherent bias.  Since learning anything about the American healthcare system, I’ve always known that something was wrong.  I’m a firm believer that healthcare is an inalienable right, on the same level as freedom of speech and religion.  However, I went to Rep. Weiner’s meeting a skeptic of the “single-payer option”.  After hearing Rep. Weiner--a major supporter of a single-payer system--present his argument, I was practically a convert:

• Private insurers have gargantuan 20-40%! overhead costs. Medicare and Medicaid have ~4% overhead cost.  Therefore, that alone in a single-payer system = a savings of ~$300 billion.   
• A single-payer option is one of the best ways to insure the 47+ million Americans who are currently uninsured.
  
  

Now you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute, there are a number of reasons why we shouldn’t throw out our current system.”  Well, you’re not alone in making this argument.  In fact, there were many people--not even including the folks outside who handed out flyers of Obama’s face with a Hitler-mustache…!--there who were vehemently opposed to healthcare reform, and they made themselves known early in the evening (I think my grandmother in Oregon even heard them!). 

I would now like to elucidate a few of the arguments I heard that night against current health reform W/ the public option, and show why they are inherently flawed:

We can’t afford to reform healthcare!

In fact-and Weiner said this as well-We can’t afford NOT to!

• We currently spend more in real dollars and % GDP on healthcare than most western countries 
• but we are only ranked 37th worldwide by the WHO for quality of healthcare (if you went to Morocco you would receive better care!).   
• While more and more of us can’t afford our healthcare, private insurance continues to bring in astronomical profits year after year.  As things stand, they have no incentive to change the system, If there ever is a dip in their profit margin, all they have to do is raise the premium on their customers and the coffers are refilled! 
  
  

So, without the government stepping in in some form, whether through regulation or outlawing certain practices, we are currently set on a path of economic implosion solely from healthcare costs.

But we are a capitalist society, let the market fix the problem!

Without even mentioning the obvious example of 2008, it has been proven that the market cannot fix all of life’s problems.  Without the government, there would be no freeways, no electrical grid, no public school system (a blessing and a curse, for some), or Medicare/Medicaid (opponents sometimes conveniently forget that these are in fact government programs). 

Regarding healthcare, capitalism is not the most effective economic model because it reduces healthcare to a commodity, equal to insuring your belongings (i.e. renter’s insurance).  This ignores the fact that when someone gets seriously sick and their survival is in question, they can’t just choose not to seek medical help because they don’t feel like it (well, they could, but it would run against their Darwinian instincts).  If my TV is stolen and I don’t have insurance, I’m out a TV, whereas if I’m diagnosed with a curable cancer but have no insurance to pay for it, I either lose my life or go bankrupt (and so do my wife, siblings, parents, grandparents, etc.).  Viewing healthcare as a commodity ignores the reality & human side of healthcare.

The Government is wasteful and does a poor job of running national programs.

3 words: Med-i-care.  Ask anyone over the age of 65 with Medicare how they think the government is doing with their healthcare, and 96% of them will say they’re doing a DAMN good job!  (I’m almost certain that no other health insurance company can brag about such high customer satisfaction).

(This last point has less to do with current proposals for health reform being considered--i.e. Health Insurance Reform W/ the Public Option—and instead is only in response to a government Single-Payer system)

I don’t want my taxes to go up.

Sure, your taxes would probably go up.  You’d be paying more into Medicare, but guess what!  YOU’RE ALREADY PAYING MORE TAXES, just in a different form!  What does the middle class think their premiums are, a gift to their insurance company for doing such a good job?  Premiums have risen so drastically that the average individual now pays over $4000 each year for health insurance with a private insurer.  My question to the nay-sayers then is this: if you had the same coverage as you do now, but never had to argue with your insurance on the phone because of hidden fees, never had to search for a doctor that accepted your insurance, who cares whether the money is going to the private sector or the government!?  In fact, if everyone was paying into the same pot for healthcare, the young and old, sick and healthy, our premiums would probably go down or at least stay the same.  Spread the risk around and no one person is stuck with the bill!

These were just a few of the things that I heard being said/shouted, and through it all I sat quietly listening to what Rep. Weiner and the audience had to say.  It was exciting, it was scary, but most of all, it was eye-opening.  We are the land of freedom, where anyone has the right to express their individuality without fear of persecution or reprisal.  Somewhere along the way we lost our moral compass and veered off-course, to a place where we no longer care about the common good of our society.  We will send millions in aid to Africa every year to help the world’s poor and destitute, but I’ll be damned if I’ll help my neighbor with leukemia.

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"Health Care Sound and Fury"

Health care debate has heated up, some of the added volume to drown actual discussion, other voices shouting to remain heard above the crowd. But this news segment goes on from there to summarize a new PBS documentary, "Money-Driven Medicine," which is gradually earning people's ears & attention, because of its thought and willingness to actually listen & learn from the stories of doctors and patients in America.

To watch the full PBS documentary see below:

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Where'd all the fear come from? Somewhere that led to my mom's email inbox

My mom received an email about "Health Care Info," from a large community listserve, sent by a person who received the email "routed from a credible former colleague," originally written by... Who knows; maybe Sarah Palin? Here is my response:

The first sentence is not only written to scare (with no explanation whatsoever), but it is a complete outright lie: "...is over 1,000 pages long and puts the government in charge of our health care system."  The mention of 1,000 pages is a pointless scare tactic (as someone said, the last Harry Potter book was >700 pages long), and nothing proposed by anyone even comes close to "government in charge of our health care system." 

For the past 30 years, it is the insurance companies who are already dictating how doctors practice, and what care patients can or cannot get.  This has happened while every year there are over a million more Americans without health insurance (this year now there are 48 million uninsured), many of these uninsured people either get very sick or end in the hospital--which all Americans have paid for via high & rising premiums, and bankrupt public hospitals--while insurance companies have shown record profits year after year & their CEOs earn increasing salaries in the millions. 

If you or anyone you know have ever dealt on the phone with an insurance company trying to deny you care, I strongly urge you to read this New York Times article on Wednesday explaining why.   This former executive in the health insurance industry, who's job was to devise ways to scare Americans from important health reform (just like the email below), reached his conscience and now is speaking out strongly in support of needed health reform.

Insurance companies are also afraid of & against progressive ideas like the Health Info "Exchange" (mentioned in the email below) which will promote free-market competition and make it much easier for you to individually compare & contrast different health plans (currently, sorely lacking), and therefore improve health coverage + bring down premiums by competition.The types of rules that health care reform plans indeed want to enact that do affect health care are things like requiring all health insurance plans to cover annual checkups, cancer screenings--saving lives & saving costs by preventing end-stage hospitalizations--and to outlaw insurance companies from denying care based on "pre-existing conditions."  These are all changes in the current Health Insurance Reform that everyone (except insurance company CEOs & others people trying to scare Americans) agrees are good and necessary.

Therefore, I would indeed agree with going online "AND WRITE YOUR REPS"--as the email below urges you--but I would advocate for contacting them in support of real substantial health reform aspects like these (instead of the vague scare tactics announced elsewhere).
-Abe

 [The original email forwarded, forwarded, forwarded, from some unidentified "guru," into my mom's inbox is right here below:]

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