Opinion
Bust the Health Care Trusts
By Robert Reich
New York Times
February 23, 2010
...Rates are soaring all over the country. Insurers have been seeking to raise premiums 24 percent in Connecticut, 23 percent in Maine, 20 percent in Oregon and a wallet-popping 56 percent in Michigan. How can insurers raise prices as much as they want without fear of losing customers? Astonishingly, the health insurance industry is exempt from federal antitrust laws, which is why a handful of insurers have become so dominant in their markets that their customers simply have nowhere else to go. But that protection could soon end... Read full article
Note: On February 24th the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to eliminate the insurance industry's antitrust exemption.
Kristof: I Cost More, But I'm a Specialist
What is our news industry were like our health care system?
Nocholas Kristof
New York Times
February 20,2010
Senator John Marty- Open Letter to President Obama
An open letter in response to President Obama's State of the Union
request for a better approach to health care reform
by, Senator John Marty
January 29, 2010
"If anyone...has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring
down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors,
and stop insurance company abuses, let me know."
-- State of the Union, January 27, 2010
Dear President Obama,
During your State of the Union address, you explained why you are
fighting for health care reform, expressed frustration at the lack of
success, and invited others to suggest a better approach.
I'm taking you up on that invitation and offer a bold suggestion:
Take a look at our Minnesota Health Plan -- a proposal that covers
everyone, saves money, and creates a logical health care system to
replace the dysfunctional non-system which currently exists. It is a
proposal that would provide health care to everyone, not merely health
insurance for many.
Commentary from Dave Durenberger
National Institue of Health Policy
Published Online December 22, 2009
While We Watch Bowl Games
The health reform conference committee will be a photo op with various committee chairs who helped write the bills. But the actual work will be done by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and a couple folks from the White House in the Speaker's House office. I want to believe it will be reported out by January 12, 2010, the day the House is scheduled to return to session. The House will undoubtedly require the Senate to vote first this time to make sure the 60 votes are still there before the Speaker submits it to a very angry Democratic caucus for passage...
E. J. Dionne: Democrats- Stop Screaming and Pass Health Reform
E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post
Monday December 21, 2009
For progressives, the question on the health-care battle going forward is not whether they have a right to be angry but whether they can direct their fury toward constructive ends. The alternative is to pursue a temporarily satisfying and ultimately self-defeating politics of protest...
...It's quite clear that substantial majorities in both houses of Congress favored either a public option or a Medicare buy-in.
In a normal democracy, such majorities would work their will... But everyone must get it through their heads that thanks to the bizarre habits of the Senate, we are no longer a normal democracy.
Johns Hopkins' Dean: Reform 2.0- Single-Payer
By Michael J Klag, Dean of Johns Hopkins, School of Public Health
Published in Fall 2009
Magazine of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
I have to find a new doctor.
Last month, my primary care physician wrote me a letter. He said he was leaving private practice. He's an outstanding physician-a doctor's doctor whom I've known since he was a medical student. His reason for closing up shop? The sheer frustration of getting paid by private insurance companies...
...If we want true health care reform, we need a single-payer system. In this system, the government would act as administrator, paying for all patient visits, prescription drugs, medical procedures, and so on. Instead of thousands of different insurance companies, HMOs and others with all of their separate forms and billing contacts, doctors, hospitals and others would deal with a single administrator-eliminating waste in our system...
U.S. Needs Health Care, Not Insurance
By Carol Miller, Public Health Professional and Health Care Advocate
Albuquerque Journal
November 15, 2009
A very complex, mandatory private insurance scheme recently passed the U.S. House. The public is being overwhelmed by sound bites on one hand about how great it is, on the other, how terrible. We are hearing few of the details that are actually in the bill. Having read the bill, it is clear now that what started as health reform has emerged from the political process as health "deform," building on the worst, not the best of the current system...
...Imagine real reform, as simple as adding people ages 55 to 65 years old to Medicare in 2010, 35-55 in 2011, and so on until everyone is included by 2013. The bills that promote this kind of reform are under 200 pages, they are simple to implement, cost effective and equitable. Choose a doctor, choose a hospital when needed and let the government pay the bills. Everyone in one system...
The Public Option Ain't What it Used to Be
There's Almost Nothing Left to Give Away in a Healthcare Compromise
By Robert Reich
Salon.com
November 19,2009
First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a nonstarter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada -- which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)
Weighing the Evidence for Single-Payer
by Ann Settgast MD and Elizabeth Frost MD
Published in Minnesota Medicine
November 2009
As physicians, we are troubled by the direction of federal health care reform. Whether via a public health insurance option or an insurance mandate, the proposals on the table build on the structure of our broken system-the most costly, fragmented, and bureaucratic in the world...
...Elimination of U.S.-style private insurance has been a prerequisite to achieving universal health care coverage in every other industrialized nation. We ask, "What if the rest of the world is right?" Only under single-payer can we eliminate the administrative costs associated with billing hundreds of payers and the sizeable overhead of the private insurance industry. These overhead dollars are spent marketing, underwriting, lobbying, and fighting claims-none of which makes our patients healthier. Elimination of this administrative waste would save more than $400 billion annually. Read the entire article
Let Congress Go Without Insurance
Nicholas D. Kristof
October 7, 2009
New York TimesLet me offer a modest proposal: If Congress fails to pass comprehensive health reform this year, its members should surrender health insurance in proportion with the American population that is uninsured...
...Health care has often been debated as a technical or economic issue. That has been a mistake, I believe. At root, universal health care is not an economic or technical question but a moral one. Read more