What Really Ails Medicare
By admin | June 23, 2008
What Really Ails Medicare
By Jonathan Cohn, The American Prospect
Posted on May 29, 2008, Printed on June 22, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/85832/
When Lyndon Johnson signed the law creating Medicare in 1965, he promised that it would transform the lives of America’s senior citizens. “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine,” Johnson proclaimed. “No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years.” As ambitious as those goals were, some of Medicare’s architects had even loftier hopes. Many were veterans of Harry Truman’s crusade to provide insurance to every single American; it was only after that effort failed that they decided to concentrate on covering the elderly, whom they knew to be a politically sympathetic group. But in focusing on senior citizens, they didn’t give up on bringing insurance to the rest of the country. Medicare, they fervently hoped, would be a stepping stone to universal coverage — and perhaps a model for how to achieve it.
More than 40 years later, universal health care is back on the political agenda. But hardly anyone with actual political power is talking about quickly achieving universal coverage with a Medicare-like program to cover everybody. And while some progressives hope to establish a new public program that could eventually cover everybody — an idea endorsed by all the leading Democratic candidates for president — they haven’t made this element a prime selling point. Instead, Medicare is just as likely to be invoked by the opponents of universal coverage. As far as they are concerned, Medicare is proof that universal coverage can’t work.
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McCain’s Free-Market Health Plan Would Boost Role of High-Risk Pools
By admin | June 23, 2008
The Wall Street Journal
June 2, 2008
McCain’s Free-Market Health Plan Would Boost Role of High-Risk Pools
By Laura Meckler and Anna Wilde Mathews
John McCain’s plan for a health-care system built around consumers shopping for their own insurance comes with a significant downside: for people with a history of illness, it can be impossible to find coverage on their own.
The Republican presidential candidate’s main answer is to bolster the role of high-risk pools, which sell insurance to people with pre-existing conditions such as diabetes, cancer and AIDS.
These pools, typically created by state governments, require significant government subsidies, charge high premiums and sometimes sharply restrict benefits or enrollment. Nationally, fewer than 200,000 people are enrolled in such pools, while 47 million people in the U.S. are without insurance.
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Government-Funded Care Is the Best Health Solution
By admin | June 23, 2008
Government-Funded Care Is the Best Health Solution
Multiple Insurers, Multiple Plans Create Expensive, Draining Hassle
THE DOCTOR‘S OFFICE
By BENJAMIN BREWER, M.D.
THE WALL STREET JOUNRAL
A recently approved Massachusetts plan designed to force all residents to get health insurance was a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough.
Under the Massachusetts approach, there will still be a maze of plans provided by any number of insurers. That multiplicity is the problem. Multiple insurers and multiple plans create layers of unneeded expense and bureaucracy related to billing, collections and the entire assembly line of middlemen between the service rendered and the payment.
It took me a while to conclude that a single-payer health system was the best approach. My fear had been that government would screw up medicine to the detriment of my patients and my practice. If done poorly, the result might be worse than what I’m dealing with now.
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Research Finds Wide Disparities in Health Care by Race and Regio
By admin | June 23, 2008
NEW YORK TIMES
June 5, 2008
Research Finds Wide Disparities in
Health Care by Race and Region
By KEVIN SACK
Race and place of residence can have a staggering impact on the course and quality of the medical treatment a patient receives, according to new research showing that blacks with diabetes or vascular disease are nearly five times more likely than whites to have a leg amputated and that women in Mississippi are far less likely to have mammograms than those in Maine.
The study, by researchers at Dartmouth, examined Medicare claims for evidence of racial and geographic disparities and found that on a variety of quality indices, blacks typically were less likely to receive recommended care than whites within a given region. But the most striking disparities were found from place to place.
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UHCAN Statement of Unity
By admin | June 21, 2008
Major health care reform is again at the top of our nation’s agenda. However, the outcome is far from certain. Will supporters of the status quo again succeed in confusing the public, capturing our elected officials and stone-walling meaningful reform? Will health care in America continue to cost too much, cover too little and leave too many out?
To do our part to help meet the challenge, UHCAN has identified a new priority for our work in 2008-09: to build active unity within the health care justice movement. This email spells out the reasoning behind this decision, and how we hope to work with all of your organizations to make it happen.
Our sixteen years in the health care justice movement have allowed us to develop relationships with every part of our broad and diverse movement. We have operated as an inclusive network that promotes collaboration and works to help other groups succeed. We celebrate the growth and development of new coalitions and campaigns and help advocates for differing approaches learn from and work with each other to advance the cause of health care for all.
UHCAN has decided to devote significant organizational resources to this active unity initiative because we believe that active unity in the health care movement is an absolute necessity for success in the fight for health care justice in America. This is an historic political moment in the U.S. with health care at or near its core. Divide and conquer is the basic organizing strategy of the opponents of health care justice. If they succeed, we all lose, as we have time and again. Actively unified we have the opportunity ensure their divide-and-conquer strategy fails this time. But, for active unity to work, we all must do our part.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Discussion about McCain and Obama’s health care proposals
By admin | June 21, 2008
An interview with PNHP Senior Health Policy Fellow Dr. Don McCanne on McCain and Obama’s health care proposals.
Dr. McCanne served as PNHP President in 2003-2004 and writes a daily health policy “quote of the day” for single payer advocates. Subscribe by dropping a note to don@mccanne.org.
PNHP: How would you characterize Sen. McCain’s health care plan?
Dr. Don McCanne: Of the two candidates, McCain would rely more on the private sector and market forces to produce changes in the health care system. He says he would free up the market to allow private insurers to compete with each other to create plans with premiums we could afford.
Compared to Obama’s proposals, McCain’s program represents a much greater change from what we have now. He would shift responsibility for health care from employers to individuals by providing tax incentives for people to move to a deregulated, individual private insurance market.
What would be the impact?
McCain’s plan will likely result in many more people being uninsured and underinsured.
First of all, with workers receiving a government subsidy for health insurance - $2,500 for individuals, $5,000 for a family - employers are going to be motivated to terminate their health insurance programs and turn people over to the individual market.
McCain is basically proposing to change health insurance from a defined benefit to a defined contribution. In today’s market, what kind of family health insurance can be purchased with a $5,000 defined contribution? The average family premium is about $12,000, and that doesn’t include deductibles, co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses.
I believe the private insurance companies will treat people in the marketplace very shabbily. Many people will be unable to afford any insurance - and it won’t only be those who are older or who have pre-existing conditions, sectors the insurance companies don’t want to cover at all.
Second, his proposal for less regulation of the insurance industry means that industry will be offering grossly inadequate insurance products to people in order to compete on price. The insurers can’t afford to provide real, comprehensive insurance and at the same time make their premiums affordable.
As a result, there will be a huge increase in the underinsured population. People will be losing their employer-based insurance and will be swelling the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured. This will result in a massive, catastrophic failure of the system. It will be horrible.
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U.S. life expectancy still trails 30 countries
By admin | June 21, 2008
U.S. life expectancy still trails 30 countries
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) — For the first time, U.S. life expectancy has surpassed 78 years, the government reported Wednesday.
The increase is due mainly to falling mortality rates in almost all the leading causes of death, federal health officials said. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2006 was about four months greater than for children born in 2005.
However, the United States continues to lag behind about 30 other countries in estimated life span, according to World Health Organization data.
Japan is No. 1 on the list, with a life expectancy of 83 for children born in 2006. Switzerland and Australia were also near the top of the list.
“The international comparisons are not that appealing, but we may be in the process of catching up,” said Samuel Preston, a University of Pennsylvania demographer. He is co-chair of a National Research Council panel looking at why America’s life expectancy is lower than other nations’.
The new U.S. data, released Wednesday, come from the National Center for Health Statistics. It’s a preliminary report of 2006 numbers, based on data from more than 95 percent of the death certificates collected that year.
Life expectancy is the period a child born in 2006 is expected to live, assuming the mortality trends observed in that year stay constant.
The 2006 increase is due mainly to falling mortality rates for nine of the 15 leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, accidents and diabetes.
“I think the most surprising thing is that we had declines in just about every major cause of death,” said Robert Anderson, who oversaw work on the report for the health statistics center.
Health statisticians noted declines of more than 6 percent in stroke and chronic lower respiratory disease (including bronchitis and emphysema), and a drop of more than 5 percent in heart disease and diabetes deaths. Indeed, the drop in diabetes deaths was steep enough to allow Alzheimer’s disease — which held about steady — to pass diabetes to become the nation’s sixth leading cause of death.
The U.S. infant mortality rate dropped more than 2 percent, to 6.7 infant deaths per 1,000 births, from 6.9.
Perhaps the most influential factor in the 2006 success story, however, was the flu. Flu and pneumonia deaths dropped by 13 percent from 2005, reflecting a mild flu season in 2006, Anderson said. That also meant a diminished threat to people with heart disease and other conditions. Taken together, it’s a primary explanation for the 22,000 fewer deaths in 2006 from 2005, experts said.
U.S. life expectancy has been steadily rising, usually by about two to three months from year to year. This year’s jump of fourth months is “an unusually rapid improvement,” Preston said.
Life expectancy was up for both men and women, and whites and blacks. Although the gaps are closing, white women continue to have the highest life expectancy (81 years), followed by black women (about 77 years), white men (76) and black men (70). Health statisticians said they don’t have reliable data to calculate Hispanic life expectancy, but they hope to by next year.
Increases in female smoking are a major reason that men’s life expectancy is catching up with the women’s, Preston said. Improvements in the care of heart disease — a major health problem for black Americans — helps explain an improving racial gap, he said.
About 2.4 million Americans died in 2006, according to the report.
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10% of Population, 40% of Uninsured
By admin | May 8, 2008
by Melinda Tuhus |
As with environmental initiatives, movement toward universal health care is coming from the states. That was demonstrated again on Saturday with a regional action summit called Latino Voices in Universal Health Care.
The Latino community is the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population and has the highest percentage of uninsured and underinsured people,. That’s true in Connecticut as well. The latest census figures show that Latinos are ten percent of the state population but 40 percent of the uninsured.
Saturday’s summit was co-sponsored by the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut and Latinos for National Health Insurance and held at the Sheraton Hotel in Meriden. The approximately 50 attendees hailed from Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and possibly other states.
“We’re doing two things today,” said Juan Figueroa, president of the foundation (which is also a sponsor of this website). “We’re trying to strengthen a national voice through Latinos for National Health Insurance, while we figure out at the state level how to do some of this work. The ultimate solution needs to be a national solution, but in the meantime this is a way of creating momentum to get that national solution.” He said his expectations of action at the national level are not very high right now. But he pointed to the evolution of a bedrock social program to show how states might influence federal policy. “We had Social Security in ten states before we had it at the national level.”
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Dodd: Nation desires unviersal health
By admin | May 8, 2008
By Ryan J. Phelan, Record-Journal staff
MERIDEN - The American people are desperate for a universal health care plan, said U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., during his keynote address at the regional action summit of Latino Voices in Universal Healthcare on Saturday.
Dodd’s speech touched on a number of topics discussed at the daylong summit, co-sponsored by the Latinos for National Health Insurance and Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut. Dodd stressed the need for universal coverage of children, regardless of their documented status, and condemned proposals from the Bush administration that would reduce Medicaid funds by more than $83 million in Connecticut.
Dodd further said that plans to incorporate universal health care coverage had a majority of support in Congress and were only being stymied by the president’s veto power.
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Democrats Hedge on Health Care
By admin | April 25, 2008
By Manu Raju
The Hill
Wednesday 23 April 2008
Congressional Democrats are backing away from healthcare reform promises made by their two presidential candidates, saying that even if their party controls the White House and Congress, sweeping change will be difficult.
It is still seven months before Election Day, but already senior Democrats are maneuvering to lower public expectations on the key policy issue.
In the back of their minds is the damage done to President Bush’s second term by his failed attempts to change the nation’s Social Security policy.
For some senators, the promises made by Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) outside of Washington may not match the political reality on Capitol Hill.
“We all know there is not enough money to do all this stuff,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a Finance Committee member and an Obama supporter, referring to the presidential candidates’ healthcare plans. “What they are doing is … laying out their ambitions.”
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