Mike Malloy

[neonesglow]

These are the forces we are up against!

[mliu]

BHO's health care reform is dead on the arrival.

He did not and can not solve the real problem.

Get rid of the middle man. Pharm is gauging. I guess people don't have money and simply can't pay. Let the market doing the reform for them.

[mliu]

This is what I am talking about. They aren't going to make money. People simply not going to do it. Cause there isn't any money to do anything.

http://news.creaders.net/headline/newsViewer.php?nid=393582&id=905673&aid=13

Costs are keeping patients from care
Copayments rise as families struggle
By Kay Lazar
Globe Staff / June 21, 2009
Email| Print| Reprints| Yahoo! Buzz| ShareThisText size – + People with robust health insurance are putting off doctors’ appointments and skimping on prescriptions because they can’t afford the increasing costs of copayments and deductibles, according to managers of patient-assistance hot lines in Massachusetts.

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COMMENTS (89)

Graphic Copayment per primary care visit
Not that long ago, such dilemmas were typically faced by lower-income families, often on publicly subsidized insurance. But with many consumers struggling to pay rising healthcare costs amid today’s shrinking family budgets, these tough choices are becoming commonplace - even among families with employer-provided health insurance, consumer advocates say.

“Our medical debt resolution program is hearing repeatedly that copayments are a problem,’’ said Mark Rukavina, executive director of the Boston-based Access Project, a nonprofit organization that helps consumers with healthcare issues.

“Previously it was the uninsured,’’ Rukavina said. “Now we are seeing people with insurance, but they are struggling to pay their bills.’’

The problem appears particularly acute for people with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, asthma, and cancer. They make frequent visits to doctors and often take multiple medications.

The issue has become so widespread that state lawmakers have scheduled a hearing Wednesday to address aspects of the problem, including a proposal to allow residents with chronic illnesses to buy prescribed medications and medical devices without facing a copayment or deductible.

As healthcare costs rise and the recession’s grip has tightened, more employers have slashed their health costs by shifting more costs onto their workers, according to Families USA, a Washington-based consumer group. As a result, more employees are shouldering heftier copayments.

In 2004, most patients had copayments of $15 or less for a visit to a primary care physician, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health research nonprofit group. By 2008, a majority were paying $20 or more per visit. Many insurance plans now require even higher copayments for visits to specialists, the doctors typically seen by people with chronic illnesses.

Christina Knowles of Boston said she canceled two appointments with pain specialists this spring because she couldn’t afford the $25 copayments. Despite having what she thought was decent health insurance, the 26-year-old had accumulated more than $2,000 in medical debt from copayments for surgery, frequent follow-up care, and prescriptions, after having a benign tumor removed from deep within her jaw.

“It’s both incredible and sad to think that I am the poster child for the new demographic of people who cannot afford medical care,’’ said Knowles, statewide manager for the Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization for Women. Her annual salary was in the low-$30,000s until she got a raise this month.

The surgery left her with partial facial paralysis and a gnawing pain, but Knowles said she was so cash-strapped that she resorted to frequent ice packs and Advil instead of going to the pain specialist recommended by her physician.Continued...

“There were days where it bothered me so much, I had ice on my scar all day,’’ said Knowles, whose pain has since eased.

In Framingham, Dr. James Kenealy, an ear, nose and throat specialist, said his patients increasingly cite copayments as a hurdle to continuing with allergy treatments. The care typically includes weekly shots for several months, with copayments ranging from $20 to $50, per shot, depending on the patient’s insurance plan.

“Probably once a week, there will be a patient deciding to discontinue allergy injections or not pursue that as a therapy because they have high copays,’’ Kenealy said.

Even patients without chronic illnesses are finding themselves in a copayment crunch.

“If you are a family with four or five kids . . . copayments are going to add up,’’ said Worcester family physician Dr. James Broadhurst, noting that children visit doctors frequently for illnesses and preventive care.

Especially in the past year, Broadhurst said he’s encountered more families asking him to treat or prescribe over the phone because they can’t afford the copayment of an office visit.

As part of Massachusetts’ pioneering 2006 healthcare overhaul, the state created the Safety Net program, which helps people of any income pay large medical bills. But it specifically excludes coverage for copayments.

“Oftentimes, these people end up using their credit cards to pay their copays and end up with medical debt,’’ said Kate Bicego, help line manager at Health Care for All, one of the state’s largest consumer groups.

Bicego said calls to the nonprofit group’s helpline are up roughly 65 percent from last year, and many of those seeking help are struggling with copayments and deductibles.

One of the proposed laws, cosponsored by Senator Mark C. Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat, and Representative Charles A. Murphy, Democrat of Burlington, would prohibit insurers from charging copayments or deductibles for any prescribed drugs or medical devices that are “necessary for the treatment or maintenance of a chronic disease, illness or condition.’’

But the trade association that represents most of the state’s insurers says employers and consumers would just end up paying higher monthly premiums, instead, because the costs have to be covered somehow.

“Right now, employers are struggling with increased costs for healthcare in general, and this is not the time to be adding to their healthcare costs,’’ said Dr. Marylou Buyse, president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans.

Buyse said the state’s Connector Authority, which oversees the 2006 law that requires most adults to have health insurance, carefully considered the issue of high copayments and deductibles when it crafted rules that define the minimum health plan a resident must have in order to avoid a tax penalty. Those rules generally say out-of-pocket costs - deductibles, copayments and other patient fees - cannot exceed $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 for families, but allow copayments and deductibles for prescription drugs to be excluded from the calculation.

“The state struck a delicate balance to make sure individuals have adequate coverage, while guarding against standards too few could afford,’’ Buyse said.

Jon Kingsdale, the authority’s executive director, said it has taken no position on the bill or on another legislative proposal, also sponsored by Montigny. That measure is aimed at requiring the Connector Authority to consider the total amount of copayments and deductibles a consumer pays when calculating affordability thresholds used to exempt some residents from paying the tax penalty assessed for having no insurance.

Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

[neonesglow]

The Patient is Begging for the Cure

June 26-28, 2009

President Obama said he is not yet ready to draw any lines in the sand in the developing showdown over his health care reform initiative. Unfortunately for this consummate, consensus seeking politician, the lines in the sand have already been drawn for him by the resident health care beach bullies.

The major insurance industry associations already have kicked sand all over Obama’s plan to offer a public option to individuals and small businesses to compete with the private, for profit health plans. They have vowed to go down swinging in an effort to stop the public option from seeing the light of day.

Obama cannot hide from this fight. The public option is the only remotely substantive provision left since single payer has been axed from consideration. Leave out the public option and everyone on the beach will know Obama turned tail and slinked away from the bullies. It looks like it’s going to fall to Obama because although the House is preparing to pass a bill with the public option included, the key Senate Finance Committee is promising to pass a bi-partisan bill, which means no public option, since Republicans have vowed they will not support it.

Both Obama and the Congress have already ruled out the single payer option (Medicare for everyone), which is the only option which would comprehensively and effectively address the inefficiencies and fundamental flaws of the existing system, which costs us roughly twice as much as other comparable national health systems (France, Germany, Canada) yet produces significantly worse health outcomes.

A reform plan with single payer as its basis is the only alternative that would make it possible to cover all Americans with equal or better benefits at less overall cost than what we pay today for a system that leaves 50 million Americans without coverage and the rest of us wondering whether the coverage we have will actually pay our claims. (For an excellent summary of the cost/savings profile of single payer see the David Lindorff article in Counterpunch June 24 edition.)

By ruling out single payer, Congress and Obama have committed themselves to the false proposition that Americans are so enamored of their existing insurance plans that they are not prepared to give them up. This idea is at the core of the relentless propaganda employed by the insurance/medical/pharmaceutical industry complex in their attempt to maintain their stranglehold on a system designed to deliver profits before actual care.

further reading: http://www.counterpunch.org/sher06262009.html

[neonesglow]

[DavidNM]

Couple of points:

- Either Obama grows a pair or he is going to leave one heck of an opening for a 3rd party or non-traditional candidate in 2012. And that candidate could siphon off enough votes to get him thrown out of office if he continues to non-perform.

- About the AMA -- only about 20% to 25% of the Dr's out there now belong to the AMA. While Obama tried to meet with the AMA to kiss their behind - he wasn't meeting with ALL Dr's. And - the AMA has a long glowing history of being obstructionists.

- About the other Dr's - polls indicate that about 59% of Dr's favor some kind of single payer health plan. They wouldn't mind getting paid for their services while cutting out the middleman.

- About Medicare -- If Obama wants to court the Dr's in the country he had better stop using Medicare as the example. I know many Dr's that have considered dropping or have dropped Medicare as an insurance that they accept due to Medicare cutting re-embursements and taking wayyyyy to long to pay. You want Dr's to buy in - you need a system that is easy, fair, quick and pays a going rate for services.

- About the sales pitch -- Obama keeps saying that "if you like your current health care plan you can keep it". What is he thinking? If he gets a public plan passed - and it's a good plan - employers will be flocking to this new plan like flys at a picnic. And people who work for those employers won't have the option of keeping their old plan - they will have to keep the plan of their employer. Obama keeps talking like everyone in America is an independent contractor buying their own health coverage. Not true.

- Lastly - if you put a public plan in place that is affordable to all, covers all, doesn't screw with previous conditions, doesn't find ways to drop sick people, allows physicians the option to choose treatments (with the appropriate auditing in place to stop physician abuse), pays a fair rate for treatment (at least average with what's being paid now) and pays quickly -- it will turn into Universal Single Payer health care in the blink of an eye. The insurance companies know it - the rich Congress members and Senators know it - it should not be a surprise. If Obama is planning to push the public plan through he had better prepare for a holy war. If, for some miraculous reason this manages to pass, the government had better plan for how big this will get and how fast it will get big - or it will collapse under its own weight.

Right now I give him about 8 to 1 odds. Lat month it i was giving him 5 to 4.

[neonesglow]

[neonesglow]

Are Your Representatives Bought And Paid For By Big Pharma?

So now we've got a unique problem on our hands in which 3/4 of Americans want a public option, and yet Congress is still sitting on our hands. The reason of course, being that the politicians are being bribed by insurance and other healthcare lobbyists.

Which means we need to change the nature of our debate from getting public opinion to shaming Congress.

djtyg's diary :: ::

The odds are about 100% that if a Democrat has spoken out against the public option, it's because they've received large chunks of money from the insurance industry. The odds are strong that if a Republican has done it, he's also received money from the insurance industry (although there are a few Ron Paul types that oppose it out of conservative principal).

So what we need to be doing is digging up the info on our Congressmen and Senators and finding out how much money they've been receiving from the Medical Industrial Complex.

To start, here's the politicians from my home state of Michigan (all data comes from OpenSecrets.org).

Congressional Democrats:

Bart Stupak-$0
Dale Kildee-$2,000
Mark Schauer-$13,550
Gary Peters-$22,175
Sander Levin-$28,000
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick$-0
John Conyers-$0
John Dingell-$9,500

Congressional Repugs:

Peter Hoekstra-$2,000
Vern Ehlers-$2,200
Dave Camp-$77,500
Fred Upton-$24,250
Mike Rogers-$45,750
Candice Miller-$0
Thaddeus McCotter-$8,500

Senate (both Dems):

Carl Levin-$193,183
Debbie Stabenow-$434,065

I included "Medical Professionals" because after looking at some of the groups, there's more than at least one that have come out against the public option. I didn't include hospitals/nursing homes because if I had to guess, I'd say they'd want a public option to make sure that all their hospital bills are getting paid.

Nobody likes hearing that their Representatives are bought and paid for, and Congress knows this. If there's anyway we can scare them into not caring that they've received tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from insurance lobbyists, it's by exposing them as corrupt bureaucrats.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't keep pushing for public opinion. We have the people on our side and we need to keep it that way. But now our bigger battle needs to be with Congress.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/1/748902/-Are-Your-Representatives-Bought-And-Paid-For-By-Big-Pharma

[neonesglow]

Big Pharma's Phony 'Gift' to Health Care Reform

July 1, 2009 by Mother Jones

Congress's $1.2 Million a Day Drug Habit—and Pharma's Phony "Gift" to Health Care Reform

by James Ridgeway

Big Pharma pulled off a first-class PR coup last week with its widely celebrated pledge to support health care reform by offering up a package of discounts they claim will run to $80 billion over the next ten years. The highlight of the package, said to be worth about $30 billion, is a 50 percent discount offered to old and disabled people who fall into the "donut hole," the notorious coverage gap in the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, which leaves some of us paying as much as $3,000 out of pocket for our meds.

Announcing the agreement, President Obama hailed the drug-makers for offering "significant relief" to a "continuing injustice that has placed a great burden on many seniors," and for helping to reach "a turning point in America's journey toward health care reform." AARP, the mammoth old people's lobby, was right there at Obama's shoulder, with head man Barry Rand trumpeting that industry's progress: "This is an early win for reform and a major step forward. It is a signal the process is working and will work." The deal was also seen as a victory for Senate finance committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT), who engineered negotiations in his self-assigned role as champion compromiser in the reform debate. But the real triumph belongs to the drug companies themselves, since the supposedly magnanimous offer is just what we might expect it to be, considering the source: another wolf in sheep's clothing from Big Pharma.

more:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/07/01-8

[msanchez]

Can someone please JUSTIFY to me WHY Obama is singing another tune now.
THIS TIME LAST Year, when he was running against Hillary for the nomination, Hillary's healthcare plan was mandatory, and Obama's was "optional". I CLEARLY remember him saying, people who don't have health insurance for whatever their reasons, shouldn't be forced to get it. (maybe they CAN'T afford the premiums)

NOW ... here we are a year later, and now Obama's plan is Hillary's plan!
Get health insurance or else!
Or else you will be FINED by the gov't!

What kind of sh*t is that?

[debbie n]

We need to get single payer for CA NOW!!! But even here the wheels are going TOO slowly!

At a healthcare for all event instead of fighting more they seem to be saying well in 2 years we will get CA single payer!

But now if congress gets their way we will not even be able to do SB-810 here because one of the poison pills is that STATES will not be able to do their own Single Payer bill!!

Have I told you today how much I hate these people

[neonesglow]

[DavidNM]

[neonesglow]

[neonesglow]

Why are Congressional Democrats screwing up Healthcare Reform?

Posted on July 10th, 2009 by ecthompson

I have now been arguing for months about a single-payer, universal health care plan which requires no ADDITIONAL MONEY. I recently debunked the notion that private industry can somehow work better than the government. At the very least, even Republicans have to admit that the government has been standing for over 250 years. Name one business that has been standing for over 200 years. Can you name any? Some of the most profitable and long-lasting businesses like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns have just collapsed under the weight of their own stupidity and greed.

Now, we find new secrecy being applied to health care reform. Somewhere in the bowels of Congress or at one of those trendy restaurants over a couple martinis, politicians are making deals. Why? This is very simple. I don’t want a hybrid (public-private system) which will be more efficient and less cost-effective. The only reason to have a hybrid system of any sort is so that Americans can pay insurance companies money. There is no other reason. So, I’m figuring, the reason that they are our these backroom deals is so that Americans won’t see the quid pro quo.

If we want to keep paying billions of dollars so that corporate executives can have luxury jets and vacations in Fiji, all we have to do is look to Medicare part D. (You can’t tell me that 90% of the congressman that voted for this huge piece of garbage even understood it.) This was a huge disaster. The only reason it was so complex was that the Bush administration allowed the pharmaceutical companies to write the legislation. The purpose of the complexity was to confuse the American public. When, in fact, the whole system can be very simple. Allow the government to negotiate drug prices. Remove the dough hole. Then, we don’t have to worry about charity from large pharmaceutical companies that give away a couple of samples to the poor while they pocket billions from the rest of America.

If the goal of healthcare reform is to provide high-quality cost-effective medicine and the only reasonable solution is a single-payer universal healthcare. With a single-payer we can accomplish the following:

•Cover all 46 million Americans who are currently uninsured without spending any more money.
•The government, working with doctors, other healthcare providers and researchers can develop “best practices” for the most common diseases like diabetes, hypertension and congestive heart failure.
•Medicare, Medicaid and all other health programs will be rolled into one program called universal healthcare. States save money. Businesses save money.
•The government negotiates with drug companies and other medical hospital suppliers to drive down costs.
•Pay primary care physicians to take care of a population of patients.
•Give MD’s bonuses for keeping their population healthy.
•Give patients tax rebates for losing weight or staying in shape or not smoking.
•Pay hospitals to take care of a population of patients this removes incentives to keep patients in the hospital unnecessarily. It also removes incentives to readmit patients.
•Reform immigration so that we are covering all Americans with health care form

rest of article:

http://www.whereistheoutrage.net/wordpress/2009/07/10/why-are-congressional-democrats-screwing-up-healthcare-reform/

[Doc]

[neonesglow]

President Obama today:

Monday, July 13, 2009 12:08 PM
by Mark Murray

From NBC's Mark Murray

In the conveniently timed intermission during the Sotomayor hearings, President Obama announced Regina Benjamin to be his pick for surgeon general.

But the president also used the announcement as a kind pep talk on health-care reform, as congressional watchers and the press have begun to doubt whether Congress can meet his goal to pass reform bills before it goes on its August recess.

"We are going to get this done," Obama said. "Inaction is not a option."

He added, "Don't bet against us. We are going to make this happen."

And mentioning a sports/exercise metaphor he's used before, Obama said that Washington's muscles for enacting change have atrophied. So: "We are whipping folks back into shape."

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/07/13/1994860.aspx

Those are his words.

Let's see some action.

[neonesglow]

Obama Not Following His Doctor’s Advice On Health Care Reform

by Ron Chusid

David Scheiner, Obama’s internist from Chicago, says Obama is on the wrong track with regards to health care reform. No, he is not a doctor opposing health care reform but is recommending a single payer system.

Scheiner is critical of Obama’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary–Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who used to work as the chief lobbyist for her state’s trial lawyers association.

“He doesn’t see all the pain, it’s so tragic out here,” he says. “Obama’s wonderful, but on this one I’m not sure if he’s getting the right input.”

What should the president be focused on? Scheiner thinks that a good health reform would be “Medicare for all,” a single-payer system where the government would cover everyone and pay for it by cutting out waste in the system. “A neurosurgeon gets paid $20,000 for cutting into the neck of my patient. Have him get paid $1 million a year instead of $2 million or $3 million. He won’t starve,” Scheiner says.

complete article at:

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=8971

[greg]

[neonesglow]