Treating Underinsurance By James M. Perrin, M.D. Editorial, The New England Journal of Medicine August 25, 2010 Health care reform, through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, may improve access to needed health care services for people with chronic health conditions, including children. Key private insurance reforms, including the removal of provisions imposing lifetime limits or unreasonable limits on annual benefit, the removal of discriminatory premium rates, guaranteed ...

Medical Loss Ratio and Public Health: Questions Linger Should insurance companies be able to get off the hook for paying rebates to customers, who may believe their company is unfairly denying them specific medical care in order to save money, by virtue of engaging in health promotion campaigns? Ellen R. Shaffer, Co-Director, EQUAL Health Network Last week the National Association of Insurance Commissioners issued proposed rules for measuring the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR), a key instrument for...

Funding healthy society helps cure health care Laura Gottlieb, Op-Ed, San Francisco Chronicle, page A - 8, August 23, 2010 I had known and adored Jeremy's family for several years. So when the sandy-haired, good-natured 8-year-old came to see me in my clinic with abdominal pain, I bent over backward to find out why his tummy hurt. I poked and prodded; did tests of his urine, stool and blood; and took X-rays, over the course of several months. When those tests came back normal, I did more. I ha...

 
A stunning critique of corporate power in America. "America is devolving into a third world country."

For OpEdNews: Sherwood Ross - Writer Too little has been written about the cowardice of CIA and Pentagon torturers and even less about the stoic courage of their victims. Irrespective of what they might have done, there can be no question that those suffering illegal and criminal tortures are, in fact, more courageous than their tormentors. After all, how much courage does it take to pummel a man tied to a chair or chained to a wall? Answer: A lot less than is required by those who must endure ...

(Link)/ <<<<snip>>> Premiums will vary from state to state. In California, for example, the cost for a 50-year-old is estimated at $575 a month, with a $1,500 annual deductible and 15 percent co-insurance. Premiums in states with lower medical costs could be around $400 a month. <<<snip>> Millions fit that description, and technical experts who advise Congress and the administration have repeatedly warned that the White House underestimated the cost. The ...

The Do-Nothing 44th President by David Michael Green (Link) <<snip>> We could hardly have a president more ill-suited to our time if we were to dig up Herbert Hoover and prop his weary bones up on the presidential throne. Barack Obama has five major problems as president. The first is that he doesn't understand priorities. The second is that he seems to have little strong conviction on any given issue. The third is that to the extent he stands for anything, it is for mainte...

(Link) ---- <snip> Although the American Revolution was fought to establish a government of the people, the will of the people has often been subverted by wealth and influence. Franklin Roosevelt once said, "The real truth of the matter is ... that a financial element ... has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Johnson." Most critically, over the past 30 years, an ever-more-powerful elite has seized complete control of the U.S. presidency. Earning millions of dollars a yea...

so, if the analogy were to hold, the auto insurance would pay for oil changes, tune-ups, engine overhauls, etc, and there would be deductibles and copays for those things. BUT, having a body requires some routine assessment and upkeep besides accidents. That's NOT the purpose of insurance. We need CARE (oil changes, diagnostics, replacement of parts occasionally).

If this bill were a step forward, we would support it Posted by Andrew Coates MD on Sunday, Mar 21, 2010 If this bill were a step forward, we would support it by Margaret Flowers, MD (Link)/ ------------------------ If this bill were a step forward, we would support it. If we believed and evidence indicated that this bill could be “tweaked” into something better, we would support it. But this bill is a step backwards, a step away from single payer. This bill further cements the privatizati...

The insurance giant Cigna last year gave compensation packages worth more than $120 million to two executives who left the company, according to a filing with the SEC on Friday. The vast majority of that total went to former chairman and CEO H. Edward Hanway who left his post with a retirement package worth $110.9 million -- which included $18.8 million in executive compensation for 2009, as well as a healthy pension plan, deferred compensation and stock options. source-- (Link) ----------...

I suggest that the "self-loathing partisan sycophants" and the "cheerleaders" wherever they might be, and anyone else concerned about the privatization of this public good (health CARE services) take a look at this article and reply thoughtfully, rather than do name-calling. (Link) (Hat tip to Sandwalker1984 for posting the link to this article elsewhere today)

Dr Don McCanne's take on Obama's proposal (Link) "Comment: The greatest significance of President Obama's health care reform proposal released today is that he has now formally placed his stamp of approval on the fundamental policies already contained in the House and Senate reform bills. While remaining silent on some of the third rail issues(public option, Medicare buy-in, pregnancy termination, etc.), he and his staff merely tweaked the bills and added insurance premium rate review, whate...

(Link) Unless Congress bails them out, states probably will have to cut health coverage for low-income families and others without insurance, a new report says. Lawmakers included higher Medicaid reimbursement funds for states in last year's economic stimulus bill, but the money will expire next Dec. 31. Without an extension, most states won't be able to ensure that eligible Medicaid beneficiaries will be served, according to Families USA, a nonpartisan health advocacy group, which issued ...

(Link) The Folks Who Missed the Bubble Want Your Social Security Tuesday 16 February 2010 by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed <<snip>> But the deficit hawks aren't interested in going after the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, the highly paid medical specialists, and others responsible for out-of-control health care costs. They want to take away the Social Security benefits that workers have already paid for and cut their Medicare. Apparently, it was not en...

Party of Capitulation Short-Changing the Health Care Debate ... For Now By GREGORY VICKREY <<<snip>>> It does not matter because these power brokers are in the pockets of the corporations that simply want to continue to dictate who they will cover, and under what conditions they will provide coverage, in order to satisfy particularly well-refined formulas to maximize profits driven by our illnesses. They need us to be sick (but not too sick, initially) to siphon dollars a...

Greed, Be Thou My God How Wall Street Destroyed Health Care By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS <<<snip>>> "While Medicare payments for in-office services to private doctors, including those for blood work and x-ray units, were drastically cut, payments to outside corporate facilities for the same services were increased. It is obvious what is afoot. Corporate lobbies are using their whores in Congress to shift income from physician offices to corporate labs, corporate medical service...

Why Taxing Health Care Plans is a Terrible Idea The Myth of "Cadillac" Health Plans By BILL SALGANIK January 12, 2010 <snip> The myth of rich-benefit “Cadillac” plans is the first flaw in the theory. By 2019 the benefits tax would hit one-fifth of households making between $50,000 and $75,000 a year, according to figures from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. The tax would pose a heavy burden on working families. Studies by the Economic Policy Institute and for the policy jo...

I want to thank IndianaGreen for posting "Obama: I am a New Democrat" yesterday. Here's the link to the article IndianaGreen cites, originally from Politico. (Link) For many months into his administration it has been hard for me to grasp Obama's values. Now they are much clearer (not that I agree with them). Pigeonholes are useful and limiting. Sometimes I need at least some sort of starting framework, a skeleton on which to hang ideas. Something to begin to make a more coherent whole. ...

(In response to a poster describing the aggressive tone recently on DU) So when I hear you describe the aggression as similar to sibling rivalry, I ask myself, well, whose attention then are the sibs seeking, what is this symptom a manifestation of? For myself, I have been reflecting on the amount of effort I gave to the Obama campaign last year and in 2008--donations of money, time--canvassing, holding houseparties, giving OFA feedback because I genuinely hoped that maybe this time an adminis...

Monday 14 December 2009 by: Lawrence S. Wittner, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed "<snip> The major problem is that the president's action fails to go beyond traditional thinking about how to relate to overseas strife. Indeed, Obama's response to the messy situation the United States faces in Afghanistan is reminiscent of how an imperial or military leader would have responded a few thousand years ago. Have we learned nothing over these intervening years? Instead of resorting to outdated thinki...

Perhaps in other posts this link has been given. I don't see it on a quick glance. (Link) Check out the 4th page chart from CBO to Rangel and the subsides/"cost-sharing" for one person and a family of 4. One thing that is just amazing to me is that apparently Congress doesn't give a rat's ass about COST to middle-income people for health INSURANCE. If they say there has to be a level playing field, then there is little to no benefit to middle income people who don't get any subsidy for befo...

From Dr Don McCanne--"Quote of the Day" mailing list Volume 65, Issue 19 (will be posted on pnhp.org website) Congressional Budget Office October 29, 2009 Preliminary Analysis of the Affordable Health Care for America Act The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committeeon Taxation (JCT) have completed a preliminary analysis of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, as introduced on October 29, 2009. The options available in the insurance exchange...

author--Leonard Rodberg --snip-- The President’s Fateful Choice Sixty percent of all Americans get their health insurance from private insurers, mostly through their employers, with some buying it directly from insurance companies. About half as many — 87 million according to the latest report from the Census Bureau — are covered by Medicare (the federal program for the elderly and the disabled), Medicaid (the joint federal-state program for the poor), the VA, and other public programs. How...

Author-- Miles Mogulescu The so-called "public option" -- as it remains in the bills being proposed in the House and Senate -- is a fraud and a sham. It bears no resemblance to the "robust" public option originally sold by its supporters as the most pragmatic, "uniquely American" multipayer way of achieving affordable universal health care, instead of importing successful single payer models from other democratic capitalist countries which provide better health to its citizens at considerably ...

Published on Monday, October 26, 2009 by The Morning Call (Pennsylvania) Health Care Reform Is Moral Battle for the Soul of a Nation by Scott Berman I have been asked to testify Monday about my experience with health insurance to a panel of clergy who will meet to discuss the moral issues of providing health care. What a terrific idea! In all the lobbying and bargaining in Washington, D.C., we seem to have forgotten about the moral imperative to take care of the sick. One issue that is bandie...

(Link) ....Suppose you're Pete Peterson, and you've spent your career trying to slash America's "entitlement" programs, and you figured out a way to make drastic cuts in Medicare under the guise of "health care reform." In that hypothetical, your major goal would be to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from the Medicare payment system, and then build in a politically shielded mechanism to extract hundreds of billions more if the initial cuts didn't sufficiently reduce Medicare's hi...

This article describes the impact on several actual US persons and families of the health proposals. The Uninsured High Deductibles High Out-of-pocket Costs High Out-of-Network Fees Sharp Premium Increases Premiums Rose with Age Pre-existing Conditions (It's not likely to get better for most. Except for the insurance corporations.) (Link) A Market 'Fundamentally Changed': How Health Proposals Could Affect Americans Who Buy Their Own Insurance By Julie Appleby, KHN Staff Writer ....

several videos available on his Sept 2 Rolling Stone article-- "Perhaps the biggest flaw in the American health care system is that 31 percent of costs are associated with administration and paperwork. Here Taibbi examines the easiest way to eliminate the red tape:" (Link) One of the most unaddressed issues is the impact of administrative costs for practitioners of this fragmented multi-layered and confusing way we have of financing and delivering care. The "public option" doesn't touch o...

(Link) <<<snip>>>> Obama eventually will get a health care bill to sign. But it will be a bill that will satisfy few. Progressives will scream even louder that the bill sans a public option, and a deal laden with big Pharma giveaways, is smoke and mirrors, a sham reform, and another infuriating betrayal of his campaign pledge of hope and change. The Fox Network, Limbaugh, and the GOP attack hounds will scream even louder that the bill and Obama are taking the country d...