America's Health Insurers to the Rescue . . . of themselves.

AHIP has a new website ahipbelieves.com that lets them jump on the "Health Care Reform" bandwagon. (Warning.  You may want to shower after visiting this site.)

Their plan has 5 "key elements:"

Expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to make eligible all uninsured children from families with incomes under 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL).

Improving and expanding Medicaid to make eligible all uninsured adults, including single adults, with incomes under 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Line.

Establishing a Universal Health Account (UHA) to allow all individuals to purchase any type of health care coverage and pay for qualified medical expenses with pre-tax dollars, with federal matching grants for contributions made by working families to the UHA.

Establishing a health tax credit of up to $500 for low-income families who secure health insurance for their children.

Establishing a new $50-billion Federal Performance Grant to assist states in expanding access to coverage.

Now let's pick these apart in detail.

Something interesting is happening. First, "Health Care for America Now" (HCAN) announced their $40 million K-street-based grand coalition, that had many good points to it, but tried to take Single Payer off the agenda. Then they put up a Blog on their website, and it promptly filled up with the real grassroots supporting Single Payer and calling them out on it. Then one of their coalition partners, the AFL-CIO put up a Blog supporting HCAN... five out of five commenters supported Single Payer... and then they closed comments!

While the beltway and people "who knew better" did little after 1994, it has been Single Payer advocates who continued more then anybody to do the hard work of actually building a grassroots infrastructure and support.

My mother-in-law is 80 years old. She is an invalid and has lived with my wife and I for the past 3 years. Her late husband was an employee of General Motors, and GM provides a surviving spouse's pension and health care coverage to Mom. At least they will until the new year. Here's the letter Mom received today from GM. It's a real kick in the teeth on top of many of her favorite doctors no longer accepting Medicare. Some won't even accept any insurance at all and have reverted to cash basis only.

(Cross-posted at Liberal Arts)

A trip to the gynecologist is not a fun time. But yesterday’s was terrible. I left feeling angry and shaky, wishing I had been able to say something to him, but trying to accept that in my position it was okay to be upset and unable to respond. I still wish I had stuck up to my nurse, talked back, not just given him the smile-and-nod, waiting for it to be over. I know it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. I’m sure many experiences are much worse. But my nurse lied to me. I've never been particular about doctors, taking whoever's available at the office, trusting anyone that walked through the exam room door. Now I'm not so sure, because a person I trusted, who I've been taught to trust for his medical degree, deceived me.

Even though I had no response for the nurse at the time, as soon as I got home I started writing down what I could remember him saying, did some research, and went back in today. Fortunately, the problem was dealt with by my doctor, the head of the practice, quickly and well. Still, I want to share my story, as an example of how sexism and challenges to reproductive rights can come up when you least expect them.

cross posted in The Political Underground

I find it very telling that the richest country in the world, My America, with all its values is not living up to its potential because "The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England" (Leonard Doyle: July 17, 2008). Research has supported time and time again that disparities in health care access and socioeconomic status are key influences on health outcomes and according to the article huge disparities have opened up in income, health, and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday (Leonard Doyle: July 17, 2008).

As many of you know, one of the most striking differences between Canada and the United States is in the strength of religious feelings. Despite cheerful whistling past the graveyard by the usual suspects, religion in Canada is on life support. The commonly quoted proportion of Canadians who attend church weekly stays within a few points of 20% according to surveys, but there is hard evidence, provided by on the spot head-counting, that such surveys over-report actual physical presence at church by up to 100%:

Hadaway, Marler, and Chaves repeated their Ohio study in Oxford Country in southern Ontario, Canada. Most polls show that 20% of the adult population say that they go to church weekly. Again, half were lying, as only about 10% actually attend church weekly. [source]

However, fifty years ago, the situation was very different. In the early 1960s, church attendance in Canada was not only as high or higher than in the United States, it was steadily increasing.

Hello from Netroots Nation in the Lone Star State, Austin Texas.

I'm sitting in the beautifully air conditioned lobby of the Austin Hilton.  The lobby here is a sea of bloggers and computers. There's free internet access and clusters of very comfortable arm chairs, so as you might imagine, we've turned it into one huge living room.

But despite all the noise and activity, lots of us are hard at work.

Here's the big news on the healthcare front.  I just received an email from Mike Dundas the chief health care deputy city attorney in Rocky Delgadillo's office. Mike wanted to let me know that Rocky's office (The Los Angeles City Attorney), has filed a lawsuit against Blue Shield of California as part of the ongoing investigation regarding retroactive recission of health insurance policies.

And the great news is that Rocky Delgadillo will be at Netroots Nation on the health policy panel.  Please join us, Saturday, July 19 Ballroom G at 10:30.

And doesn't it feel good to fight these bastards.

Kent Snyder, Ron Paul's campaign chair, died of pheumonia a couple of weeks ago after two months in the hospital. He was openly gay.

Here's what Paul had to say about Snyder:

Kent poured every ounce of his being into our fight for Freedom. He will always hold a place in my heart and in the hearts of my family... Without Kent Snyder, the fight for liberty would not be where it is today. We all owe him a great debt.

Snyder wasn't provided health care with his job in the campaign, even though Ron Paul raised over $35M and the Clinton, Edwards, Obama, and McCain campaigns all provided health care to their staffers. Surely there would have been enough money in there to provide basic coverage to at least his senior staff?

We who are advocates for the Single Payer (aka: expanded and improved Medicare for all) approach to acheving real universal health coverage in the United States are often accused of being zealots opposing the supposedly acheivable good (pre-compromising proposals like HCAN's) for the an idealistic unacheivable best. A more balanced then most version of this argument appears under the title Single Minded by Jon Cohn in the New Republic.  PNHP has a response on their blog.  

But as a one of those who has supported the obvious need for some sort of "universal health care" since I was first learned about the issue as a college and medical student in the 1980s, and only came to single payer per se recently, I have a few of my own points to make:

On June 18, 49-year-old Esmin Green was admitted to the Kings County Hospital Center psychiatric ward.  After waiting to be seen for 24 hours, she fell to the floor, began to convulse and then passed out.  Two security guards and one doctor walked into the waiting room, looked at her and then walked away.  After one hour, a nurse finally came over, kicked Ms. Green, and then proceeded to get a stretcher.  Shortly afterwards, Ms. Green was pronounced dead.  The entire incident was documented on a security camera, and is now on YouTube, thanks to the Associated Press.

Boo-hoo for the insurance weasels.
Boo-hoo for the Prince of Petulance.

Go House!  (Override was by larger measure than original passage.)
Go Senate!

FINAL VOTE: 70-26 in the Senate!!!  

Update: Senate Roll Call (h/t histopresto)

House Roll Call (h/t Llarian)

From the comments:

Why this is important for our veterans and their families.

Why this is important for people suffering from mental illness.

We'll call this a Massachusetts Case Study. Here's a little background info before we get to today's main point: dragging the business community along with us kicking and screaming.

When Massachusetts passed its major health care reform law, it wasn't quite as revolutionary as many people thought. Instead of trying to fix the systemic problems of health care, Massachusetts went after a bad symptom: the hundreds of thousands in the state without Health Care. Why? It's a politically popular thing to do, and HMOs enthusiastically supported the idea because who could pass up a little government corporate welfare in the quest to insure those who otherwise couldn't afford it? The Mass Health Care plan was a dream come true for the insurance industry.

However, as Ezra Klein notes, addressing health care access before you address health care costs adds perhaps insurmountable problems to the system, as the costs rise way above the rate of inflation and suddenly the state can't afford the new coverage. More on that here.

Maybe President Bush is smarter than he appears. After all, it takes an aspect of cunning to introduce a proposal that would require federally funded medical institutions to hire health care providers who don't believe in abortion or birth control, and present it as an "anti-discrimination rule." I imagine even Houdini could not achieve such an act of illusion.

Last Thursday, the American Medical Association issued an official apology for its past racism toward African American patients and physicians.  Along with the apology were the findings of a study conducted by the Commission to End Health Care Disparities, a group that the AMA and the National Medical Association (an organization representing black physicians) co-chair.  The study has found that between 1846 and the 1960s, the AMA's past transgressions included:

I want to take a moment and address those of you who have been asking why Health Care for America Now is not focusing on creating a single-payer health insurance system.

I was a leader of the fight for single-payer reform during from 1988 to 1994. I co-wrote with Richard Gottfried - then and now the Chair of the Health Committee of the New York State Assembly - the only fully-financed single-payer billto ever pass a state legislative body in the country. I shared the responsibility with Assemblyman Gottfried for presenting single-payer at twelve debates sponsored by Governor Mario Cuomo in 1991 on healthcare reform proposals. I wrote a training manual and talking points for candidates for Congress to use in running on single-payer in 1992. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Okay, let's try this again. Last time I posted this, I got absolutely no reads, which is totally not right. Other diaries of mine got at least one or two people to read and comment. I think this one got lost in the early morning flood, so I'm rescuing it myself and giving it another chance. I hope all readers get something out of it.

Yeah, I know this is being posted very late. If you're really wondering, I write Project Awakening issues as an email newsletter that I send to a very small (but hopefully growing!) group of subscribers. I hadn't posted this one earlier because the response to the last two, quite frankly, was pants (yes, I just used an Anglicism there). After the moderate response to the last non-Project Awakening diary I posted, I figured I'd try again, while I get myself in the mood to write the next issue (which is also very late).

Past issues are here and here.

Judging from the last couple days on the site, and the endless stream of diaries about how to properly imagine  other people's opinions of cartoons, or how to properly eulogize a political opponent, I think it's more proper, actually, to recognize this editorial opinion from Elizabeth Edwards on the death of Tony Snow.  Edwards and Snow are linked by virtue of being diagnosed with recurrences of their cancer within days of one another in 2007, and the news of his death clearly came to her as chilling and sad.  In the article, Edwards reveals some universal, human truths, which often get lost in the clatter of political warfare, not limited to this site.  I want to excerpt a bit: