Guaranteed Healthcare

New Energy for Healthcare Reform After National Bills Stall

To ecstatic applause from healthcare advocates, the California Senate today breathed new life into national prospects for fundamental health reform by passing on a 22 to 14 vote a major bill to guarantee healthcare in the state through creating a Medicare for all system that would cover every Californian. 

By Donna Smith

So, all the great fanfare and all the king’s horses.  The great and almighty U.S. Senate has spoken.  I will have to buy private health insurance – forever, amen.  The defective product that has left me wanting for real healthcare for all of my adult life is now a step closer to being the law of the land.

A lump of Christmas coal all polished up with sparkling rhetoric. 

Here’s what the Chicago Tribune said this week, and I agree: 

Sen. Bernie Sanders outlines the case for single payer/Medicare for all on the Senate floor, following withdrawal of his single payer amendment due to parliamentary maneuvers by Republican opponents.

• Click here for the C-SPAN video clip

The idea of a Medicare for All type, single-payer healthcare system will be heard on the Senate floor.  Late last evening, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont filed Senate Amendment No. 2837, and there are two additional original co-sponsors of this amendment, Senator Roland Burris of Illinois and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

As we know, the House passed its health care reform bill on October 29, 2009 after many months of contentious debate. By a narrow margin, 220-215, the 1,990 page, almost 20 pound bill was passed. It laid out the most liberal health care reform that might be expected out of Congress this year, since any bill that may clear the Senate will certainly be more restrictive.
In order to answer our question as to the value of the House bill, we need to re-state the original major goals of reform: (1) contain skyrocketing costs of health care and health insurance; (2) expand access to care by including everyone; and (3) improve the quality of care.
At a gross cost of $1.055 trillion over ten years, the House bill would do some good things, including reduction of the uninsured by up to 30 million; helping many Americans to pay for insurance through government subsidies; helping small business to provide coverage to their employees; expanding Medicaid and community health centers; establishing a new Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research to study and recommend the most effective treatments; initiating limited reforms of the health insurance industry, such as termination (four years hence) of its common practice of denying coverage based on health status and pre-existing conditions; phasing out government overpayments to private Medicare Advantage plans; revoking a decade-old anti-trust exemption for insurance companies; and creating a new long-term care program (CLASS ACT) to supplement Medicaid and/or private long-term care insurance.
However, the negatives far outweigh the positives, and adopting this bill would delay real reform for years to come. Despite a chorus of accolades about the bill by its supporters, even comparing it with the historic importance of Social Security and Medicare, this monster bill instead bears the heavy imprint of corporate stakeholders who themselves are largely responsible for out-of-control health care costs. After months of lobbying and campaign contributions to legislators crafting the legislation, their multiple conflicts of interest and political compromises, this bill ends up being a bailout for the insurance industry and a bonanza for stakeholders in the medical industrial complex.

Does passage of a bill that funnels millions of additional Americans into the private insurance system, and the decision of House leaders to shut down debate on one single payer amendment and scuttle another, mean the end of the years of efforts by single payer activists to win the most comprehensive reform of all?

The new House bill for health care reform (HR 3962), unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi on October 29th, will not fundamentally reform U.S. health care.

If you were to believe the hype that accompanied its release, you might think that it would be as important as Medicare and Social Security. The <em>New York Times</em> concluded that "This bill will take a long stride toward universal coverage while remaining fiscally responsible." Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman added: "The political environment is as favorable for reform as it's likely to get. The legislation on the table isn't perfect, but it's as good as anyone could reasonably have expected."

But this bill is not good enough to pass. It will not make a big enough difference in addressing the three main problems requiring reform--containing the spiraling costs of health care, providing universal access to affordable health care, and improving its quality. If we look at the provisions of this 1,990-page bill concerning just the first two of these three goals, we see that it will fail to deliver real reform.

Your calls are needed to keep single payer amendments alive in the U.S. House of Representatives. The message is simple: Keep the Kucinich Amendment!

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
  DC 202.225.4965 - SF 415.556.4862

• Representative George Miller:
  DC 202.225.2095 - Concord 925.602.1880
  
• Representative Henry Waxman:
  DC 202.225.3976 - LA 323.651.1040
  

By Donna Smith

Jenny Fritts was 24 years old.  Jenny lived with her husband Sean for the past five years, and together they had a little girl named Kylee, 2. Jenny was seven-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child – a beautiful, baby girl. 

Jenny is dead.  Jenny’s unborn baby is dead.  They died because they were turned away for appropriate care at a for-profit hospital because they did not have health insurance.  Sean rushed Jenny back to another hospital when her symptoms became even more severe, and he lied about having insurance to get her in the door. She was placed on a respirator in intensive care, but she didn’t make it.  She died.  And so did her baby.

They become two more of the more than 45,000 Americans who die preventable deaths due to our broken healthcare system every year.  Two more.  Mother and child. 

How many horror stories will it take before Congress decides to act on the most ignored problem in the present healthcare debate, denials for people with insurance? In September, San Francisco's KPIX-TV reported the story of Rosalinda Miran-Ramirez of Daly City, who woke up one April morning with her left breast bleeding and her shirt soaked in blood.

Bob Schieffer of Washington Unplugged interviews Donna Smith, of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Ogranizing Committee, who was a featured patient in the Michael Moore movie SiCKO, and Robert Zerkilbach of America's Health Insurance Plan (AHIP) about a new report of insurance claim denials.  
Watch CBS News Videos Online

For anyone not interested in slogging through the debate on the 500-odd amendments to the Baucus bill, it has become increasingly and painfully apparent that the healthcare legislation soon to emerge from at least the Senate will fall far short in reigning in out of control health care costs.

That lapse is especially ironic in that "affordability" is perhaps the only goal that seems to top everyone's to do list, from President Obama to the "keep the government hands off my (government-financed) Medicare" crowd.

But as long as our policy makers refuse to throw the elephant out of the room, the insurance company pirates and their predatory pricing practices,  all their subsidies and tweaking will amount to little more than an umbrella in a hurricane.  

We have seen this coming for many weeks, but the release of the Baucus plan in recent days by the Senate Finance Committee, without any Republican support within the Gang of Six, leaves no more doubt about Republican intentions or votes on health care reform. House Republicans have already been clear in their total opposition to reform bills in the House. Republicans want nothing to do with reform except to derail any plan put forward by the Democrats, and are salivating over making a defeat on health care reform a Waterloo event for the Obama Administation, carrying over into the elections of 2010 and 2012.

Americans are dying at a faster rate — 1 every 12 minutes, 5 an hour, 120 a day, 45,000 a year — not from war or natural disaster, but from lack of health insurance.

CNA/NNOC Executive Director, Rose Ann DeMoro calls on AFL-CIO convention attendees to support single-payer healthcare for everyone in America.

Unanimous Vote for Medicare-for-All Reform

PITTSBURGH – In a historic vote that adds the nation’s leading voice of American workers to a broad national campaign, the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention here today to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare for all Americans.