Amidst the talk of the 2008 Senate races, Senator Barbara Boxer may be the most endangered incumbent in the class of 2010.

Polling came out this week finding that she narrowly trails Arnold Schwarzenegger in a projected matchup.

And now the health insurance industry has come up with a devilish scheme to prop up Arnold, increase their revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars, end the drive for genuine healthcare reform all in one fell swoop…with Boxer’s Senate seat being collateral damage in this scenario.

We’ll take a look below…cross-posted at daily kos, hence more background than Caliticsians might need!

It all hinges on the drive for health care reform in California.  There’s a fake debate going on right now, with insurers funding both sides.  Governor Arnold’s proposal is to require individuals to purchase expensive, wasteful, private insurance products.  Some Democrats in the legislature are countering with a proposal to force employers to purchase these same products.

Really, what’s not for insurers to like?

And now we are presented with a strange political kabuki between these two proposals.  Advocates on both sides are bashing the other-with arguments that would apply exactly equally to their own proposal.

So yesterday, in a bit of Capitol irony, Schwarzenegger’s health care plan was heard on Halloween-and it is scary and full of treats for insurance donors.  The charge that the legislators made against his plan?  It’s unaffordable!  But their counter-plan, for so-called employer mandates, is just as bad.  That’s the system we have now, but more.  And it’s a recipe out-of-control premiums, rising co-pays and deductibles, and an entire industry devoted to denial of care.  In short, we’d have the healthcare crisis we already do. 

We don’t know the third act of this drama.  But since the sides aren’t really too far apart, there’s a good chance that Schwarzenegger will compromise, look like a conquering hero, bring fake healthcare reform to California, and be all set up to turn the wonderful Barbara Boxer out of the Senate in 2010, with full complicity of a number of legislators who are heavy on the payroll of the big insurance corporations. 

George Skelton, dean of the California press, doesn’t think so, but neither he nor I are privy to the planning sessions that the insurers have convened between Arnold and their Democratic allies. 

The sad part is that after the legislature passed a guaranteed healthcare, single-payer bill last year, Arnold set the terms of this year’s debate by vetoing it.  Now the Capitol insiders are running around saying, “let’s get something, anything done so we look good.”  Malinda Markowitz, RN, a member of CNA/NNOC’s Council of Presidents, takes on this argument, saying:

Sadly, the main beneficiaries of a rushed “compromise” will be the same insurance companies that created the present crisis. They would harvest millions of new customers, with the government using its power and the public purse to further an insurance industry that will continue to be able to profiteer and deny care.
We don’t have to turn just to Massachusetts to see an example of how this can lead to disastrous public policy. A decade ago, the same “consensus” pushed the hurried passage of energy deregulation. That was followed by blackouts, skyrocketing energy costs for consumers, financial calamity for the state, and open thievery by Enron and other energy corporations.
Californians should demand that legislators pull the plug before we plunge into another disaster.

And in case we needed it, here’s one more reason to fight for genuine healthcare reform on the single-payer model: nearly two million veterans, who already face a number of challenges, have no coverage at all.  That’s just not right.

Trick or trick?

It’s not just that Rudy Ghouliani lied about the odds of patients in Britain surviving the kind of prostate cancer he had, in the controversial radio ad and message of the day he’s offering this Halloween.

It’s not just that Rudy asserts the big lie, that “we have the best healthcare system in the world,” better than the “socialized medicine” practiced by scary countries like Canada, Taiwan, France, England, etc.  Or even that he is willing to pimp out his own cancer diagnosis, while dismissing the healthcare inequality that shames our nation.

We’ll look at what’s really scary after the fold…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

What Rudy’s Halloween health care moment highlights is just how scared American patients should be of any of the Republican candidates, and their “it’s your problem” approach to healthcare.  The lot of them are against universal healthcare-let alone guaranteed healthcare. 

We’d be back to square one: the debate would not be over how to guarantee every American can access the health care they need-but whether poor people really need or deserve healthcare.  The debate would no longer be over whether to replace or regulate insurance companies-but instead how to ensure their ongoing profitability.  The debate wouldn’t be about we-it would just be about he.  We wouldn’t be on a path to guaranteed, single-payer care–we’d see be on a fast track to more pain, suffering, and heartache.

What may be even scarier than Rudy this Halloween?  The trend towards health care credit cards.  Already half of all bankruptcies are medical-related…now you can get all that and 19 per cent interest, also!

The good news is that the activist docs at Physicians for a National Health Program continue their sharp advocacy…and nurses striking in Appalachia over patient care issues are still on the picket line.  Go nurses!

Today’s guaranteed healthcare roundup, cross-posted at  the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Associations’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

When Iowans want ethanol, presidential candidates leap to it.  When the state’s largest paper calls for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model…well, we’ll just have to see how that riles up the candidates.  The Des Moines Register did just that today.  Momentum is building.  Money quote:

What we hope {Michael Moore’s “SiCKO”} does: Spur Americans, at long last, to demand a system that covers everyone, while providing greater quality and reining in costs.

The best option for doing that: a government-financed system, much like Medicare, which covers America’s senior citizens. That wouldn’t be “socialized medicine.” Under Medicare, seniors still choose their doctors, and doctors don’t work for the government.

Barack Obama is soliciting health care policy ideas.  I’m going to email him the Des Moines register editorial.

Meanwhile the Des Moines Register finds that Blue Cross/Blue Shield literally have no shame.

In today’s New York Times, {sub. req’d} Paul Krugman slams FOX News for implying national healthcare causes terrorism.  If you remember Katrina, you know that our dysfunctional healthcare system is actually a major security vulnerability for this nation.  Krugman sums it up:

The only things standing in the way of universal health care are the fear-mongering and influence-buying of interest groups. If we can’t overcome those forces here, there’s not much hope for America’s future.

The Wall St. Journal finds that state plans to require employers to provide health insurance are illegal.  They’re right.  So why are politicians in California and other states still out there pushing them?

How to make a killing in the healthcare field?  Dr. Prem Reddy found where to start: restrict patient access to care.  Scary.

We should all follow NBC News’ story on Iraq and military medicine.  The U.S. is going to be working with our soldiers for many, many years as a result of the war.

John Conyers is an American hero.

And finally..is SiCKO Psycho?

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee. 

(Yes, go nurses! : ) – promoted by atdleft)

Roxy Carr is where any of us could be: medically bankrupt.  She’s both the face of our nation’s healthcare crisis, and symptomatic of the most important aspect of that crisis, affordability.  While private insurance companies enjoy record profits, average Americans find they can barely afford medical care, and they are one crisis away from seeing their life savings gone.  Coincidence?  We learn more about just how unaffordable Massachusetts’ healthcare reform plan is for residents, why a Minnesota plan is even worse, and how California’s plan is failing as a result.  Meanwhile, Connecticut unions fight for the kind of SinglePayer insurance that makes care affordable–and the national AFL-CIO endorses a similar proposal.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

Meet Roxy Carr of Twin Falls, ID:

She was making $6.25 an hour working for an employer that didn’t offer health insurance, and she certainly couldn’t afford to purchase her own policy. After paying rent and utility bills and putting gas in the car and food on the table, there was nothing left to pay for the expensive medications she needed to manage her diabetes.

“I juggled bills to afford medications,” Carr said. “I was robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Carr couldn’t juggle forever. Complications from her diabetes eventually landed her in the hospital, adding yet another bill to the growing stack on her table waiting to be paid. One day, she woke up and discovered she was more than $45,000 in debt. So she did the only thing she believed she could do: She filed medical bankruptcy.

While Roxy had no insurance, many people with insurance have similar problems in the face of deductibles, co-pays, and uncovered costs.  In fact, three-quarters of those bankrupted by illness had insurance, according to a Harvard study. 

So we drive our patients to bankruptcy, and then what happens to them? 

The bankruptcy wasn’t the end of Carr’s story. Still uninsured, she ended up in an emergency room one night when she fell ill. She was diagnosed with shingles – a skin rash caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. An emergency room doctor examined her, ran some tests and gave her a shot for pain. She was there for three hours, and the bill came to $3,700. Carr could have received the same treatment in a doctor’s office for less than $200.

That’s right we send them into bizarro world where they have to spend even more money on health maintenance.

As Roxy learned, the big problem with our health system is affordability-so many interests are sucking care dollars out of the system that regular, working Americans can’t afford care, especially if they actually get sick. 

Massachusetts has led the way in healthcare reform lately, implementing the dastardly “individual mandates” that require people to buy insurance from private insurers, and impoverish themselves while enriching the insurers.  Who’s hit hardest?  The middle class:

The economic pressure in the state’s new plan falls on those in the middle, the almost poor, several experts told The Standard-Times.
  “For the low-income family earning $36,000 a year before taxes, how do they pay what amounts to 6 to 8 percent of their income for health care, perhaps $2,400 a year?” asked Alan Sager, a professor of health policy and management at the Boston University School of Public Health.

Health costs can be crippling, even to families with health insurance, writes Yale University professor Jacob S. Hacker in his 2006 Oxford University Press book, “The Great Risk Shift.”

In 2003, 82 million Americans were without health insurance at some point, Mr. Hacker reported.
  “And yet, these ordinary Americans at extraordinary risk have for years remained largely unnoticed, an inconvenient blot on the heralded success story of the American economy,” Mr. Hacker wrote.

As people learn about these problems in Massachusetts, copy-cat programs in states like California are starting to run into trouble:

As California lawmakers work out a health insurance overhaul that could contain a similar requirement for individuals, advocacy groups here say the Massachusetts example raises questions about whether it’s possible to come up with affordable health insurance for people to buy on their own.

“Our big concern is that without guarantees that costs will be controlled, we’re certain to stick some patients with health plans that simply aren’t affordable,” said Carmen Balber of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Los Angeles, an organization that wants the state to limit how much insurers can charge

It’s even worse than that in a Minnesota proposal.  The plan actually wants to garnish employees wages to pay for their private insurance.  Not only do are you MANDATED to buy insurance, but they will helpfully take it our of your paycheck for you. You won’t be surprised to hear that:

The proposal grew out of a task force of insurers and health care providers from Blue Cross and Blue Shield, HealthPartners, Mayo Clinic and elsewhere.

The opposition is being led by the Minnesota Nurses Association.  Go nurses!

More and more labor unions are supporting the answer to the affordability problem-a SinglePayer system that does away with the bloat of the insurance industry middleman.  Connecticut’s unions are the latest to join the fight.  Nationally, the AFL-CIO recently endorsed Medicare for All, and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee will affiliate with them.

If the unions don’t succeed, we might see more of the global outsourcing of medicine, a/k/a “medical tourism,” that has devastated other industries in this country. 

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

(Horray for the nurses… And horray for a health care proposal that actually helps real working people! : ) – promoted by atdleft)

State Senator Sheila Kuehl yesterday re-introduced SB 840, her historic bill to move California to a “Medicare for All” health plan.  These kinds of SinglePayer health systems exist in every other developed nation in the world and are the only solution to the problems of access and cost of healthcare-problems caused by the wasteful private insurance bureaucracy.  Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill last year; this year he has promised to bring about healthcare reform and, when SB 840 lands on his desk again, he will have to consider if he is serious about his promise.

The California Nurses Association is the lead sponsor of SB 840, and a strong advocate of H.R.676, the national bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers.  Nurses are motivated to fight for SinglePayer healthcare because so much of their time is spent fighting insurance corporations on behalf of their patients.  A nurse explains below….

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

Deborah Burger, RN, President of the California Nurses Association explains why nurses support SinglePayer in her testimony from the SB840 hearing yesterday, and why nurses will continue to fight for it every way they know how, including in a new advertising campaign.  We are at a historic moment in this movement, and California’s progress should provide hope to people across the country that we can cure this healthcare tragedy that is touching so many of us.

Registered Nurses use what’s called the “nursing process” to assess and treat patients.  We are educated to collect objective and subjective data, synthesize that data, and apply our judgment skills to help patients survive both their health problems and the treatment for those problems.  When we ask a patient how they are doing, what their favorite flower is or if they have children, we are not just being pleasant.  We are noting their skin tone, their speech, their pain level, their emotional response and many other indicators of their overall condition.  We are doing a comprehensive assessment of their health, although it may not be apparent to them.

Applying the nursing process to the ailing patient called California, we note symptoms of less access, increasing costs and a less healthy population leading to a diagnosis of healthcare crisis.

The good news is that there is a cure.  It is called SB 840 authored by Senator Sheila Kuehl.

It is probably no accident that the same legislator who fought to protect patients in hospitals and authored California’s historic nurse-to-patient ratios is also the author of SB 840, a SinglePayer, or “Medicare for All” system, where everyone is in, benefits are better, and costs are controlled.  We are very proud, as the principal sponsor of SB 840, to work again with Senator Kuehl.

The California Nurses Association and nurses around the country have  fought insurance companies, HMO’s, patient-care gatekeepers, hospital corporate chains, and everyone else who wants to put us in the position of letting our patients suffer from inadequate care. 

We know one very important fact: a SinglePayer system is the only cure for the current market-based system that has turned our health into a commodity subjected to “insurance products” that cost more and deliver less every year.

Treating these symptoms with more insurance would be like treating a patient with lung cancer or asthma with cigarette smoke.

A SinglePayer plan is the only way to assure genuinely universal care – not universal insurance with a windfall to health plans.

It is the only way to avoid a multi-tiered system, assure better, more comprehensive benefits, and guarantee patient choice of physician and hospital. 

It is the only effective way to adequately control premium and out-of-pocket costs and to end an insurance bureaucracy that wastes 30% of every healthcare dollar because it quite simply takes the insurance middle man out of the middle.

Therefore, CNA RNs are proud to stand with Senator Kuehl, other advocates and other legislators who will fight for the right cure for California’s health crisis.

If you want to join the fight for SinglePayer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

(Shiela Kuehl is back, this ought to be interesting. – promoted by dday)

While Schwarzenegger’s healthcare plan languishes, California State Senator Sheila Kuehl will re-introduce her historic SinglePayer bill tomorrow.  It landed on Arnold’s desk last year and it will land there again–except this year he has promised to finally deal with the healthcare crisis.  Elsewhere, Republican and Democratic Governors are fighting Washington for their healthcare dollars, indicative of the national consensus for reform, but the Cook County Board of Supervisors drops the ball by fighting for their patronage jobs instead.  Meanwhile bloggers and editorialists check in on the state of healthcare reform in this country.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

The battle for genuine healthcare reform is shifting now to California, where tomorrow Sen. Sheila Kuehl, hero of the SinglePayer movement, will re-introduce SB840, the nation’s signature SinglePayer bill.  It was vetoed by Arnold Schwarzenegger last year even though, as Senator Kuehl remarks, 

“SB 840 represents the gold standard for healthcare reform-the plan that will move California into healthcare solvency and security, not only for ourselves, but for the generations that will follow.”

The time for this bill is now:

Universal health care is possible.  Polls are showing that 60% of Californians now support a publicly funded universal health care system over the current system.  The conversation is steering away from whether we need to enact such a system in favor of how.  SB 840, the California Universal Healthcare Act, is a very important step forward in this because it answers the how.

Here’s how it works:

SB 840 is the only proposal that establishes universal, affordable, comprehensive health insurance for all Californians and that guarantees the right of each patient to choose his or her own doctor.  SB 840 replaces insurance companies with a state-wide trust fund that collects premiums paid by employers and individuals, sharing the responsibility for funding.  This reduces the administrative portion of California’s healthcare costs from nearly 30% to under 10%.  With everyone in one risk pool, no one is denied coverage for a so-called pre-existing condition. Consumers are free to change jobs; start a business; go to school or start a family without losing the doctors they trust.

So what about Arnold?  He has promised to bring universal, affordable coverage to California.  His mask briefly slipped off this weekend, when he made a slightly different promise in reference to the insurance companies:  “You must let everyone make their profits.”

Nonetheless, he hopes to make his legacy with healthcare reform.  His problem is that his plan won’t work.  Legally, he won’t be able to mandate employers provide their workers with health care.  Practically, he won’t be able to mandate individuals to purchase insurance they can’t afford.  And financially, the numbers don’t add up. 

It’s interesting to note that Mitt Romney’s plan in Massachusetts is also facing severe problem; he over-promised and under-delivered.  Unfortunately for Schwarzenegger, RomneyCare was his inspiration.  Here’s one of many articles detailing the Massachusetts mess, in which a conservative activist notes “RomneyCare is in the intensive care unit, soon to be wheeled into hospice.” 

This kind of uncertainly is leading to legislative trouble for Schwrazenegger.  He has yet to find a sponsor for his bill, much of the state is still sitting on the sidelines watch the drama unfold, and it is entirely unclear that his plan will even get out of committee.  Moreover, the California Nurses Association today unveils a wide-ranging media campaign to shape public opinion about the Governor’s plan, and spread the word that it is an insurance industry giveaway barely pretending to address the problems of cost and access of healthcare.  The San Francisco Chronicle writes:

The ads are strong and striking in a political arena that so far has treated the governor’s health care plan with kid gloves.
Although a lot of interest groups have expressed doubts about parts of the governor’s plan, there’s been little public criticism. Many groups, like the Service Employees International Union and the California Chamber of Commerce, have said that they are withholding judgment until the legislative process takes it course and at least, so far, are willing to work with the administration. The nurses do not appear interested in being part of that effort.
“We will never be a part of any plan that benefits only the big insurance companies,” said Chuck Idelson, association spokesman.

Schwarzenegger will have to choose between affordable, universal coverage under the SinglePayer system proposed by Senator Kuehl or breaking his promise of healthcare reform.  The movement for SinglePayer healthcare runs through the California legislature for the next few months.

Around the country, despite the strong public mood for an increase in healthcare, much of our public health system is in deep peril.  A bi-partisan coalition of Governors is raising a red flag about underfunding of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a stop-gap program which helps millions of families.

The program in question, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, covers more than six million children in families that have too much income to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to buy private insurance.

Karen A. Smigielski, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Human Services, said her state had a federal allocation of $48.6 million this year, would run out of money in July and would need $15 million to continue the program as it is.

In a separate letter to Congress, the National Governors Association criticized a Bush administration proposal to cut federal Medicaid payments to public hospitals and nursing homes. The White House says the changes are needed to ensure the “fiscal integrity” of Medicaid and to curb “excessive payments.”

It is extraordinary that Republican governors are forcing a confrontation with a Republican President over a healthcare issue.  Are we seeing healthcare emerge as the new third rail of American politics-the issue that no candidate dares to fail on?

If so, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger in Chicago hasn’t gotten the message.  Many of Cook County’s 5.2 million residents rely on their public health system, which is among the best in the nation.  Not for long, if Stroger has his way-his new budget would cut nearly 10% of the system’s nurses and close half the clinics, while maintaing 400 high-paid patronage jobs doled out by the politicians.

The County’s RNs, represented by the National Nurses Organizing Committee, promises a furious fight-back.  Watch this one.

Finally, the Agonist notes why market-based health insurance simply CANNOT work,  USA Today notes that we are approaching a choice: change the employer-based system of healthcare or junk it, and an insurance corporation executive argues that it’s not his bloated industry driving costs in our healthcare system-it’s those darn, sick patients!

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

John Edwards looked a “Medicare for All” health system in the eye, and he blinked.  The tragedy is that there are strong political arguments to be made that a SinglePayer or Medicare for All plan is the smartest politically and will have the most appeal among the public.  Today’s SinglePayer Update will review those arguments, and knock down the claim that SinglePayer healthcare is a political non-starter.  In fact, it seems much more realistic than the incredibly complicated mix-and-match plans that have now been offered by Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mitt Romney.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

To the data:

1. The public is ready for a significant healthcare reform
Much of my data comes from the Center for American Progress, including this article that suggests that 89% of Americans are looking for fundamental change to the healthcare system.  In this context, the plans we have seen fail woefully.  Edwards, for instance, joins Schwarzenegger in demanding an “employer” mandate and joins Romney in demanding an “individual” mandate.  This is not a fundamental change to our healthcare system–this is much, much more of the same.

2. There is broad public support for significantly expanding Medicare
There is a bunch of date to support this.  The same Center for American Progress article cites an October, 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation/ABC News/USA Today poll finding that, by a 56% to 40% majority, Americans want to replace the current, employer-based system with a universal, governmet-run healthcare plan “like Medicare,” for instance.  It seems that the public is far ahead of our leaders on this-and that the first Presidential candidate, Democratic or Republican, to realize this will have the wind at their backs.

3. People hate the health insurance companies-they will make a wonderful target in explaining a SinglePayer or Medicare for All system.
Much of the evidence I have on this is anecdotal and comes from my bosses, California’s Registered Nurses, telling me about conversation they have with patients and their families in care settings.  I have never heard anyone say anything good  about insurance companies.  Edwards, and Clinton/Romney/Schwrazenegger, all do their darnedest to carve out a role for and protect the profits of private insurance companies, thereby limiting their ability to attack them.  We saw how well this worked for Clinton back in ’93; she couldn’t attack the big insurers, but they attacked her with their Harry & Louise ads.

4. SinglePayer or Medicare for All is the only solution that will work
Look-the U.S. spends the most money of any nation on healthcare, but our healthcare system is only the 37th best in the world.  Every other developed nation uses a system based on SinglePayer, and it has been proven to work time and time again.  You can’t really argue this point, at least not with facts.  For more background, why don’t you check out Physicians for a National Health Program?  Specifically, I don’t think that Edwards’ idea of “regional health markets,” where Medicare would be sold alongside private insurance plans will work, and I turn to Jonathan Cohn:

Still, such an evolution is hardly guaranteed. One big concern is the possibility of adverse selection–the idea that the public program would continually attract sicker beneficiaries, thereby tilting its beneficiary pool in a way that forces it to jack up premiums, thereby scaring away healthier people, further driving up the premiums. If that sort of cycle begins, the public program would eventually lose most of its beneficiaries–not because it was deficient but because, in effect, it was too good. Edwards’s plan theoretically has protections against this: Regulation of private insurers would, supposedly, keep them from selecting out the best risks. But that’s easier said than done and it’s an open question whether the protections would work

5. It is in the interest of businesses to support a move to a SinglePayer system
The healthcare mess is decimating our manufacturing sector and is a major competitive disadvantage for America.  Only a few business leaders are now on the record in favor of SinglePayer, but that will change, as it is in their interest to get themselves OUT of the business of arranging healthcare for their employees.  By contrast, check out this quote on the Edwards plan from a spokeswoman for a small business lobbying group: “Health care mandates are a nonstarter for our members.”

6. Half-hearted reforms hurt progress 
Edwards and his supporters argued that his plan might ultimately pave the way to single-payer by allowing people with his proposals that people “buy in” to Medicare.  I think it is just as likely that the American people will become convinced that our healthcare systems are un-reformable, because his plan won’t work, and we will have missed an opportunity for reform.

7. Rhetorically-which plan will have more effect with voters?

a. “I support an employer mandate, individual mandate, regional health markets with Medicare buy-in, buttressed by tax code changes and tighter insurance regulations.”
b. “It is time to modernize Medicare and extend it to ALL Americans.”

We’re still waiting from Giuliani, Clark, Obama and others-who will be the first Presidential candidate to support SinglePayer?

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

Arnold and Bush are going to war over healthcare.  Arnold wants the feds to give him almost $4 billion more to subsidize his insurance industry; Bush wants to cut the money he spends on healthcare.  Any true healthcare reform will have to deal with the cost problem caused by unnecessary private insurance companies.  The other big news in the healthcare cauldron also comes from California, where the state’s top HMO regulator is threatening to investigate insurance thugs who toss sick people off their rolls without cause.  Elsewhere, Massachusetts’ half-hearted reform attempts will force consumers who already have health insurance to buy more plans, New Jersey and New York are coming up with new proposals, New Orleans finally figures out how to get some healthcare, and single-payer activists around the country make their case.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of Single-Payer Healthcare.

The Los Angeles Times carries the story of the coming war between Schwarzenegger and Bush over healthcare dollars.  Remember that each is committed to protecting the profits of the private health insurers-and each needs to find more healthcare dollars for their own political purposes.  In Arnold’s case, he’s looking for about $4 billion a year to subsidize the state’s insurance industry.  Not gonna happen:

“That’s a big number on an annual basis,” said Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. “California hasn’t yet passed a law [implementing the governor’s plan], but when they do, I would think people are going to take a deep breath.”

The cost of helping states fund their health plans has already attracted the attention of budget cutters because it is complicating President Bush’s stated goal of balancing the federal budget in five years. In his new budget, scheduled to go to Congress on Monday, Bush is expected to call for a substantial slowdown in federal healthcare spending. Some of the cuts Bush proposes could affect programs Schwarzenegger is counting on to help pay for his plan, such as Medicaid.

Yep, this healthcare reform is stuck between Iraq and a hard place.  Remember that a main benefit of single-payer health systems is that they allow for genuine cost savings by rooting out the 34% waste committed by private insurers.

Those private insurers must feel extraordinarily vulnerable right now.  A growing public outcry has targeted, in addition to their profits, their “recissions.”  Recission is industry-speak for revoking the insurance of sick people.  Is California about to crack down on them?

The state’s top HMO regulator said Monday that health plans should be required to get outside review before dropping a policyholder, a dramatic step up in oversight that probably would face stiff challenges from the industry.

Cindy Ehnes, director of the Department of Managed Health Care, said she hadn’t yet developed details on how such a requirement would work. But she said any external input – possibly by the department or some independent panel – could significantly enhance policyholders’ safeguards against the loss of coverage.

“It is clear to me that we have to have some independent oversight,” Ehnes said.

Chris Ohman, president of the California Assn. of Health Plans, contended that regulations to limit rescissions would not be necessary if the governor’s plan were adopted and insurers had to sell to everyone.

“We see pursuing new regulation of rescission as a contradiction of the governor’s overall policy direction,” he said.

Elsewhere, Massachusetts’ plan mandating individuals purchase private insurance is forcing patients to sign up for all sorts of supplemental policies-much to the evil glee of the companies selling the product.

More than 200,000 people with health insurance would have to buy additional coverage to meet proposed minimum standards under the state’s new health insurance law, according to a count completed by insurers yesterday.
Most of the individuals do not have coverage for prescription drugs or have drug coverage that is more restrictive than the minimum proposed by the state board implementing the law. The Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector board is scheduled to vote on the standards in March. Individuals would face a fine of about $200 next year and more in future years, if they do not have insurance that meets the standards.
“It’s very troubling,” said Richard Lord, president of Associated Industries of Massachusetts and a member of the Connector board. “The new law was about expanding access for people without any health insurance. I don’t think we should be forcing people who do have some coverage to spend more.”

Iin California, the state GOP demonstrates that it doesn’t have any idea what to do about health access problems, while New Orleans has figured out that if we can’t have a healthcare system, perhaps we can have a healthcare fair. 

I’m not sure what New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is up to; he says he’ll cut Medicaid to pay for more health insurance.  Sounds like he’s re-shuffling around healthcare dollars.  In New Jersey, the individual mandate-aka, the “forced market” for insurance companies-is coming down the turnpike, at least until everyone realize it doesn’t work. 

Meanwhile, Congressman Pete Stark makes clear that Bush’s healthcare proposals will only make the situation much worse and have no political future, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin pushes a bill to allow states to use federal money to experiment with single-payer health systems, Connecticut could save $1 billion if it tried a single-payer system, and blogger Terri Emerick at My Left Wing gives us an overview of HR 676, the “Medicare for All” single-payer bill that was recently re-introduced.

( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Sadly, we’re reminded again today by Newsweek why we need to fight for single-payer healthcare.  They tell of the struggle of Nathan Wilkes and his very ill son to get medical coverage through his insurer.  Hint: the insurance industry didn’t do the right thing.  But the Wilkes are not alone-today we also learn how Insurance Corporation Gangsters practice unfair, retroactive cancellation of coverage for sick people, and their latest scam for elderly Medicare supplemental insurance patients. Nationally, experts dismiss the Bush plan as a giveaway to insurers, Hillary Clinton tells us why she SHOULD support single-payer, Schwarzencare is running into problems, and more voices around the country call for genuine healthcare reform.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of Single-Payer Healthcare.

If you aren’t committed to putting these sociopath insurance corporations out of business and replacing them with the kind of single-payer health plan that works in every other industrialized nation, read this Newsweek profile:

But it wasn’t just folks in Washington who were upset. Nathan J. Wilkes of Greenwood Village, Colo., was so worried about the possible effects of Bush’s proposal on his ability to provide coverage for his chronically ill son that he decided to travel to the capital to make some noise. A computer network security expert who earns over $100,000, Wilkes works for a private firm outside of Denver which fits into the large-group insurance category and is allowed to shop around for different providers each year. But when his son Thomas, born with severe hemophilia, developed a resistance to treatment at age 1, Wilkes’s claims soared; his company’s insurance provider, Wilkes says, soon began hiking premiums 40 to 55 percent each year, and introduced a lifetime cap of $1 million for all employees and their families-including Thomas. Soon, Wilkes says, no other insurance companies would offer to cover the company.

His father will soon have no choice but to go bankrupt.  He had health insurance-and it worked so long as nobody got sick.

A USA Today story suggests that he’s lucky he got what care he did.  The new trend for insurance corporations is to comb the applications of their sick customers and try to retroactively deny them care for mistakes. 

Their stories illustrate a little-recognized fact about insurance purchased by individuals: Even after being approved, policyholders can see their coverage amended to exclude certain medical conditions or revoked entirely, sometimes long after the policies are issued.
“Insurers love to market the promise, ‘We’ll take care of you. Just sign here,’ ” says Karen Pollitz of the Institute for Health Care Research and Policy at Georgetown University. “Then there is all this opportunity for the insurer not to keep the promise, and you don’t find out until it’s too late.”…
Attorney William Shernoff, who represents Wheeler, Seals and some other patients involved in the California legal disputes, says the forms are designed to be unclear, giving insurers cover to cancel almost any policy.
“I would venture to say that anyone who fills one out would make a mistake,” Shernoff says. “They have compound questions, confusing questions, ambiguous questions. There’s no place to answer ‘I don’t remember’ or ‘I don’t know.’ ”

And the San Francisco Chronicle reports one more health insurance abuse-bullying or deceiving elderly customers into buying Medicare supplemental insurance that’s a total rip-off.

So are we any closer to getting rid of them?  The Washington Post tells us that Bush’s plan will only make things work by allowing corporations selling junk insurance to get their hooks deeper into America:

But experts said yesterday that (Bush’s plan) would tilt that field toward a kind of health insurance that Bush has long favored — a high-deductible plan paired with a special tax-exempt health savings account, or HSA.

This is ideological warfare on the everyday consumer.  Patients, like Mr. Wilkes, would have high out-of-pocket expenses and caps that would quickly burn through their HSA’s.  Insurance companies would get more customers, and would find it easier to get rid of those pesky sick ones.  More risk for individuals and more profits for insurers.

Elsewhere, Hillary Clinton tells us why she SHOULD support single-payer healthcare, in an unusual speech making clear that it’s affordable and her supporters like it.

Let’s pick up story.  Campaigning in Iowa, Hillary says she favors universal healthcare, but on the plan:

“I’m not ready to be specific until I hear from people,” she said

Oooookay.  Then:

… Clinton asked at one point for a show of hands from the audience to see how many would prefer employer-based health insurance, how many would prefer a system in which individuals purchased insurance, with help from the government if necessary, and how many would prefer a system modeled on Medicare.
The audience overwhelmingly favored moving toward a Medicare-like system for all Americans. But Clinton, recalling the famous “Harry and Louise” ads run by opponents of her early-’90s health-care plan, warned that until there is greater political consensus, the same kind of attacks could sink any new efforts to provide universal coverage.

Jill Lawrence from USA Today continues the story:

“That really makes a lot of sense, because you could get the costs down,” Clinton said. But she said such a plan, like her 1994 proposal, is vulnerable to attacks that it is “government-run health care.” Clinton said she will work this year to cover all uninsured children and seek input from voters before proposing larger changes. “This time we’re going to build the consensus first,” she said.

So she used to oppose Medicare for All before she supported it?  Or is it the other way around?

Meanwhile, in California, Schwarzenegger’s ineffective, complicated plan is running into political problems and it looks the state will face a referendum of one kind or another in 2008. 

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has some advice for him: the patchwork plans are too complicated to pass and will never work: 

Yet the closer you look at these ambitious plans, the more you see they are mere patchworks. In Massachusetts, which will require most residents to buy private insurance, policies are coming on the market with higher prices and less coverage than experts hoped. Economist and columnist Paul Krugman points out that the Schwarzenegger plan will require big new state bureaucracies to regulate insurance companies and police individual behavior. As for the president’s plan, even the White House admits it will cover only 5 million of the nation’s 46 million uninsured; that’s because it relies on tax deductions, which aren’t much use to low-income families who represent the bulk of the uninsured population

The biggest argument against a single-payer system is it’s “politically unrealistic” in a free-market society like the United States. We think that gives too little credit to the impatience and common sense of American voters. But then we won’t know until a leader has the courage to find out.

Elsewhere, columnists in New York and California call for single-payer healthcare, Blogger Over My Med Body reminds us it will be cheaper, and the Smirking Chimp asks who’s afraid of SinglePayer.

( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Two days after George Bush’s State of the Union healthcare proposals, the bid for reform hits rocky shoals in the states and continues to split America’s business community.  California sees problems with the employer mandate, Massachusetts sees trouble with its individual mandate, and New York sees further threats to its already-declining public health system.  Meanwhile there are rumbles from the national businesses sector over the  broken healthcare system, and editorialists continue to look at Bush’s proposals.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of Single-Payer Healthcare.
 

Before we get into the details, go look at the genius cartoon by Tom Tomorrow.

The politics of healthcare remains turbulent in the states.  The Los Angeles Times picks up on two big problems with Schwarzenegger’s proposals. 

Whatever the governor eventually comes up with – and whether he calls it a tax or a fee – could wind up becoming the target of a lawsuit, said Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce.

Business groups such as Wal-Mart could challenge any proposed healthcare benefit mandate under the federal law. For their part, Republican lawmakers and anti-tax activists are likely to sue if the payroll levy does not receive what they contend is a constitutionally required two-thirds vote in the (California) state Legislature.

“This is the dilemma that any solution faces in California,”( Chamber of Commerce President Allan) Zaremberg said.

His “employer mandate,” requiring companies to cover workers, might well be illegal thanks to a recent Maryland court ruling, and he also faces trouble from conservatives over its funding.

In Massachusetts, the “individual mandate” (mandating individuals buy insruance) is also running into problems.  When Governor Mitt Romney announced his plans, he predicted state residents could buy basic insurance for about $200 per month.  Whoops!  The insurance industry rolled up their sleeves and came back with a plan to charge residents nearly double that, $380 per month.  The Globe reports:

But yesterday, Eric Linzer, vice president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, said that the board was being “overly prescriptive” and that it would be “a huge challenge” for insurers to meet all requirements and keep costs down.

Which is likely true: there is no way that private insurance companies can keep costs down.  They lose money paying people like Mr. Lizner to dial up the press, and paying politicians like Romney to pass laws favorable to them-all told about one-third of care dollars are lost when insurers get their mitts on them (no pun intended).  And the costs will only rise rapidly once the insurance industry has the market locked up.  That’s why real solutions can’t depend on private insurers.

So we have two main ideas floating around the states to rescue our current insurance-based system: employer or individual mandates, each of which force patients into becoming insurance customers.  Each is running into problems. 

Meanwhile, reports from New York State remind us of how urgently we need to continue pressing for single-payer health insurance.

The New York Times analyses Bush’s State of the Union proposals and finds it would strip New York City public hospitals of 7% of their operating budget, or $350 million a year.  The upshot:

“We would have to do a wholesale dismantling of our ambulatory care system and scale down our emergency departments,” said Alan D. Aviles, president of the Health and Hospitals Corporation.

The poor would even less access to medical services.  This comes on top of recent plans to close public hospitals around the state, which has inspired some very brave healthcare workers to embark on a 320-mile protest march.

Given all this, you would think New York Governor Eliot Spitzer would look into the single-payer solution already working in every other industrialized nation?  Blogger Rick Lippen says no:

Mr Spitzer like these other big state Govs have proposed complex plans that 1) are not fully understood because they are overly complex 2)in some cases require federal and state legislation to implement and 3)take too damn long to achieve desperately needed health care for all in their states now. Mostly however they all seem to buy into continuing their relationships with Big Insurance whose overhead costs and greed are bankrupting the health care system- to put aside Big PhRMA/BIO for the moment.

While the states continue to fumble for answers, the business community is increasingly split over whether it really wants healthcare reform.  If they want really things to change for the better, they could help the drive for single-payer healthcare right along.

News today that Ford Motor Company-possibly the world’s largest health care provider-lost $12.7 Billion dollars this past quarter should force them to think about it. 

The right wing of the business community is increasingly forced into ridiculous positions like this one: our healthcare problem is caused because Americans use too much of it (never mind every indicator shows the quality of healthcare received in this country is scandalously low.)

But there may be signs that the business community is coming around.  Alan Webber argues that if we can truly solve the health care problem, it would unleash a transformative entrepreneurialism like nothing this nation has ever seen.  And Milt Freudenheim of the New York Times tests the wind and finds some businesspeople ready to look for real solutions:

“There is more frustration and less acceptance of the current system among employers than we have ever seen in my 30 years in this field,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization made up of large companies.

So let’s find a real solution.

Of course many of the biggest stakeholders like things just the way they are:

Jack O. Bovender, chief executive of HCA, the hospital company, said that a patchwork of state plans would not work. For one thing, he said, state regulation of health care financing had often been overturned by lawsuits filed under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which the courts have said was intended to let big companies set up uniform health benefits across the country, rather than navigate state-by-state requirements.

Finally, the San Jose Mercury News is looking beyond Bush and wants our next crop of Presidential wanna-be’s to lay our their plans:

Since it’s becoming increasingly clear that the president isn’t going to be able to lead a national debate on health care for his remaining years in office, it’s time for the 2008 presidential contenders to start offering ideas.
They can begin by talking about their reaction to what innovative states — including California and Massachusetts — are doing to provide potential national models for health care reform.