The truth has come out at last about how the big insurers mounted large campaigns to defeat previous attempts to institute a national healthcare plan. If you have not seen or read Bill Moyers' interview with Wendell Potter, a former exec with Cigna health care, then go there now.
Mr. Potter tells of how he finally had an epiphany in mid-2007, after years of working for Cigna. "I was beginning to question what I was doing as the industry shifted from selling primarily managed care plans, to what they refer to as consumer-driven plans. And they're really plans that have very high deductibles, meaning that they're shifting a lot of the cost off health care from employers and insurers, insurance companies, to individuals. And a lot of people can't even afford to make their co-payments when they go get care, as a result of this. But it really took a trip back home to Tennessee for me to see exactly what is happening to so many Americans."
He heard about a health care expedition that was being held down the road, while he visited relatives back in Wise, Virginia. He decided to go there, and take pictures. He had no idea what he would see, but he had a vague idea that it would be a public clinic for people without insurance.
What he saw were people being treated in animal stalls at a Wise County Fairground. Some patients were on gurneys. People had come from miles around, from Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee. "There could have been people and probably were people that I had grown up with. They could have been people who grew up at the house down the road, in the house down the road from me. And that made it real to me. It was absolutely stunning. It was like being hit by lightning. It was almost-- what country am I in? I just it just didn't seem to be a possibility that I was in the United States. It was like a lightning bolt had hit me."
Nevertheless, Potter did not know what to do about the fact that real human beings had no health care access.
Potter also related what happened when the film "Sicko", by Michael Moore, came out. He saw the film himself and felt that Moore was pretty accurate in depicting the situation as it really is. However, he participated in the industry effort to dampen political reaction to the film for fear that it would fuel a real effort to institute a national health care plan.
(from the interview)
BILL MOYERS: And there was a political strategy. "Position Sicko as a threat to Democrats' larger agenda." What does that mean?
WENDELL POTTER: That means that part of the effort to discredit this film was to use lobbyists and their own staff to go onto Capitol Hill and say, "Look, you don't want to believe this movie. You don't want to talk about it. You don't want to endorse it. And if you do, we can make things tough for you."
BILL MOYERS: How?
WENDELL POTTER: By running ads, commercials in your home district when you're running for reelection, not contributing to your campaigns again, or contributing to your competitor.
This is the truth about why, in spite of poll after poll that shows the majority of Americans favor a national healthcare program, we still have none and Europe and other countries have had national healthcare for nearly a century.
The full story and links to more is at Moyers' PBS website, at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html
You can also view Wendel Potter's congressional testimony online or read the text. At Commerce Dept. site on dot gov: http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.LiveStream&Hearing_id=6f02dcc8-ad5b-445c-81ca-36c9b06ebdd5
In addition, the Frank Lutz memo strategizing opposition to health care reform Bill Moyers mentions in the interview. -- RAN in Politico: www.politico.com/static/PPM116_luntz.html
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Kucinich Supports Single-Payer Plan
by L.A.S.
With all the news coming out of Washington this week regarding Obama's national health care proposal, it is difficult to focus on just one or two threads for an article or discussion. But one major thread is that Dennis Kucinich is again taking the lead regarding national healthcare, and has come out in support of a single-payer plan.
The alternative news site AlterNet has been very enthusiastic about his version of healthcare reform. You may read their article here: www.alternet.org/blogs/politics/141404/how_dennis_kucinich_may_save_the_health_reform_battle/
Kucinich would allow states to create their own single-payer programs. This is a positive step. However, in the current economic climate, I doubt that many states are in any shape to start up a new public benefit program. Some states, like California, are dropping eligible people from the public healthcare programs that they already have.
Perhaps Obama's plan is meant merely as a transitional phase from the present multi-payer, all-private (except for Medicare) situation to a true single-payer plan such as one finds in many European countries and Canada. I could live with that, but I think that the insurance companies are bound and determined to avoid covering the people that they do not want: those who have pre-existing conditions, and those who run up large bills.
We saw when Medicare first was rolled out as a result of the President Johnson initiative under his "Great Society" programs, that the insurance companies could not dump the seniors fast enough. In fact, they terminated policyholders even before they had been formally enrolled into Medicare! Let us hope that someone has thought to insert verbiage to prevent a similar fiasco this time around.
One approach to reducing the cost of medical care that is not used enough is to manage cases for improved drug therapy (and other management of chronic conditions) so that patients spend fewer days in the hospital. This requires a progressive attitude!
One may read a rather long article on the Nursing Center website about interventions with high-risk or at-risk families on Medicaid, or on a public health plan in other countries. Typically, visiting nurses make regular home visits and help to educate parents and monitor the progress of children in the studies. Overall, such intervention returns about $17,000 per family in the program (they take into account not only hospitalizations that have been avoided, but also crime and domestic violence, and other costs to society: "Cost-benefit analysis of the NFP reveals that there is a $17000 return to society for each family served by the program.13 These benefits were calculated on the basis of the program's impact on societal outcomes such as crime, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, child abuse and neglect, and domestic violence.")
Let's hope that such relatively low-cost interventions will be the norm, and produce better management of childhood asthma and other chronic conditions.
With all the news coming out of Washington this week regarding Obama's national health care proposal, it is difficult to focus on just one or two threads for an article or discussion. But one major thread is that Dennis Kucinich is again taking the lead regarding national healthcare, and has come out in support of a single-payer plan.
The alternative news site AlterNet has been very enthusiastic about his version of healthcare reform. You may read their article here: www.alternet.org/blogs/politics/141404/how_dennis_kucinich_may_save_the_health_reform_battle/
Kucinich would allow states to create their own single-payer programs. This is a positive step. However, in the current economic climate, I doubt that many states are in any shape to start up a new public benefit program. Some states, like California, are dropping eligible people from the public healthcare programs that they already have.
Perhaps Obama's plan is meant merely as a transitional phase from the present multi-payer, all-private (except for Medicare) situation to a true single-payer plan such as one finds in many European countries and Canada. I could live with that, but I think that the insurance companies are bound and determined to avoid covering the people that they do not want: those who have pre-existing conditions, and those who run up large bills.
We saw when Medicare first was rolled out as a result of the President Johnson initiative under his "Great Society" programs, that the insurance companies could not dump the seniors fast enough. In fact, they terminated policyholders even before they had been formally enrolled into Medicare! Let us hope that someone has thought to insert verbiage to prevent a similar fiasco this time around.
One approach to reducing the cost of medical care that is not used enough is to manage cases for improved drug therapy (and other management of chronic conditions) so that patients spend fewer days in the hospital. This requires a progressive attitude!
One may read a rather long article on the Nursing Center website about interventions with high-risk or at-risk families on Medicaid, or on a public health plan in other countries. Typically, visiting nurses make regular home visits and help to educate parents and monitor the progress of children in the studies. Overall, such intervention returns about $17,000 per family in the program (they take into account not only hospitalizations that have been avoided, but also crime and domestic violence, and other costs to society: "Cost-benefit analysis of the NFP reveals that there is a $17000 return to society for each family served by the program.13 These benefits were calculated on the basis of the program's impact on societal outcomes such as crime, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, child abuse and neglect, and domestic violence.")
Let's hope that such relatively low-cost interventions will be the norm, and produce better management of childhood asthma and other chronic conditions.
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