No. We cannot afford to have a health care reform bill that is merely lip service.
Literally. We can’t afford it.
Senators, congressmen, please vote down any bill that doesn’t have, at the very least, a fully operational public option, not a trigger option, not a co-op. Though we are completely convinced that reform is essential to a healthy future for our country, both people and economy, we also understand that the “reforms” that mandate individuals to purchase an insurance policy from the private industry, without significant cost control mechanisms, is a recipe for disaster.
Follow my logic. The Finance Committee’s bill offers a bunch of “reforms” but no constraints on profits, and no publicly run insurance option.
Eliminating “pre-existing conditions” is a moral imperative. But without removing the “rating” – inflated premiums – that are charged, the cost of such insurance will be out of reach of most of the 47 million currently uninsured. (We personally would have to pay more than $2000 per month right now, even if they exclude coverage for our pre-existing conditions.)
That would lead to subsidies by the federal government (or, as some amendments propose, state governments) to try to make it affordable. Tax dollars. That would go directly to private insurance companies, who are at record profit levels today.
The Baucus plan doesn’t require employers to provide insurance, and it would fine anyone who doesn’t purchase a private plan. The latest number we saw is $1,500 a year. What would they get for that? Nothing. (Oh, that’s right – charity, or the opportunity to sell everything they own, spend it on treatment, then sign up for a government program like Medicaid - this advice from those bleeding heart Republicans.)
And who would get the $1,500? The government, so they can forward it to the private insurance companies, to help them pay for covering all those sick people with pre-existing conditions.
Despite the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates that this bill will reduce the deficit, it will surely lead to continuing escalation in the cost of insurance for individuals.
Whose costs are we trying to reduce? The individuals? The taxpayers? Aren’t they the same people? Ah, there’s the rub. Corporations are taxpayers, too. They’re also currently footing the bill for most American’s health insurance premiums.
Without a serious mechanism to contain the amount of money we pay to health care service providers, and cut back the overhead of insurance companies (currently at more than 25%, compared to Medicare at 3%), the number of dollars spent on “health care” will climb. If individuals and employers have to keep up with increasing premiums (or pay fines), and co-pays go up, out-of-pocket maximums go up, we will be paying out more than the current 1/6th of our GDP. It may not build up the government’s deficit, but it will surely build up personal deficit for each of us individually.
So how you do you contain costs? How do you do it at home? Discipline. Efficiency. Practicality. Shopping around.
The current system, and the “reformed” system without a public option, doesn’t encourage these things. When the cost of an ultrasound goes up, insurance companies just charge more for premiums, and deny any claims they can get away with. Those of us with “good” health insurance plans don’t see or appreciate the actual costs of the care they receive. As Senator Schumer pointed out recently, if a doctor says ‘Hmmm, I don’t think it’s really necessary, but I suppose we could do a CT scan’, neither the patient nor the doctor has a second thought about what it costs because they don’t pay it directly. So unnecessary tests are done, and the overall cost goes up.
Medicare, the only “public option” in existence right now, uses all those cost containment principles, very effectively. But with the private insurers letting costs creep up, Medicare has to keep increasing its payment rates, too, or providers will drop out of participation. So individuals costs go up, and government costs go up.
When the costs strangle our economy, voters will go crazy and Republicans will capitalize on that by claiming the “reforms” were to blame, and we can kiss true reform goodbye. Congress will tinker some more as our economy turns us into a third-world debtor nation.
We have three choices – 1) make it illegal for insurance companies to make profits and put severe regulations on their operations, or 2) maintain more of a free market and make them compete with a non-profit public option to force prices down, or 3) expand our successful Medicare program to all Americans.
Since the Dems took 3) off the table before they even started negotiating, we don’t have any hope of that one. Choice 1) would take an act of God, not just an act of Congress.
The public option has to be big enough, and strong enough, to have the cost-containing impact we need. If, as some Republicans are crying these days, it would be so good people would leave private insurance companies in droves and head to the public option, destroying the profitable industry, we ask: what is your priority? Affordable and great health care for all, or profits to a heartless industry that controls our very lives?
Quoting Wil Rogers, "Even if you are on the right track you will get run over if you just sit there."
Congress, if some of you don’t have the heart and balls to put real health care reform into play, then show your true selves to the electorate and let us all show you what we think.
JM
Showing posts with label medicare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medicare. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Jeopardy – it’s not just a game show anymore!
Did you watch Jeopardy the other day when one of the categories was about brand names of prescription drugs? I found it frightening that no one missed any of them. The clue was the brand name, and contestants had to guess the condition it was meant for. Accutane? Acne. Zoloft? Depression. They knew ‘em all, A to Z.
These are products you can’t just walk into Walgreen’s and buy. You have to go to your doctor, convince them you have (whatever), and that you need (the drug). Doc has to write a prescription, you go to your favorite pharmacy, and they sell you the product (sometimes at an outrageously high price because there is no generic equivalent). Why would the average person, even really smart people, have reason to be familiar with these diverse drugs? Surely they didn’t all have every one of those conditions?
Television advertising. Online advertising. That’s why. Billions - that's with a B -of dollars spent every year in promoting their products. Direct to consumer ads designed to make people think they have a condition and that the manufacturer’s product is the only thing that will fix it. Go tell your doc you need it. And s/he will write the scrip.
Guess who ultimately pays for that? YOU and ME! Not just specifically the high price of drugs, which of course includes the marketing costs, but also the high price of health insurance. Prescription plans get lumped into the expenses of those middlemen, and spread around to everyone with that particular health insurance plan. (And by the way, have you ever paid for your prescription out-of-pocket and compared what they charged your insurance company? Insurance companies pay MORE than cash customers!)
But that’s not the only outrageous aspect of this issue. We’re treating ourselves for things we might not have because some ad made us think we did. Outrageous.
And then there’s The Media, beneficiary of all that advertising expenditure. If your business got billions of dollars from a customer, wouldn’t you go out of your way to treat them nicely? Think about that when you watch the news.
And ultimately, Congress. I could almost cut and paste the sentence from the paragraph above here. (“If your business got billions…”) Forget the big “health care reform” issue on the front pages right now. We’ll get to that in a minute. Consider that Medicare prescription plan put in place near the end of the Bush administration that explicitly forbids the government from negotiation for lower prices. How could even the most corrupt and idiotic legislator sign on to that? But they did. Both sides. Yet they’d all tell you they want to cut waste out of the budget. Yeah, right.
Unless you are hopelessly naïve, you understand that spending by lobbyists, including lunches and trips and parties, and campaign contributions, has had a profound effect on the way Congress votes. And it’s not just one side or the other getting those contributions. It’s virtually everyone, albeit some more than others.
Just look at this Blue Dog lineup… Since 1989, Rep. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota took in $628,805 from health insurance companies, and $130,999 from the pharmaceutical industry. His pal and fellow North Dakotan Senator Kent Conrad, got $828,000 and $255,000 from those same groups.
The four boys from Tennessee, Democratic Representatives Gordon, Tanner, Cooper, and Davis, each pocketed hundreds of thousands from various health sector donors over the past 20 years, with Tanner getting a quarter mil from the health insurance industry and $300,970 from big Pharma. Are you surprised they’re dragging their feet on the “Public Option?”
Blue Dog Representatives from at least 25 states held their hands out when the health insurance money train went by. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, our source for all these numbers, the “typical Blue Dog Democrat took $10,300 more from the insurers than Non-Blue Dog Democrats,” and “only $3,625 less than the typical House Republican.”
Senators are doing their bit, too. Says the CRP, “Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) has received $1.3 million from the health sector since 1995. Her campaign committee and leadership PAC have also collected more than $155,150 from health insurers.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman has been handed “more than $2.5 million from the health sector since 1989 for his campaign committee and leadership PAC, and more than $455,000 from health insurers.” (Same CRP source.) Surprise surprise!
One more thing. If the campaign contributions have their desired effect, the pharmaceutical manufacturers and other health care industries and special interests of all types, are more than generous with jobs. The legislator can walk away from his responsibility by leaving Congress and working for those who paid the piper and called the tune.
Don’t believe me? Example: Jim McCrery, Republican from Louisiana and former member of the House Ways and Means committee responsible for overseeing health care policy, joined the lobbying firm Capitol Counsel, that got $6.7 million last year from Roche and AstraZeneca (both big Pharma). (Thanks to Bloomberg.com for that one.) He’s not alone. A study by the University of Michigan shows that 27% of federal legislators become lobbyists as their first job after leaving government. 37% more join the K Street mob as their second or third job after leaving.
And all these millions have to come from somewhere, don’t they? It’s hard to say whether more comes from your health insurance premiums or your tax dollars. Either way, wouldn’t it be nice if we could control it?
Call your representatives and senators. NOW! We need health care reform, and we need to stop the gravy train of special interest lobbies.
JM
These are products you can’t just walk into Walgreen’s and buy. You have to go to your doctor, convince them you have (whatever), and that you need (the drug). Doc has to write a prescription, you go to your favorite pharmacy, and they sell you the product (sometimes at an outrageously high price because there is no generic equivalent). Why would the average person, even really smart people, have reason to be familiar with these diverse drugs? Surely they didn’t all have every one of those conditions?
Television advertising. Online advertising. That’s why. Billions - that's with a B -of dollars spent every year in promoting their products. Direct to consumer ads designed to make people think they have a condition and that the manufacturer’s product is the only thing that will fix it. Go tell your doc you need it. And s/he will write the scrip.
Guess who ultimately pays for that? YOU and ME! Not just specifically the high price of drugs, which of course includes the marketing costs, but also the high price of health insurance. Prescription plans get lumped into the expenses of those middlemen, and spread around to everyone with that particular health insurance plan. (And by the way, have you ever paid for your prescription out-of-pocket and compared what they charged your insurance company? Insurance companies pay MORE than cash customers!)
But that’s not the only outrageous aspect of this issue. We’re treating ourselves for things we might not have because some ad made us think we did. Outrageous.
And then there’s The Media, beneficiary of all that advertising expenditure. If your business got billions of dollars from a customer, wouldn’t you go out of your way to treat them nicely? Think about that when you watch the news.
And ultimately, Congress. I could almost cut and paste the sentence from the paragraph above here. (“If your business got billions…”) Forget the big “health care reform” issue on the front pages right now. We’ll get to that in a minute. Consider that Medicare prescription plan put in place near the end of the Bush administration that explicitly forbids the government from negotiation for lower prices. How could even the most corrupt and idiotic legislator sign on to that? But they did. Both sides. Yet they’d all tell you they want to cut waste out of the budget. Yeah, right.
Unless you are hopelessly naïve, you understand that spending by lobbyists, including lunches and trips and parties, and campaign contributions, has had a profound effect on the way Congress votes. And it’s not just one side or the other getting those contributions. It’s virtually everyone, albeit some more than others.
Just look at this Blue Dog lineup… Since 1989, Rep. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota took in $628,805 from health insurance companies, and $130,999 from the pharmaceutical industry. His pal and fellow North Dakotan Senator Kent Conrad, got $828,000 and $255,000 from those same groups.
The four boys from Tennessee, Democratic Representatives Gordon, Tanner, Cooper, and Davis, each pocketed hundreds of thousands from various health sector donors over the past 20 years, with Tanner getting a quarter mil from the health insurance industry and $300,970 from big Pharma. Are you surprised they’re dragging their feet on the “Public Option?”
Blue Dog Representatives from at least 25 states held their hands out when the health insurance money train went by. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, our source for all these numbers, the “typical Blue Dog Democrat took $10,300 more from the insurers than Non-Blue Dog Democrats,” and “only $3,625 less than the typical House Republican.”
Senators are doing their bit, too. Says the CRP, “Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) has received $1.3 million from the health sector since 1995. Her campaign committee and leadership PAC have also collected more than $155,150 from health insurers.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman has been handed “more than $2.5 million from the health sector since 1989 for his campaign committee and leadership PAC, and more than $455,000 from health insurers.” (Same CRP source.) Surprise surprise!
One more thing. If the campaign contributions have their desired effect, the pharmaceutical manufacturers and other health care industries and special interests of all types, are more than generous with jobs. The legislator can walk away from his responsibility by leaving Congress and working for those who paid the piper and called the tune.
Don’t believe me? Example: Jim McCrery, Republican from Louisiana and former member of the House Ways and Means committee responsible for overseeing health care policy, joined the lobbying firm Capitol Counsel, that got $6.7 million last year from Roche and AstraZeneca (both big Pharma). (Thanks to Bloomberg.com for that one.) He’s not alone. A study by the University of Michigan shows that 27% of federal legislators become lobbyists as their first job after leaving government. 37% more join the K Street mob as their second or third job after leaving.
And all these millions have to come from somewhere, don’t they? It’s hard to say whether more comes from your health insurance premiums or your tax dollars. Either way, wouldn’t it be nice if we could control it?
Call your representatives and senators. NOW! We need health care reform, and we need to stop the gravy train of special interest lobbies.
JM
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Who’s Looking Out For You? It’s most assuredly not the Republicans
Okay, the pity party is officially over. The distressing lack of spine displayed by many of the Democrats in both the House and Senate regarding a Public health insurance Option has had us crying in our beer for the last couple of days, and that’s long enough. Now there’s work to be done, so let’s get serious about the task at hand. It’s apparently being left up to us to convince everyone we possibly can, particularly the Blue Dogs, that meaningful Health Care Reform is in the best interests of the country as a whole.
We all need to play a part in this, even if it just means making a phone call or communicating in some other way with your Senators and House Reps…unless, of course, they’re Republicans. In that case, forget it! You’d be wasting your time…time that could be better spent calling friends and neighbors who need more convincing. The GOP has shown repeatedly since this process began that they have absolutely no interest in Health Care Reform, meaningful or otherwise. They are not your friends!
This really shouldn’t surprise anyone because the Republicans have fought and voted against the best interests of 95% of Americans…the best interests of your families and ours…on every significant social issue since the 1940s. They have consistently sided with huge financial institutions, large corporations, and the 5% of our population that’s comprised of the country’s wealthiest individuals, rather than with us.
They have a tradition of being on the wrong side of history whenever it comes to the overall wellbeing and lifestyle security of the working class. If you doubt that, all you have to do is look at the evidence. It’s so stark that one can’t help but wonder why anyone who is counted among the 95% would ever vote Republican… unless you’ve been deluded into believing, like so many have, that they consider you one of them.
The GOP waged a savage campaign against the advent of Social Security back before it became law…and even today they’re continually lobbying behind the scenes to either privatize the program or, preferably in their minds, get rid of it altogether. If you need your memory jogged, just think back to the failed efforts of W’s administration in that regard. Were they trying to derail Social Security with your future in mind?
Republicans fought bitterly against Medicare before the Democrats prevailed and it became law back in the 1960s. For some reason they just never seem to want to give anything back to the people who spend their entire lives working to help make America the country that it is. Why do you suppose that is?
And why do you suppose it is that the GOP always so vehemently opposes any proposed increase in the minimum wage…even knowing full well that as the cost of living continues to rise, many Americans end up in a deeper and deeper financial hole. Do you think they’re campaigning and voting against these paltry increases because they have your best interests at heart? Not bloody likely. It’s because they know that if the minimum wage goes up, so will everyone else’s wages…and that’s what they're really trying to prevent!
The same goes for unemployment benefits. Even though we all faithfully pay into this pool…for insurance purposes…Republicans consistently vote to limit the payouts as much as possible, and they never, ever vote to extend benefits no matter what’s happening with the economy or the job market. In fact it’s because of the GOP that today’s job market is as bad as it is. It was under their watch, and with their blessing, that so many companies were allowed to close down plants in the United States and open up off-shore operations so they could access all that inhumanely cheap, third-world labor. The resulting loss of good-paying American jobs will be felt for at least a generation.
Now, once again, the debate on Health Care Reform resumes. This is something the Democrats have been working unsuccessfully to accomplish for almost 70 years…and the Grand Old Party has been working successfully to prevent for just as long. The rules of the game changed dramatically in the 1970s when Richard Nixon opened the door for Health Care to become a for-profit industry…Hippocratic Oath be damned! Ever since then, the need for meaningful reform has been even greater.
The biggest problem is a health insurance sector run amok. The insurance companies are essentially operating without any real oversight or competition. They collude to charge premiums at rates that would embarrass loan sharks. They cancel policies and deny further coverage to even long-time customers who happen to get sick or injured and have to make a claim. When confronted with claims, especially large claims, they routinely deny coverage…either on technicalities as mundane as typos, or for some trumped-up issue that they’ve suddenly discovered in the client’s health history or policy application.
They pay employees huge performance bonuses based solely upon the dollar value of the claims they manage to deny. And they pay their highest-ranking executives ridiculous amounts of money to ensure that their companies continue making obscene profits.
This is who the Republicans are fighting to protect. They couldn’t care less about you or me…or the tens of millions of Americans who are either underinsured or have no insurance at all. You want to talk obscene, just listen to what Virginia GOP Congressman Eric Cantor told one of his constituents at a recent Town Hall Meeting in Richmond:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yyiJpeA4w
So the Republican answer seems to be, if you don't have insurance, maybe you can get charity. And good luck with that. Get well soon!
We’ll leave you with a prescient piece about the plight of the deservedly maligned American health insurance industry done by comedian Will Ferrell and several other notable performers, published on ‘funnyordie.com’. Keep up the good fight!
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/041b5acaf5/protect-insurance-companies-psa
SC
We all need to play a part in this, even if it just means making a phone call or communicating in some other way with your Senators and House Reps…unless, of course, they’re Republicans. In that case, forget it! You’d be wasting your time…time that could be better spent calling friends and neighbors who need more convincing. The GOP has shown repeatedly since this process began that they have absolutely no interest in Health Care Reform, meaningful or otherwise. They are not your friends!
This really shouldn’t surprise anyone because the Republicans have fought and voted against the best interests of 95% of Americans…the best interests of your families and ours…on every significant social issue since the 1940s. They have consistently sided with huge financial institutions, large corporations, and the 5% of our population that’s comprised of the country’s wealthiest individuals, rather than with us.
They have a tradition of being on the wrong side of history whenever it comes to the overall wellbeing and lifestyle security of the working class. If you doubt that, all you have to do is look at the evidence. It’s so stark that one can’t help but wonder why anyone who is counted among the 95% would ever vote Republican… unless you’ve been deluded into believing, like so many have, that they consider you one of them.
The GOP waged a savage campaign against the advent of Social Security back before it became law…and even today they’re continually lobbying behind the scenes to either privatize the program or, preferably in their minds, get rid of it altogether. If you need your memory jogged, just think back to the failed efforts of W’s administration in that regard. Were they trying to derail Social Security with your future in mind?
Republicans fought bitterly against Medicare before the Democrats prevailed and it became law back in the 1960s. For some reason they just never seem to want to give anything back to the people who spend their entire lives working to help make America the country that it is. Why do you suppose that is?
And why do you suppose it is that the GOP always so vehemently opposes any proposed increase in the minimum wage…even knowing full well that as the cost of living continues to rise, many Americans end up in a deeper and deeper financial hole. Do you think they’re campaigning and voting against these paltry increases because they have your best interests at heart? Not bloody likely. It’s because they know that if the minimum wage goes up, so will everyone else’s wages…and that’s what they're really trying to prevent!
The same goes for unemployment benefits. Even though we all faithfully pay into this pool…for insurance purposes…Republicans consistently vote to limit the payouts as much as possible, and they never, ever vote to extend benefits no matter what’s happening with the economy or the job market. In fact it’s because of the GOP that today’s job market is as bad as it is. It was under their watch, and with their blessing, that so many companies were allowed to close down plants in the United States and open up off-shore operations so they could access all that inhumanely cheap, third-world labor. The resulting loss of good-paying American jobs will be felt for at least a generation.
Now, once again, the debate on Health Care Reform resumes. This is something the Democrats have been working unsuccessfully to accomplish for almost 70 years…and the Grand Old Party has been working successfully to prevent for just as long. The rules of the game changed dramatically in the 1970s when Richard Nixon opened the door for Health Care to become a for-profit industry…Hippocratic Oath be damned! Ever since then, the need for meaningful reform has been even greater.
The biggest problem is a health insurance sector run amok. The insurance companies are essentially operating without any real oversight or competition. They collude to charge premiums at rates that would embarrass loan sharks. They cancel policies and deny further coverage to even long-time customers who happen to get sick or injured and have to make a claim. When confronted with claims, especially large claims, they routinely deny coverage…either on technicalities as mundane as typos, or for some trumped-up issue that they’ve suddenly discovered in the client’s health history or policy application.
They pay employees huge performance bonuses based solely upon the dollar value of the claims they manage to deny. And they pay their highest-ranking executives ridiculous amounts of money to ensure that their companies continue making obscene profits.
This is who the Republicans are fighting to protect. They couldn’t care less about you or me…or the tens of millions of Americans who are either underinsured or have no insurance at all. You want to talk obscene, just listen to what Virginia GOP Congressman Eric Cantor told one of his constituents at a recent Town Hall Meeting in Richmond:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yyiJpeA4w
So the Republican answer seems to be, if you don't have insurance, maybe you can get charity. And good luck with that. Get well soon!
We’ll leave you with a prescient piece about the plight of the deservedly maligned American health insurance industry done by comedian Will Ferrell and several other notable performers, published on ‘funnyordie.com’. Keep up the good fight!
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/041b5acaf5/protect-insurance-companies-psa
SC
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Joe Wilson Agenda: Racism by any other name is still…
South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson showed the country and the world what he really is during Barack Obama’s Health Care Reform speech to a joint session of Congress last Wednesday…and by that we don’t mean just an ignorant, unprincipled peckerwood with no respect for the office of President of the United States, or the institution to which he was, incredibly, elected to serve. Unfortunately, it’s much more distressing than that.
If it were that simple, President Obama’s subsequent, gracious acceptance of Wilson’s so-called apology would have led us to conclude that it’s time to move on…except that it’s not that simple. Oh, Joe Wilson is everything we said above, but he’s more than that. He’s also a racist who, because of enablers and apologists like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin, now feels it’s acceptable to bring his racism out of the closet and put it on display for the world to see.
So there was Wilson offering to keep the welcome mat out at his Washington office Saturday for somewhere between an estimated fifty and a hundred thousand like-minded people who gathered in our nation’s capitol for something called the 912 Project or the 912 March…a staged event conceived in the twisted, unbalanced, paranoid mind of the aforementioned Beck. And although they arrived both as individuals and groups who claimed kinship with or interest in any number of causes, what they were really there to do was show their true color…WHITE!
They can hide behind any banner they find and call themselves whatever they like, but the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of those who participated in this event are extreme, right-wing ideologues who became unhinged when a black man was duly and constitutionally elected President of these United States. And now, because the enablers are telling them it’s okay to hate the President and anyone who supports him, overt racism is the right-wing flavor of the moment.
If it wasn’t such a sad commentary on what public discourse and deportment in America has become, it would be laughable. Actually, no it wouldn’t. It’s just plain sad!
Two things before we wrap it up for this edition of our PWC blog. First, one of the funniest albeit saltiest journals we regularly follow is the Rude Pundit. For his take on Saturday’s display of lunacy at the 912 event in Washington, go to http://www.rudepundit.blogspot.com/ . Suffice it to say that ‘The Rude One’ has a way of putting things the way we’d often like to put them…if only we weren’t worried about what our mothers would think.
And finally, here’s an editorial that was sent to us by a friend which appeared in today’s Toronto Globe and Mail. It concerns the Health Care Reform debate currently raging in America. It’s short, concise, and, in our estimation, right on the money.
By Eugene Lang and Philip DeMont
From Monday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Monday, Sep. 14, 2009 03:21AM EDT
"It is rare for Canada to get noticed in the United States. In fact, it is almost unprecedented for anything Canadian to be the focal point of debate in Washington. Yet we have seen just that in recent months during the congressional wrangling over U.S. President Barack Obama's attempts to reform health insurance.
Canada's medicare system has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight south of the border. It has been pilloried by the Republicans in Congress, the subject of derisive and distorted television advertisements, described variously as a system of medicine by bureaucrat, a statist form of health care afflicted by gross inequities and inefficiencies, one that pales in comparison to the U.S. model. The hysterical tone of the anti-medicare rhetoric among Republicans would make one think Canada is North Korea.
But there is an inconvenient truth that the Republican ideology cannot dispute. Canada's approach to providing citizens with universal health insurance is superior to the U.S. model of private insurance. When we get beyond the anti-medicare ideology and histrionics on Capitol Hill, we can establish this by reference to four basic numbers that give a good sense of our system versus the system in the United States.
Life expectancy is a basic measure of the quality of health care. In the U.S., a citizen will live 77.8 years on average. In Canada, you can expect to live two and a half years longer (80.4 years). Infant mortality is also a vital indicator of health care. In the United States, 6.37 infants die out of every 1,000. In Canada the number is 5.4 out of a 1,000.
But what about the cost differences of the two approaches to health care? Surely our Leviathan-like system, which produces such enviable results, must cost a fortune relative to the U.S. model.
The best measure of health care costs is the percentage a country spends relative to the size of its economy, or its gross domestic product (GDP). Canadians spend about 10 per cent of GDP on health. Americans spend 16 per cent to achieve inferior results on life expectancy and infant mortality.
Finally, it is estimated that there are somewhere around 40 million Americans – about 12 per cent of their population, well in excess of the total population of Canada – who have no medical insurance whatsoever. These unfortunate people are literally on their own in paying for any and all medical treatments they require. That gap in coverage is staggering, making the United States an outlier among all advanced Western nations.
One might ask how many uninsured citizens exist in Canada? The answer is zero – all Canadians are insured. In this country, good-quality, universally accessible medical care is regarded as a basic element of citizenship, kind of like owning a gun is in the U.S.
So to sum up. We live longer than the Americans do. We are less likely to die at or soon after birth than the Americans are. All Canadians have medical insurance, whereas a huge number of Americans don't. And we pay less as a society for health care than they do in the United States. Four numbers paint a stark picture. And when you strip away the anti-medicare ideological rants and falsehoods on display in Washington, Canada's approach to health insurance would probably sound pretty good to many Americans.
To their credit, by putting public insurance on the table as a supplement to private plans, the Democrats in the U.S. Congress are trying to drag the United States into the club of civilized nations when it comes to health care. We've been in that club since the establishment of medicare more than 40 years ago.
Don't get us wrong here. We are not saying medicare is perfect; it is far from that, and it requires constant improvement, as most Canadians understand. But it is not a bad deal for citizens of this country.
The Republican-led anti-medicare lobby in Congress knows these numbers and facts. But they are regarded as inconvenient truths that must be ignored in the crusade to discredit the Canadian approach to health insurance, to ensure no public option creeps into the U.S. system. Anti-government ideology is running amok in Washington, trumping facts and rational debate, distorting one of the most important public policy issues the United States has grappled with in decades.
Ultimately, the U.S. public will pay the price for that."
So there you have it. As always, your comments and opinions are encouraged. We’ll talk to you again tomorrow.
SC
If it were that simple, President Obama’s subsequent, gracious acceptance of Wilson’s so-called apology would have led us to conclude that it’s time to move on…except that it’s not that simple. Oh, Joe Wilson is everything we said above, but he’s more than that. He’s also a racist who, because of enablers and apologists like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin, now feels it’s acceptable to bring his racism out of the closet and put it on display for the world to see.
So there was Wilson offering to keep the welcome mat out at his Washington office Saturday for somewhere between an estimated fifty and a hundred thousand like-minded people who gathered in our nation’s capitol for something called the 912 Project or the 912 March…a staged event conceived in the twisted, unbalanced, paranoid mind of the aforementioned Beck. And although they arrived both as individuals and groups who claimed kinship with or interest in any number of causes, what they were really there to do was show their true color…WHITE!
They can hide behind any banner they find and call themselves whatever they like, but the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of those who participated in this event are extreme, right-wing ideologues who became unhinged when a black man was duly and constitutionally elected President of these United States. And now, because the enablers are telling them it’s okay to hate the President and anyone who supports him, overt racism is the right-wing flavor of the moment.
If it wasn’t such a sad commentary on what public discourse and deportment in America has become, it would be laughable. Actually, no it wouldn’t. It’s just plain sad!
Two things before we wrap it up for this edition of our PWC blog. First, one of the funniest albeit saltiest journals we regularly follow is the Rude Pundit. For his take on Saturday’s display of lunacy at the 912 event in Washington, go to http://www.rudepundit.blogspot.com/ . Suffice it to say that ‘The Rude One’ has a way of putting things the way we’d often like to put them…if only we weren’t worried about what our mothers would think.
And finally, here’s an editorial that was sent to us by a friend which appeared in today’s Toronto Globe and Mail. It concerns the Health Care Reform debate currently raging in America. It’s short, concise, and, in our estimation, right on the money.
By Eugene Lang and Philip DeMont
From Monday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Monday, Sep. 14, 2009 03:21AM EDT
"It is rare for Canada to get noticed in the United States. In fact, it is almost unprecedented for anything Canadian to be the focal point of debate in Washington. Yet we have seen just that in recent months during the congressional wrangling over U.S. President Barack Obama's attempts to reform health insurance.
Canada's medicare system has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight south of the border. It has been pilloried by the Republicans in Congress, the subject of derisive and distorted television advertisements, described variously as a system of medicine by bureaucrat, a statist form of health care afflicted by gross inequities and inefficiencies, one that pales in comparison to the U.S. model. The hysterical tone of the anti-medicare rhetoric among Republicans would make one think Canada is North Korea.
But there is an inconvenient truth that the Republican ideology cannot dispute. Canada's approach to providing citizens with universal health insurance is superior to the U.S. model of private insurance. When we get beyond the anti-medicare ideology and histrionics on Capitol Hill, we can establish this by reference to four basic numbers that give a good sense of our system versus the system in the United States.
Life expectancy is a basic measure of the quality of health care. In the U.S., a citizen will live 77.8 years on average. In Canada, you can expect to live two and a half years longer (80.4 years). Infant mortality is also a vital indicator of health care. In the United States, 6.37 infants die out of every 1,000. In Canada the number is 5.4 out of a 1,000.
But what about the cost differences of the two approaches to health care? Surely our Leviathan-like system, which produces such enviable results, must cost a fortune relative to the U.S. model.
The best measure of health care costs is the percentage a country spends relative to the size of its economy, or its gross domestic product (GDP). Canadians spend about 10 per cent of GDP on health. Americans spend 16 per cent to achieve inferior results on life expectancy and infant mortality.
Finally, it is estimated that there are somewhere around 40 million Americans – about 12 per cent of their population, well in excess of the total population of Canada – who have no medical insurance whatsoever. These unfortunate people are literally on their own in paying for any and all medical treatments they require. That gap in coverage is staggering, making the United States an outlier among all advanced Western nations.
One might ask how many uninsured citizens exist in Canada? The answer is zero – all Canadians are insured. In this country, good-quality, universally accessible medical care is regarded as a basic element of citizenship, kind of like owning a gun is in the U.S.
So to sum up. We live longer than the Americans do. We are less likely to die at or soon after birth than the Americans are. All Canadians have medical insurance, whereas a huge number of Americans don't. And we pay less as a society for health care than they do in the United States. Four numbers paint a stark picture. And when you strip away the anti-medicare ideological rants and falsehoods on display in Washington, Canada's approach to health insurance would probably sound pretty good to many Americans.
To their credit, by putting public insurance on the table as a supplement to private plans, the Democrats in the U.S. Congress are trying to drag the United States into the club of civilized nations when it comes to health care. We've been in that club since the establishment of medicare more than 40 years ago.
Don't get us wrong here. We are not saying medicare is perfect; it is far from that, and it requires constant improvement, as most Canadians understand. But it is not a bad deal for citizens of this country.
The Republican-led anti-medicare lobby in Congress knows these numbers and facts. But they are regarded as inconvenient truths that must be ignored in the crusade to discredit the Canadian approach to health insurance, to ensure no public option creeps into the U.S. system. Anti-government ideology is running amok in Washington, trumping facts and rational debate, distorting one of the most important public policy issues the United States has grappled with in decades.
Ultimately, the U.S. public will pay the price for that."
So there you have it. As always, your comments and opinions are encouraged. We’ll talk to you again tomorrow.
SC
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