[Dialogue] health care reform

Fri Aug 28 00:09:43 CDT 2009

Marshall,

You are exactly right in your analysis of the proposed health legislation, it doesn't deal with the

major reasons for the high costs.? Former Senator Bill Frist made his fortune from for-profit hospitals, 

Senator Edwards made his fortune suing doctors and hospitals.? Any health plan that refuses to deal

with high drug costs and leaves out tort reform cannot lower costs significantly.? 

Charles Krauthammer writes:? "When a neurosurgeon pays $200,000 a year for malpractice insurance 

before he even turns on the light in his office or hires his first nurse, who do you think pays? Patients, 

in higher doctor fees to cover the insurance.? And with jackpot justice that awards one claimant zillions 

while others get nothing -- and one-third of everything goes to the lawyers -- where do you think that 

money comes from?? The insurance companies, which then pass it on to you in higher premiums.?

But the greatest waste is the hidden cost of defensive medicine: tests and procedures that doctors order 

for no good reason other than to protect themselves from lawsuits.? Every doctor knows, as I did when 

I practiced years ago, how much unnecessary medical cost is incurred with an eye not on medicine but on the law."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072302723.html?? 

The much touted Medicare drug benefit passed under Bush, provided for obtaining drugs at the prices 

set by the drug companies, no volume discounts, no negotiating for price reductions.? The Canadian 

Health Service buys these same American drugs for a fraction of what Medicare pays, and now we 

find out the current administration has cut a deal with PhRMA that continues this arrangement.? At

first a deal was denied, then admitted.? There really shouldn't be a secret WH deal with PhRMA.? Congress

is presumably writing the legislation.? Will Obama refuse to sign a bill that provides for negotiating for

lower drug prices for Medicare after promising PhRMA there will be no negotiating?

See these links.? www.huffingtonpost.com/.../phrma-walks-back-claim-of_n_256111.html,??

www.huffingtonpost.com/.../internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_258285.html

How about a piece meal overhaul, starting with drug prices and tort reform?? And then consider?insurance regulations.

Medicare has already cut hospital and physician reimbursement significantly, now other sectors need work.

Don Elliott

-----Original Message-----
From: W. J. <synergi at yahoo.com>
To: oe at wedgeblade.net; dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Sent: Thu, Aug 27, 2009 1:26 pm
Subject: [Dialogue] health care reform

Colleagues,

I've been continually amazed at your silence on the wildfire 'debates' on health care 'reform' in the USA. We did hear from Bob Rafos up in Canada, but very little else.

Especially with the travesty of 'town meetings' across the country this month, which were highjacked by the right wing nut cases eager to exploit the obvious lack of a participatory methodology for real proposals for reform. Where were the ICA types when we needed them??

Enjoying our 'retirement', you say?

Well, what about being part of the Medicare generation (at last), with the widespread fears that 'death panels' (thank you, Sarah) will ration health care at the end of life, and that extracting bloated, inflationary expenditures from the only government-run sector of the system (apart from the VA and Medicaid) will reduce the quality of senior care? Still asleep on that one?

My own view of what sustainable health care will have to look like has evolved to the point where Obamacare looks like a rerun of Hillarycare--a complex hodgepodge of Bandaid fixes designed to keep the present system up and running, maintain a robust private for-profit sector that skims Medicare/Medicaid, include more people under the private insurance 'umbrella' (remember the travesty of The Travellers/CitiCorp merger?), and still preserve access to healthcare as a privilege of citizenship/economic affluence rather than a human right available without 'co-pays' to all who enter the system, including those who sneaked across our borders to harvest our food for minimum wage and no health benefits, and who get deported (via expensive international Med-Evac flights) to third world shacks rather than treated for expensive health conditions by our public hospitals, our healthcare safety net of last resort.

Yeah, I know that was a long, complex sentence, but the new healthcare reform bill is gonna be long and complex too.

If you want a fairly understandable example of the problem, in which the highest health care bills are extracted from one of the poorest populations in the nation, please read:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande

More later, but this is a start.

Marshall

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