Health Spectator

Represetative Earl Blumenauer has posted an open letter to his fellow members of Congress over on Huffington Post. For your convenience, we’ve posted the text here:

Senators who are filibustering and throwing sand in the gears to delay health care reform desperately need a reality check. It is ironic to me that members of Congress enjoy some of the best health insurance in the world through our government-administered health care, and yet so many are working overtime to deny quality care to Americans – using scare tactics to claim the “government is going to take over their health care.”

Well, for those Representatives and Senators who are so terrified of a government take-over, I say to them NO access to government run programs for you.

Members of Congress should not have access to taxpayer-funded health care when they are actively denying these very people quality care of their own.

So for the 150 members of Congress who qualify for Medicare, a single-payer government insurance plan, you get no access.  For all members who are eligible for the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, no more. And no more access to the attending physician in the Capitol, either. Not until we pass the health insurance reform that millions of Americans so urgently need.

I share with you my open letter to members of Congress:

Dear Colleague,

I invite you to join me in sponsoring the Health Care Reality-Check Act which I will be introducing next week.

It has become clear that some of our colleagues lack proper perspective on the urgency of health reform because, ironically, as members of Congress we enjoy some of the best health security in the world through our government-administered health care:

• All Members of Congress are eligible – and most participate in – the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, which provides all federal employees with a government-negotiated insurance exchange that is subsidized by their employer: the Federal Government;
• Almost 150 Members of Congress qualify for Medicare, a single-payer government insurance plan;
• The 121 Senators and Representatives who served in our armed forces are eligible for the “socialized” health care we provide for all veterans; and
• Members who aren’t veterans can avail themselves to a similar “socialized” program – the Attending Physician in the U.S. Capitol, for an annual fee of around $500.

These government-run health programs have successfully provided countless Senators and Representatives with life-saving medical treatments, but as we all know, most Americans don’t have this kind of protection.

Members of Congress should not have access to taxpayer-funded healthcare when they are actively denying these very people quality care of their own.

Congress needs a reality check.

In 2007, before the economy collapsed, 42% of all adult Americans under 65 were either uninsured or underinsured.  Our dire unemployment rates and escalating health care costs have only made this situation worse.  Today half of all American families delay seeking medical treatment because they have such a tenuous health insurance situation.   Our colleagues do not fully appreciate the plight of 50% of our population, but we can help them understand.

Until health reform is enacted, Members of Congress should get to experience the tender mercies of our fragmented, complex, and exploitative health care system.  My Health Care Reality Check Act terminates all government-administered health benefits for Members of Congress until comprehensive health reform is signed into law:  no more Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, no Medicare, no VA, no attending physician in the Capitol.

Instead, Senators and Representatives may self-insure or they can rely on a spouse’s company having employer-provided insurance, thus tying them –  like millions of Americans- to the employment of a family member. Some will need to buy health insurance on the private market, exposing them to legal discrimination based on age and gender.

By personally dealing with rescissions, pre-existing condition exclusions, the fine-print of insurance contracts and the gaps in coverage from weak consumer protections maybe our colleagues can better grasp the urgency of our health care crisis.

If our own health security were linked to the success of health reform for all Americans, we [would] have a bill enacted within weeks, guaranteed.  I urge you to cosponsor the Health Care Reality Check Act today.

To your health,

Earl Blumenauer

Instead, Medicare may open to those 55 and older

In a surprise move to appease moderate Democrats, sources say the Obama health reform plan may drop the public option in favor of extending Medicare to the uninsured who are more than 55 years of age, the Associated Press is reporting. Currently, only those over 65 are eligible to receive Medicare.

At a last-minute news conference in the Capitol Tuesday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) would say only that a “broad agreement” had been reached between liberals and moderates on the issue. The resulting bill is expected to forbid insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions and to reduce healthcare costs in general.

However, dropping the public option is seen as a great loss by those who wish to see healthcare needs prevail over insurance-industry profits. And it seems less likely costs will be curtailed if a purely private health insurance solution is formulated. Currently, about 20% of every healthcare insurance dollar the public pays out goes to insurance industry profits and overhead. The competition provided by the public option was seen as a way to lower these costs and see that more of the healthcare dollars coming both from taxes and individual expenditures would go toward providing actual health care. Medicare overhead costs are generally considered to be between two and five percent, with four percent the most popular figure.

One undoubted benefit of increasing the Medicare rolls is that it will increase the scrutiny paid to Medicare and its benefits. Currently, Medicare recipients are saddled with recent additions to the plan that operate like private insurance or require recipients to sign up for private insurance if they wish to receive, for example, payment for drugs. Some recipients claim that the copays under these plans exceed the cost of many generic drugs purchased directly from a low-cost pharmacy.

Increasing the number of people dependent on the program may increase political pressure to return Medicare more to its single-payer roots.

There are three videos here, so be patient. The first is nominally a debate between Betsy McCaughey and Anthony Weiner, but moderator/interviewer Dylan Ratigan gets heavily involved. This debate starts out well enough, but it turns into a bit of a free-for-all when Dylan Ratigan refuses to let Betsy McCaughey ignore his question and go off on a tangent to scare seniors with accusations about health care reform. McCaughey is obviously not used to being called on this tactic and becomes defensive.

Meanwhile, New York Representative Anthony Weiner continues to impress as an articulate spokesman for healthcare reform. This particular video may not provide you with lots of new information about healthcare reform, but it should at least make you aware of the attempts some are making to spread propaganda about some of the current healthcare reform bill’s provisions.

In a separate interview with Jon Stewart (below), McCaughey is credited with raising the issue from which Sarah Palin coined the phrase “death panels.” Stewart attempts to hold McCaughey to her task, though more gracefully than Ratigan. The amazing thing is the way McCaughey consumes the whole interview with evasive tactics, never actually coming to the point of demonstrating where in the bill the text she refers to allegedly exists. (It doesn’t.) The whole interview is a study in evasiveness.

But in Jon Stewart’s gracious and skillful hands, it becomes a hilarious commentary on the current healthcare reform debate. He and McCaughey part on friendly terms.

Below is the unedited Part 1 of the Betsy McCaughey interview with Jon Stewart.

Ready for more? Are you still waiting to hear where the health reform bill proposes to pull the plug on seniors? Below is the rest of the interview, uncut.

By the way, there are certain inaccuracies here that Stewart apparently doesn’t know about. When writing previous articles, we’ve checked on health care statistics from WHO and other sources. The method McCaughey uses here to correct for deaths due to violence and auto accidents, thereby establishing the U.S. as the #1 source of effective health care in the world does not work. In fact, the WHO has already thought of these issues and they are incorporated into the statistics WHO provides. Not only is no correction for violence and auto accidents necessary, attempting to do so results in inaccurate statistics. McCaughey is falsifying her evidence, and probably knows it.

You may recall that approximately a year ago the nation was in the throes of a severe financial collapse and that the government—then the Bush administration—had taken upon itself to dole out billions in taxpayer monies to those deemed deserving: by which we mean giant corporations, not our taxpaying individual citizens. Among those recipients was Goldman Sachs, which was selected as among those “too big to fail” and given, in round figures, approximately $70 billion. Forgive us if we err by a few billion in either direction—we’re using round numbers here as the government or Goldman executives would—as though a few billion either way is, well—chicken feed.

You may or may not be aware that Goldman has since enjoyed its best-ever quarterly profits, after a down quarter that coincided with the payouts and a pretty respectable first quarter this year, which was followed, as we say, by a couple of blowouts. Since words don’t really do it justice, we refer you to the chart below right, which was lifted from no less a source than the Washington Post, though we borrowed it in turn from Glenn Greenwald’s excellent blog.

Goldman has its best-quarter ever

You must understand that the figure depicted for the second quarter was the best quarter ever for Goldman Sachs. A mere $3.4 billion in earnings. (That’s in three months, in case you weren’t paying attention.) And the quarter that just ended—the third quarter—was no slouch either. In fact, it just happened to be Goldman’s second-best quarter ever. How’s that for coming back like bandits after a mere $70 billion loan, which—did we mention?—had no strings attached, so Goldman is not obligated in any way to share its outsized profits with those of us who contributed our share but may have continued to fall upon hard times—losing jobs, businesses, houses and so on—despite Goldman’s rather spectacular windfall. Those profits occurred, we’d be remiss not to add, at the same time the unemployment rate went to 9.8%, the highest in 26 years.

You get the picture.

This is a company, you must remember, that were it not for the American taxpayer, would have gone bankrupt a year ago. We repeat: Goldman Sachs was going out of business before we, the taxpayers, intervened. (Okay, our leaders intervented on our collective behalf—had it been up to many of us, Goldman might well have joined the likes of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bankers Trust, and Salomon Bros as footnotes in history.)

Indeed, as other firms on Wall Street failed, Goldman—as one of the privileged bailed-out bankers—was able to quadruple earnings year over year. No small feat, we can assure you. And the scary part is that since the money they used was essentially free in terms of any moral hazard involved, their bailout acted as an encouragement for further risky behavior. (The worst that could happen was that they would still go bankrupt despite raking in billions in government money. But it was our money—not theirs—so they had nothing to lose.)

Mind you, we don’t think Goldman took on undue risk and just got lucky. As seasoned traders, they had every reason to believe that they were trading at or near the bottom of the market, so the bargains they picked up—knowing full well that hardly anyone else was in a position to do so—were likely to remain great bargains a year or so later.

So after skidding over to the brink and looking down, Goldman has managed to land right back on top. And the employees are anticipating record bonuses. Yes. We’re not kidding. Record bonuses for bonusable Goldman employees. Again.

How could all this happen, you might ask? Well, there are legions of Goldman alumni in the Federal government, which is mostly what Greenwald’s column is about. Indeed, those Goldman alums are particularly concentrated in the Treasury Department (which, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, is where the money is).

Dylan Ratigan has a pretty good explanation of it all in this video.

But what does all this have to do with health care or even just plain health? you should be asking. Glad you got around to it.

The point is, we’re pussyfooting around health care because of the great cost, isn’t that right? The Republicans especially love to point out that all this health care could get terribly expensive.

But look at the difference. We paid out $70 billion so that a few hundred or so Goldman employees could get multimillion-dollar bonuses. We paid out over $700 billion just to bail out Wall Street in general and over $2 trillion as of November, 2008¹. The CBO puts the cost of the current healthcare bill around $1 trillion. What’s so bad about paying out half what we paid out to mismanaged, failing companies so that every citizen in America gets (and will continue to get) good health care?

Think about it.

Dylan Ratigan explores that old Goldman magic.

“Make the U.S. the envy of several African nations,” he says

Whether you agree with him or not, you have to admit that Bill Maher is the master of acerbic whit and political satire. Here he displays his growing irritation with Obama’s apparent laissez-faire attitude toward right-wing Republicans and the inroads they have made against the Obama administration. He then rips into the healthcare debate in a way that no one we know of can better.

Just a warning: there’s some language partially bleeped out in this one, but you can still tell what Maher is saying.

To counterbalance Maher’s acerbity, we’re following that video with an interview with Bill Moyers, in which Bill Moyers displays the command of language, of history and of the issues that has made him so revered as an observer of the American scene.

If you’re a conservative and not too fond of Bill Maher, we urge you to skip the first video but view the second. Moyers is ever the gentleman. He points out that the big difference between the healthcare fight and the civil rights fight is that the healthcare fight is opposed more strenuously by Big Money. And he points out that the Republicans have every reason to oppose healthcare reform. Not only has there been a conservative revolution in the U.S. in recent decades, but Republicans are reluctant to hand President Obama the biggest political victory since President Johnson established Medicare.

Remember that President Nixon first proposed health care reform in 1974. The Republicans have since lost that initiative. Why should they just hand it to the Democrats and make it easier for the President to seek re-election in 2012?

Below: Bill Moyers speaks to Bill Maher about health care reform and related issues.

Bill Maher appears on Jay Leno on September 29, 2009. The conversation starts out with some Maher classic “new rules,” turns to talk of Obama, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. Then they get “serious” with a discussion of health care, which is actually a good summation of the current dilemma facing us as the nation faces a vote on the current round of health-care legislation.

Because this is an NBC tape, it starts with a 30-second commercial spot, for which we apologize. But we guarantee the segment is worth the wait.

This first video, a brief excerpt from a roundtable discussion, focuses on the public option in healthcare. In it, first Robert Reich says a few words, then Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman tells us what’s behind the resistance to the public option in the Senate. Then in the clip below that, Robert Reich, who is a former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton and currently a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, explains what the public option really means.

Krugman is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University; Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics; and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography.

Robert Reich (below) is currently Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

You’ve already heard what we have to say on this. If you missed it, check the list of related links, and you’ll surely get there. We’ve decided to put some other voices out there via video so you can watch or listen on your way to work or whenever.

We don’t always agree entirely with the conclusions drawn by these speakers. We’ve made no bones about favoring a single-payer system, because we believe it would be the cheapest way to cover everyone and cover them well. Nevertheless, there are arguments for other systems worth hearing.

This segment is entitled, “What is the best healthcare option?”

Interviews with John McCain and Joe Lieberman about the public option in healthcare:

Keith Olbermann discusses health care reform, interviews Bill Maher:

And finally, you’ve heard lots about the French healthcare system in speeches, particularly speeches by Republicans, who love to dump on the French system, which costs less than half what ours does per person.

But do you (or they, for that matter) know anything about it? We thought not.

We were surprised too when we saw this video, which was produced for CBS. Whatever you thought the French system was like, we suspect the truth will surprise you. The numbers for U.S. healthcare here are a bit dated (figures for the U.S. currently exceed $7,000 per person annually in the U.S., which is more than twice the $3,400 quoted annually here for the French. However, the last figures we found for both countries at the same time had U.S. cost just shy of double the French cost, so the figures used in this video seem reasonable).

Don’t forget to use the Comments area below to share your ideas and reactions, whatever they may be.

Just yesterday we wrote that Max Baucus (D-Mont) had finally circulated details of a Senate Finance Committee health care framework that would not include the so-called public option.

Then, in his speech before a joint session of Congress last night, President Obama put the public option back on the table.

To do otherwise would seem to have been political suicide for Obama. There’s little doubt that his healthcare platform had a lot to do with his winning the election, and he will bitterly disappoint those followers who are expecting some public plan in health care if he does not at least go down fighting for that cause. So it would seem that the injection of the public option into the mix was the least he could do.

But he did it.

So now, liberals are somewhat encouraged that some form of national health care might yet happen in a reasonable time frame, though it has been about 35 years since the decidely non-liberal Richard Nixon proposed it and of course others have after him.

For those who missed Obama’s speech or would simply like to see it again, we’ve embedded the full version below.