Hospital group pitches universal insurance

A group of U.S. hospitals on Thursday offered a plan to cover the nation's 47 million uninsured, including mandatory coverage for all and subsidies for the working poor.

The proposal by the Federation of American Hospitals, which represents about 20 percent of the industry, is the latest in a flurry of proposed schemes to solve the growing problem of the uninsured. Since 2000, about 6 million people in the United States have lost their insurance.

The hospital group's plan, estimated to increase federal spending by $115 billion, would build on the employer-based health system, under which most Americans already get coverage.

It would provide subsidies for individuals to buy insurance from their employer if they cannot afford it, or to buy tax-subsidized coverage in the open market.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070222/us_nm/usa_hospitals_coverage_dc

just another money pit. Single-Payer is the way to go.

and we have the model with Medicare. Medicare is more efficient, has better service, lower overheads etc. BY FAR than any private insurance scheme. So the system is in place. just expand it. Start with children and also move down the age eligibility 5 years every year to give the system time to cope. (Or some such.)

The only thing that will be good enough is to cut the middle men out - meaning cut the insurance companies out of the deal entirely.

Every dollar that goes to an insurance company is a health care dollar diverted to unnecessary middle man profits that could have and should have gone to provding health care directly to a person.

this morning and their idea is not going to cut it their first mistake with me was they had a Republican pollster do the polling on what the people want. Nope I'm not for their ideas they want to keep the greedy insurance companies in the game.

Charles N. (“Chip”) Kahn III is President of the Federation of American Hospitals, the national advocacy organization for investor-owned hospitals and health systems. Mr. Kahn became the Federation’s President in June 2001.

http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/bio/kanh.html

Reuters has failed to disclose that this group has a direct financial interest in maintaining the status quo for profit system, and would greatly benefit from any government mandated private insurance purchase program.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell ya, at the level of outright corruption and malfeasance in this proud republic of ours.

Single Payer Not For Profit Universal Health Care - everyone gets the same plan, everyone in the same boat, cut the middle men out.

I can't add anything. You said it all.

We had a lady w/ a CVA, one of the docs on her case told her/her family "you have no insurance, we/I can't give away our care for free, so we are sending you home".
Refused to do any more treatment/tests. Needless to say, the next day when there was a big meeting between the pt/family and the OTHER docs, this particular doc was not invited...yet per a witness in the room, the pt was told the same thing. Including that there was no rehab to send her to because of no insurance. A staff member brought up that our oncampus rehab center is owned by our hospital and surely taking one indigent patient would not hurt the place...that staff member was brought into the brass' office and counseled over her comments in the meeting.

I doubt that hospital is a tax exempt one if they were THAT open about shipping that lady out of there due to a lack of insurance.

If they ARE tax exempt, however, they need to be nailed to the wall for that. There is an expectation that IF you are not taxed because you are a charity you will ACT like one. It is called a "community benefit" and charity care is one component of that.



Laura

Part of one of the largest chains in the US that's owned by a repuke family.

can't the patient just get signed up for state medicaid? I'm shocked that the hospital didn't have a case worker help with the paperwork.

Having the benefits kick in is another...takes a while for them to kick in, several weeks/months not days. The patient's family has submitted the paperwork but the bennies won't start in time for this hospital stay. She was a healthy adult, working full time, no insurance just prior to her CVA/hospital stay. And all of this is with the caseworker involved.

"Providing" special coverage for the "now-uninsured" does not correct the problem. It only re-inforces the separation of groups.

We have to ALL be in the SAME group.. young, old, healthy, sick... If you split off only the poor in one group.. only the sick in another..young..old..etc.. it's only making the division worse..

Single payer, the ONLY "universal" healthcare.

The support for (and understanding of) single public payer universal health care that I have watched grow over a few years of reading DU is the single most encouraging feature of the US political landscape, to this outside onlooker.

We Canadians here would of course be pleased to think we'd contributed to this phenomenon. ;)

Something to remember: universal health care was an early cause adopted by the precursor to today's New Democratic Party in Canada, and the cornerstone (along with public old age pensions) of the social safety net that the party championed and prodded government parties into implementing over the decades.

One of the party's first national leaders, Tommy Douglas, brought the first public health care plan to North America when he was premier of Saskatchewan -- starting in 1944 with medical care for pensioners, then $5/year hospitalization coverage for everyone in 1947, and finally:

http://www.saskndp.com/history/douglas.html

In 1959, twelve years later, when the province's finances seemed to him to be strong enough, Douglas announced the coming of the medicare plan. It would be universal, pre-paid, publicly administered, provide high quality care, including preventive care, and be accepted by both providers and receivers of the medical service.

"The father of Canadian medicare" is what he's remembered as -- not nearly as many people know that he's the grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland -- and why he was voted The Greatest Canadian in 2004.
http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/

Unfortunately, the NDP has achieved many things, but never national government.

The Democratic Party in the US is starting from a different place, though. It is one of the two established parties, not a third party trying to break onto the scene as the NDP was back in that day. (And the Republicans are really hardly likely to co-opt this plan out from under the party that campaigns for it, as the Liberals are famous for doing with NDP policies.)

People can be confounded and misled by the corporate interests that control health care delivery. But it is one issue that affects virtually everyone in a society, certainly all working people in the US, whether middle-class or minimum-wage, who are one lay-off away from losing their coverage. It is an issue that everyone feels on a gut level, all their lives.

It is therefore an opportunity for a political party that does genuinely care about their interests to demonstrate that, by proposing -- and doing the hard work to explain and defend -- a universal health plan. And hard work it will be, in the face of all the money and all the lies that will be poured into defeating it.

But people get it, in their guts, and the party that truly gets that and demonstrates that it gives a damn about them by fighting for what they need is a party that is going to win a lot of votes and loyalty.

And once a society does have universal health care, it is a society in which everyone just has a little more stake in the welfare of everyone else, and a little more commitment to the programs and policies that work for the welfare of everyone, and maybe a little more trust in the public institutions that are doing something to earn it for a change, and just think what could happen when that starts. It's a transformative moment -- but it does call for, and is part of, a transformative process.

Back in the early 80s I picked up a hitchhiker in Tennessee, an unemployed housepainter who was travelling north to see his sick mother. He wasn't a person with a passport. After admiring my multi-coloured currency, he asked, thoughtfully, "what's it like up there? are you free to go anywhere you want?" Well, I said, it's pretty much like it is down here. Except we have free health care.

Aaaaaah, he said.

People do get it.

The insurance companies are profit driven and will only go along with the charade because they know they can mysteriously deny coverage for expensive procedures, jack up co-pays and institute foolish deductibles. Damn . . . why can't people figure this out?????

The absolute inefficiencies and the obscene profiteering in the current system have to go. This plan is a means to make it LOOK like they are addressing the problem while maintaining their profits.