MORE THAN NINE THOUSAND AMERICANS HAVE DIED THIS YEAR BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE

This is why passing the current bill is so urgent. More than 18 thousand Americans are dying each year because of lack of health insurance (see http://journals.democraticunderground.com/berni_mccoy/691 )

This is why I care so much.

This is why the Republicans and Blue Dogs need to get busy and start helping to pass this legislation instead of blocking it.

The blood of these poor and sick Americans are fully on the shoulders of those who would block this reform.

But they don't care, because the people who are dying are poor.

I apologize for the all-caps, but these statements by Republicans today have infuriated me:


(from
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6082148 )

Well DAMN THEM TO HELL for their fear tactics. Americans already are living in fear of being SICK YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!

On edit:
Note: to those who are saying these people are dying because they don't have health care (not health insurance) you are correct, as there are people who are insured who still can't afford care. I recognize the difference, but I'm quoting a study on the uninsured, which precludes those who are insured going without care. So ultimately the number is probably even higher.

As per Schumer in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6075750

How does that make any sense?

:shrug:

:dem:

-Laelth

And I agree a Single Payer system is the long term goal, but we aren't going to get there in one step.

I would be perfectly happy with a public option paid for out of general tax revenues like they have in the U.K.--as opposed to a plan paid for on the backs of the uninsured via a new tax amounting to 12% of their gross income. I don't need single payer, so I am not sure what you're talking about.

Besides, it's Schumer who's convinced that the public option insurance will stink so bad that the private insurance companies will get 40 million new customers. I didn't say that. He did.

:dem:

-Laelth

because they didn't have health care.

STOP CONFUSING THE TWO.

that's the state of our current system.

It's semantics, but it is what our current system is.

Lots of people who have health insurance are denied health care. They are definitely not the same thing.

:dem:

-Laelth

But I am quoting a study that refers to uninsured.

Not if you have insurance, you have healthcare.

Insurance is a for-profit industry. Most basic preventative healthcare and chronic healthcare treatment actually reduces the enormous costs that acute healthcare treatments incur.

Why are we talking insurance instead of public healthcare? Insurance can most certainly refuse to treat you or treat you and cap your benefit if treating you cuts into their guaranteed profits.

I think we need to create a government health coverage agency administered like a hybrid of the IRS and an employer insurance agency, without risk group tiering. If employers collect the additional "tax", the agency pays the bill. Elective procedures can be covered with private, optional or additional insurance, and that makes primary healthcare the focus of that agency.

You know the insurance industry is just loving this by the complete absence of commentary and counter-lobbying taking place on their part.

Hell, I'm going to go work in the insurance industry - they'll finally be able to afford me.

Lots of people had health insurance and yet died anyway due to lack of health care.

Also: http://sivers.org/barking

Mr. Nit Picky Picky Pants!

There is a big difference.

We don't need insurance. We need health care.

:dem:

-Laelth

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

If a person is poor,sickly,elderly they turn away for those in need. It's their way the culling the herd. The only herd they care about is their select group of healthy,wealthy individuals. So many of us are looked upon as a liability to their ever growing bank accounts!

We're discussing this in other threads. The people who need it most because they can't afford it, will still be stuck with thousands of dollars a year to pay for it if they want it, not to mention their deductible.

Forget the current plan. It won't work.

But it damn sure will make some folks feel better.

Like NAFTA, Telecom 1996, destroying AFDC, and repealing Glass-Steagal. Not that any of that helped Americans. No, it helped the rich and the multi-national corporations ... but at least they did something.

:crazy:

:dem:

-Laelth

many who are uninsured today will get it for free under the house plan. Many, many more will get good, guaranteed coverage courtesy of a big subsidy. The rest get good coverage, a cap, and the knowledge that the premiums are much lower than they would have been absent any action.

Healthcare costs were 14% of gdp in 1992. They are 17% today and are projected to reach 20% in 2017 if we do nothing.

non-free <> unaffordable.

If you are uninsured, and you earn less than 133% of poverty, yes, it's free. You already qualify for Medicaid. If you earn more that 133% of poverty, you pay 12% of your gross income, every year, in a brand spanking new tax. And you're a criminal if you don't pay it.

Of course, if you're single and earn over $43K/year, the amount of your new tax is capped at $5K/year. If you're married and have a family income over $88K/year, your new tax is capped at $10K. The bill is actually better for the rich uninsured because their new tax is capped at $5K or $10K. Those of us in the struggling middle class must pay out a full 12% of gross income in new, extra taxes.

This plan is insane. It's not cheap. It's not affordable, and its cost must be paid principally by the uninsured (the most vulnerable among us). And no hospital nor any doctor will actually be required to take patients with public insurance.

That's not what I call affordable. This is what I call political suicide for the Democratic Party.

:dem:

-Laelth

11% is the cap for those who don't make more than 43k/yr single or 88k/year family.

And it's a sliding scale. The less you make, the less % you pay.

Why are you insisting on spreading lies about this bill?

It's a range between 1.5% and 11.5% of gross income. Only those just over 133% of poverty pay the 1.5% rate. If you're single and make $43K/year, you pay 11.5% of gross. It's way more of a tax bill than the uninsured should be forced to foot. We're uninsured for a reason. We can't afford insurance. What makes you think we can afford a new, massive tax?

:dem:

-Laelth

Yeah, you're effectively going to pay more taxes - 12%, as you say. Now answer me a few questions...

a) if we had single-payer tomorrow, what do you think would be funding it?
b) in developed countries where they do have healthcare (European countries, Canada, Japan...), what do you think is funding it?
c) what did you think was going to fund ANY government-run healthcare?

That's right - taxes! Please do not tell me you seriously believed that you could have universal healthcare without increaased taxes. I mean I'm European, public healthcare is an absolute no-brainer to me, and I can't work out why Americans have put up with not having it for so long, but it's not free. Over in Europe we pay taxes for that stuff. More income tax than here, plus about a 20% (on average) sales tax. Have you ever been to Europe? If so, have you ever wondered why many things are more expensive there? It's because we pay more taxes.

The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 45.7 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.

This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.

http://www.pnhp.org/

Personally, I don't think you can pay for the whole thing out of administrative savings, although heaven knows there is more than enough administration and overhead to cut away at in pursuit of this goal. I'm all for it, just not as optimistic as the PNHP people about the economics involved.

For the good of the country.

I do think the top rate of tax should be higher, but 'tax the rich' is very often a euphemism for 'let someone else pay for it'. My view is we have to pay for this ourselves. If we make some extra money in tax from rich people, it should go towards reducing the deficit.

For instance, we have hidden taxes.... like at least $2,000 of the cost of every new car is to cover the cost of health care for the workers!

All of that adds up...quickly.

I wish it were possible to really compare it.

In civilized countries a progressive tax that puts the burden on those most able to afford it pays for the system. The proposed, regressive tax that we're talking about now puts most of the burden on the shoulders of those who can least afford to pay for it--the uninsured, themselves--in the form of a new tax of between 1.5% and 11.5% of gross income.

That's insane, and it will drive people away from the Democratic Party in droves.

:dem:

-Laelth

"The most credible estimate of the number of people in the United States who have died because of lack of medical care was provided by a study carried out by Professors David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler (New England Journal of Medicine 336, no. 11 <1997>). They concluded that almost 100,000 people died in the United States each year because of lack of needed care—three times the number of people who died of AIDs. It is important to note here that while the media express concern about AIDs, they remain almost silent on the topic of deaths due to lack of medical care. Any decent person should be outraged by this situation. How can we call the United States a civilized nation when it denies the basic human right of access to medical care in time of need? No other major capitalist country faces such a horrendous situation."

http://monthlyreview.org/0903navarro.htm


100,000 american each year.



The mess of a plan in Mass. that we are modeling our national plan on:

"Yet despite the threat of a $1,068 fine for being uninsured, hundreds of thousands remain uncovered in Massachusetts, and the number of uninsured patients showing up at hospitals and clinics has fallen by only one-third. Moreover, according to surveys one in five state residents (including many with insurance) cannot afford care, and those directly affected by the reform are more likely to say it has hurt than helped them.
High costs and skimpy coverage are in the reform's DNA; private insurers drafted its blueprint, cementing their dominant role. As a result, the plan forfeited the savings on bureaucracy that a single-payer plan could realize--an estimated $7.8 billion annually in Massachusetts alone. The public-plan option that Massachusetts's reform offers to the near-poor hasn't trimmed bureaucracy--a warning that this option, pushed as a compromise at the federal level by erstwhile single-payer supporters, would yield scant savings. Indeed, Massachusetts's reform has actually increased bureaucratic costs; the new insurance exchange (similar to that touted by President Obama and Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus) has added 4 percent to insurers' already high overhead. Promised savings through prevention, care management and computerization (also mainstays of Obama's plan) haven't materialized. Consequently, much of the new coverage has come with unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. And cost overruns have drained state funding for care of those who remain uninsured."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090427/himmelstein_woolhandler

Yesterday budget cuts in Mass. are kicking out 30,000 legal immigrants from the program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/us/15insure.html

a) those who didn't have insurance, the 18,000 in berni's OP, and,
b) an additional 80,000 who didn't get care, usually because of the actions of their insurance.

Both groups would be helped by this bill.

Among Rich Nations, U.S. Has Highest Rate of Preventable Deaths
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By Avram Goldstein

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- More than 100,000 Americans die each year from lack of timely, effective medical care, according to a study that found the U.S. has the highest rate of preventable deaths among 19 industrialized nations.

In the five years through 2003, the rate of preventable deaths in the U.S. declined more slowly than in the other 18 market-based, democratic nations, according to the analysis published today by the policy journal Health Affairs. The U.S. is the only one of the 19 nations without universal health care coverage. About 47 million Americans lack insurance to help pay for rising medical costs.

If the preventable death rate in the U.S. improved to the average of the top three countries, France, Japan and Australia, 101,000 fewer Americans would die annually, the study said. The analysis was done by Ellen Nolte and C. Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

``There has been an increase in the past couple of years in the number of people in the U.S. who don't have access to insurance coverage,'' Nolte said in a telephone interview. ``People who don't have insurance tend to forgo, postpone or delay health care when they need it. It also leads to presentation at a later stage when less can be done.''

Focus of Study

The report focused only on people whose lives might have been extended by widely available medical or surgical interventions. The authors looked at more than 30 conditions that cause preventable deaths before age 75, including tuberculosis, thyroid disease, appendicitis, tetanus infections, abdominal hernia, colon cancer, measles and epilepsy. Deaths caused by leukemia, cervical cancer and diabetes were included only if victims were under 50 years old.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aicuTZz3sykc#

won't take effect until 2012. There goes another 27,000 deaths due to not having insurance.

for individuals without coverage and micro-employers. The remainder are phased in over the subsequent 4 years.

Not that it matters.

who has been and probably will be homeless again, it matters more than I can say.

:cry:

AND THEIR ENABLERS HAVE KILL TENS OF THOUSANDS EACH YEAR.

Decade, after decade, after decade we continue to keep these companies in business whose sole purpose is to extract profits from health care dollars.

:puke:

"They are interested in 45 million new customers," he said, "but the first thing in everybody's mind is preserving their right to do business in a way that can be profitable and meet shareholder needs."

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/07/business/fi-healthcare7?pg=2

I'm hoping to get to that critical mass of americans who decide that being a doormat is not getting them much, in my lifetime. Then things will change.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Oh well, that is your choice. Reflects much more on your character and motives than mine.
I need to go find the ignore button now, I suggest you do the same.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUSN1532459020090715

"...Insurers are among the last segment of the healthcare industry that have not pledged to help fund the estimated $1 trillion reform that aims to rein in soaring costs and provide medical coverage to millions of the uninsured.

Drugmakers have committed $80 billion and the hospital sector has offered $155 billion, both over a decade.

"We need the insurance companies to step up to the plate," Schumer said. "It makes sense that private health insurers, who are going to gain 40 million customers in a reformed system, should pay their fair share."

As in non-profit. Then we can put that fair share into a true public option.

All for profit industry will make out like a bandit. That's the problem in Mass.
I've had a few people attack me for posting with my opinions and concerns but not one can tell me why we are modeling a one time shot at national health care reform on a failed plan in mass. not to mention the half a dozen other states a version of the plan doesn't work in.

be enough to cover everyone. Most likely the reason no one responds is because they would rather avoid the question.

:)

Testimony of Quentin Young, M.D., to the House Ways and Means Committee

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/june/testimony_of_quentin.php

"...Third, because of this inability to control costs or realize administrative savings, the coverage and benefits that can be offered under the discussion draft will be of the same type currently offered by private carriers, which cause millions of insured Americans to go without needed care due to costs and have led to an epidemic of medical bankruptcies.

Virtually all of the reforms contained in the discussion draft have been tried, and have failed repeatedly. Plans that combined mandates to purchase coverage with Medicaid expansions fell apart in Massachusetts (1988), Oregon (1992), and Washington state (1993); the latest iteration (Massachusetts, 2006) is already stumbling, with uninsurance again rising and costs soaring. Tennessee’s experiment with a massive Medicaid expansion and a public plan option worked — for one year, until rising costs sank it.

...The $1 trillion price tag on the Tri-Committee proposal already threatens to capsize our new President’s flagship initiative. In contrast, single payer avoids these hazardous political waters entirely because it requires no new sources of funding.

In tumultuous economic times, single payer is the only fiscally responsible option. Two-thirds of the American people support it. The majority of physicians are in favor of it, as are the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 39 state labor federations and hundreds of local unions across the country. Millions of Americans are mobilized to struggle for single payer, but your leadership is crucial. I hope this Committee will see fit to provide it."

Graphs at this link...

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/young.pdf

fucking vampires

that the number is about 18,000 per year. so I guess we're just about on target. :eyes:

That 18,000 figure is old. This from a Jan 2008 study by the http://www.urban.org/publications/411588.html">Urban Institute:



But those numbers are already old. The 22K cited is their estimate for 2006, two and a half years ago. Given the way Wendell Potter has described the recision process -- kicking the high-risk policy holders off the rolls to lower the medical loss ratio and look good for the fuckers on Wall St. -- it's got to be much higher by now.

Btw, ever notice that virtually everything that's good for Wall St. is bad for humans, and vice versa? These parasites make the for-profit medical insurance scam look like a back alley craps game.


sf

Using a linear projection based on the 2006 numbers.

becoming really sick in a family.

It's Uniquely American to go broke over medical bills, you know. :eyes: