Just fired off an email to my Senator

[krispos42]

I would have fired off an email to BOTH of my Senators, but, alas, Colecreature is still being an asshole.

Hello Senator Klobuchar,

I'm writing regarding healthcare.

There are a couple of aspect of health insurance and the public-vs-private debate that I'm not seeing on the news programs, in the commercials, or in the soundbites. I'm hoping you can give consideration to making them and/or perhaps getting them out via one of those "issue ads" that so saturate TV sometimes.

Point 1: Insurance is basically accounting. They collect money from everybody, then re-distribute it according to bills received. It's something that bookkeepers were doing in Ancient Sumeria 4,500 years ago with clay tablets and abacuses!

They don't actually heal, prevent, or cure any disease or illness. They simply pay the people that do. Insurance choice does not equal doctor choice, yet I have seen commercials on TV that strongly imply such things.

Point 2: An insurance company is like being able to chose between MasterCard, Visa, American Express, or Discover... nice, perhaps, but it does not have any bearing the product you're purchasing.

Point 3: Insurance companies base their rates on collecting and chopping vast amounts of data to place people in the proper risk pool. This costs lots of money to do; those analysts don't work for free. By having EVERYBODY in the pool and charging a flat tax to pay for it (remember how much the Repubs love the idea of a flat tax???) you can do away with much of the bureaucratic overhead. Plus stockholder dividends, "executive retreats", and of course the giant executive salaries. Is amazing, isn't it, how the headline "Business Struggle Under Weight of Executive Compensation" never appears, isn't it?

Point 4: Insurance companies know that people will change carriers many times during their life. At the age of 33, I've had perhaps a half-dozen. Therefore they have incentive to avoid paying for preventive care or expensive treatments on the theory that they'll pass off the later, more expensive, treatments to "someone else". This same theory lets them not pay for "pre-existing conditions".

Or the person would just die, which generally saves the company lots of money as well.

If EVERYBODY was in the insurance pool, and EVERYBODY was in the pool from conception to death, such incentives evaporate.

Point 5: Insurance deductions would disappear from your paycheck.

I put my most recent paycheck into Excel yesterday. I'm on reduced hours at my job and have been for over four months now, so the percentages would be lower for full time employment, but this is what I pay currently, in percent: private health insurance is 6.8% and rivate dental insurance is 2.4%, for a total of 9.2% of my gross pay.

In contrast, only 1.3% of my gross pay goes to Medicare, bringing to 10.5% the total of my paycheck going to some kind of health insurance. If Medicare was expanded to everybody, you could increase the percentage SIX or SEVEN times... and not cost me an extra dime in my net pay!

I think this is the way to go. Medicare for all, universal single-payer. Charge a flat tax on everybody's earnings, no ceilings, no floors, and enroll everybody in the program from conception to death.

Since the private health-insurance "industry" takes up a very large percentage of our GNP I imagine the economy would shrink somewhat, but that is what happens when you build muscle and shed fat... you lose weight! To argue otherwise is like saying that Louie Anderson is in better shape than Michael Phelps, simply because Louie is bigger.

For your consideration,
<krispos42>

[JamesA1102]

1. Great letter nt

[patrice]

2. Such an excellent letter deserves all of the weight it can muster . . .

I don't want to discourage you or make you feel criticized, but email, because of the way that technology allows one individual to have as many "sock puppets" as you can support, does not get the consideration that a phone call does and phone calls don't get the importance that a hard-copy letter does. Letters take longer, to get through the security watch for anthrax and such, but they are considered the most significant and have more "weight" because they represent the most effort and can be directly and concretely associated with a specific constituent.

Thom Hartmann, who works constantly on getting people to contact their reps/sens and has been doing so for several years, makes the above points and, if you could get staffers to tell you the whole story of how they evaluate constituency input, you'd probably find out something quite similar to these points.

:applause: That said, thanks for the work that you are doing on one of the most fundamental issues of our time. :applause:

[krispos42]

4. Thanks!

I know electronic writing is cheap (look where I am and look what I do) but everything I write comes from me and only me.

I also have some heavy card stock that meets USPS postcard requirements, so sometimes I print out a quick note on this stock, cut it out to make 3 postcards (thats how many you can get per standard sheet), write on the addresses, and stick a 23-cent stamp (or whatever) on it.

I figure it would get through security faster because it doesn't need to be opened or anything.

:shrug:

Those 4x6 photo papers are also postcard-compliant, just FYI.

:hi:

[patrice]

7. Excellent, excellent idea re the card stock! I will share it with the local action

group that is forming here.

Re the sock puppets: I know it would not be something that decent folk such as you and I would do, but I guess there are people who sell their services from rooms/basements filled with computers, each with its own internet connection . . . (and I think maybe I hate them whoever they are).

[krispos42]

8. I imagine there's a lot of copy-and-paste type of stuff going on out there

Which is vastly easier than writing something original.

I assume the staffers can tell the difference. Of course, who knows... this letter might wind up being copied and spammed! :evilgrin:

[rasputin1952]

3. Excellent points all...

the only reason we have insurance companies is because they spend a lot of money on Congress to make sure they keep the profits rolling in.

Two things you didn't mention though...we hear of "the evil bureaucrats denying people 'coverage', but no one seems to mention the people behind desks in insurance companies that deny treatment all of the time, w/o medical training, w/o looking at the medical records of the pt, and making decisions based solely on cost of the procedure/treatment involved.

The other is the dropping of out of pocket costs, like a $2,000-$5,000 annual deductible. There is a massive saving right there that most people would be ecstatic over...:D

[krispos42]

5. That is true, Ras...

...I have some kind of supplemental insurance that pays 50% of costs back to me, presumebly so I can give them to the doctor or whatever.

It's a hassle. And working on reduced hours and other expenses means I have no reserve at all. :-(


Well, you know about my problems earlier this year... I ranted about them a couple of times in the Hot Tub. :-)

[PatSeg]

6. Great letter!

I hope it gets read and taken seriously.

[grantcart]

9. Great letter

You don't have to be against capitalism to be against reduntant profit centers.

Indeed the whole justification of capitalism is that it makes the most efficient use of capital.

Sometimes this means that innovation will create an "E Bay" and all kinds of middle men are wiped out.

Sometimes this means that innovation will create all kinds of boutique services that makes a particular discreet function in the market more efficient, like the local store front "E Bay Retail Store" that will add an additional profit center but will handle all of the E Bay functions for people that don't have the time to handle all of the steps.

Sometimes the market adds a profit center and sometimes the market takes away a profit center.

Each time the profit center has to 'add value' or it is simply a redundant 'tax' on the system.

When you have legislation that requires universal health insurance and proscribes pre existing conditions, all of the health insurance companies are being put into the same box. It also means that their function as a profit center is eliminated. They no longer make useful decisions about case acceptance or marketing or even rates. Their use as a 'profit center' is completely undermined by the fact that the government now establishes the rules, not the market. Once that is done then the additional profit center is completely redundent and is in fact an inefficient tax on the system. In fact, once the government makes certain rules mandatory about health care, the involvement of private health insurance is actually against the best interests of the capitalist model. Capitalism is not intended to establish private companies that derive a permanent benefit for doing service work for the government without adding any value to the service.

[krispos42]

11. Good points

I never thought of it quite that way.


My thinking was that because insurance companies don't directly offer medical services, they are in fact a very mature sector that has little innovation left to do. They don't research new surgical techniques, don't develop new mechanical or electrical equipment, or new therapies, or new drugs. So they really don't have field to compete in! It's like the water company... you're putting clean water in a pipe. There's not a whole lot of room to work with in terms of innovation or areas of competition. It's a mature natural monoply. There's not going to be a radical new pump design that saves the company tons of money, or a new product like "Lemon Zest Oxygenated Mega-Hydrator" flowing through the pipes. It's drinking water!

Now the insurance companies can invent areas of innovation by data-chopping, or investing their collected premiums in the market, but that's incidental to what should be their primary job: paying the doctor's bills.

[grantcart]

14. Here is the entire and complete problem

they are in fact a very mature sector

Once you have isolated it down to this one fact everything becomes clear.


Personal communication devices are a very immature sector. Business can add market share by innovating. Software, Hardware, Interchange, everything.


Furniture is a very mature sector. Business cannot add value by marketing. There is virtually no brand name value in the American furniture market. It all competes on price points.


Innovation in health happens with Doctors, researchers and pharamceutical companies, but not with the insurance providers.




Now here is a question, once an industry becomes "mature" and the basic nature of the industry has no further innovation how can it increase profit (the primary concern of private company leadership?







Answer below:
































The only way that a mature industry can increase profit is through cost reduction.

While a useful exercise for furniture manufacturers, for health insurers it means simply one thing: refusing to cover procedures.
Its really not their fault they act like heartless pricks, that is the requirement of the system. The health provider that can take in the most revenue and provide the least amount of services will return the highest return on capital investment to its shareholders.


That is the ultimate reason why we need single payer. There is no more innovation for health insurance to provide and with the new government regulations health companies will not be assuming any risk, just following government guidelines. All they have left to compete is to deny coverage.

[krispos42]

15. Bingo.

And our problem is that the insurance companies took their money reserves and invested them to make more money. Because investments became more innovative as the Reagan tax cuts pumped money to the rich, and rich had vastly more wealth to play with. They had more to play with, so they could afford to take higher risks.

Then the bubbles burst, and we're where we are today.

[handmade34]

10. awesome

can I steal the sentiments for my letters?

[krispos42]

13. Knock yourself out

:-)

[DKRC]

12. K&R for REAL health care reform!

Great message!

:yourock:

[Doremus]

16. Outstanding! Bookmarked for later. I WILL be using these points!! nt

[krispos42]

18. There are good points in the discussion as well

Don't forget those! :hi:

[Vidar]

17. Well done.

[dflprincess]

19. Excellent letter. Let me know if you get something other than this non-response

Thank you for contacting me about health care. I thought I would take this opportunity to update you on what’s been happening on this key issue in Congress.

Health care reform is a top priority for me in the Senate, and I have supported a number of important health care initiatives. During the past year, I have pushed to expand health care coverage for children through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, increase federal funding for veterans’ health benefits, expand coverage for mental health services, and provide additional federal support for Critical Access Hospitals in rural Minnesota. I have also advocated for making prescription drugs more affordable for all Americans, from pushing for reimportation from Canada to investigating the practices of a boutique drug company that was engaging in price gouging on a drug for premature infants that has been on the market for 30 years.

I also believe that all Minnesotans must have access to groundbreaking technologies that reduce waste and seek out best health practices. As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which became law in February, 2009, investments in Health Information Technology were made to help reduce waste, reign in cost, and stimulate quality reforms for our health care system. The Recovery Act also provided a temporary increase in federal Medicaid funding in an effort to provide aid to states that have seen recent increases in unemployment and Medicaid enrollment. I led the fight in the Senate to make sure the Medicaid funding formula was good for our state. As a result, this legislation will help more than 20 million Americans keep their health care. Furthermore, I believe that the federal government must play a key role in supporting basic and clinical biomedical research, and the Recovery Act provided an additional $10 billion in biomedical research for the National Institutes of Health. More information about the Recovery Act can be found here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgibin/query/D?c111:8:./temp/~c11... ::

Also this year, Congress passed the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, which extends health coverage to low-income children who do not qualify for Medicaid and whose families cannot afford private insurance. The passage of this legislation ensures health care for an additional 4.1 million uninsured children, and was signed into law on February 4, 2009. Additional information about this legislation can be found here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:5:./temp/~c1... ::

You may also recall that the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act was enacted into law last summer, despite a Presidential veto. On July 15, 2008, the Senate voted to override President Bush’s veto and pass this legislation in a vote of 70-26 to prevent a 10.6 percent payment cut to doctors who treat Medicare beneficiaries.

Going forward, our state already has a track record of providing increased access to high quality health care, and there is much that the rest of the nation can learn from us. But Minnesotans also face higher health care costs than ever before. In fact, many of our families and businesses can no longer afford to bear the costs of health insurance. Employees are forced to pay a larger share of the premiums, or they get no health care insurance at all. That is why I believe we must reform our health care system to make it more affordable. We must act to provide incentives to allow small businesses and the self-employed to buy into the Federal Employees Health Benefits program (FEHB). This will reduce the cost of health care by giving small businesses and the self-employed the chance to pool their insurance risk. This will also be helpful for people who change jobs.

As you know, this year we will be working on comprehensive health care reform. Without reforming the way our system delivers care, we will never be able to sufficiently reduce costs, maintain solvency, promote wellness and prevention, and provide quality care for all Americans. According to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly $700 billion a year in health care services delivered in the United States do not improve health outcomes. Our health care system is reactive; we need to make it proactive.

Many believe that comprehensive reform should start with our Medicare system. Medicare is the single largest purchaser of health care, and its policies directly affect nearly every health care provider. I am committed to sustaining Medicare as a healthy, high quality program that Americans deserve, and will work to address these challenges with the goal of reforming the Medicare program to reward efficient, high-quality care.

As it happens, doctors and hospitals in many regions of the country, including Minnesota, practice exactly this kind of high-quality, low-cost medicine, and they should be applauded for it. But Medicare does not reward them for it. The problem is that, despite periodic efforts at reform, Medicare pays for quantity, not quality. More tests and more surgeries mean more money – even if the extra tests and operations do nothing to improve a patient’s condition. And states that have historically delivered excessive procedures are still rewarded for the wasteful practices of the past, while efficient states such as Minnesota are punished.

I am very much aware of the positive impact that Medicare has on seniors’ quality of life. I keep that impact in mind when considering legislation, and I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to maintain the fundamental goal of providing a strong safety net to protect the health care of our nation’s seniors.

I will continue to fight for policy solutions to make our health care system more affordable, accessible and responsive. I appreciate your taking the time to get in touch with me, and hope you will not hesitate to contact me in the future about issues of concern to you.

Sincerely,

Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator

I've received this from her twice. Ironically, the second time was when I emailed it back to her office and told them it was one of the best non-response responses I had ever received. In the emails I've sent I have asked whether or not she would support single payer - a question she keeps avoiding. (I never received a response at all when I asked if it were true that she's gone over to the Blue Dogs - and I did ask politely).

I realize that Wellstone set the bar awfully high for any future Minnesota senators, but Klobuchar really has been a major disappointment.

[krispos42]

21. Sure

Right now I just have the "we got your email, thanks for sending it" message in my inbox.

:shrug:

We'll see what happens.

[HughMoran]

20. Good job.

We all need to write or call or Congressman. This is our chance.

[avaistheone1]

22. Very thoughtful

Single payer is the best way to go.

[ccharles000]

23. Wonderful