Physicians for Natl Health Program Single Payer PROPOSAL--Why is Obama listening to INSURANCE Co's?

[Faryn Balyncd]

Why is our president listening to the insurance lobby and NOT to the physicians & nurses supporting SINGLE PAYER Healthcare-for-All?

Should not the Physicians for a National Health Program & the California Nurses Association have a larger voice than the insurance companies who take a 31% cut in "administrative costs" for a cherry-picked demographic and then dump those with pre-existing & other high risk conditions on the taxpayers and providers?

When we pay twice as much of our GNP for healthcare as other industrial societies, pay 2-3 times the "administrative costs" as other industrialized nations, and get inferior healthcare for our citizens while making our productive industries non-competitive, we must get rid of the parasitic insurance industry if we are to reform healthcare.

Any sort of mandatory insurance scheme will be ultimately unaffordable.

And it will further enrich & entrench the very parasitic insurance industry that we must ultimately confront.

If we are not to confront them now, how could we ever defeat them when they are even stronger?





http://www.pnhp.org/physiciansproposal/proposal/Physicians%20ProposalJAMA.pdf

http://www.pnhp.org/

http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/press-releases/2009/january/first-of-its-kind-study-medicare-for-all-single-payer-reform-would-be-major-stimulus-for-economy-with-2-6-million-new-jobs-317-billion-in-business-revenue-100-billion-in-wages.html





:kick:

[Cleita]

1. I don't know. For a smart person, this isn't the smart way to do it.

It will cost the taxpayer more and won't deliver any better health care than the average person gets now. Maybe he feels he can't beat the insurance companies so feels he has to include them. I hope that maybe he has an ace up sleeve to defeat them in the end. It seems that everyone who has opposed the insurance company industry up until today has emerged from the fight with a political black eye and a lot of humiliation.

[msongs]

2. congresspersons get $ millions from corporate health care, will they will give this up easily? n t

[inna]

3. rec #8. agree with you completely. nt

[kath]

4. Yep - those mega-bucks of campaign donations sure do help.

Single-payer is what we need - get the blood-sucking insurance companies OUT of health care!

-- oops - meant to be a reply to msongs' post.

[leftchick]

5. perhaps because

they give him LOADS of money?

[Froward69]

6. actually I think

it is to "wet the ins comps. powder" that is to say to "take the wind out of their sails."
compromise their arguments.
as the story of how his mother died... the story of being Dicked around by the insurance company's... making this personal... (If true) would mean they will certainly either be in the loop to a limited extent or cut out of health care completely later.

I am for the latter... as the Insurance companies are the cancer on American single payer health care.

[TheWraith]

7. Same reason he listens to the Republicans: so they look stupid when they say he didn't. NT

[Peace Patriot]

8. Well, his style seems to be include malevolent forces like the insurance vampires,

hear them out, then go his own way, which might include some of what they want, or not. It's a bit early to tell for sure, on his style or the total substance of policy, but it seems to me that this is how a number of issues have gone. There were a lot of surprises for me in his State of the Union/economy, because of his appointments and who-all he was talking to, then, bang, we have tax increases on the rich, the end of oil and big ag subsidies, military budget cuts, end of no-bid contracts, big chunks of money for jobs, education and 'green' projects, etc. A lot of things I didn't expect, due to who he was talking to. Who he was talking to was not a good predicter of what he would ultimately do. There was one thing I didn't like--centralized electronic medical records. That is very worrisome, and might portend insurance vampires' influence--it would be especially worrisome in rightwing or corporate hands, just like, say, centralized federal electronic voting might be*. So easy to take over and misuse and abuse (like e-spying, too).

Anyway, just sayin. This Obama decision-making pattern is emerging. I know it's rather a fragile reed to hang our hopes for real health care reform on. And I know he has never said anything about dumping the vampires out. But I think it is still hard to predict what he will propose, now that he is president and getting more comfortable with his own role, methods, strategy, style, and position of command.

--------

*(You think states having e-voting systems, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by a handful of rightwing Bushwhack corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls, is bad? Yeah, it's bad. VERY bad. But think how bad it would be--how difficult to reform--and how massively it could be manipulated, without detection and with no appeal, no recourse, if it was federalized and centralized, and all run from some computer in Singapore! With the states running these fraudulent, privatized voting systems, at least we have the possibility of reform at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some potential influence.)

[bertman]

9. All of the above.

[glinda]

10. Insurance Companies should be left out completely as they are the Pharma Gate-keepers

[OneBlueSky]

11. if single payer advocates are indeed not at the table . . .

then any healthcare reform plan that Obama may propose is doomed to failure . . . "cutting out the middle men" -- the HMOs and insurance companies that soak the systems for hundreds of billions of dollars for stuff totally unrelated to providing good healthcare to Americans (corporate profits being the most egregious) -- is an absolute prerequisite to any plan that has any hope at all of bringing about real change . . .

I hope that single payer advocates have their ducks lined up to make a major push to be included in the process . . . they need to make the case publically and generate massive public support for the idea . . . otherwise, what we get will be no better than what we have now -- and possibly even worse . . .

this particular problem is symptomatic of the kind of forces that Obama will be up against in anything he tries to do that brings about real change . . . want to end war and excessive "defense spending?" . . . deal with the defense contractors and arms dealers . . . want to focus on keeping the food supply safe? . . . deal with Monsanto and other agribusiness conglomerates . . . want to encourage alternative energy and conservation and weaning the country off the oil teat? . . . deal with the oil companies that have literally robbed this country blind during the past eight years (not surprising given that Bush, Cheney, Rice and others are oil men) . . .

what disappoints me immensely in the healthcare debate is that Obama himself has not come out in favor of single payer and against the corporate greed that has made our healthcare system the laughing stock of the industrialized world . . . he needs to start listening to a whole different set of advisors, imo . . . which is sad, given that his administration is only a month old . . .

[slipslidingaway]

12. K&R n/t

[Delphinus]

13. K&R

Single payer, Universal Health Care, HR 676, Expanded Medicare for All.

[crimsonblue]

14. We need the insurances co's involved if we are going to fix health care

IMO, I think we should go towards a universal, private insurance system, much like exists in the Netherlands. The Dutch have the best health care system in Europe, in no small part because efficiency is built into the system (because companies want to make money). What we need to convert our health care system to is a well-regulated free market with certain pre-conditions: 1) a person cannot be denied coverage b/c of pre-existing coverage 2) rationing of care must be avoided 3) a free, competitive market must be open. For those that cannot afford health care, it will be subsidized by the government. This system brings about universal health care, without destroying the incentives for R&D that have made American health care the best in technology.

[TBF]

15. The pick of Sebelius for HHS may be a good thing to offset the donations

Obama took from the industry. I found this information about her: "She refused to take campaign contributions from insurers and blocked the proposed merger of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, the state’s largest health insurer, with an Indiana-based company. The decision by Sebelius marked the first time the corporation had been rebuffed in its acquisition attempts."
Link: http://lezgetreal.com/?p=2874

So, that's positive anyway.

[Fireweed247]

16. kick them out of the discussion-their 'services' are no longer needed

I am quite confident that insurance workers can be trained to do something more useful.

[newtothegame]

17. Question about the insurance companies..

what's the deal with AIG? All the DU posts I see about insurance talk about their high administrative costs, record profits, etc. I did a google search but can't find a definitive answer as to how all of this meshes with their $62 billion loss this last quarter. Did they have a particular product that didn't work or something?

[Fireweed247]

18. they didn't lose the money, they moved it to offshore accounts

They are lying about it and looting the American people, just like all the others...

[Xolodno]

19. There insurance business is actually....

...the only business they are still profitable in. Its all there other business's that are eating them alive. There are actually a few insurance companies (those that played it safe and responsible) salivating at its possible break up (the company I work for included) and getting a big slice of their insurance operations.

[newtothegame]

23. Ahh...thanks for the insight :) n/t

[QC]

20. You dance with the one who brought you. n/t

[Xolodno]

21. I think..

Its actually very prudent to listen to the health insurance companies. They want to make money, period. So they are going to avoid all the major pitfalls and a single payer system would have to absorb those pit falls, may as find out what they know.

I don't work for a health insurer, but the insurance company I work for actually WANTS more government intervention. For example, a regional insurance plan for hurricane prone areas. Even make Flood Insurance mandatory in flood prone zones, can't tell you how often insurance companies get stuck with some of the bill because someone emphatically tells a judge "oh but the agent said we we're covered".

Problem is, insurance companies can't just pool together and work on this, believe it or not anti-trust laws prevent them from doing this, so they just won't write the coverage for it. Maybe its the same for health insurers?

[Raineyb]

22. You've got it exactly backwards.

This is exactly why we should not listen to the insurance companies. They are only interested in making money and they do so by denying care to the people who pay the premiums. We already have bureaucrats determining care but they are the profit driving bastards at the insurance company.

If we want a healthcare system that is concerned with getting care to everyone we will not allow the insurance companies (or the drug companies for that matter) anywhere near the reforms.

Regards

[Xolodno]

27. Exactly!

You believe it or not, you furthered my point.

They are denying coverage, making exclusions, etc. Why? Because the can't be profitable in it. That means the costs are out-pacing the premiums. Why?

If a universal system is going to be put into place, that information is needed. Is it the drugs, liability, administrative? What is causing the cost to go up so quickly in one particular area of health coverage that it out paces the speed in which they can raise premiums?

Simply throwing universal care at it won't make those costs go away. Were not just talking universal care here, were also talking about reforming the entire health care system. To do that effectively, you need every bit of information...and that includes the insurers. They may have some ideas that are good that could benefit everyone...and they are going to have some self-serving ideas as well. Its up to the Obama administration to decide which idea's (if any) have merit and which ones to throw into the waste basket after they leave the room. I'm pretty sure he knows they are going to have their own best interests in mind, but that doesn't mean some of those ideas wont work or can't be modified.

[glinda]

24. Got a notice from Blue Cross today that my insurance went up $30. Has gone up every three months

[L0oniX]

25. So is this Washington K Street lobbyists as usual???

Fuck those sociopath HMO big pharma asscarrots!

[Karmadillo]

26. If only the Democrats controlled the White House and the Congress this

wouldn't be happening.