There's only one "problem" with Single Payer

[TomClash]

Health insurance carriers cannot make fabulous profits off it.

And that would mean certain members of certain Congressional Committees wouldn't get their bribes (uh, excuse me, "campaign contributions").

[Laelth]

1. K&R for the truth. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[newscott]

2. That's the bottom line in all of this.

It's not quality of care. It's lack of profit for insurance companies. Unless and until you take the profit makers out of healthcare, you have crap for a system.

[TomClash]

3. Oh No!

It has nothing to do with Humana wanting to protect its $5.6 billion market cap. They're concerned about YOUR care. :sarcasm:

Humana's stock went up 6% today.

[slipslidingaway]

5. The BTK went up 16% one day last week....

http://stockcharts.com/charts/gallery.html?$BTK

This might have had something to do with it...

Biotech lobbyists cast their nets
http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/21/biotech-lobbyists-cast-their-nets/

[felinetta]

55. Bulletin: I found a photo of these insurance ghouls and those that support them.

 
http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/425/mm35pg119.jpg

[slipslidingaway]

4. knr nt

[Senator]

6. K&+R

[Amos Moses]

7. R&K

We need health care, not health insurance.

[wroberts189]

8. Simple truth. Simply stated. knr

[TheKentuckian]

9. and finding any votes for it.

[leftstreet]

10. Let's just Pre-Bubble Bailout the insurance industry now

Give them their money, then give us the inevitable single payer.

Why put us through a couple of decades of this bullshit while they're gorging at the trough?

[TahitiNut]

11. Sorta ... remember how Medicare Part D got passed??

Believe me, the corporate interests (Big Pharma in that case) won't be closing up shop if Single Payer ever comes to pass. The appetite for privatization and sucking on the public treasury teat without controls just won't go away.

[TomClash]

21. The appetite for plunder and profits without creating value will always be with us

I agree. But then why there is so much opposition to single payer?

[AllyCat]

54. Brainwashing, I mean education of the masses through media "news:

That's where the opposition comes in. People frequently believe the lies they read in print, on the teevee, and from people spouting off at the water cooler as if they know what they are talking about. They fear they won't have doctor choice, failing to recognize they don't have it now. They fear "government run" health care, failing to grasp the fact that while the government runs many things well, this is only "government paid" health care. They fear long waits, failing to understand that they will wait LESS time in most cases because people will get basic preventive care, eliminating the lines at the specialists' offices.

[Enthusiast]

12. And that is it, in a nut shell.

The health insurance industry has zero qualms about people dying or going bankrupt. ZERO!

[stlsaxman]

13. KnR 69!!! whooo hooo!

[fasttense]

14. Millions will die for lack of health care so that some may be bribed.

I sometimes wonder if the United States ever really had democracy.

[TomClash]

20. This is true

Dedicated health professionals save many, but there are people who die because they don't have health insurance.

[John Q. Citizen]

32. 18,000 people every year die in the US of curable illness. They die so a few might be rich.

[florida08]

15. oy vey

http://www.thebatavian.com/blogs/howard-owens/todays-poll-do-you-support-or-oppose-obamas-health-care-reform-efforts/8034

just took this poll..not good

[Echo In Light]

16. Phony democracy

[Joe Bacon]

17. KICK!

Kicked & recommended

[Hannah Bell]

18. same problem with everything in the system; it's based on fucking people over to survive & thrive -

if you call being the biggest predator "thriving".

[TomClash]

19. There's a difference though

It's different when you make profit off people's illness without lifting a finger to cure them.

It's different than Apple making fantastic profits off iphones and ipods.

Fasttense's post above is right. I almost died because I didn't have health insurance; I'll write about it in another thread. The private insurance system is just bullshit - collect the maximum in premiums and pay as little as possible in claims. Cover the healthy and fuck the sick. It's an invitation to murder.

[Hannah Bell]

41. there's a difference, but only in degree. system = my gain = someone else's loss.

[Jkid]

22. That's the point!

If any bill with single payer succeeds, they'll either have to go out of business, or actually compete with a single-payer system by providing additional services not provided by single payer.

[OwnedByFerrets]

23. Right on target

[SheilaT]

24. Actually, there's a second problem

that is rarely acknowledged, and that is that workers will no longer be tied to a job just for the health care benefits.

I took my current job because, even though I'm amazingly healthy and never need to see a doctor, I recognize that it's not a good idea to be without health care coverage. Plus, as it turns out, this job's health care benefit will cover my yearly eye exams and contact lenses, which is nice. Otherwise, I'd be happy to do temp work indefinitely, or until I landed the "perfect" job that way. There are undoubtedly millions out there who would leave a job or change jobs were it not for a pre-existing condition of a family member, or some other genuine need to keep the current health care.

[pleah]

26. You're right. I know

people that would change jobs in a heartbeat if it weren't for the health insurance.

[blindpig]

27. Indeed

It is a species of blackmail.

[Uncle Joe]

53. Yes, it builds 21st century feudal style riga mortise in to our society. n/t

[annabanana]

62. They WANT to keep us as "health care slaves". . That's what we are.

A very dear friend is working at an abusive workplace. She drags herself there every day and endures nearly unrelenting verbal abuse.. because her husband is very ill and they need the coverage.

I watch her getting more and more beaten down, week after week and I don't know what to tell her. A good bill would save her spirit, and maybe her life.

[pleah]

25. K&R

[Christa]

28. K& R for truth. nt

[Dinger]

29. K & 98th Rec!

Very concise and correct!

[Maineman]

30. Open letter to Soros, Buffett, and Gates

Gentlemen:

Since Republican politicians are so much more concerned about taking care of insurance companies and drug companies than providing honest, affordable, ethical health care to citizens, how about if you guys set up a nonprofit corporation to provide health care for Democrats, something similar to the Veteran’s Administration model perhaps. (I heard recently that the VA health care system rates above all of the others, private or public.) The Republicans can then figure out how to fund the status quo and continue their little dance with the big insurance and drug companies. (Unfortunately, I presume the Republican politicians will be able to continue enjoying their high level government run health insurance plans.)

Respectfully,

Mike - in Maine

[lazyriver]

31. We have the best government that money can buy and until

we get campaign financing reform - real reform with teeth in it - we won't see real change in health care or anything else for that matter. Sure they will nibble around the edges and create an illusion of change, but that is all it will be.

[Moostache]

33. We lost our way over the past 30 years...

This country used to have a soul, one that was forged in the Great Depression and steeled in the shared sacrifice of World War II. The progressive policies and programs that were implemented to form the New Deal helped give that soul form and also provided a target for the vampires of pure capitalism to aim for ever since.

Regulated capitalism is the only solution that can save the country. Free market ideologues refuse to recognize the dammage they have wrought in every sphere they enter. There is nothing wrong with societal standards that reign in the profit motive to include truly FREE markets - not markets rigged to the advantage of a few or markets that allow companies to ignore "externalities" like pollution, water usage, power consumption, resource depletion and the like.

I have to agree that until there is meaningful campaign finance reform - until people realize that freedom of speech is not about the dollars that can be given to run more banal attack ads to scare people every 2 years (or now it seems like a perpetual campaign with TV and web ads coming out almost daily) - then we will get what we have now. That is a broken system, rigged against the majority by the powerful few. It has become a self-perpetuating machine and its time to pour the sugar of re-regulation into the gas tank of run-amok capitalism...

[JDPriestly]

43. Watch the movies from the 1940s and late 1930s and you

will see the soul of America. Oddly enough, that is the America that Ronald Reagan who started this mess we are in talked about so much.

[earcandle]

34. There saying the VA electronic medical care is the best and it is a medicare like program

[SharonAnn]

51. VA care is more like Socialized Medicine. The doctors are employees of the Fed. Gov't.

Medicare is more like a Single Payer Plan. Patients choose their own doctors, doctors submit bille to the "Single Payer" (the Federal Government Medicare division), and get paid by the Medicare division.

So, we have two good federal programs already working well in this country.
1. VA - socialized medicine
2. Medicare - Single-Payer

[lyonn]

61. Thanks for this explanation

This is the problem, people are confused about the Democrats' plan. They only hear sound bites from the likes of limbaugh, etc..

[KalicoKitty]

35. Right on!!!

:kick: and recommend!!!

[harmonicon]

36. *sigh* yes, all too true

[OneBlueSky]

37. there's another problem . . .

and that it what to do with all of those people who are currently insurance company and HMO employees . . . some of them can be accommodated helping to run the new system (though they may have to take a pay cut) . . . but a plan needs to be put in place to help the others find replacement jobs, including whatever re-training might be required . . .

what this speaks to is the necessity of not dealing with healthcare in isolation from all of the other issues facing us as a nation . . . a simultaneous commitment to alternative energy and energy conservation, for example, could include job training in these newly expanded industries for some of those who will no longer be needed in healthcare . . . a similar linkage can be made to the "defense" budget and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which, if ended, would free up enough money to fund a universal single payer system, and then some . . . although it may be a stretch politically, a movement to legalize hemp farming (not necessarily marijuana legalization, although that would be a good move, too) and the new hemp-based industries that could be created is another linkage possibility . . .

in designing a new single payer system, these kinds of linkages are important both to help those insurance company employees who would lose their jobs and to demonstrate the truth that all of these issues are inextricably linked, particularly when it comes to funding . . .

[JDPriestly]

44. When it came to getting cheaper manufactured and IT products to sell,

jobs were simply shipped to China and Mexico and India and the Philippines, etc. without any concern for displaced workers. Why would anyone worry about displaced workers in the insurance industry?

[Blue_Tires]

38. cannot be put more simply than that....

[sui generis]

39. au contraire

forcing 56 million uninsured people to add premiums into the payment system and letting companies and other insurance companies offload their highest risk highest cost subscribers is indeed a profit.

[valerief]

40. The other day I heard a caller on the Thom Hartmann show ask Bernie Sanders

why they didn't just call them bribes and he delicately sidestepped around that landmine. He added that few lobbyists come to his office (he's not bribable) but I guess Sanders didn't want to be on record calling them bribes.

I always wondering why people just didn't say bribes instead of the safer 'influence' also.

[orbitalman]

42. THERE ARE 2 PROBLEMS...

Many of these insurance companies would go OUT OF BUSINESS. Gooddddd rrridance!!!

[DailyGrind51]

45. Bingo! Eliminate the "middle-man" and save the $$ commission!

[winyanstaz]

46. K & R..

Thank you for posting this.
This is my feelings on the matter exactly!
I for one am sick to death of being screwed by polititians and of taxpayers coming last on their list.
We need to stop laying down and rolling over!

[Iwillnevergiveup]

47. Thom Hartmann nailed it this morning

It's not a war between Republicans and Democrats, it's a war between a handfull of wealthy insurance executives against the American people.

[Moral Compass]

48. Let's bombard our state attorney generals with demands for bribery charges

It is obvious that bribery has taken and is taking place when our Senators and Representatives are refusing to support the interests of their constituencies. Rather they are supporting the interests of their paymasters the lobbyists, the PACS, the pharmaceutical companies, and the medical insurance conglomerates. There is very obvious quid pro quo here.

I suggest that everyone that has a Senator and/or Representative that is clearly doing the bidding of their campaign contributors start calling their state attorney general and asking that charges of accepting bribes be filed against that official or officials.

We all know what's going on here. The organizations that are funding the elected officials campaigns are getting the votes that they've bought.

This is still against the law. Let's insist that bribery remain criminalized. The legislature of the U.S. are profoundly corrupt. Let's call them to account.

[daggahead]

49. I have a question ...

My sister-in-law's mother claims that under Obama's Socialized Healthcare plan, her son (who desperately needs a lung transplant) would not be covered and would have to pay out of pocket for the transplant. She is a republican, but claims that all of Congress is corrupt; even the Republicans (yet, she voted for McCain ... )

Is anybody here familiar enough with what Congress is working on to know if this is true?

I suspect she's getting the information on what is or isn't going to be covered from the corporatist right-wing talking heads.

Any help on this is greatly appreciated!

Scott

[followthemoney]

50. It is easy to understand if you just Follow the Money. nt

[Uncle Joe]

52. That's the nuts and bolts of the situation, I would also add the corporate media would have one less

less major purchaser of their commercials. They're being bribed to sell the American People down the river as well.

[defendandprotect]

56. Are any of the unions coming out to demonstrate for single payer???

Any of the women's groups --??

Any Democrats calling people out to demonstrate for single payer?

You're right -- campaign finance (BRIBERY) is the way that corporations have taken

complete control of government/legislators!

[grahamhgreen]

57. The one problem is OBAMA REFUSES TO STUMP FOR IT! He could have a million of us in DC tomorrow if

he would only ask.

[CrispyQ]

58. Elected officials, accepting campaign contributions from entities that can't vote,

in an effort to sway the opinion of entities that can vote, so once elected, said officials can implement policy that benefits the contributors, not the voters.

:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:
:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:
:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

:banghead:

[cascadiance]

59. Which is why we should have a joint strategy for health care reform AND public campaign financing

... at the same time.

Health care reform is an absolute necessity now, and needs to be first in priority for everyone. And it is hitting everyone, so that everyone is becoming more conscious of the problem that happens now. I almost wonder if the insurance companies LOVE more and more of us losing our jobs or switching jobs, as they can slap pre-existing condition and other newer insurance plan conditions when we get work someplace else. Therefore they are probably LOVING this way they can bleed their system of older expensive obligations now.

But I think hopefully, whether we win or lose this current effort to get real health care reform through, the battle itself will become more and more visible to all Americans. We MUST make sure that it is visible to the average American for what it is (NOT socialized medicine, but corruption infesting Washington to the point that it is more obvious to everyone that they aren't there to work for us, but corporate lobbyists instead).

Health care reform offers a unique opportunity for us to build up awareness of people that the campaign finance system (aka campaign corruption system) is totally broken and needs fixing. If we don't try to push it now, when everyone can be made more aware of the effects of it with this battle for health care reform, we might not get that opportunity again. So many other issues aren't as life threatening, vital, global or visible in nature as health care reform is that would provide the motivation for the average American to want the root cause of it to be fixed.

The key is an education process for the masses of how public campaign financing works so that they can see how it can be made to fix the corrupt mess that our health care system is now, and if that can be made to happen, we have an issue where we might, just might be able to force the lobbyists out of the bribery system they have now in Washington. But I think we need to strategize both efforts in tandem, so that we can see how working on both issues can help each other if we coordinate those efforts and spending on them in the right places to match up with the absolute HUGE spending that the lobbyist crowd will be lining up against any efforts in both of these areas.

[invictus]

60. K&R

[LiberalFighter]

63. Or their spouses or family members won't benefit by being on insurance company boards.