California Eye » Healthcare Reform

Counting your Chickens

Featheriver — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:28:38 +0000

Does your doctor accept chickens for healthcare?

Lowden named worst person in the world by Olbermann

Featheriver — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:14:36 +0000

After nearly a month of national ridicule, Lowden’s campaign manager’s (Robert Uithoven) outrageous comments while discussing health care reform and BarterGate on Face to Face culminate with he and Lowden being named Worst Persons in the World.

Lowden: “Barter with Your Doctor”

Featheriver — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:58:28 +0000

Sue Lowden, former chair of the Nevada GOP, has some suggestions for health care policy rather than the Democrats’ plan.

1. Save as much as you can in tax-free health savings accounts;

2. Barter with your doctor.

She said

I would have also allowed for us to have savings plans increase instead of being decreased like in this bill,” said Lowden. “I would have said to all of you, if you have a health savings account, I don’t really care how much you save, good for you. pre-tax, go ahead and save as much as you want. It’s your — it’s for your health. And if you want to save $20,000, good for you. Save it pre-tax.

And I would have suggested, and I think that bartering is really good. Those doctors who you pay cash, you can barter, and that would get prices down in a hurry. And I would say go out, go ahead out and pay cash for whatever your medical needs are, and go ahead and barter with your doctor.

This is the lady leading in the polls to be the GOP nominee to run against Nevada’s Senator Harry Reid.

How many people are in a position to save up $20,000 for a health savings account? Not many of anyone I know.

And barter with your doctor rather than pay in cash? Wonder if she barters with her doctor? I doubt it.

A fellow named Russell decided to try the barter idea:

I just called my doctor and he wont take a 1973 Dodge Dart with a new motor for my upcoming yearly physical, which runs about $600 and that includes prostate exam. I offered to throw in 3 dead squirrels and a live chicken and still no deal! Heck I even went so far as to offer to mow his lawn for a month and he still shot me down! So much for that airhead’s idea to barter for health care….How stupid are republicans thinking you can barter with health care providers? Can you imagine what their ads will look like in the fall…”please vote for me and I’ll do my best to repeal health care so you wont have access to decent affordable healthcare”….yea…that sounds like a winning message.

Lowden made national TV on the Jay Leno Show bringing the spotlight on the state of Nevada.
[Source: TPM]

Democrats’ Health Bill Will Reduce Deficit up to $1.2 Trillion

Featheriver — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:16:42 +0000

House Democratic leader, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, said that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had determined that the package of legislation would produce “the largest deficit reduction of any bill we have adopted in Congress since 1993,” when it passed President Clinton’s budget proposal including substantial tax increases.

In the first ten years, the legislation would reduce deficits by $130 billion, Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the House majority whip, said after a meeting of the party’s caucus. The effect on deficits over the following decade would be much greater, a total of $1.2 trillion, he said. The savings would come largely from reductions in the growth of Medicare spending, with new fees and tax increases also contributing.

[Source: New York Times]

Jon Ralston interview Sue Lowden on Health Care

Featheriver — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:34:35 +0000

Jon Ralston of Face to Face interviews Republican candidate Sue Lowden about her position on reformation of health care in the U.S.

Obama has his mojo back

Featheriver — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:44:47 +0000

I watched President Obama’s speech in St. Louis yesterday. It was quite noticeable that he has seemingly dropped his previous effort of trying to cajole the Republican leadership into governing in a bipartisan way. The Republican leadership were clear in showing they’d have none of that and proceeded to earn its deserved moniker of the Party of No.

Obama talked about that during his speech. He reminded us of the Republican leaders participation (or lack thereof) during the seven-hour televised health care summit between himself, the Democrats and Republicans.

For seven hours we only heard the Republicans say, no, start over. Nothing of any constructive nature from the Republican side.

Looks like Obama has given up on trying to enlist any Republican support in working together.

He is getting equally hard on the health insurance industry, who are only interested in corporate profits.

Republicans seem to be only interested in politics and the election this fall. Not much, if any, interest in the condition of the American people.

Be that as it may, it is good to hear President Obama back on track, for us little people.

[Post inspired by The Daily Beast]

Health Insurance Industry push back on attacks

Featheriver — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:36:10 +0000

Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, said insurance industry workers “do not deserve to be vilified for political purposes. … For every dollar spent on health care in America, less than one penny goes toward health plan profits. The focus needs to be on the other 99 cents.” AHIP plans to spend more than $1 million to run television ads on cable stations nationwide beginning in the next few days to push back on the attacks on insurers.

As “President Obama makes his final push to get health care reform through Congress, he is “seizing on a report showing that market concentration for health insurance is so monopolized that insurance companies are willing to raise prices and lose customers in an effort to help their bottom line,” HuffPost’s Sam Stein reported.”

[Source: Huffington Post]

Why there is no single-payer public option

Featheriver — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:53:07 +0000

Amy Goodman on Democracy Now stated “Republican lawmakers remained staunchly opposed to using the federal government to regulate health insurance.” Republicans want the current health care bill dumped in the trash and to start all over.

Goodman interviewed Trudy Lieberman (no relationship with Joe Lieberman that I know of) a contributing editor and blogger to Columbia Journalism Review. Lieberman noted, “as a country, we are still extremely divided….We have a deep cleavage in this country about how much government should do and how much government should not do.” She referred to the issue of how much regulation of insurance companies should government engage in.

Goodman quoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on President Obama: “…a year ago…you (Obama) said ‘The public option is one way to keep the insurance companies honest and to increase competition.’”

Quoting Pelosi further, “the public option, which would save $120 billion, keep the insurance companies honest, and increase competition.” Pelosi continued, referring to Senator’s Enzi, Snowe and Durbin proposing exchanges “because the insurance companies opposed the public option. They couldn’t take the competition.”

So Goodman asked Lieberman “Why did President Obama drop the public option?”

Lieberman didn’t know but speculated that it was because, perhaps, campaign contributors to the Obama campaign, stakeholders such as insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, the business community led by the Chamber of Commerce, didn’t want the public option.

Goodman turned to her other guest, Dr. Margaret Flowers, a Baltimore pediatrician and congressional fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program, who is in favor of a single-payer public option.

Dr. Flowers responded “we’ve been excluded from this discussion….the special interests …have been involved in this process.”

“…the President and Congress are talking about—cost controls, increasing coverage, excluding pre-existing conditions—all of these would be met through a national Medicare-for-All system. But—so we win, you know, on the policy. But there is such a heavy influence from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies that they, I guess, felt threatened by the presence of the single-payer advocates.”

Goodman fortified Dr. Flowers assessment of why the single payer public option has failed. “Just looking at a report from the National Journal by Ashlie Rodriguez, who writes, ‘Health care interests have given $46.6 million in campaign donations since 2005 to [the] 21 lawmakers’ at the bipartisan healthcare summit, including Senator Max Baucus, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and to the summit’s host, President Obama, according to this new report.”

Goodman added, “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that health professionals, political action committees, hospitals and nursing homes, pharmaceutical and health product companies, health services firms, SHMOs and accident insurers have given heavily to all summit attendees.”

Goodman then asked Dr. Flowers, “How dies that affect this discussion…?”

Dr. Flowers’s response was, “…pretty strongly….members of congress need to get reelected, and if they speak out against the interests who are funding their campaigns, they’re not going to get that funding.”

Flowers added,

Because we have this system of multiple private, for-profit—or profit-driven, really—insurance companies—their bottom line is not health; it’s profit—we’re wasting a third of our healthcare dollars, over $400 billion a year at this time.

——————

The foregoing focuses upon the impact of campaign fund money to members of Congress that precludes good legislation for the benefit of ordinary citizens. It is a major problem in government which has to be ended. The only way I know how to do that is to cease voting for members of congress that represent moneyed special interests rather than their constituents.

Nevadans support reconciliation strategy

Featheriver — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:14:17 +0000

Health Care

A majority of Nevadans support using reconciliation to pass health legislation. Poll shows 55% of Nevadans do not object to reconciliation. 64% of Independent voters as well.

Maybe that calm some of the timorousness of some of those Democratic senators so they can go ahead and pass the health bill without so much fear.

Those that don’t vote to pass the bill are risking more. This vote may be a career changer for those who do not vote to pass the health legislation.

[Source: Las Vegas Sun]

Reconciliation to pass healthcare reform?

Featheriver — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:35:18 +0000

Today on Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room on CNN the Cafferty file segment asked “should the Democrats try to ram healthcare reform through with 51 votes using that process called reconciliation?”

Blitzer commented

How do you feel about the prospect of that being used to pass health care reform? A company called Crimson Hexagon tracks online comments about topics. Check this out.

Of more than 14,000 conversation on twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, it finds 39 percent support reconciliation. 30 percent are against it. 17 percent think the Republicans are hypocritical, 14 percent say that Democrats are hypocritical.

Imagine that! Only 39% support reconciliation and 30% are against it. Both the Republicans and Democrats are hypocritical.

I would have thought that the percentage of those that support reconciliation would have been higher. From my vantage point I think reconciliation is the way to go since it appears the only way to get the bill passed and into law. I’m beginning to think a two-party political system sucks. The parties seem to be looking out for themselves, not us people.