I don't think enough can be said about the sheer boneheadedness, arrogance, and, yes, elitism of this statement from McCain advisor, John Goodman.
But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort.
What Mr. Goodman (and every other person who decries universal health care as socialized or government-sponsored medicine that the U.S. cannot afford) fails to recognize is that we already have government sponsored "health care" in the form of Emergency Rooms across the country. The problem is that this government sponsored health care happening in the most expensive, least effective way possible.
A proposal for guaranteed, affordable health care for all Americans building on Medicare and employment-based insurance by Jacob S. Hacker
The latest AFL-CIO newsletter is pushing this agenda in the health care forum. It's actually very similar in concept to Romney's plan, which was implemented in Massachusetts a few years back with the blessings of Ted Kennedy. Under Romney's plan, people are required to produce 'proof of insurance' within a mandated time frame, or be subject to increasing tax penalties. The Mass. plan is capped at $200/ per month for individual coverage.
It's also very similar to Hillary's health care plan, which includes mandated coverage as well. Obama's plan follows the same line, but without forcing anyone to purchase the coverage.
Basically, the idea is to keep status quo for people who have good coverage, and to keep the Insurance Lobby happy and unopposed, while bringing in a lower-cost option for the currently uninsured. It hits everyone a little bit. Small businesses, who may not offer any coverage at all, will be forced to contribute about 6% payroll tax to the'America' plan. Large businesses, who currently get away without contributing anything as long as they classify an employee as 'part time', will also have to contribute based on a percentage of those employees' earnings. To my mind, that's a good move. The main reason people are now working two and three jobs is because of large corporate employers who decided that 2 people working 20 hours a week is much cheaper than one person working 40. A plan like this would 'disincentivize' that little ploy.
While it seems a good compromise in a lot of respects, I also find it a little scary, especially the 'mandated coverage' aspect and its enforcement proposals.
To my mind, it's all part and parcel of the 'service economy'. The person (like a doctor, a nurse, or a chemist) who has actual knowledge, and a marketable skill, gets eaten alive by the eight middlemen who are basically making a living by marketing his skill, and adding on a profit for themselves. He slips lower and lower down the food chain, as the money boys reduce him to utter dependence on their 'system', which system the Federal Government is bravely tring to 'buck' by forcing the entire population to pay them ransom for health care...sigh..
It's like allowing the pilot fish to steer the shark.
Susie posted a wonderful thing that David wrote. Go read it at one of those links.
Are we such a pitiful tool for change? We're waiting for leaders. We need to be the leaders or at least to be dragging the leaders, kicking and screaming, to the kind of change America needs.
Health Care and its related industries are all over the Fortune 500. Folks are making a fortune controlling who lives and who dies in America. PFIZER is #6, and United Health Group is #21, with revenues over 71 billion a year now. It's Social Darwinism at its finest. And what's wrong with that?, you may well ask. This is a capitalist country after all, not a socialist one. Right?
That's right, Jack. And don't you forget it. Problem is, when it comes to a few bottom-line survival issues like pensions and housing, we've decided in the past that it's better to help people eke out an existence, rather than have starving, diseased beggars cluttering up the streets like they do in Calcutta, or have people doing home amputations on their kids to improve begging revenues like they do in Mexico.
Henry Ford was famous for saying, "If my workers can't buy my cars, what's the point?", but that statement dated to a time when a car was both made and sold in America.
My question is this: in a Global economy, will the fate of individual Americans have even that much impact on Corporate decision-making? I don't think it will. I think that if we want to keep our society decent and safe we must do it ourselves. The more the corporations become based in the Third World, the less they will care about what goes on here. It's up to us, the American People, to bring about necessary, humane changes to our social structures, and not rely on the all-poweful Market Forces to do it.
I tink we will do it because we want a decent country. I think we will do it when we get sick of seeing companies like CIGNA basically give the thumbs-down to someone's daughter simply because it doesn't mesh well with their bottom line. I think we will do it because we're tired of having doctors who get their Continuing Medical Education from the Drug Companies, and are heavily invested in rings of Procedure clinics that tout one company's 'latest fad marvel' over another's. I think we're tired of having half the FDA on Pfizer's or Monsanto's (or equivalent's) payroll.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. When have you last seen a Corporation provide that? Instead, they try to convince you that Happiness is the latest widget, that Life is the perogative of Those Who Can Pay, and that Liberty ain't all it's cracked up to be if you aren't driving the latest model and eating at the latest fashionable restaurant.
Kucinich links economic, immigration problems to trade issues
PORTLAND, OR --Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich told audiences in California and Oregon yesterday that the United States would not be able to resolve its economic and immigration issues until it resolves its trade policies, and he renewed his promise that his first act in office will be to cancel the United States’ participation in NAFTA and the WTO...
He noted that NAFTA and the WTO were sold to the American people as a way to provide better wages and economy. But, as he and other critics had predicted, the pacts ended up destroying high-paying manufacturing jobs in the United States and seriously depressing the economy of Mexico, forcing millions of Mexicans to come to America in search of work. Once here, Kucinich said, the immigrant workers were exploited and often forced to work for low pay and few, if any, benefits, driving down the wages of U.S. workers...
The six-term Ohio Congressman also continued his call for true single-payer, not-for-profit universal health care, an issue that separates him from the other Democratic candidates who favor subsidies and mandates that would keep the for-profit insurance companies involved in health care.
Kucinich is a co-author and co-sponsor of HR 676, a bill to expand Medicare-like coverage to all residents of the United States. Although the bill has 84 co-sponsors, none of the other Democratic candidates have signed on. In fact, Kucinich said, current and former Democratic Presidential candidates have said “they don’t want to take on the insurance industry.”
“Somebody's running for President of the United States, and they're saying they can't take on the insurance companies? If you can't take on the insurance companies, who else can't you take on?,” Kucinich asked...
The way for the Democratic Party to win elections, he said, is to get out of Iraq quickly -- not in 2013, as other Democrats suggest -- and to give Americans “real health care,” not just more inadequate health insurance. But, he noted that the Democratic Party leaders and other Democratic Presidential candidates are not moving in that direction.
Joseph Paduda is principal of Health Strategy Associates, a national consulting firm specializing in managed care for workers compensation, group health and auto, and health care cost containment. They serve insurers, employers, and health care providers. He did a small series of blogs on Universal Health Care that I think is worth reading; here's ''my favorite sentence" and a link for each blog.
"While Americans with health insurance are generally as healthy as those in other industrialized countries, those without are most definitely not. In fact, they are so unhealthy that they drag down the national health status to a level equal to Costa Rica's."
4.-6. UC will give the government too much power. UC is a devastating blow to personal liberty. A mandate is not necessary as the free market will solve the problem.
"Perhaps UC critics are concerned that government would be in a position to determine what should and should not be paid for. But that's the situation today."
"And customer satisfaction is highertoo - "65% of French citizens express satisfaction with their system, compared with 40% of U.S. residents"
7.& 8. If you give more peoplehealth insurance, they'll use it, which will cause costs to increase. (the moral hazard argument). It will drive up costs, which will inevitably lead to forced rationing.
Malcom Gladwell in an article in The New Yorker. "The moral-hazard argument makes sense, however, only if we consume health care in the same way that we consume other consumer goods, and to economists like Nyman this assumption is plainly absurd. We go to the doctor grudgingly, only because we’re sick.
9. It's just a replacement for a failed Medicaid/Medicare system that should be covering those folks without employer-based insurance. Once we fix the 'M' programs we'll be fine.
"Medicaid covers people at or near the poverty line - 38 million people all told in 2005 were covered by the program throughout the year. The vast majority of the uninsured non-elderly are employed with incomes that place them well above that line."
"If the definition of 'success' is lower costs and better outcomes for the entire population, the stats certainly indicate that the 'socialist' model works better than ours."
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