In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists’ November 16, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: big pharma, biotechnology industry, congress, genetnech, health, health care, health care reform, health insurance, healthcare, healthcare reform, insurance industry, Lobbyists, pharmaceutical industry, robert pear, roche, roger hollander, washington lobbyists
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WASHINGTON — In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.
Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.
E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.
The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.
Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists.
In an interview, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said: “I regret that the language was the same. I did not know it was.” He said he got his statement from his staff and “did not know where they got the information from.”
Members of Congress submit statements for publication in the Congressional Record all the time, often with a decorous request to “revise and extend my remarks.” It is unusual for so many revisions and extensions to match up word for word. It is even more unusual to find clear evidence that the statements originated with lobbyists.
The e-mail messages and their attached documents indicate that the statements were based on information supplied by Genentech employees to one of its lobbyists, Matthew L. Berzok, a lawyer at Ryan, MacKinnon, Vasapoli & Berzok who is identified as the “author” of the documents. The statements were disseminated by lobbyists at a big law firm, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.
In an e-mail message to fellow lobbyists on Nov. 5, two days before the House vote, Todd M. Weiss, senior managing director of Sonnenschein, said, “We are trying to secure as many House R’s and D’s to offer this/these statements for the record as humanly possible.”
He told the lobbyists to “conduct aggressive outreach to your contacts on the Hill to see if their bosses would offer the attached statements (or an edited version) for the record.”
In recent years, Genentech’s political action committee and lobbyists for Roche and Genentech have made campaign contributions to many House members, including some who filed statements in the Congressional Record. And company employees have been among the hosts at fund-raisers for some of those lawmakers. But Evan L. Morris, head of Genentech’s Washington office, said, “There was no connection between the contributions and the statements.”
Mr. Morris said Republicans and Democrats, concerned about the unemployment rate, were receptive to the company’s arguments about the need to keep research jobs in the United States.
The statements were not intended to change the bill, which was not open for much amendment during the debate. They were meant to show bipartisan support for certain provisions, even though the vote on passage generally followed party lines.
Democrats emphasized the bill’s potential to create jobs in health care, health information technology and clinical research on new drugs.
Republicans opposed the bill, but praised a provision that would give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to approve generic versions of expensive biotechnology drugs, along the lines favored by brand-name companies like Genentech.
Lawmakers from both parties said it was important to conduct research on such “biosimilar” products in the United States. Several took a swipe at aggressive Indian competitors.
Asked about the Congressional statements, a lobbyist close to Genentech said: “This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it.”
In separate statements using language suggested by the lobbyists, Representatives Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri and Joe Wilson of South Carolina, both Republicans, said: “One of the reasons I have long supported the U.S. biotechnology industry is that it is a homegrown success story that has been an engine of job creation in this country. Unfortunately, many of the largest companies that would seek to enter the biosimilar market have made their money by outsourcing their research to foreign countries like India.”
In remarks on the House floor, Representative Phil Hare, Democrat of Illinois, recalled that his family had faced eviction when his father was sick and could not make payments on their home. He said the House bill would save others from such hardship.
In a written addendum in the Congressional Record, Mr. Hare said the bill would also create high-paying jobs. Timothy Schlittner, a spokesman for Mr. Hare, said: “That part of his statement was drafted for us by Roche pharmaceutical company. It is something he agrees with.”
The boilerplate in the Congressional Record included some conversational touches, as if actually delivered on the House floor.
In the standard Democratic statement, Representative Robert A. Brady of Pennsylvania said: “Let me repeat that for some of my friends on the other side of the aisle. This bill will create high-paying, high-quality jobs in health care delivery, technology and research in the United States.”
Mr. Brady’s chief of staff, Stanley V. White, said he had received the draft statement from a lobbyist for Genentech’s parent company, Roche.
“We were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record,” Mr. White said. “I asked him for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There’s not much reason to reinvent the wheel on a Congressional Record entry.”
Some differences were just a matter of style. Representative Yvette D. Clarke, Democrat of New York, said, “I see this bill as an exciting opportunity to create the kind of jobs we so desperately need in this country, while at the same time improving the lives of all Americans.”
Representative Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey, used the same words, but said the bill would improve the lives of “ALL Americans.”
Mr. Payne and Mr. Brady said the bill would “create new opportunities and markets for our brightest technology minds.” Mr. Pascrell said the bill would “create new opportunities and markets for our brightest minds in technology.”
In nearly identical words, three Republicans — Representatives K. Michael Conaway of Texas, Lynn Jenkins of Kansas and Lee Terry of Nebraska — said they had criticized many provisions of the bill, and “rightfully so.”
But, each said, “I do believe the sections relating to the creation of a market for biosimilar products is one area of the bill that strikes the appropriate balance in providing lower cost options.”
Important Message Re: Health Reform Legislation: PROTEST HR 3962, Or Be Stuck With Corporate Medical Insurance Racket For The Rest Of Our Lives November 16, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: congress, health, health care, health care reform, health insurance, health legislation, healthcare reform, insurance industry, medicare, medicare-for-all, public option, roger hollander, single payer
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“Folks, we are dedicating the next couple months of our lives to stopping the phony reform, and forcing Congress to get real about good public policy. The bill that passed the House last week, HR 3962, represents one of the most profound betrayals in American political history. Forget the fact that the Republicans oppose it as well, they would oppose anything coming out of a Congress where they did not have majority control. WE must oppose HR 3962 because it is a transparent sham, a total sellout to the medical insurance industry.”
Who Else Wants To Get SERIOUS About Real Health Care Reform??
We need the help of every one of our participants who has a website (if not please read on because there is an individual action page as well). We have created a simple and small sized (182×228 pixels) web page module, perfect for the side bar of your web page, where people can watch the latest of the “I’m A Democrat, And I’m A Republican” videos. To get this feature for your website just put the following code anywhere on your web page.
If you are on MySpace or Facebook or another site that disallows javascript, you can copy the alternate code from this page.
http://www.peaceteam.net/mfa.htm
We have already shot six of these incredibly professional looking videos, making the point (with wit and humor) that NEITHER the Democrats, NOR the Republicans, are actually interested in real health care reform. The Democrats are forcing consideration of only plans that further empower the medical insurance corporations that are ripping us off now. The Republican are only interested in derelict non-regulation, achieving the same end result by default.
By getting more and more people to watch these videos, we will mobilize people to submit this fax action page, which sends a strongly worded but even tempered petition (which you can read on the page), stating in essence that we the people are demanding real reform and will not be fooled again. And you can add your own personal comments as well. WATCH the video also on this page.
Medicare For All FREE Fax Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1020.php
There will be a new video release in the “I’m A Democrat, I’m A Republican” series once a week, and the web page module will automatically update with the latest video. And we are asking you, our participants to submit the petition yourself ALSO once a week. We need to speak out and keep speaking out, until Congress finally gets the message, to stop fooling around and do what should have been done in the first place, pass economical and efficient Medicare for All.
Folks, we are dedicating the next couple months of our lives to stopping the phony reform, and forcing Congress to get real about good public policy. The bill that passed the House last week, HR 3962, represents one of the most profound betrayals in American political history. Forget the fact that the Republicans oppose it as well, they would oppose anything coming out of a Congress where they did not have majority control. WE must oppose HR 3962 because it is a transparent sham, a total sellout to the medical insurance industry.
You don’t have to believe us. Believe the corporate analysts themselves gloating about the additional windfall profits they are predicting from this fatally corrupt bill, that purports to FORCE all Americans to buy a plan from a lobbyist designed restrictive “market”, where at least 90% of the American people would be excluded from participating in the feeble non-competitive “public” option provided, even if we wanted to. They might as well now call it the “welfare” option, because all it really represents is welfare FOR the insurance companies.
The Republicans condemn the bill because they demagogue that it does too much. The truth is that it does so LITTLE, that by the time the Senate gets through with it we expect there will be nothing left that any progressive could cheer about. The ultimate Benedict Arnold, Joe Lieberman says HR 3962 is dead on arrival. So we might as well throw it in the medical waste bin where it belongs and start from scratch, then let him try to filibuster what the American people REALLY want.
And we are especially ashamed of the Congressional so-called “Progressive” Caucus which, except for Kucinich and Massa, have demonstrated once again how utterly worthless they are as representatives for the people of their districts.
From time to time we will get email from some of you arguing that there is no point in emailing hardcore Republicans, for those of you who live in such districts where that is your current representation. We disagree about that of course. Never should we let the worst members of Congress think that even people in their own districts are just going to roll over and take just keep taking it in silence.
But for crying out loud, at least the liberals ought to be listening to us. And for the presumptive liberals to wave through a bill that as a bottom line makes exploitive and overpriced corporate insurance MANDATORY, under threat of the police power of the IRS, is so outrageous it defies belief. Each and every one of these gutless wonders needs to hear our protests now.
Medicare For All FREE Fax Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1020.php
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Stupak amendment, forbidding a woman to even use her own money to pay for an abortion, because no plan in the new market will be allowed to provide such a service, even if the plan that woman was forced to buy was paid for with 100% of her own money, is so far out into reactionist wowee-wowee land, it is incredulous that any so-called progressive could have voted for final passage with such a provision in there, especially as they had already SWORN not to support a bill with such a weak joke of a public plan.
So now, and only in response to our outrage, some of them are backtracking, SAYING that draconian anti-choice provision needs to come out of the final bill. Have you ever heard such worthless lip service in your life (apart from their lip service of last week, last month, the year before that, etc.)? Where were the voices of these miserable cowards in Congress, trying to pass themselves off as our progressive representatives, when they voted for FINAL passage in the first place? Who can count on them to put up a fight even one time any time in the future, if they could and would not do so last week?
And the ultimate answer remains what it has always been. IF AND WHEN enough of us speak out at ONCE, and declare that we will no longer support their perpetual shinola, then and only then will we get real policy change. We live for the day when we can build such a base to make it so. That day can be today! So please submit the fax action page once a week, encourage everyone you know to do the same, put the video module on all of your websites so we can get hundreds of thousands of views, and like numbers of action page submissions. Then we will have a real movement for real policy change.
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@cxs #p1020
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
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Huge rise in birth defects in Falluja November 15, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: War Crimes, roger hollander, Iraq war, Iraq, Iraq health, war, Iraq occupation, white phosphorus, Iraq invasion, fallujah, iraq atrocities, martin chulov, falluja, iraq birth defects, birth defects, iraq civilians, iraq birth abnormalities, iraq contamination, iraq war crimes, enas irbahim
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Fatima Ahmed, born after the assault in Fallujah, has deformities that include two heads.
Iraqi former battle zone sees abnormal clusters of infant tumours and deformities
Fallujah, an Iraqi city forever marked by the U.S. assault there, is dealing with another claim to infamy—infant deformities running up to 15 times higher than normal and a spike in cases of early-life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials from the fighting. —JCL
- Martin Chulov in Falluja
- guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 November 2009 19.24 GMT
Doctors in Iraq’s war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.
The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months as specialists working in Falluja’s over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.
Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems – are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.
A group of Iraqi and British officials, including the former Iraqi minister for women’s affairs, Dr Nawal Majeed a-Sammarai, and the British doctors David Halpin and Chris Burns-Cox, have petitioned the UN general assembly to ask that an independent committee fully investigate the defects and help clean up toxic materials left over decades of war – including the six years since Saddam Hussein was ousted.
“We are seeing a very significant increase in central nervous system anomalies,” said Falluja general hospital’s director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais. “Before 2003 [the start of the war] I was seeing sporadic numbers of deformities in babies. Now the frequency of deformities has increased dramatically.”
The rise in frequency is stark – from two admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now. “Most are in the head and spinal cord, but there are also many deficiencies in lower limbs,” he said. “There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of less than two years [old] with brain tumours. This is now a focus area of multiple tumours.”
After several years of speculation and anecdotal evidence, a picture of a highly disturbing phenomenon in one of Iraq’s most battered areas has now taken shape. Previously all miscarried babies, including those with birth defects or infants who were not given ongoing care, were not listed as abnormal cases.
The Guardian asked a paediatrician, Samira Abdul Ghani, to keep precise records over a three-week period. Her records reveal that 37 babies with anomalies, many of them neural tube defects, were born during that period at Falluja general hospital alone.
Dr Bassam Allah, the head of the hospital’s children’s ward, this week urged international experts to take soil samples across Falluja and for scientists to mount an investigation into the causes of so many ailments, most of which he said had been “acquired” by mothers before or during pregnancy.
Other health officials are also starting to focus on possible reasons, chief among them potential chemical or radiation poisonings. Abnormal clusters of infant tumours have also been repeatedly cited in Basra and Najaf – areas that have in the past also been intense battle zones where modern munitions have been heavily used.
Falluja’s frontline doctors are reluctant to draw a direct link with the fighting. They instead cite multiple factors that could be contributors.
“These include air pollution, radiation, chemicals, drug use during pregnancy, malnutrition, or the psychological status of the mother,” said Dr Qais. “We simply don’t have the answers yet.”
The anomalies are evident all through Falluja’s newly opened general hospital and in centres for disabled people across the city. On 2 November alone, there were four cases of neuro-tube defects in the neo-natal ward and several more were in the intensive care ward and an outpatient clinic.
Falluja was the scene of the only two setpiece battles that followed the US-led invasion. Twice in 2004, US marines and infantry units were engaged in heavy fighting with Sunni militia groups who had aligned with former Ba’athists and Iraqi army elements.
The first battle was fought to find those responsible for the deaths of four Blackwater private security contractors working for the US. The city was bombarded heavily by American artillery and fighter jets. Controversial weaponry was used, including white phosphorus, which the US government admitted deploying.
Statistics on infant tumours are not considered as reliable as new data about nervous system anomalies, which are usually evident immediately after birth. Dr Abdul Wahid Salah, a neurosurgeon, said: “With neuro-tube defects, their heads are often larger than normal, they can have deficiencies in hearts and eyes and their lower limbs are often listless. There has been no orderly registration here in the period after the war and we have suffered from that. But [in relation to the rise in tumours] I can say with certainty that we have noticed a sharp rise in malignancy of the blood and this is not a congenital anomaly – it is an acquired disease.”
Despite fully funding the construction of the new hospital, a well-equipped facility that opened in August, Iraq’s health ministry remains largely disfunctional and unable to co-ordinate a response to the city’s pressing needs.
The government’s lack of capacity has led Falluja officials, who have historically been wary of foreign intervention, to ask for help from the international community. “Even in the scientific field, there has been a reluctance to reach out to the exterior countries,” said Dr Salah. “But we have passed that point now. I am doing multiple surgeries every day. I have one assistant and I am obliged to do everything myself.”
Additional reporting: Enas Ibrahim.
(Roger’s Note: We read about Falluja [Fallujah] when it was big news, we read about the US military destroying a city and terrorizing its residents in order to bring them Democracy. Then we forgot about Falluja. Now it comes back to haunt, not to haunt us but rather the ungrateful Iraqi residents of Falluja, sort of a gift that keeps on giving. The amount of human suffering and damage caused by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is probably beyond our comprehension, we think about it when it is brought to attention in articles like that I have posted above. My point: make no mistake about it, the Iraq holocuast was not a “mistake” or a political miscalculation; it is a criminal act of the highest order, and if there were justice the entire Bush neo-Fascist cabal would be tried and convicted.)
Time for Men to Make a Sacrifice November 14, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Religion, Women.Tags: roger hollander, abortion, religious bigotry, health care, health, healthcare, anti-choice, reproductive choice, reproductive health, reproductive rights, catholic church, feminism, patriarchy, anti-abortion, catholic bishops, healthcare reform, health care reform, choice, blue dog, stupak, katha pollitt, stupak-pitts, tax exempt, right wing christian, christian supremacist
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Women are being asked to shut up and accept the ban on abortion funding in the US healthcare reform bill. We won’t
by Katha Pollitt
You know what I don’t want to hear right now about the Stupak-Pitts amendment banning abortion coverage from federally subsidised health insurance policies? That it’s the price of reform, and pro-choice women should shut up and take one for the team.
“If you want to rebuild the American welfare state,” Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast, “there is no alternative” than for Democrats to abandon “cultural” issues like gender and racial equality. Hey, Peter, Representative Stupak and your 64 Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other anti-choice “progressive” Christians, men: Why don’t you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?
For example, budget hawks in Congress say they’ll vote against the bill because it’s too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won’t wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.
Barack Obama, too, worries about the deficit. Maybe you could help him out by sacrificing your denomination’s tax exemption. The Catholic church would be a good place to start, and it wouldn’t even be unfair, since the blatant politicking of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on abortion violates the spirit of the ban on electoral meddling by tax-exempt religious institutions.
Why should anti-choicers be the only people who get to refuse to let their taxes support something they dislike? You don’t want your tax dollars to pay, even in the most notional way, for women’s abortion care, a legal medical procedure that one in three American women will have in her lifetime? I don’t want to pay for your misogynist fairy tales and sour-old-man hierarchies.
Women Democrats have taken an awful lot of hits for the team lately. Many of us didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary because the goal of electing a woman seemed less important than the goal of electing the best possible president. Only a self-hater or a featherhead didn’t feel some pain about that. And although women are hardly alone in this, we’ve seen some pretty big hopes set aside in the first year of the Obama administration.
The Paycheque Fairness Act, which would expand women’s protections against sexism in the workplace, is on the back burner. Meanwhile, the Office of Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships is not only alive and well. It’s newly staffed with anti-choicers like Alexia Kelley of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which, as Frances Kissling notes in Salon, has compared abortion to torture.
I know what you’re thinking: conservative Democrats like Stupak took Republican districts to win us both houses of Congress. Thanks a lot, Howard Dean, whose bright idea it was to recruit them. But those majorities would not be there, and Obama would not be in the White House, if not for pro-choice women and men – their votes, talent, money, organisational capacity and shoe leather.
We knocked ourselves out, and it wasn’t so that religious reactionaries like Stupak – who, as Jeff Sharlet writes in Salon, is a member of the Family, the secretive rightwing Christian-supremacist congressional coven – would control both parties. Elections have consequences, you say? Exactly: Obama, the pro-choice, pro-woman candidate, won. Stupak didn’t put him in the White House, and neither did the Catholic bishops or the white anti-feminist welfare staters of Beinart’s imagination.
We did. And we deserve better from Obama than sound bites like “this is a healthcare bill, not an abortion bill“. Abortion is healthcare. That’s the whole point.
What makes the Stupak fiasco especially pathetic is the fumbling response from pro-choicers. Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill would not be in the Senate today were it not for pro-choice and feminist supporters like Emily’s List. How does she thank us? By telling Joe Scarborough that Stupak isn’t so bad, that it won’t affect “the majority of America” – just low-income women – and that it’s “an example of having to govern with moderates.”
So people who’ll tip healthcare reform into the trash unless it blocks abortion access are the moderates now! (McCaskill took it back later, but the damage was done.) If I ever give that woman another dime, shoot me.
The big pro-choice and feminist organisations are up in arms – Now and Planned Parenthood want to see healthcare reform voted down if Stupak is retained – but writing in the Daily Beast, Dana Goldstein nicely captures the bewilderment of leaders caught by surprise. “It’s the feeling that you’ve been rolled,” said Eleanor Smeal, of Feminist Majority. Or haven’t been paying attention.
Smeal was onto something, though, when she told Goldstein: “Here we are playing nice guy again, we didn’t want to make a fuss.” Consciously or unconsciously, by not organising in advance to insist on coverage of abortion, pro-choicers set themselves up to be out-manoeuvred. In fact, as Sharon Lerner reported on TheNation.com, Democrats stood by while anti-choicers kept contraception out of the reform bill’s list of basic benefits all insurers must cover. So much for the “common ground” approach where we all agree that birth control is the way to lower the abortion rate.
Enough already. Pro-choicers have been taking one for the team since 1976, when Congress passed the Hyde amendment, which Jimmy Carter would later defend with the immortal comment: “There are many things in life that are not fair.” Time for the theocrats and male chauvinists to give something up for the greater good – to say nothing of the 20 pro-choicers, all men, who supported Stupak out of sheer careerism.
After all, if it weren’t for pro-choicers, there wouldn’t be much of a team for them to play on.
The Nighmare Of Coat Hangers Revisited November 13, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Religion, Women.Tags: RNC, roger hollander, abortion, health care, healthcare, pelosi, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, abortion rights, reproductive rights, catholic church, catholic bishops, blue dogs, women health, health care industry, lucinda marshall, stupak, stupak amendment, catholic hospitals
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by Lucinda Marshall
Wouldn’t you know it- while we silly feminists have been agonizing about the impact of the Stupak Amendment after Nancy and the Cardinals did the C Street Shuffle at the Saturday Night Congressional Jerk I mean Dance Off it turns out that if we really want to keep our reproductive rights, all we need to do is get a job at the RNC or the anti-choice group Focus on the Family cuz their health plans cover, wait for it, ABORTION. Really.
I don’t even know why this surprises me. The entire health care debate without end has been one long-winded exercise in stupid. From the get go the sad thing is that what passes as discourse has suffered from the same malady as the abortion issue-a deeply flawed frame. In the case of abortion, the minute the word ‘choice’ and the phrase ‘pro-life’ became the descriptors, the discussion we should have been having about women’s reproductive rights was gone.
In the case of health care we have had all manner of false flag buzzwords-public option, triggers, yada yada everything centered around the cost of premiums totally losing sight of the fact that health care is a human right, not a commodity that needs to be delivered in a way that keeps pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies afloat so they will keep funding our elected representatives. Our health care system is ill, it is a disgrace and it is an affront to human decency. Ditto our Congress who, with very few exceptions have apparently had frontal lobotomies and seem to be suffering from some painful form of spinal disintegration. What part of just fix it could possibly not be clear? The answer of course is apparently the whole damned thing and until we insist that Congress get their little patooties (I leave it to you to decide what part of the anatomy you feel that should describe) pointed in the right direction and back on topic, our health care is going to remain in critical condition.
One of the most galling aspects of the Stupak Amendment is that after months of dithering, pontificating, waffling and other forms of ass covering that pass for political debate these days, Stupak happened in the 11th hour before a Saturday vote leaving reproductive justice advocates doing a lot of WTF-ing. I am still deeply shocked that the Democratic leadership that has been so unable to use its majority position to act decisively could all of a sudden simply decide that women’s reproductive rights could just cavalierly be thrown to the Blue Dogs for the sake of the last 3 votes. It is just breathtaking even though it has come to light in recent months that our current system has been shafting women on many health care fronts for quite some time-higher premiums, maternity care, etc. As I noted last week, even high risk state insurance pools have been discrimination against women.
But what is the deal with Pelosi making a last minute concession of this magnitude to the Catholic Church? Wendy Norris sheds some light on why this isn’t just a matter of the Catholic Church playing the abortion card on a moral basis, it is also has a huge stake in the financial ramifications of the health care legislation,
The justifiable anger at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for lobbying on the Stupak-Pitts amendment overshadows what is possibly the bigger motive for the Vatican: the billions of dollars at stake for the church’s hospitals.
The scale of the church’s involvement in the rapidly growing $2.5 trillion dollar American health care industry is staggering.
Abortion may be safe, it may be legal. But if it isn’t affordable, it is de facto not available and that is detrimental to women’s health and an unacceptable compromise. For additional commentary on this issue, please also read,
- Joanne Bamberger
- Gloria Feldt
- Katha Pollitt
- Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman
- and ongoing coverage on RH Reality Check
Lucinda Marshall is the Founder and Director of the Feminist Peace Network, http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org. She is the author of the FPN blog as well as Reclaiming Medusa, http://www.lucindamarshall.com.
Kucinich: Why Is It We Have Finite Resources for Health Care but Unlimited Money for War? November 13, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Economic Crisis, Health, Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: Afghanistan War, roger hollander, Iraq war, Wall Street, Dennis Kucinich, job loss, health care, main street, healthcare, healthcare reform, health care reform, war funding, insurance compaines, home loss, mortgage default
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WASHINGTON – November 6 – Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement:
“Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for war?
“The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer’s money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive.
“People are losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their investments, their retirement security; yet there is unlimited money for war, Wall Street and insurance companies, but very little money for jobs on Main Street.
“Unlimited money to blow up things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relatively little money to build things in the US.
“The Administration may soon bring to Congress a request for an additional $50 billion for war. I can tell you that a Democratic version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is no more acceptable than a Republican version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Trillions for war and Wall Street, billions for insurance companies… When we were promised change, we weren’t thinking that we give a dollar and get back two cents.”
Is the House Health Care Bill Better than Nothing? November 9, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: roger hollander, health insurance, health care, single payer, health, kucinich, healthcare, medicare, insurance industry, Medicaid, private health insurance, healthcare reform, health care reform, conyers, marcia angell, health costs, public option
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Well, the House health reform bill — known to Republicans as the Government Takeover — finally passed after one of Congress’s longer, less enlightening debates. Two stalwarts of the single-payer movement split their votes; John Conyers voted for it; Dennis Kucinich against. Kucinich was right.
Conservative rhetoric notwithstanding, the House bill is not a “government takeover.” I wish it were. Instead, it enshrines and subsidizes the “takeover” by the investor-owned insurance industry that occurred after the failure of the Clinton reform effort in 1994. To be sure, the bill has a few good provisions (expansion of Medicaid, for example), but they are marginal. It also provides for some regulation of the industry (no denial of coverage because of pre-existing conditions, for example), but since it doesn’t regulate premiums, the industry can respond to any regulation that threatens its profits by simply raising its rates. The bill also does very little to curb the perverse incentives that lead doctors to over-treat the well-insured. And quite apart from its content, the bill is so complicated and convoluted that it would take a staggering apparatus to administer it and try to enforce its regulations.
What does the insurance industry get out of it? Tens of millions of new customers, courtesy of the mandate and taxpayer subsidies. And not just any kind of customer, but the youngest, healthiest customers — those least likely to use their insurance. The bill permits insurers to charge twice as much for older people as for younger ones. So older under-65’s will be more likely to go without insurance, even if they have to pay fines. That’s OK with the industry, since these would be among their sickest customers. (Shouldn’t age be considered a pre-existing condition?)
Insurers also won’t have to cover those younger people most likely to get sick, because they will tend to use the public option (which is not an “option” at all, but a program projected to cover only 6 million uninsured Americans). So instead of the public option providing competition for the insurance industry, as originally envisioned, it’s been turned into a dumping ground for a small number of people whom private insurers would rather not have to cover anyway.
If a similar bill emerges from the Senate and the reconciliation process, and is ultimately passed, what will happen?
First, health costs will continue to skyrocket, even faster than they are now, as taxpayer dollars are pumped into the private sector. The response of payers — government and employers — will be to shrink benefits and increase deductibles and co-payments. Yes, more people will have insurance, but it will cover less and less, and be more expensive to use.
But, you say, the Congressional Budget Office has said the House bill will be a little better than budget-neutral over ten years. That may be, although the assumptions are arguable. Note, though, that the CBO is not concerned with total health costs, only with costs to the government. And it is particularly concerned with Medicare, the biggest contributor to federal deficits. The House bill would take money out of Medicare, and divert it to the private sector and, to some extent, to Medicaid. The remaining costs of the legislation would be paid for by taxes on the wealthy. But although the bill might pay for itself, it does nothing to solve the problem of runaway inflation in the system as a whole. It’s a shell game in which money is moved from one part of our fragmented system to another.
Here is my program for real reform:
Recommendation #1: Drop the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55. This should be an expansion of traditional Medicare, not a new program. Gradually, over several years, drop the age decade by decade, until everyone is covered by Medicare. Costs: Obviously, this would increase Medicare costs, but it would help decrease costs to the health system as a whole, because Medicare is so much more efficient (overhead of about 3% vs. 20% for private insurance). And it’s a better program, because it ensures that everyone has access to a uniform package of benefits.
Recommendation #2: Increase Medicare fees for primary care doctors and reduce them for procedure-oriented specialists. Specialists such as cardiologists and gastroenterologists are now excessively rewarded for doing tests and procedures, many of which, in the opinion of experts, are not medically indicated. Not surprisingly, we have too many specialists, and they perform too many tests and procedures. Costs: This would greatly reduce costs to Medicare, and the reform would almost certainly be adopted throughout the wider health system.
Recommendation #3: Medicare should monitor doctors’ practice patterns for evidence of excess, and gradually reduce fees of doctors who habitually order significantly more tests and procedures than the average for the specialty. Costs: Again, this would greatly reduce costs, and probably be widely adopted.
Recommendation #4: Provide generous subsidies to medical students entering primary care, with higher subsidies for those who practice in underserved areas of the country for at least two years. Costs: This initial, rather modest investment in ending our shortage of primary care doctors would have long-term benefits, in terms of both costs and quality of care.
Recommendation #5: Repeal the provision of the Medicare drug benefit that prohibits Medicare from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices. (The House bill calls for this.) That prohibition has been a bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry. For negotiations to be meaningful, there must be a list (formulary) of drugs deemed cost-effective. This is how the Veterans Affairs System obtains some of the lowest drug prices of any insurer in the country. Costs: If Medicare paid the same prices as the Veterans Affairs System, its expenditures on brand-name drugs would be a small fraction of what they are now.
Is the House bill better than nothing? I don’t think so. It simply throws more money into a dysfunctional and unsustainable system, with only a few improvements at the edges, and it augments the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry. The danger is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we’ve tried health reform and it didn’t work. But the real problem will be that we didn’t really try it. I would rather see us do nothing now, and have a better chance of trying again later and then doing it right.
Marcia Angell, M. D., is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine on June 30, 2000.
Why I Voted NO November 8, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: co-pay, Dennis Kucinich, health, health care, health care reform, health costs, health insurance, healthcare reform, insurance companies, insurance industry, max baucus, medicare, premiums, privatization, public option, roger hollander, single payer
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We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.
Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.
But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies – a bailout under a blue cross.
By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal. The Center for American Progress’ blog, Think Progress, states, ’since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.’ Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that ‘money will start flowing in again’ to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation. Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy.
During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The ‘robust public option’ which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.
Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks’ hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy – in which most Americans live – the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street.
This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America’s manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care. America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatized health care system. As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care.
Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America’s businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals.
Get Ready for the Obama/GOP Alliance November 25, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Health, Iraq and Afghanistan, Right Wing.Tags: Afghanistan War, Afghanistan, roger hollander, democrats, NAFTA, Obama White House, Obama presidency, republicans, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Clinton, health care, congress, newt gingrich, healthcare, gop, afghanistan troops, healthcare reform, health care reform, glass-steagall, public option, jeff cohen, clinton presidency, dick morris, telecom act
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With Obama pushing a huge troop escalation in Afghanistan, history may well repeat itself with a vengeance. And it’s not just the apt comparison to LBJ, who destroyed his presidency on the battlefields of Vietnam with an escalation that delivered power to Nixon and the GOP.
There’s another frightening parallel: Obama seems to be following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, who accomplished perhaps his single biggest legislative “triumph” – NAFTA – thanks to an alliance with Republicans that overcame strong Democratic and grassroots opposition.
It was 16 years ago this month when Clinton assembled his coalition with the GOP to bulldoze public skepticism about the trade treaty and overpower a stop-NAFTA movement led by unions, environmentalists and consumer rights groups. How did Clinton win his majority in Congress? With the votes of almost 80 percent of GOP senators and nearly 70 percent of House Republicans. Democrats in the House voted against NAFTA by more than 3 to 2, with fierce opponents including the Democratic majority leader and majority whip.
To get a majority today in Congress on Afghanistan, the Obama White House is apparently bent on a strategy replicating the tragic farce that Clinton pulled off: Ignore the informed doubts of your own party while making common cause with extremist Republicans who never accepted your presidency in the first place.
“Deather” conspiracists are not new to the Grand Old Party. Clinton engendered a similar loathing on the right despite his centrist, corporate-friendly policies. When conservative Republican leaders like Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey delivered to Clinton (and corporate elites) the NAFTA victory, it didn’t slow down rightwing operatives who circulated wacky videos accusing Clinton death squads of murdering reporters and others.
For those who elected Obama, it’s important to remember the downward spiral that was accelerated by Clinton’s GOP alliance to pass NAFTA. It should set off alarm bells for us today on Afghanistan.
NAFTA was quickly followed by the debacle of Clinton healthcare “reform” largely drafted by giant insurance companies, which was followed by a stunning election defeat for Congressional Democrats in November 1994, as progressive and labor activists were lethargic while rightwing activists in overdrive put Gingrich into the Speaker’s chair.
A year later, advised by his chief political strategist Dick Morris (yes, the Obama-basher now at Fox), Clinton declared: “The era of big government is over.” In the coming years, Clinton proved that the era of big business was far from over – working with Republican leaders to grant corporate welfare to media conglomerates (1996 Telecom Act) and investment banks (1999 abolition of the Glass-Steagall Act).
Today, it’s crucial to ask where Obama is heading. From the stimulus to healthcare, he’s shown a Clinton-like willingness to roll over progressives in Congress on his way to corrupt legislation and frantic efforts to compromise for the votes of corporate Democrats or “moderate” Republicans. Meanwhile, the incredible shrinking “public option” has become a sick joke.
As he glides from retreats on civil liberties to health reform that appeases corporate interests to his Bush-like pledge this week to “finish the job” in Afghanistan, an Obama reliance on Congressional Republicans to fund his troop escalation could be the final straw in disorienting and demobilizing the progressive activists who elected him a year ago.
Throughout the centuries, no foreign power has been able to “finish the job” in Afghanistan, but President Obama thinks he’s a tough enough Commander-in-Chief to do it. Too bad he hasn’t demonstrated such toughness in the face of obstructionist Republicans and corporate lobbyists. For them, it’s been more like “compromiser-in-chief.”
When you start in the center (on, say, healthcare or Afghanistan) and readily move rightward several steps to appease rightwing politicians or lobbyists or Generals, by definition you are governing as a conservative.
It’s been a gradual descent from the elation and hope for real change many Americans felt on election night, November 2008. For some of us who’d scrutinized the Clinton White House in the early 1990s, the buzz was killed days after Obama’s election when he chose his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a top Clinton strategist and architect of the alliance that pushed NAFTA through Congress.
If Obama stands tough on more troops to Afghanistan (as Clinton fought ferociously for NAFTA), only an unprecedented mobilization of progressives – including many who worked tirelessly to elect Obama – will be able to stop him. Trust me: The Republicans who yell and scream about Obama budget deficits when they’re obstructing public healthcare will become deficit doves in spending the estimated $1 million per year per new soldier (not to mention private contractors) headed off to Asia.
The only good news I can see: Maybe it will take a White House/GOP alliance over Afghanistan to wake up the base of liberal groups (like MoveOn) to take a closer and more critical look at President Obama’s policies.
Jeff Cohen is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.