Baucus’ Raucous Caucus May 14, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: ama, amy goodman, Democracy Now, denis moynihan, free speech movement, health, health care, health care reform, health insurance lobby, health net.ahip, healthcare, healthcare reform, hosptial association, insurance industry, kaiser, mario savio, max baucus, merc, national health insurance, pharma, pharmaceutical industry, phrma, private health insurance, roger hollander, russ feingold, single payer
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Barack Obama appeared this week with health-industry bigwigs, proclaiming light at the end of the health-care tunnel. Among those gathered were executives from HMO giants Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Health Net Inc., and the health-insurance lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans; from the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association; from medical-device companies; and from the pharmaceutical industry, including the president and CEO of Merck and former Rep. Billy Tauzin, now president and CEO of PhRMA, the massive industry lobbying group. They have pledged to voluntarily shave some $2 trillion off of U.S. health-care costs over 10 years. But these groups, which are heavily invested in the U.S. health-care status quo, have little incentive to actually make good on their promises.
This is beginning to look like a replay of the failed 1993 health-care reform efforts led by then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Back then, the business interests took a hard line and waged a PR campaign, headlined by a fictitious middle-class couple, Harry and Louise, who feared a government-run health-care bureaucracy.
Still absent from the debate are advocates for single-payer, often referred to as the “Canadian-style” health care. Single-payer health care is not “socialized medicine.” According to Physicians for a National Health Program, single-payer means “the government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector.”
A February CBS News poll found that 59 percent in the U.S. say the government should provide national health insurance.
Single-payer advocates have been protesting in Senate Finance Committee hearings, chaired by Democratic Montana Sen. Max Baucus. Last week, at a committee hearing with 15 industry speakers, not one represented the single-payer perspective. A group of single-payer advocates, including doctors and lawyers, filled the hearing room and, one by one, interrupted the proceedings.
Protester Adam Schneider yelled: “We need to have single-payer at the table. I have friends who have died, who don’t have health care, whose health care did not withstand their personal health emergencies. … Single-payer now!”
Baucus gaveled for order, guffawing, “We need more police.” The single-payer movement has taken his words as a rallying cry. At a hearing Tuesday, five more were arrested. They call themselves the “Baucus 13.”
One of the Baucus 13, Kevin Zeese, recently summarized Baucus’ career campaign contributions:
“From the insurance industry: $1,170,313;
health professionals: $1,016,276;
pharmaceuticals/health-products industry: $734,605;
hospitals/nursing homes: $541,891;
health services/HMOs: $439,700.”
That’s almost $4 million from the very industries that have the most to gain or lose from health-care reform.
Another of the Baucus 13, Russell Mokhiber, co-founder of SinglePayerAction.org, has been charged with “disruption of Congress.”
He was quick to respond: “I charge Baucus with disrupting Congress. It once was a democratic institution; now it’s corrupt, because of people like him. He takes money from the industry and does their bidding. He won’t even diffuse the situation by seating a single-payer advocate at the table.”
As I traveled through Montana recently, from Missoula to Helena to Bozeman, health-care activists kept referring to Baucus as the “money man.” Montana state Sen. Christine Kaufmann sponsored an amendment to the Montana Constitution, granting everyone in Montana “the right to quality health care regardless of ability to pay,” or health care as a human right. It died in committee.
Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, a single-payer advocate, said his position will not likely prevail in Washington: “I don’t think there’s any possibility that that will come out of this Congress.” That’s if things remain business as usual.
Mario Savio led the Free Speech Movement on the UC Berkeley campus. In 1964, he said: “There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
“Unless you’re free,” the Baucus 13 might add, “to speak.” The current official debate has locked single-payer options out of the discussion, but also escalated the movement-from Healthcare-NOW! to Single Payer Action-to shut down the orderly functioning of the debate, until single-payer gets a seat at the table.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Doctors, Single Payer Activists Arrested May 5, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Media.Tags: ahip, american health insurance, c-span, donna smith, health, health arrests, health care, health care reform, health insurance, health insurance lobby, healthcare, healthcare reform, insurance industry, karen ignagni, margaret flowers, max baucus, Media, national health plan, private health insurance, roger hollander, senate finance committee, single payer
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Published on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
It made me physically ill to see Maryland pediatrician Margaret Flowers cuffed like a criminal and pushed out the door as the Senators waited to begin their staged roundtable discussion. It made me want to scream. It made me proud of them for being bold but ashamed that not one Senator spoke up for their own citizen-protestors and asked that they at least be allowed to speak. But the insistence that the citizens rising in protest be arrested continued from the chair with each incident.
Simply asking to have single payer be included and fully vetted is a crime. Profiting as the for-profit health insurance companies do at the expense of 22,000 American lives every year, however, gets you a run of the table in this healthcare reform discussion. Just ask the Senators who are drafting what this nation’s health system will look like – and watch their behavior today – if you want evidence of how your voice will be heard in the process.
The protestors were stoic and respectful but direct. One by one they stood. One by one they asked why single payer reform was not “at the table” of 15 witnesses Senator Max Baucus and his finance Committee gathered to map out what sort of coverage Americans might expect in the Senate reform bill now being crafted.
Sen. Baucus eventually spoke and indicated that he was respectful of those who believe in single payer – as he acknowledged many of his constituents in Montana do – but he made no attempt to explain why no single payer voice has been included in any Senate discussion to date. He urged any others in the audience who might have any designs on speaking up like the protestors did to not do so, and then he moved on to his roundtable discussion.
The press seated comfortably at the press table first looked amused and then puzzled by the procession of protest in the chamber. The C-SPAN cameras fixed on both the Committee’s table at the front of the room and the witness table directly across from them could have easily picked up the protests but the network chose to keep their cameras fixed only on Chairman Baucus – though the protestors’ words could be heard in the audience. Only two reporters of the 20 or so assembled were curious enough or industrious enough to rise and exit the room to see the arrests being carried out in the hallway.
While neither the Finance Committee or the press allowed their proceedings to be disrupted for very long, the air in the room and the atmosphere had changed — the giddy and gleeful assembly of industry lobbyists who had been chattering in rapt anticipation of the coming of their carefully chosen witnesses could not deny that some brave and patriotic fellow citizens had just been hauled out for arrest for nothing more than demanding that a point of view held by a majority of patients, nurses, physicians and other healthcare providers be included in the national discussion.
While this Congress may pass something very different than single payer reform, it will not do so without hearing the cries of the people left so openly exposed to personal health and financial ruin by the corrupt system that celebrates only profit. The citizens who stood for the thousands and thousands of dead today will not let this democracy give itself completely over to the big money interests in healthcare. Not without a fight. Not on their lives or yours or mine.
Standing Against Single Payer April 29, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: billy tauzin, democratic party, families usa, health, health care, health care consumers, health care reform, health insurance, health insurance industry, health reform, healthcare, healthcare reform, insurance industry, karen igagni, max baucus, medicare, pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical manufacturers, private health insurance, private insurance, republican paty, roger hollander, ron pollack, russell mokhiber, single payer, taiwan single payer
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Published on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
My Ron Pollack Problem — and Yours
Karen Ignagni is not the problem.
As president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, Karen Ignagni represents the health insurance industry.
The same health insurance industry that would be wiped out by a single payer national health insurance system.
We know where Karen Ignagni stands.
She stands with the health insurance industry.
Against the will of the American people.
If she stood with the will of the American people, she would effectively be asking her member insurance companies to commit suicide.
Not going to happen.
Ron Pollack is executive director of Families USA.
Ron Pollack identifies himself as a consumer advocate.
Or more precisely as an advocate for health care consumers.
The majority of the American people stand with single payer.
And against the health insurance industry.
And against the pharmaceutical industry.
But Ron Pollack stands against single payer.
Against the will of the American people.
With the health insurance industry.
And with the pharmaceutical industry.
Think we’re kidding?
Well, on Thursday at 3 p.m., Ron Pollack will join Karen Ignagni in a live web chat to discuss “health reform.”
The live web chat is sponsored by The Campaign for an American Solution.
The Campaign for an American Solution is a fake grassroots group created by the health insurance industry.
The idea is that we can’t have single payer because it’s not American.
Or as Senator Max Baucus put it when asked about single payer last month – “We have come up with a uniquely American solution which is a combination of public and private, because we are America.”
Yes we are, Max.
But there is a uniquely American solution and it’s called single payer.
Check out Jonathan Cohn’s New Republic interview with Michael Chen of Taiwan’s single payer system. Chen told Cohn that when Taiwan was in our predicament years ago, they searched the world for a better health care system. They came to the United States and studied Medicare. And they then went back to Taiwan and modeled their single payer system on Medicare.
Anyway, on Thursday at 3 p.m.,this so called consumer advocate, Ron Pollack, will be standing with Karen Ignagni, advocating against single payer.
Last week, Ron Pollack joined with Billy Tauzin, the head of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, and unveiled “a campaign to promote three key policies designed to help achieve high-quality, affordable health coverage for all Americans.”
None of which will do anything to fundamentally alter the private health insurance industry and drug industry’s death grip on America’s health consumers.
So, no Karen Ignagni is not the problem.
Billy Tauzin is not the problem.
The Republican Party is not the problem.
We know where they stand.
They stand with big corporations.
Against the American people.
The problem is Ron Pollack.
The problem is Max Baucus.
The problem is the Democratic Party.
The problem lies with people who say they stand with the people.
But end up standing with Billy Tauzin.
And Karen Ignagni.
And big pharma.
And the private health insurance industry.
The problem is that the so called opposition is no opposition at all.
Yesterday, I attended a conference on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform – another “collegial group.”
Dirksen 106 was packed with over 200 staffers and lobbyists.
The topic: Public Plan Option: Fair Competition or a Recipe for Crowd Out?
There were four people on the panel.
Two argued against giving consumers a choice between public plan and private plan – Karen Ignagni and Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation.
Two argued for giving consumers a choice for a public plan – John Holahan of the Urban Institute and Karen Davis of the Commonwealth Fund.
In opening remarks, John Holahan was downright defensive.
Holahan said a public plan was not part of a “a secret plot to destroy the insurance industry and bring about a single payer system.”
There were no advocates for single payer at the table.
Of the 75 or so health policy experts listed in the packet, I couldn’t find one advocate for single payer.
So, when question time arrived, I got to a microphone:
“John Holahan said that he’s not part of a secret plot to destroy the insurance industry,” I said. “But there is actually a public plot to destroy the private insurance industry. It’s called HR 676. It’s single payer. And it has 76 members of the House who support it. The Lewin Group did a side by side analysis of all of the plans, and they found that single payer saves the most money. The single payer idea is that the private health insurance industry deserves to be destroyed. In Canada and the UK it’s unlawful to sell private health insurance for basic health needs. That’s the idea behind single payer. Other than the fact that it would be the death penalty to Karen Ignagni’s companies, why not do it?”
Out of deference to Karen Ignagni, the panelists pretty much ignored the question.
It was as if the question hadn’t been asked.
That’s the problem with collegiality.
The industry is facing the death penalty.
It’s either them.
Or us.
No amount of collegiality can mask that stark reality.
Put Single-Payer on the Table March 11, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: amy goodman, big pharma, black caucus, denis moynihan, geri jenkins, H.R. 676, health, health care, health care reform, health insurance industry, health insurance plans, health summit, health-care summit, health-insurance providers, healthcare, healthcare reform, healthcare summit, joe stiglitz, marcia angell, max baucus, National Health Program, Obama, private health insurance, quentin young, reform advocates, rep. conyers, single payer, single payer action
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Published on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 by TruthDig.com
Congress is considering H.R. 676, “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All,” sponsored by John Conyers, D-Mich., with 64 co-sponsors. Yet even when Rep. Conyers directly asked Obama at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting if he could attend the White House health-care summit, he was not immediately invited. Nor was any other advocate for single-payer health care.
Conyers had asked to bring Dr. Marcia Angell, the first woman editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, the most prestigious medical journal in the country, and Dr. Quentin Young. Young is perhaps the most well-known single-payer advocate in America. He was Martin Luther King Jr.’s doctor when King lived in Chicago. “My 15-minute house calls would stretch into three hours,” he told me.
But he came to know Barack Obama even better. Though his medical partner was Obama’s doctor, Young was his neighbor, friend and ally for decades. “Obama supported single-payer, gave speeches for it,” he said.
This past weekend, hundreds turned out to honor the 85-year-old Young, including the Illinois governor and three members of Congress, but the White House’s response to Conyers’ request that Young be included in the summit? A resounding no. Perhaps because Obama personally knows how persuasive and committed Young is.
After much outcry, Conyers was invited. Activist groups like Physicians for a National Health Program (pnhp.org) expressed outrage that no other single-payer advocate was to be among the 120 people at the summit. Finally, the White House relented and invited Dr. Oliver Fein, president of PNHP. Two people out of 120.
Locked out of the debate, silenced by the media, single-payer advocates are taking action. Russell Mokhiber, who writes and edits the Corporate Crime Reporter, has decided that the time has come to directly confront the problem of our broken health-care system. He’s going to the national meeting of the American Health Insurance Plans and is joining others in burning their health-insurance bills outside in protest. Mokhiber told me, “The insurance companies have no place in the health care of American people. How are we going to beat these people? We have to start the direct confrontation.” Launching a new organization, Single Payer Action (singlepayeraction.org), Mokhiber and others promise to take the issue to the insurance industry executives, the lobbyists and the members of Congress directly, in Washington, D.C., and their home district offices.
Critical mass is building behind a single-payer system. From Nobel Laureate in Economics Joseph Stiglitz, who told me, “I’ve reluctantly come to the view that it’s the only alternative,” to health-care providers themselves, who witness and endure the system’s failure firsthand. Geri Jenkins of the newly formed, 150,000-nurses-strong United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing Committee (nnoc.net) said: “It is the only health-care-reform proposal that can work. … We are currently pushing to have a genuine, honest policy debate, because we’ll win … the health insurers will collapse under the weight of their own irrelevance.”
Dr. Young has now been invited to a Senate meeting along with the “usual suspects”: health-insurance providers, Big Pharma and health-care-reform advocates. I asked Young what he thought of the refrain coming from the White House, as well as from the leading senator on the issue, Max Baucus, that “single-payer is off the table.” “It’s repulsive,” sighed Young. “We are very angry.” But not discouraged. I asked him what he thought about Burn Your Health Insurance Bill Day. “Things are heating up.” he chuckled. “When things are happening that you have nothing to do with, you know it’s a movement.”
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Obama, the healthcare Riddler May 16, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Health.Tags: david sirota, health, health care, health care reform, health industry, health insurance, healthcare, healthcare companies, healthcare reform, insurance industry, max baucus, medicare, national health plan, obama promises, president obama, private health care, private health insurance, profiteering, public health plan, roger hollander, single payer
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David Sirota
www.salon.com, May 16, 2009
Why is the president suddenly so afraid of a single-payer solution to America’s healthcare crisis?
May 16, 2009 | The most stunning and least reported news about President Barack Obama’s press conference with health industry executives this week wasn’t those executives’ willingness to negotiate with a Democrat. It was that Democrat’s eagerness to involve those executives in a discussion about healthcare reform even as they revealed their previous plans to pilfer $2 trillion from Americans.
That was the little-noticed message from the made-for-TV spectacle that administration officials called a healthcare “game changer”: In saying they can voluntarily slash $200 billion a year off the country’s medical bills over the next decade and still preserve their profits, healthcare companies implicitly acknowledged they were plotting to fleece consumers and have been fleecing them for years. With that acknowledgment came the tacit admission that the industry’s business is based not on respectable returns, but on grotesque profiteering and waste — the kind that can give up $2 trillion and still guarantee huge margins.
Chief among the profiteers at the White House event were insurance companies, which have raised premiums by 119 percent since 1999, and one obvious question is why — why would Obama engage those particular thieves?
It’s a difficult query to answer, because Obama is a healthcare mystery, struggling to muster consistent positions on the issue.
Listening to a 2003 Obama speech, it’s hard to believe he has become such an enigma. Back then, he declared himself “a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program” — that is, one eliminating private insurers and their overhead costs by having government finance healthcare. Obama’s position was as controversial then as it is today — which is to say, controversial among political elites, but not among the general public. ABC’s 2003 poll showed almost two-thirds of Americans desiring a single-payer system “run by the government and financed by taxpayers,” just as CBS’s 2009 poll shows roughly the same percentage today.
In that speech six years ago, Obama said the only reason single-payer proponents should tolerate delay is “because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”
That might explain why, when Illinois contemplated a 2004 healthcare proposal raising insurance lobbyists’ “fears that it would result in a single-payer system,” those lobbyists “found a sympathetic ear in Obama, who amended (read: gutted) the bill more to their liking,” according to the Boston Globe. Maybe Obama didn’t think single-payer healthcare was achievable without a Democratic Washington. And when in a 2006 interview he told me he was “not convinced that [single-payer healthcare] is the best way to achieve universal healthcare,” perhaps he was following the same rationale, considering his insistence that he must “take into account what is possible.”
Of course, even as a senator aiming for the “possible” in a Republican Congress, Obama promised to never “shy away from a debate about single payer.” And after the 2008 election fulfilled his precondition of Democratic dominance, it was only logical to expect him to initiate that debate.
That’s why the White House’s current posture is so puzzling. As the Associated Press reports, Obama aides are trying to squelch any single-payer discussion, deploying their healthcare point-person, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., to announce that “everything is on the table with the single exception of single-payer.”
So it’s back to why — why Obama’s insurance-industry-coddling inconsistency? Is it a pol’s payback for campaign cash? Is it an overly cautious lawmaker’s paralysis? Is it a conciliator’s desire to appease powerful interests? Or is it something else?
For a president who spends so much time on camera answering questions, those have become the biggest unanswered questions of all.
© 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.