What IS that new health care system that we are arguing about?

I've been wondering about this for months. What IS the new health care system that we are arguing about? How can I know if I'm for it or against it until I know what it is? That was one of the topics Bill Moyers discussed with his guests, Trudy Lieberman, director of the health and medical reporting program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and Marcia Angell, senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine.

TRUDY LIEBERMAN: [Barack Obama] has essentially advocated is throwing more money into the current system. He's treating the symptom and he's not treating the underlying cause of our problem. Our problem is that we spend two and a half times as much per person on health care as other advanced countries, the average of other advanced countries. And we don't get our money's worth. So, now he says, okay, this is a terribly inefficient, wasteful system. Let's throw some money into it . . . Into the same system. That's his problem. The other problem, in the press conference, was that he was trying to mobilize public support for a bill, and we don't know what that bill is.
Here's a big problem with the current system:
MARCIA ANGELL: Well, that goes to the cause of the problem. We are the only advanced country in the world that has chosen to leave health care to the tender mercies of a panoply of for-profit businesses, whose purpose is to maximize income and not to provide health. And that's exactly what they do.
Angell then strongly states that the system that Obama is apparently pushing doesn't change this sad situation, even though 2/3 of Americans prefer the Canadian-style single payor system. Is Obama going to change health care for the better? Angell says she's not optimistic:
But what I would say this time around, and now I am going to be very pessimistic, Bill. This time around, I don't think it's going to happen because of the power the pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies. I don't think it's going to happen. But I would rather see Obama go down fighting for something coherent and practical that the public could mobilize behind, than go down fighting for this amorphous plan that tries to keep these private insurance industry in place . . . Well, he will have to fight . . . I think he'll go down. I don't think he's grasped the nettle. And I don't think that even the best of the proposals that he is considering are going to be effective. And I worry about even the public option, because the power of the insurance industry is so great that I believe that they would use their clout in Congress to hobble the public option in some way.
What's the only solution? Angell says it forcefully:
I think we have to go for a single payer system. You could institute that gradually. You could do it state by state. You could do it decade by decade. You could improve Medicare. That is, make it nonprofit. But extend it down to age 55 and age 45 and age 35. It would give the private insurance industry a chance to go into hurricanes, earthquakes or something. To get out of the health business. It could be done gradually. I think that has to be done. And it's the only thing that can be done.
As always, Bill Moyers and his guests give you details and arguments that you won't find in most news sources.

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Words you’ll never hear in the Canadian health care system

From Daily Kos, here's a long list of words you'll never hear in the Canadian health care system. They include:

"Out of network" COBRA Co-Pay Pre-existing condition. uninsurable profit recission
Additional note via Open Left:
By an overwhelming margin, Canadians prefer the Canadian health care system to the American one. Overall, 82% said they preferred the Canadian system, fully ten times the number who said the American system is superior (8%).
And consider this challenge to the GOP by Rep Anthony Weiner (via Michael Moore):

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What to make of eating 68 hotdogs in 10 minutes

I watched this video with amazement. The winner of this year's Fourth of July hotdog eating contest ate 68 hotdogs (and buns) in 10 minutes. Notice, then, the post-contest interview, where winner Joey Chestnut smiles and talks in spurts. But I kept wondering whether he was about to vomit. After all, he just ate 68 hotdogs (and 68 buns) in 10 minutes. That's about 16,500 calories of meat and 5,300 calories in hotdog buns. If Joey retained all that food in his stomach (which I doubt, but maybe I'm wrong), he gained about seven pounds in ten minutes (since every 3,000 intake is the equivalent to a pound in weight gain). If you can set aside your concerns about the contestants' health, you can appreciate that what happens in these contests is no doubt remarkable. Athleticism? Why not? That's what it seems like in this post-contest interview:

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Planning one’s death at the end of a long illustrious life

Conductor Edward Downes and his wife Joan decided to end their lives on their own terms:

He spent his life conducting world-renowned orchestras, but was almost blind and growing deaf – the music he loved increasingly out of reach. His wife of 54 years had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. So Edward and Joan Downes decided to die together.

Downes – Sir Edward since he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991 – and his wife ended their lives last week at a Zurich clinic run by the assisted suicide group Dignitas. They drank a small amount of clear liquid and died hand-in-hand, their two adult children by their side. He was 85 and she was 74.

Many people feel that suicide necessarily cheapens one's life. In many cases, I don't agree. I do think that the choice of when and how to die belongs to each person individually, as long as the decision was not made impulsively or under the influence. If the day comes when I decide that I can't bear the pain, or that I no longer find joy in my life, I would hope that I wouldn't need to travel all the way to Switzerland because inter-meddlers think they know better than me about the meaning of my own life.

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Credit where credit is due

I've criticized President Obama for not keeping his campaign pledges to end the faith-based initiative and restore transparency to government, but when he does something right, I'll give him credit where credit is due. So, it's good to see him taking this unapologetically progressive stance on an issue where some reason is badly needed - the precautionary use of antibiotics in animals raised on factory farms:

The Obama administration announced Monday that it would seek to ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans. ...In written testimony to the House Rules Committee, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs, said feeding antibiotics to healthy chickens, pigs and cattle — done to encourage rapid growth — should cease. And Dr. Sharfstein said farmers should no longer be able to use antibiotics in animals without the supervision of a veterinarian.
Feeding massive doses of antibiotics to farm animals enables them to live in crowded, unsanitary and often inhumane conditions. It also encourages the evolution of antibiotic resistance to the dangerous bacteria that inevitably live inside them, and when those bacteria spread through the food chain to humans, the result is outbreaks of virulent, drug-resistant diseases. Having recently seen the movie Food, Inc., it's easy for me to appreciate how serious a threat this is. Antibiotic use, like fossil fuels, have promoted a dangerously unsustainable way of life in our culture. This first attempt may or may not make it past the powerful corporate food lobby - but kudos to the Obama administration for bringing it into the national consciousness in a bold way.

Continue ReadingCredit where credit is due