What Healthcare Reform REALLY Does For Us

In an historic vote late Saturday evening, the US House passed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on a mostly party line vote of 219-212. The Act will be made into law (the bill passed by the US Senate 60-39) upon signature by President Obama. On Tuesday, March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the bill into law in a ceremony attended by members of Congress, the US Senate, staff and an 11-year old advocate of healthcare reform who had lost his mother to cancer. There’s been a lot of confusion and misinformation spread about the bill as to what it contains and when certain aspects of the legislation go into effect. The terms of the new law were discussed in impressive clarity by Rachel Maddow and Barney Frank. See also, this article from the New York Times. As of March 23, 2010, consumers will be entitled to the following: - Tax credits go to small businesses for buying health insurance for their employees, and; - The so-called “doughnut hole” for seniors under Medicare Part D (drug) coverage is going; if you’ve reached the total for 2009, you will be immediately sent a rebate check of $250.00, and; - Pre-existing conditions will no longer be allowed for denials of health insurance coverage on new policies issued, and; - States will be required to maintain their existing Medicaid and children’s health insurance coverage based on policies currently in effect. While states can expand their programs, they are not allowed to cut back on eligibility and are not allowed to put in place any paperwork requirements that would make it harder for people to sign up for coverage, and; Freestanding birth centers” are now eligible for Medicaid payments, and; - Another provision that appears to take effect right away is an expansion of Medicare to cover certain victims of “environmental health hazards,” which was aimed specifically at the town of Libby, Mont. - A requirement that the secretary of health and human services establish criteria “for determining whether health insurance issuers and employment-based health plans have discouraged an individual from remaining enrolled in prior coverage based on that individual’s health status.” On April 23, 2010, - The secretary of health and human services must post on the Internet “a list of the authorities provided to the secretary under this act.” In June, 2010, - High Risk Insurance pools open to cover those with any pre-existing conditions (June 1, 2010),; and - The Secretary of HHS must “develop a standardized format to be used for the presentation of information relating to coverage” — so that consumers have a more understandable way of comparing health benefits — like medical, surgical, hospital and prescription drug coverage — offered by private insurers (June 23, 2010). On September 23, 2010, - Children may not be excluded from any coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and; - Insurers will not be allowed to deny coverage because you get sick (so called “rescissions”), and; - No more lifetime limits on coverage or benefits allowed, and; - Children are covered under your policy, if you want, until age 26. [more . . . ]

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Victory at what cost?

I'm on Lawrence Lessig's mailing list. Here is an excerpt from an email he sent today, which you can read at Huffpo:

However good, however essential, however transformative this health care bill may be, we should not mistake success here as a sign that Washington has been cured. Indeed, as Glenn Greenwald reminded us over the weekend -- in an essay that should be every reformer's required reading -- success on this bill is no justification for:

claiming that it represents a change in the way Washington works and a fulfillment of Obama's campaign pledges. The way this bill has been shaped is the ultimate expression -- and bolstering -- of how Washington has long worked. One can find reasonable excuses for why it had to be done that way, but one cannot reasonably deny that it was.

Obama's victory was achieved because his team played the old game brilliantly. Staffed with the very best from the league of conventional politics, his team bought off PhRMA (with the promise not to use market forces to force market prices for prescription drugs) and the insurance industry (with the promise -- and in this moment of celebration, let's ignore the duplicity in this -- that they would face no new competition from a public option), so that by the end, as Greenwald puts it, the administration succeeded in "bribing and accommodating them to such an extreme degree that they ended up affirmatively supporting a bill that lavishes them with massive benefits." Obama didn't "push back on the undue influence of special interests," as he said today. He bought them off. And the price he paid should make us all wonder: how much reform can this administration -- and this Nation -- afford?

Another thing: As Greenwald noted in his excellent article, to get this bill passed Obama used "the exact secret processes that he railed against and which he swore he would banish."

Continue ReadingVictory at what cost?

Amy Goodman talks health care and wars with Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich

Amy Goodman dedicated an entire hour to discuss health care and the ongoing U.S. wars with Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich (video below). It was an intense and insightful discussion--truly worth watching. As you might imagine, much of the discussion focused on Kucinich's willingness to vote for Obama's version of health care. As Kucinich made clear, however, the fact that he is voting for this bill does not mean he supports it. The bill essentially disgusts him, but he believe that voting no would be even worse. Amy Goodman injects the topic that Kucinich is facing massive pressure by his own party to get in line. As I mentioned at the top, the discussion is intense. At about 45 minute mark, the topic turned to foreign policy. Ralph Nader asks how we can possibly "get the American people angry" regarding the war and corruption in Afghanistan. At the 50-minute mark, Dennis Kucinich discusses the actual costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He warns that war has become ordinary and acceptable to Americans, despite the homicidal actions of private contractors, despite the unimaginable costs and despite the lack of any meaningful objectives. Mr. Nader argued (at minute 54) that President Obama has stifled dissent at his White House, just like President George W. Bush.

President Obama is like President Bush in this regard: he doesn’t receive dissenting groups in the White House. He froze out the single-payer advocates, including his longtime friend, Dr. Quentin Young, in Chicago, Illinois. And he’s freezing out dissenters, dissenting groups from meeting with him in the White House. They can’t get a meeting with him. He’s surrounded by warmongers. He’s surrounded by the military-industrial complex. But he won’t meet, for example, Veterans for Peace. He won’t meet Iraq Veterans Against the War. He won’t meet the student groups and the religious groups and the business groups and others who opposed the Iraq war back in 2003. What is he afraid of here?

You know, we’re supposed to have a new wave with the Obama administration. Instead, we have the same old—the same old same old. And I think the whole idea—just let me make this—the whole idea that Obama is for things, but they’re not practical—he’s for single payer, he really doesn’t like war, but, but, but. But he goes along, and he goes along. We have to have the American people give the White House a measure of political courage here, because it’s not going to come from inside the White House.

Juan Gonzales asked Ralph Nader why we aren't seeing more demonstrations against these wasteful wars by the American people:

[During] the 2004 election with Kerry and Bush, the antiwar movement, most of the groups, gave Kerry a pass and broke off their mass demonstrations. It broke the momentum. Momentum is very important in mass demonstrations. Second, there are fewer people in Congress that these—the antiwar people can cling to. That’s a demoralization effect on people. And third, it costs a lot of money to put these demonstrations on, and there aren’t many super-rich antiwar Americans, like George Soros and others, who are putting some money to get the buses and get the demonstrations all over the country. And finally, the Washington Post, New York Times, they do not give adequate coverage to antiwar demonstrations, compared to the coverage they’ve been giving to the tea parties. Just check the column inches in the Washington Post covering the tea parties, compared to blocking out pro-Gaza, pro-Palestinian demonstrations, for example, when the Israelis invaded Gaza, or the upcoming demonstrations against the war. All of this demoralizes people. And they say, “What are we doing this for?” So, unfortunately, the political leaders are not leading, and the President is not leading.

Continue ReadingAmy Goodman talks health care and wars with Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich

The so-called interview

I'm having a difficult time believing that FOX calls this an interview. The elephant in the room is that FOX and much of its audience want to believe that everything would be OK without any sort of health care reform. That assumption seemed to be driving the questioning. In the past few months, though, I've been meeting more and more people who are going without health insurance, which can lead to tragic foreclosures and bankruptcies. This situation is not tenable. With regard to this frustrating interview, I do find some fault with President Barack Obama too. He's claims both that we know what's in the bill and that we'll someday see what's in the bill. And he speaks as though there is going to be a meaningful comment period. I'll be watching to see how many hours tick by after passage of this bill, before the bill is rammed home at the White House. We'll see how much input the citizens will have. And from what we suspect, the Obama bill will apparently be a huge gift to corporations that are gaming the health care system. But you wouldn't know any of this based on the questions by this hack interviewer. We desperately need to reform the health care system, though I think that most of that work, and much of the sacrifices will need to be incurred by individual Americans. The national debate thus frustrates me because it is, I think, fundamentally dishonest. We, the People need to take far better care of their bodies and quit expecting our (incredibly talented) health care professionals to bail us out of problems we create with our terrible eating habits and sedentary lifestyles. And we might need to better understand that more high-tech medicine does not necessarily lead to better for real-life health and mortality rates. Americans are dreaming to think that they can pay less and get the same or more of the same type of healthcare that they are currently consuming. Something's gotta give. Maybe a lot of things gotta give. Mostly, we need meaningful exchanges of information in order to improve health care delivery. We need civilized debate and straight talk. This "interview" was pathetic--I do put most of the blame on the shallow-minded sputtering "interviewer," who came equipped mostly with barking points, rather than any interest in developing useful ideas. This session should be shown in journalism schools a an example of how not to conduct an interview. I'd never seen Bret Baier until this interview. I'd bet that he never again gets a chance to conduct any high profile interview. I really have to wonder about his objective going in, other than a dozen barking points.

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Those death panels

At Salon, Joe Conason urges Democrats to push back when they are accused of creating "death panels" as part of health care reform:

The proper reply to "death panels" was that they already exist in the corporate bureaucracy of the insurance companies -- and in the lobbying firms where reform that would save tens of thousands of lives annually has been killed every time.

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