Spintested: 06/10/12

Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Having health insurance ≠ medical treatment.

Obama's healthcare legislation doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it).

People who voted for Obama and Democrats voted to get affordable, quality medical treatment. That was NOT a vote to protect and further enrich the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats into power to entrench the insurance industry as the gatekeepers to being able to get medical treatment. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats to Washington to continue tying insurance benefits to their employment.

Yet that is precisely what Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats did.

Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:

Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay. One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.

Obama's healthcare legislation is nothing more than a massive giveaway to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. It is one of the most corrupt pieces of legislation ever enacted by our government.

The health insurance industry provides no real service. All it does is take money out of the system. It's nothing more than a blood-sucking middleman.
About Barack Obama
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

The Emergency Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires all hospitals to provide emergency treatment to any person regardless of their citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. It was passed through the US Congress in 1986 and signed into law in by Reagan.

This opened the doors for uninsured people to use the Emergency Room as a doctor's office and thus made all insurance premiums rise and all of us pay for their medical bills.

With the ACA law, each person is responsible for buying their own health insurance thus we, the taxpayer, doesn't pay for it.

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Yes, everyone needs to contribute, but not to insurance companies.

The only "start" that ACA is is the institutionalization of insurance companies as the gatekeepers to medical care. Insurance companies add nothing to the relationship between someone who is sick and someone who can provide treatment. Insurance companies exist to make profits off of DENYING care.

I've never been impressed with the analogy of car insurance to health insurance, because for one thing people don't have to drive.

Perhaps a more equivalent comparison with healthcare in this democracy where everyone needs medical treatment throughout their lifetime might be other necessities for survival, such as food, water, and shelter (protection from the elements). We subsidize food costs, heating oil expenses, housing, because it's necessary for human survival.

There are resources that should be nationalized, such as water and oil and land. They belong to all of us, as our birthright, to share, and not for the 1% to take and sell them for profit, for their own private gain.

There are services which we recognize are necessary, like fire-fighting and policing, that are non-profit. Or used to be. We chipped in through our taxes to pay for these services, in order to get these services for a reasonable price.

The same should be true for medical treatment. When Americans say, "Don't touch my Medicare", that is what they are saying that they want.

Obama took single payer (Medicare For All) off the table, because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison. He's preserving an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care. It's government-sanctioned racketeering.

Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II -- "I don't want a lot...Just enough to wet my beak") of medical care, letting you get medical care only if you pay them a gratuity up front.
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Facts about ACA:

Insurance is NOT medical treatment.

Having insurance does NOT mean being able to get affordable quality medical care. Mandating that everybody has to purchase health insurance so that a few million people will have insurance isn't the same thing as everyone being able to get affordable, quality medical treatment.

It doesn't even mean that everyone with health insurance is going to be able to get the affordable medical treatment. It doesn't mean that if you pay your insurance premiums, your insurance company is required to pay for all of your healthcare needs.

But that's the 'Bush-speak' that Obama's been getting away with.

Obama and Democrats have been playing with the language, no differently than Bush and Republicans do. Both parties are corporate stooges, protecting the profits of the 1% over the needs of the 99%.
About Barack Obama
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

don't you find it interesting that so many of these big business supporters from 2008 are jumping ship? Bill Clinton didn't even send these kinds of negatives to them before his reelection-----those negatives being, "the first term is on the house, but not the second".

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You need to be more specific. You believe that an Obama second term would be different from his first? That he'll be a populist, liberal? On what do you base that?
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Let's bury that comparison, ACA to Social Security, once and for all.

The SocialSecurityAct of 1935 was one of many of FDR's programs where each tried to get money to people to grease the wheels of the economy back into action. SocialSecurity was different in that it wasn't designed to put anyone to work; the purpose was to funnel money to the weakest, most vulnerable, least able to provide for themselves (elderly, the blind, minor children, disabled children, etc.).

That's the complete antithesis of Obama's healthcare legislation (the Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industries'ProtectionAct), which is, at its core, a corporate welfare scheme to perpetuate a tragically flawed system of employment-based benefits that nobody wants continued. ACA institutionalizes the insurance industry's control over access to medical treatment. It's government sanctioned racketeering.

SocialSecurity was a life preserver for the moment, to get money to people who, if they didn't get money ASAP, would d!e. Nobody was even thinking about a decade or ten down the road.

Think of FDR's NewDeal programs, in general, and the SocialSecurityAct of 1935, in specific, like building a bakery to make and sell bread. Not just one type of bread (WonderWhiteBread), but a whole line of artisanal breads (bread that is crafted, rather than mass produced, baked in small batches rather than on a vast assembly line).

Think of each of the artisanal breads (ciabatta, foccaccia, brioche, levain, pain rustique, honey whole wheat, pumpernickel, etc.) as the individual groups that the program affects -- Elderly people, blind people, etc.

SocialSecurity's real and immediate purpose was to get money into the hands of people who weren't able-bodied and had no other means of earning a living, to both keep them alive and as a conduit for greasing the wheels of the economy.

Back to the bakery:

The artisan breads are such a hit that the bakery expands its offerings. Pastries, cookies, cakes (agricultural workers and other day laborers who traditionally worked off the books, work in households and as such were paid more casually, without any taxes withheld, etc.).

Back at the time when SocialSecurity was created, it was a time of great migration. More people worked 'piecework', temporarily (by the task, by the day/week/month/season) and moved around frequently to find stable work.

The building trades weren't licensed. Farming wasn't corporate (as it is now), but were family operations that hired hands as needed. Farmers didn't keep books for tax purposes. Households paid for domestic labor out of a household budget wholly unrelated to whatever the family's actual business was, and no taxes were paid or records for the government's perusal kept. That's still pretty much the case (see ZoeBaird, KimbaWood, et al, in just the last 20 years).
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Shorter and to the point:

Reconciliation WAS used by Obama to pass ACA, a "brand new program".

If you don't think reconciliation can be used to institute "brand new programs" (it has been in the past -- S-CHIP was created through reconciliation, as was COBRA, along with the law stating that hospitals who take Medicare and Medicaid money have to see all patients who walk into their emergency room was also passed in reconciliation, as was the 1983 tax increase that reversed many of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts), then you ought to be howling about it being used to pass ACA.
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

You've got it backwards and twisted, friend.

My "goal" is one of self-interest, which also happens to be the same interests of the 99%. These interests are not the interests of either of the two party's professionals.

I am an old, OLD liberal Democrat, active and well-connected for many years. I've never voted for a Republican in my several decades of voting, never will, but I can honestly tell you that I can't imagine ever voting for another Democrat again. 2008 was the last 'deal' I made to "vote for the lesser of the two evils". Never again - Obama broke that franchise.

The only value that We The People have to politicians, their only interest they have in us is to get our votes every 2/4 years. After that, we can go to he// as far as they're concerned. And stay there. Until they need our votes again. Then it's populist rhetoric galore.

What do you think Obama and Democrats are promising you now, this election season? He's said nothing but more of the same of what he's been doing these past 4 years -- Republican policies and legislation.

A question for all of Obama's 'most ardent supporters': If Obama and Democrats win in November, what do you think he and they will have a mandate to do?
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

For those like yourself that probably didn't vote for Obama and won't acknowledge the difference between the Supreme Court members and the ones who overruled other court decisions regarding "Citizen's United" and set the stage for the complete and final takeover of our system, I'm not sure if you know what you're doing.

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None of that applies to me.

FWIW, Citizen's United isn't how we got here; it was just the straw that broke the camel's back. That back would have broken sooner rather than later anyway, because it's been gamed for several decades now, without Democrats providing any meaning pushback or resistance.

See Buckley vs. Valeo for one leg of this path.

I have been working for decades to avert where we are, for and with the Democratic Party, until recently when it became clear that the fix was in and that the DLC-controlled Democratic Party isn't and hasn't been on the side of the 99%.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

The secret "quid pro quo" deals Obama negotiated were based on the premise that there'd be no public option in the final bill ("Obama Made Deal To Kill Public Option").

The week before and the week after the healthcare bill passed in the Senate (without a public option) was when an opportunity presented itself to include a public option.

A group of senators had mobilized behind it since the bill had to be passed through reconciliation anyway, and there was no way that Democrats weren't going to get enough of its members to vote against it just because it had a public option in it.

Obama nixxed it.

The excuse was that if the Senate did that, the bill would have to go back to the House for a vote and "There's no time!"

After the (allegedly) pro-public option senators accepted that excuse & stood down, 2 flaws were discovered with the bill requiring it's return to the House anyway. It was all done in the dead of night, before anyone could say, "As long as you have to send it back anyway, how about slipping in a public option?"
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

A Star Trek analogy (and an inaccurate one at that)?? Put down the bhong.

Who/What is Star Trek supposed to represent in your comparison?
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

4) And again, your insistence that single payer could have been passed via reconciliation completely and fundamentally misses the point of reconciliation. Single payer would have meant the institution of a brand new program, not just an emendation of Medicare, and no reputable source thinks that's the proper function of reconciliation.

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Even if that were true (it isn't), that reconciliation can't be used for the institution of a new program (S-CHIP was created through reconciliation, as was COBRA, along with the law stating that hospitals who take Medicare and Medicaid money have to see all patients who walk into their emergency room was also passed in reconciliation, as was the 1983 tax increase that reversed many of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts), Medicare, a single payer program, isn't "a new program". So all that would be necessary is eliminating any age requirement.

And the only people who think that it wouldn't be a "proper function of reconciliation" are those who are against getting affordable, quality medical treatment for everyone, i.e., people who stand to gain financially from Big Medical's foot on the 99%'s collective necks.
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

I see that you've stopped making the extravagant claims about how the White House bullied Kucinich into supporting the Senate version, after we had our little talk about him, and you learned that I follow Kucinich's career well enough to recognize how much you are pulling out of your backside.

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What are you talking about?

Point #1:

I didn't write enough for you?

Contrary to whatever self-important script you're running in your head about having "a little talk about him" with me that explains my not talking about him, I have no idea who you are, no recollection of ever talking with you much less an argument that changed my opinion about Kucinich.

I didn't discuss Kucinich because he wasn't specific to the points I was addressing, but I'd be more than happy to. I haven't changed my opinion about him, nor have I stopped citing the fact of Obama's having bullied him when called for. There are an abundance of candidates to cite, of Obama going after liberals and progressives and not Blue Dogs and Republicans without using Kucinich all the time.

If you want me to take you seriously, if you want me to remember you and your opinions, address the issues directly and stop the attitude and name-calling.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

"practically he through Max Baucus had proponents of single payer excluded from the Senate Finance comittee's panels and arrested."

What?

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http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/13/baucus_raucus_caucus_doctors_nurses_and
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

And a follow-up question:

What do you think they will say their win gave them a mandate to do?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

You've got it backwards and twisted, friend.

My "goal" is one of self-interest, which also happens to be the same interests of the 99%. These interests are not the interests of either of the two party's professionals.

I am an old, OLD liberal Democrat, active and well-connected for many years. I've never voted for a Republican in my several decades of voting, never will, but I can honestly tell you that I can't imagine ever voting for another Democrat again. 2008 was the last 'deal' I made to "vote for the lesser of the two evils". Never again - Obama broke that franchise.

The only value that We The People have to politicians, their only interest they have in us is to get our votes every 2/4 years. After that, we can go to he// as far as they're concerned. And stay there. Until they need our votes again. Then it's populist rhetoric galore.

What do you think Obama and Democrats are promising you now, this election season? He's said nothing but more of the same of what he's been doing these past 4 years -- Republican policies and legislation.

A question for all of Obama's 'most ardent supporters': If Obama and Democrats win in November, what do you think he and they will have a mandate to do?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Consider our elections as a business plan where the 'CorporateMastersOfTheUniverse' have charted out their plans years in advance and then they select the politician with the personality that's best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments.

If you want to lie the country into war for oil and profiteering, then GeorgeWBush is your man to front it, with DickCheney, the former SecretaryOfDefense who initiated the privatizing of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows.

And after 8 years of BushCheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that. They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in and trust. BarackObama.

Obama's 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better. I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).

You continue to support Obama-Democrats at the expense of your own best interests. As long as his numbers remain high, Obama does the bidding of corporations and establishment elites.

Why should Obama-Democrats do anything for you if they know they've got you over a barrel, that you're going to vote for them no matter what, because you're terrified of Republicans?
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Really? REALLY?? You really still believe that "lesser of two evils"-garbage???

How can you say (and expect to be taken seriously) that Republicans are by far worse when Obama's continuing just about all the BushCheney policies, even going BushCo one better:

How do any of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, NDAA, and his push for 'indefinite preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret? It's Pure Kafka.

I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this.

And it's Obama who's put SocialSecurity and Medicare and Medicaid on the table.

At this point, I'd argue that Obama-Democrats are worse. BushCheney make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are, whereas Obama-Democrats ran on knowing better.

What you fear is easily remedied (if Democrats are on the side of the 99%, as you claim) by Democrats stymieing a Republican president and Congress as effectively as Republicans have with the smallest minority over Democrats who've had the greatest majority in decades. You would think that with Republicans controlling the House after the 2010 midterms, Democrats would've turned the tables and thwarted Republicans' continuing legislation like Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Are Democrats just stupld?

KEEP READING
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Point #3:

Obama insisted there be no public option to minimize opposition by the insurance, pharmaceutical and healthcare industries (opposition both to the bill itself and the Democratic Party generally). The secret "quid pro quo" deals he negotiated were based on the premise that there'd be no public option in the final bill ("Obama Made Deal To Kill Public Option").

When it comes to defiant progressive members of Congress -- as opposed to supposedly defiant Blue Dogs and "centrists" -- the Obama White House has proven itself extremely adept at compelling compliance with the President's agenda. Consider what happened when progressive House members dared to oppose the war supplemental bill which Obama wanted passed:

The White House is playing hardball with Democrats who intend to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, threatening freshmen who oppose it that they won't get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said Friday.

"We're not going to help you. You'll never hear from us again," Woolsey said the White House is telling freshmen.

When progressives refuse to toe the White House line, they get threatened. Contrast that with what the White House does with Blue Dogs and "centrists" who are allegedly uncooperative on healthcare -- they protect them:

The Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported this morning that Rahm Emanuel warned leaders of liberal groups in a private meeting this week that it was time to stop running ads attacking Blue Dog and "centrist" Dems on healthcare.

I'm told, however, that Emanuel went quite a bit further than this. Sources at the meeting tell me that Emanuel really teed off on the Dem-versus-Dem attacks, calling them "f**king stupid." This was a direct attack on some of the attendees in the room, who are running ads against Dems right now.

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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Obama didn't need Lieberman, nor any Blue Dog, although when Obama does need Blue Dogs, he buys them. Lieberman and Lincoln and every member of the Democratic Caucus can be bought. They've been bought. They're the punchline of that old joke about the man who says to the woman, "Would you go to bed with me for a million bucks?". The woman says yes. He says, "Would you go to bed with me for $5?" Indignant, the woman says, "No! What do you think I am, a pr0stltute?", to which the man says, "We already established that. Now we're just dickering over price."

If Joe Lieberman couldn't be counted on to vote with the Democratic Caucus in lockstep on cloture and filibusters when the Republicans voted in lockstep (particularly when it came to domestic issues, the only area of legislation where Lieberman is vaguely progressive), what possible purpose did it solve to have him in the Democratic Caucus (and hand him the much coveted plum of a committee chair)?

http://thinkprogress.org/lieberman-not-progressive/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/8/17349/2244

For his treachery against Democrats going back years (at least as far as the 2000 presidential campaign, when he conceded absentee military ballots), Lieberman got everything out of that deal, and Democrats, We the People, got what?

There is nothing that Democrats in Congress are doing that Obama hasn't signed off on, much less ordered.

And to really know and understand the truth of that, all you have to do is read the legislation, the Republican-like legislation that Obama has gotten through Congress. It's not reform -- It's corporate pork, and regulatory loopholes. It's more of the same old, same old. It's nothing that Democratic voters put Obama and Democrats into power to get for them.

KEEP READING
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Obama could have gotten single payer passed (or a public option at the very least) through reconciliation, 50 + 1, which is what he ended up doing anyway to get his gift to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries through. His gift, Democrats' pay-off to PhRma and Big Insurance, after the 2003 Medicare Reform Act gift. That was Republicans paid homage to Big Insurance and PhRma (and had Democrats joining them) with the Medicare Reform Act, an $800 billion corporate pork-laden giveaway.

Normal people would have thought, "Well, that'll set them up for a generation, they've gotten their pay-offs along with the defense contractors and energy firms".

But we're not in normal times.

Obama and Democrats had to pay off Big Insurance and PhRma on their own after the 2008 election, and went Republicans even bigger. Obama was the biggest recipient of insurance/hospital/PhRma money of all of the candidates. Hillary was the second biggest recipient.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.php?ind=H03

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.php?ind=H02

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.php?ind=H04

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.php?ind=H01

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.php?ind=F09

KEEP READING
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

Point #2:

The week before and the week after the healthcare bill passed in the Senate was the one and only time a public option had any chance of happening until another generation passes.

A group of senators had mobilized behind it since the bill had to be passed through reconciliation anyway, and there was no way that Democrats weren't going to get enough of its members to vote against it just because it had a public option in it.

Obama nixxed it.

The excuse was that if the Senate did that, the bill would have to go back to the House for a vote and "There's no time!"

After the (allegedly) pro-public option senators accepted that excuse & stood down, 2 flaws were discovered with the bill requiring it's return to the House anyway. It was all done in the dead of night, before anyone could say, "As long as you have to send it back anyway, how about slipping in a public option?"

Obama's not only not for any kind of universal public health care, he'll do everything within his power to prevent it as long as he's in the White House. Because that was the deal that he made. Those who believe that Obama's healthcare legislation is "incremental change", it institutionalizes the insurance industry as the gatekeepers to medical treatment (requiring having a job, too), which is something that everybody wanted to end. And there never will be a public option or any kind of affordable, quality medical care for all as long as Obama and DLC-controlled Democrats are in office: "There Won't Be Any Public Option--Obama Never Was For It". Watch it and weep.

FYI - There's rarely a majority in Congress to pass anything at all until a campaign has been mounted to sell it. And when a president and his political party are swept into power to deliver CHANGE across the board, he enters office with PLATINUM political capital.

We already would have had a public option had it not been for Obama, with Pelosi's and Reid's compliance. We actually would have already had real healthcare reform legislation (single payer universal healthcare), but Obama had to get it off the table before negotiations ever began. Because if affordable, quality medical care for everyone is the goal, everything else pales next to single payer. And that's why Obama had to get it off the table.

KEEP READING
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Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

1) Obama did not block a public option. For as much as you've written and opined on the ACA, you should know that there were two bills, one originating in the House, and one originating in the Senate. The House bill DID include a public option. The Senate bill was one Lieberman away from a public option. Obama didn't block the public option any more than he set up death panels.

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Point #1:

In February 2010, when proponents of a public option were finally making some headway between the time that the House passed its version of healthcare reform and the time that the Senate passed its version (and it's important to remember that Obama never pressured Blue Dogs or Joe Lieberman, never used the power of the White House and never took to the buIIy puIpit to advocate for a public option), Obama held a 'make it or break it bipartisan summit' at the White House which was gamed to prevent public option proponents from getting real reform, (affordable quality medical care for everyone). PO proponents were shut out of the negotiations. Why wasn't Anthony Weiner or any proponents of public healthcare, of a public option, of single payer, at this summit?

The summit was gamed to let insurance companies retain their lock on the path to getting healthcare.
Whether it was Republicans saying no or Democrats saying yes, to attend this summit you must have accepted that the insurance industry's ability to make profits off of you be preserved and protected, despite it bankrupting the American people individually and the nation at large.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Health Care Reform: Undoing Obama's Health Law Could Have Messy Ripple Effects

I just finished replying to every point in this article on another thread so I can't post it here. If you want to read the argument, the whole thread, it's here.

This article provides a great opportunity to observe how corporate politicians have set it up, years in advance, and are using fear to bully citizens into compliance with legislation that doesn't serve them, but serves to enrich the corporations through 'stenographic'-reporters (like AP's Ricardo Alonzo-Saldivar, the author of this article).

IMHO, the real question that should be asked about Obama's 'signature' legislation, especially in light of his other 'signatures' like cutting $3 trillion in social programs and other budget cuts like freezing federal employees' wages, increasing military spending, lowering taxes on the rich, refusing to enforce business and environmental regulations (another 'signature' of Obama's):

Do Democratic politicians believe that Democratic voters put Obama and Democrats into office to achieve the Republicans' goals?
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

In 2003, PhRMA lobbied hard and got Congress to insert language into the bill that created a Medicare drug benefit that prohibits Medicare from using its market clout to negotiate with manufacturers for lower drug prices and making sure the drug benefit was only available through private insurance plans.

The result was that Medicare members can only get drug coverage by joining a private insurance plan. People who have both Medicare and Medicaid (dual-eligibles) were switched from Medicaid prescription drug coverage to a private Medicare drug plan. Prescription drugs for this population cost 30 percent more under the new private Medicare drug plans than they did under Medicaid, increasing pharmaceutical companies' profits by at least $3.7 billion dollars in just the first two years of the program. For example, Bristol Myers earned a windfall of almost $400 million, thanks to higher prices for the stroke medication Plavix.

The American taxpayer has been subsidizing pharmaceutical companies for decades with the promise that the R&D we were paying for would result in lower prices and breakthrough cures. Instead, we've been stuck with higher prices (twice as much as other industrialized countries) while the pharmaceutical companies try to snag new markets overseas with what were to be our discounts.

So not only did Obama break his campaign pledge (of the government, PhRma biggest customer, negotiating for lower priced drugs, and reimporting pharmaceuticals), he gave PhRma a huge gift. The deal that Obama made with PhRma wasn't for PhRma to go up against Big Insurance; it was for PhRma to help sell a plan that makes more profits for Big Insurance.

PhRma paid chump change ($80 billion over 10 years, plus $150 million for ads to support a plan that had NO public option) so that they could keep massive profits and kill public healthcare. Obama (who had dropped the public option and the universal requirement) let the pharmaceutical industry continue to make obscene profits, and gave the insurance industry a clear field and new customers, all paid for with taxpayers' money.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

While you might consider the $80 billion figure that Obama negotiated with Big PhRma considerable, it amounted to a coup, a 'red letter'-day, a windfall, for the pharmaceutical industry. PhRma paid chump change ($80 billion over 10 years, plus $150 million for ads to support a plan that had NO public option) so that they could keep massive profits and kiII public healthcare.

Obama (who had dropped the public option and the universal requirement) let the pharmaceutical industry continue to make obscene profits, and gave the insurance industry a clear field and new customers, all paid for with taxpayers' money. $80 billion over 10 years is less than 1 percent of the profits PhRma makes in one year.

How Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats have tried to defend and sell ACA with regard to their pledge on pharmaceutical costs (that ACA closes the 'donut hole' in Medicare) is particularly galling.

To begin with, the 'donut-hole' never should have existed in the first place, and that the DLC-controlled Democrats created as a "compromise" for Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (another massive corporate giveaway package).

But the broader point is that the whole of Medicare Part D was a scam and a scheme, a "first step" (as Obama's 'most ardent supporters' like to say) towards privatizing public healthcare.

KEEP READING

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

There is no mechanism in ACA for lowering the costs of treatment.

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whistleblower Wendell Potter talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about where the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) is in the legislation, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.

Obama put the foxes in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executives Liz Fowler and Steve Larsen) to write both the legislation and the regulations, and enforce the regulations.

Fowler's most notable actions to date has been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees. So much for Candidate Obama's pledge on restricting lobbyists from writing our laws.

Obama's healthcare legislation prohibits the very thing that was the top issue in the 2008 election: The government being able to negotiate lower drug prices or reimportation.

KEEP READING
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

Obama's healthcare legislation is Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (which was a $700 billion + giveaway to Big Insurance & PhRma), Part 2.

Not only doesn't Obama's healthcare legislation accomplish what Obama and Democrats were put into power to get (affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, lower drug prices), it is, in fact, a giant leap toward ending all public healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.).

Obama's healthcare legislation puts more people into Medicaid, which the states are required to co-pay along with the federal government. The states are already going bankrupt, and moving toward eliminating Medicaid services as a result. States' options are limited, especially those states with constitutional requirements to balance their budgets. So while people may find themselves covered by Medicaid, if you're thinking that should all else fail you've got Medicaid as your safety net, guess again: Medicaid won't cover c/hit.

Having insurance (which is all that Obama's legislation does, and not even for everyone, just for a few million more) doesn't mean getting necessary medical care or that you will be able to afford medical care. All that Obama's healthcare legislation does is require money to go from here (my pockets/taxpayers' pockets) to there (into insurance companies' pockets).

There is no limitation on insurance companies' charging and increasing co-pays and deductibles and eliminating services. There is no requirement for insurance companies to have to provide services not paid for.

Insurance companies have already figured out the way around the restrictions in ACA - The con game in the legislation:

Medical loss ratio = The amount of money insurers must spend on healthcare, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.

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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

What ACA is is insurance, not affordable quality medical treatment. ACA, which originated in the Heritage Foundation, is Republican legislation. Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party got the healthcare legislation through that the insurance industry and PhRma wanted.

From Amy Goodman's interview with whistleblower Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive:

AMY GOODMAN: But don’t the insurance companies like this legislation?

WENDELL POTTER: They do. And that’s why this will not be repealed. They like a lot about it. This legislation, we call it "healthcare reform," but it doesn’t really reform the system. There are a lot of good things in there that does make some of the practices of the insurance industry illegal, things that should have been made illegal a long time ago, so that—

AMY GOODMAN: Like?

WENDELL POTTER:—for that matter, there are good things here. But it doesn’t reform the system. It is built around our health insurance system, as the President said. And they want to keep it in place, because it also guarantees that they will have a lot of new members and billions of dollars in new revenue in the years to come.

AMY GOODMAN: How does it ensure that?

WENDELL POTTER: One of the—the core component of this—and it’s kind of ironic, but the one thing that the Republicans and conservatives are saying they want to repeal is the provision that we all have to buy coverage from private insurance companies.

AMY GOODMAN: Like we do for auto insurance.

WENDELL POTTER: Exactly, right. And they’re citing or they’re saying that that’s unconstitutional. That’s also all for show, because it is just an effort to try to, in a sense, turn people away from the idea of reform. It sounds complicated, but it’s part of the insurance companies’ strategy.

Read the entire interview here.

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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

I did a little research on Max Baucus and Billy Tarzing and leaked memos, etc. I found that it was about WH agreement with pharmaceutical industry that they would contribute 80 billion in lower costs in exchange for not having gov't bargain for lower drug prices, and agreeing to not import drugs from Canada. The article said nothing about single payer plan.

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Do some more research and you'll learn that the White House's agreement wasn't solely involving the pharmaceutical industry, but also the insurance industry, hospitals and the AMA. And the insurance industry not only wrote ACA, but also regulates it within the government.

Sweet deal, ain't it? Almost as sweet as a president both selling insurance policies (to the American people on behalf of the insurance industry) and buying them (from the insurance industry on behalf of the American people). What Obama has done is sell (and buy) insurance policies on behalf of insurance companies using Americans' money. Over-priced, lousy insurance policies, at that. That's a pretty neat trick, btw, to sell and buy. It's like playing chess with yourself. And having insurance doesn't mean getting healthcare. BIG DIFFERENCE.

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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

Single payer is the only solution to ever-spiraling healthcare costs. There's one other element to this, which is that the government needs to be freed of the restrictions preventing it from bargaining with Big PhRma about drug costs. Neither will happen under Obama, Democrats or Republicans.

Profit is defined many different ways, and how corporations define profit can be quite imaginative.

Do you remember actor James Garner's battle with Universal over his profits from The Rockford Files. The Rockford Files was one of the studios most successful television series and most lucrative syndicated series of that time, yet Garner never saw a dime due to Universal's creative bookkeeping and their original deal with Garner (profits from the net instead of the gross). On paper, The Rockford Files never made it into the black, but in actuality, Universal skimmed profits by paying itself over and over again by recharging the Rockford Files' production company for items already bought and paid for.

Kaiser-Permanente might be considered an good example of what I'm talking about here. Subscribers pay to receive medical treatment and KP takes the money and uses it (in addition to treating the subscriber) to invest in things like real estate, property, building medical facilities, etc. That becomes a tangible asset that doesn't belong to the subscriber but to KP's 'partners' - Every physician who works at KP (provided they get past a 2 year probationary period) is offered a partnership, and once they're partners they get year-end bonuses that are mainly based on the company's performance that year. Thus, subscribers/patients are putting the money up and they're not reaping the whole benefit of their money, just as insured patients are putting up their money which insurance companies then take and invest in medically-related companies and reap obscene profits, creatively cook the books while limiting treatment to the subscribers.

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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

it will take a lot to convince the many Americans who say, "Private industry can out perform government and therefore we will not stomach a single payer government health plan."

You speak of "general agreement that the insurance industry's control over people's access to affordable quality medical treatment had to end." I agree that there was agreement that health care was too costly. But agreement that insurance companies made it too costly and their reign had to end is another story. The primary Republican doctrine is that government should only do what private business cannot do - because private enterprise is always more efficient and less costly.

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When you say that "it will take a lot to convince the many Americans who say, 'Private industry can out perform government and therefore we will not stomach a single payer government health plan'", that's what I meant when I said "education is the solution". Educating with facts: Private industry doesn't outperform government.

In the case of healthcare, private industry (insurance companies) does for 23-30% (and it can be as high as 39%) what government does (Medicare) for between 2-5%. Either the private insurance companies are grossly inefficient or they're extremely profitable for the people who run them. Insurance companies profit by denying medical care to subscribers. And net profit is what's left after all the bloated salaries of the upper management team are taken out.

What's wrong with that is that CEOs are making 400-500 times as much as the line workers and they're not doing it because they're incredibly savvy, efficient, inspiring leaders; they're doing it because they run in a rarified circle of like-minded people that mutually justify their obscene compensation packages.

Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:

Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay. One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.

'Line workers', by the way, are the actual providers of healthcare services, and in most cases their rates haven't been raised in close to 20 years.

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