PNHP

Health professional students restore hope

Health professional students restore hope

(Note: This event occurred earlier this week, before the tragic earthquake in Haiti.)

The future of healthcare reform came to Sacramento yesterday

by Shockwave
Daily Kos
January 12, 2010
I joined the California Health Professionals Students Alliance at the Embassy Suites about a mile from the Capitol building.
Students from every medical school in California came in buses the night before.  I was impressed by their enthusiastic support of SB 810 and their ability to explain the advantages of Single Payer and this pivotal legislation which will be re-introduced at the Senate floor next month.
We then marched about a mile toward the Capitol building.
Shockwave’s diary and a 3 minute video of the event:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/12/824274/-The-future-of-healthcare-reform-came-to-Sacramento-yesterday
California Health Professional Student Alliance
http://www.calauhc.org/

This week medical students and other health professional students and colleagues marched on Sacramento in support of Sen. Mark Leno’s SB 810, a reintroduction of Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s single payer bill that was passed and vetoed twice in prior legislative sessions.
Reading Shockwave’s diary and watching the brief video can give you renewal. California’s health professional students understand that Congress abandoned so many important policies that they are ending up with legislation that ostensibly achieves a political victory, but one that is reform in name only, while leaving most of our dysfunctional system in place.
These students know what real reform is. They hold our future in their hands. Thanks to them and to all of the rest of the single payer activists, the process will continue until every single one of us can have the health care that we need.

Cato on implicit taxes of the individual mandate

Obama's Prescription for Low-Wage Workers: High Implicit Taxes, Higher Premiums

by Michael F. Cannon
Cato Institute
January 13, 2010

Executive Summary

House and Senate Democrats have produced health care legislation whose mandates, subsidies, tax penalties, and health insurance regulations would penalize work and reward Americans who refuse to purchase health insurance. As a result, the legislation could trap many Americans in low-wage jobs and cause even higher health-insurance premiums, government spending, and taxes than are envisioned in the legislation.

Those mandates and subsidies would impose effective marginal tax rates on low-wage workers that would average between 53 and 74 percent — and even reach as high as 82 percent — over broad ranges of earned income. By comparison, the wealthiest Americans would face tax rates no higher than 47.9 percent.

Over smaller ranges of earned income, the legislation would impose effective marginal tax rates that exceed 100 percent. Families of four would see effective marginal tax rates as high as 174 percent under the Senate bill and 159 percent under the House bill. Under the Senate bill, adults starting at $14,560 who earn an additional $560 would see their total income fall by $200 due to higher taxes and reduced subsidies. Under the House bill, families of four starting at $43,670 who earn an additional $1,100 would see their total income fall by $870.

In addition, middle-income workers could save as much as $8,000 per year by dropping coverage and purchasing health insurance only when sick. Indeed, the legislation effectively removes any penalty on such behavior by forcing insurers to sell health insurance to the uninsured at standard premiums when they fall ill. The legislation would thus encourage “adverse selection” — an unstable situation that would drive insurance premiums, government spending, and taxes even higher.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa656.pdf

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

Since the numbers and policy details in the final reform legislation have not yet been released, the results presented here by Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute may be modified, but unchanged will be the conclusion that the complex, jerry-rigged method of paying for health care premiums will not eliminate inequities.

It is almost impossible to get right the amount that each person or family should pay with so many variables moving in different directions: insurance premiums, actuarial values, premium subsidies, cost-sharing subsidies, income levels, family sizes, age rating, bracketed income cliffs of eligibility, and other factors. Financing health care by using a fixed premium for a given private insurance plan no longer works because premiums for adequate plans are no longer affordable for the majority. Trying to make health care affordable by applying corrections for the many variables increases the administrative complexity while falling short on equity.

Financing would be greatly simplified and much more equitable if we established a single risk pool that covered everyone and funded it through progressive taxes. (That likely would not be the conclusion of the libertarians at Cato, but they offered no alternative suggestions in this report, and we wouldn’t agree with them anyway.)

You say you want a revolution?

Letter to the editor, Pacific Sun (San Rafael, Calif.)
Jan. 8, 2010

I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment expressed in the letter-to-the-editor by Geraldine Caldarola [“What’s It All About?” Jan. 1] as she lamented the blockage of real healthcare reform by “moneyed interests” and asked, “Do we need another revolution?” The answer is a resounding, “Yes!”

If we had real healthcare reform, a single-payer system such as Medicare for all, all Americans would have access to healthcare, we would be able to choose our own doctors, doctors would be able to practice the way they want and would be paid fairly on a fee-for-service basis.

We would save money. The insurance industry admits that they spend about 30 percent of premiums on something other than healthcare. It would also be good for the economy. American companies, no longer burdened with the high cost of providing healthcare for their employees, would be more competitive with those of other developed nations, and smaller businesses would be able to hire more workers, creating more jobs and generating more tax revenue. So, how do we make this happen?

First, consciousness raising. Every other developed nation provides healthcare for all its citizens for less than half per capita what we spend. We are the only country that allows its insurance industry to rule healthcare and rule its legislators—to the detriment of us all. Second, we need to elect legislators who are more interested in our well-being than in catering to lobbyists. Third, we need campaign finance reform to make this feasible.

If every other developed nation can do it, so can we.

Ann Troy, M.D.
San Anselmo

http://www.pacificsun.com/story.php?story_id=3658

Keep your doc, ditch Wall Street

Letter to the editor, Concord (N.H.) Monitor   
January 11, 2010

Republican strategist Bob Luntz wrote it’s not what you say but what people hear. He was correct. I keep hearing the phrase, “government-run health care,” which is purposely vague and undefined. However, it frightens people who think that they will be forced to leave their current doctor and report to a dull gray building where they will receive poor treatment from a government doctor who graduated at the bottom of the class.

There is no bill proposing this. There is, however, a bill that addresses America’s health care issues at a price we can afford, individually and as a nation. It provides universal full health care coverage for all medically necessary treatment, mental health, vision, prescription drugs, long-term care, dental, substance abuse and other services, and it pays your doctor fairly. A poll by the New Hampshire Medical Society found that over 80 percent of primary care physicians favor such a bill. However, Congress is not even actively considering the bill, the United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676, although it is significantly cheaper and provides far greater benefits than what is being proposed. Proposed instead is a bill favorable not to you but to the Wall Street-owned corporations who pay our legislators to continue using these corporations to process the payments for health care.

Contact your legislators, have them fairly evaluate H.R. 676, which covers everyone, is affordable, comprehensive and sustainable. Keep your doctor, ditch Wall Street. Speak up or suffer for generations to come.

JOHN R. SWARTZ
Wilmot

http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/20100111/OPINION/1110334

Cato on implicit taxes of the individual mandate

Obama’s Prescription for Low-Wage Workers: High Implicit Taxes, Higher Premiums

by Michael F. Cannon
Cato Institute
January 13, 2010
Executive Summary
House and Senate Democrats have produced health care legislation whose mandates, subsidies, tax penalties, and health insurance regulations would penalize work and reward Americans who refuse to purchase health insurance. As a result, the legislation could trap many Americans in low-wage jobs and cause even higher health-insurance premiums, government spending, and taxes than are envisioned in the legislation.
Those mandates and subsidies would impose effective marginal tax rates on low-wage workers that would average between 53 and 74 percent — and even reach as high as 82 percent — over broad ranges of earned income. By comparison, the wealthiest Americans would face tax rates no higher than 47.9 percent.
Over smaller ranges of earned income, the legislation would impose effective marginal tax rates that exceed 100 percent. Families of four would see effective marginal tax rates as high as 174 percent under the Senate bill and 159 percent under the House bill. Under the Senate bill, adults starting at $14,560 who earn an additional $560 would see their total income fall by $200 due to higher taxes and reduced subsidies. Under the House bill, families of four starting at $43,670 who earn an additional $1,100 would see their total income fall by $870.
In addition, middle-income workers could save as much as $8,000 per year by dropping coverage and purchasing health insurance only when sick. Indeed, the legislation effectively removes any penalty on such behavior by forcing insurers to sell health insurance to the uninsured at standard premiums when they fall ill. The legislation would thus encourage “adverse selection” — an unstable situation that would drive insurance premiums, government spending, and taxes even higher.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa656.pdf

Since the numbers and policy details in the final reform legislation have not yet been released, the results presented here by Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute may be modified, but unchanged will be the conclusion that the complex, jerry-rigged method of paying for health care premiums will not eliminate inequities.
It is almost impossible to get right the amount that each person or family should pay with so many variables moving in different directions: insurance premiums, actuarial values, premium subsidies, cost-sharing subsidies, income levels, family sizes, age rating, bracketed income cliffs of eligibility, and other factors. Financing health care by using a fixed premium for a given private insurance plan no longer works because premiums for adequate plans are no longer affordable for the majority. Trying to make health care affordable by applying corrections for the many variables increases the administrative complexity while falling short on equity.
Financing would be greatly simplified and much more equitable if we established a single risk pool that covered everyone and funded it through progressive taxes. (That likely would not be the conclusion of the libertarians at Cato, but they offered no alternative suggestions in this report, and we wouldn’t agree with them anyway.)

California Health Professional Student Alliance Single Payer Rally in Sacramento

About a thousand California Health Professional Student Alliance marchers and supporters gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento to rally for single payer health care reform–their fifth annual event. Featured speaker was Senator Mark Leno, author of SB 810, California OneCare, the single payer bill now making its way through the legislature. The bill is expected to pass late in the summer of 2010.

The future of healthcare reform came to Sacramento yesterday

by Shockwave
DailyKos
Tue Jan 12, 2010

The supporters of SB 810, the most vetted and mature Single Payer legislation in America, marched and rallied at the Capitol in Sacramento yesterday. 

The action in the front lines of the movement that WILL succeed in doing what DC politics could not do, pass legislation for the ONLY public option healthcare that pays for itself, were glorious.

Here is a YouTube with some highlights;

When Single Payer succeeds in California it will be adopted by other states, not unlike what happened province by province in Canada.

If you think Single Payer is ultimately the way to go, please Recommend this diary.

This is my initial report.

I joined the California Health Professionals Students Alliance at the Embassy Suites about a mile from the Capitol building.

These were University of California Irvine(UCI)students. Students from every medical school in California came in buses the night before.  I was impressed by their enthusiastic support of SB 810 and their ability to explain the advantages of Single Payer and this pivotal legislation which will be re-introduced at the Senate floor next month.

We then marched about a mile toward the Capitol building.

What do we want?  Single Payer
When do we want it? NOW

Hey, hey, ho, ho.
Healthcare greed has got to go.

Insurance companies rich and rude.
We don’t like your attitude

All America should beware
Insurance companies just don’t care

Decent healthcare is our right
We are here and we will fight!

Once there we joined up at the Capitol steps with healthcare activists from many organizations supporting SB 810 that make up the core of a well thought out and managed campaign called California One Care.  Some of the organizations present included the California Nurses Association, California Physicians Alliance,  Healthcare for All California, theCalifornia School Employees Association, the California Retired Teachers Association and many others. 

It was a cold (OK by California standards) and cloudy day but spirits were high, everybody was passionate.  Speaker after speaker gave hard hitting speeches.  The whole event was incredibly well organized.  This California healthcare movement is a well oiled grassroots machine.

SB 810 is now sponsored by Senator Mark Leno who was the first speaker. He said something that I think is the bottom line of the healthcare reform movement in California and everywhere.  Something that when I said it in toe to toe discussions with teabaggers at townhall meetings and Christmas parties makes the foam at the mouth.  Something that was echoed by the other speakers.  Something that I think is the reason why I am involved in healthcare reform;  healthcare is a basic human right, not a privilege of those who can afford it.

Senator Mark Leno is very eloquent and IMO he will be effective in Sacramento starting next month when SB 810 comes to the floor.

After the action at the Capitol steps was over we went inside where smaller groups of activists, mostly the well prepared members of the California Health Professionals Students Alliance visited the offices of most of the Senators to discuss SB 810 with each one.

First they gathered in a large conference room to coordinate the visits and prepare for possible arguments;

I decided to tag along in a visit to Republican Senator Dave Cox with a group of students. Obviously the Senator opposes SB 810 so I was very intrigued by the whole concept of medical students arguing with a powerful Republican Senator.

We were received by Kevin Bassett, his Chief of Staff, who invited us into the Senator’s office to discuss the pros and cons of SB 810.

The CHPSA members defended the bill by using tragic personal anecdotes of patients they knew who had been  denied healthcare by insurance companies.  Mr. Bassett awkwardly and repeatedly used the argument that many young people do not have healthcare because they feel “immortal” not because they cannot afford it.  This concept of “no healthcare by choice” was hammered each time by a different student who eloquently brought up another advantage of Single Payer accompanied by yet another personal anecdote.

After about 30 minutes the Senator did show up.

He started his own argument against SB 810 by saying that Single Payer is “crazy” because it cannot be afforded.  He said that Medi-Cal was broke and so were the healthcare systems of all countries that had Single Payer.

Eventually the Senator gave his vision of what he said was the future of healthcare.  But this will be in some of my next diaries.

Again, if you believe that Single Payer IS the way to go because it is the only self funding public option then support California One Care or at least Recommend this diary. I will then re-double my efforts to keep you all posted of the healthcare reform movement in California, our last best hope for real healthcare reform.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the end of greedy health insurance companies in America, starting in California.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/12/114651/003?new=true

Uwe Reinhardt, Single Payer and Corporate Control

By Russell Mokhiber
Single Payer Action
January 13, 2010

Princeton University Economics Professor Uwe Reinhardt came to Washington, D.C. yesterday.

He was invited by the Cato Institute to participate in a panel discussion.

The subject: Timothy Carney’s new book – Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses (Regnery Books, 2009).

Carney’s goal – to bury the idea that the Republicans are the party of big business, and the Democrats are the party of the people.

“Both parties are the parties of big business,” Carney said yesterday. “They both promote corporate socialism.”

Reinhardt generally agreed with Carney’s thesis, calling it an “eye-opening book that should give American citizens pause as they boast to the rest of the world that we have the best government in the world.”

During the question period, Dr. Margaret Flowers stood up to question Reinhardt about why Reinhardt – one of the nation’s leading authorities on health care economics and who writes a blog for the New York Times – wasn’t pushing single payer to the forefront.

After all, Reinhardt claims he was instrumental in pushing Taiwan to a single payer system.

So, if it’s good enough for Taiwan, why not for the United States?

“Many of us have to struggle to have our voices heard,” Flowers said to Reinhardt. “But you have a very public voice. Why has single payer not been a more prominent part of the discussion among people of your stature who recognize that this is the way we can control health care costs?”

Reinhardt said that single payer would be “dead on a arrival in a country where interest groups own the government.”

Single payer should have been debated more, Reinhardt said.

“But the reason it didn’t get any mileage here is the Obama administration looked at it and said – this is dead on arrival,” Reinhardt said. “We are going to get killed over it. And Mrs. Clinton once told me that too – that she would have favored a single payer system. But in fact President Clinton said no – this won’t go.”

“Unless people of your stature are getting this message out, people won’t understand,” Dr. Flowers said.

So, Professor Reinhardt believes that single payer is dead on arrival in a country where interest groups own the government.

But what about the interest groups that control academia?

What Professor Reinhardt didn’t tell his audience yesterday at Cato – and what he doesn’t tell his readership at the New York Times – is that he sits on the board of a health insurance corporation – Amerigroup – and at last report controls 144,000 shares of Amerigroup stock worth roughly about $4 million.

He also sits on the board of Boston Scientific – a medical device company.

And he sits on the board of two health care funds – Hambrecht and Quist Healthcare Investors and Life Sciences Investors Funds.

He also sits on the board of Triad Hospitals Inc.

When we found out about Reinhardt’s corporate connections, we sent him an e-mail asking him why he didn’t disclose this information to Dr. Flowers and the audience at Cato.

Professor Reinhardt wrote back.

“I normally would – I feel I do not have anything to hide here – but this was a session on a book, not on health reform,” Reinhardt wrote. “I was really, as I thought to bring out, a session on our system of governance. My board membership have little to do with that.”

“As it happens, I am usually credited for recommending the single-payer approach to Taiwan,” Reinhardt said. “I have never supported it here, because it has failed too often by referendum in California. I do not believe the country is ready yet for a single payer approach – it might some day though. It has nothing to do with my board memberships.”

Not convincing.

Professor Reinhardt has a legal obligation to maximize the profits for the shareholders of Amerigroup, Boston Scientific and the others.

A single payer national health insurance system would significantly impact those profits.

So, when someone asks you, Professor Reinhardt – why don’t you support single payer for the United States, given that you favored it for Taiwan – you should be right up front and disclose your conflicts.

You say your answer “has nothing to do with my board memberships.”

Maybe yes.

Maybe no.

Vermont Health Care Debate

By Rachel Kent
Fox 44 News
Jan 12, 2010

There was a heated debate Tuesday night in Vermont state capitol over health care reform. It attracted hundreds of people. It was a three hour debate over whether or not there should be a state run health care plan.

The group known as *Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign* came to Vermont’s statehouse Tuesday night, armed with more than 3,000 signatures. The signatures support a bill for single payer or state-run health care.

We feel like healthcare is a human right and whatever bill passes the house or senate have to have that as an underlying factor,” health care activist Amy Lester said.

People shared testimonials and why they believe the United States is in dire need of health care reform.

We don’t qualify and we’ve been turned down over and over again,” Vermont resident Ann Gibbs said.

The United State’s Senate voted on a bill excluding the public option or a federally run health care system.

Vermonters want state legislators to take health care reform a step further.

 “Health care should be treated as both a human right and part of out economic infrastructure. You cant have a healthy economy without healthy citizens,” Vermont resident Ron Palcer said at Tuesday’s hearing.

While those in favor of a state run health care plan may have been louder, opponents tried to make their point.

“In these economic times we cant afford more taxes and that’s exactly what this will do,” opponent Joeie Clark said.

Guest speaker Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders says states need to take the lead on healthcare reform.

 “My view is at the end of the day it will be the states that will lead this country towards a rational healthcare system not Washington,” Sanders said.

Vermont state legislators say no decisions were being made Tuesday night. Vermont Legislators are hoping whatever happens in Washington D.C individual states will keep the right to decide what healthcare system will work best. 

http://www.fox44now.com/Global/story.asp?S=11812400&nav=menu660_2

Health insurers fund Chamber attack ads

Health Insurers Funded Chamber Attack Ads

By Peter H. Stone
National Journal
January 12, 2010

Just as dealings with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats soured last summer, six of the nation’s biggest health insurers began quietly pumping big money into third-party television ads aimed at killing or significantly modifying the major health reform bills moving through Congress.

That money, between $10 million and $20 million, came from Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint, according to two health care lobbyists familiar with the transactions. The companies are all members of the powerful trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans.

The funds were solicited by AHIP and funneled to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help underwrite tens of millions of dollars of television ads by two business coalitions set up and subsidized by the chamber.

In late October, (AHIP President Karen) Ignagni wrote in a letter to the Washington Post defending a health insurer-funded study critical of congressional cost estimates, “Let me be clear and direct, health plans continue to strongly support reform.” However, by that time money was already flowing through AHIP to the chamber to fund its negative ads.

The fundraising started last September and continued through December using AHIP as a conduit to avoid a repeat of the political flak that hit the insurance industry after it famously ran its multimillion-dollar “Harry and Louise” ads to help kill health care reforms during the Clinton administration.

http://undertheinfluence.nationaljournal.com/2010/01/health-insurers-funded-chamber.php

AHIP’s December 2008 proposal for reform (pages 7-11):
http://www.americanhealthsolution.org/assets/Uploads/ahipreformpolicyproposal.pdf

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

This is not a simple Gotcha! The largest private insurers in the nation have been caught red-handed, secretly passing funds through their lobby organization, AHIP, to the United States Chamber of Commerce to help fund the Chamber’s advertising campaign opposing the reform proposal currently before Congress.

AHIP’s Karen Ignagni repeatedly has professed publicly to “strongly support reform,” yet has now been caught in this dishonest scheme campaigning in opposition to the current proposal. When you read AHIP’s proposal for reform (link above), you will see that it almost could be used as a description of the legislation. That is no surprise since it essentially was written by the private insurance industry. The legislation contains virtually every major policy that they requested.

So why should the insurers be involved in this effort to sabotage the bill? The answer is in two parts: what they don’t like about the current legislation, and what they do like about the status quo.

As the bill moves along in the late stages towards enactment, Karen Ignagni has stated many times that this bill does not require the government to do enough to control health care spending. The industry has been struggling with innovations in health plans to slow the increase in premiums, which are already placing a strain on individuals and businesses. Health care costs are so high that they can no longer provide insurance products with affordable premiums if those products are designed to provide adequate protection from financial hardship for those who actually need health care.

Working with Congress, the Congressional Budget Office, and now academically-compromised Jonathan Gruber, the industry has seen that their proposal must leave perhaps tens of millions without insurance, and leave the majority of working families with plans set at actuarial values that are so low that anyone who needs health care will still face major bills. The answer to this problem was to be found in the subsidies, but for them to be adequate would require a massive increase in government spending. Neither Congress nor the Obama administration were willing to consider the massive tax increases that would be required to make this work.

Increasingly unaffordable premiums for plans with diminishing benefits increases the instability of the private insurance market. The insurers should rightfully fear that the time is not far away when our policy makers would decide that we finally would have to replace the insurance industry with an efficient single payer system that actually would provide everyone the essential care that they need. They know that they cannot possibly deliver of the promise of affordable health care for everyone.

So what do they like about the status quo? The largest, healthiest, least expensive sector – the employer-sponsored market – is still working very well for them. In fact, that market would change very little with the current legislation, though the insurance industry would be inconvenienced with some additional regulatory oversight. The private Medicare Advantage plans are working well for them as well, but they would not be as lucrative under the reform proposal. The individual market works well for them because they can skim off the healthy, but they would have to include the high-cost chronically ill under the reformed system, making plans even less affordable.

Why would they want to comply with all of the other measures in this bill when they already have most of what they want, and they are very effectively avoiding what they don’t want? If they can kill this bill, they would be much better off.

What we have now is not working – too many are uninsured, and too many of the insured still face excessive medical bills. What this legislation proposes will not work – too many would remain uninsured, and too many of the insured would still face excessive medical bills. What we could have, an improved Medicare for everyone, would work – everyone would be insured, and no one would have to face excessive medical bills. Furthermore, as a nation, it would provide us with a financing system that we could afford, unlike our current system or the system in the flawed proposal.

AHIP, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint have lied to us, telling us that they support reform while secretly spending millions on a campaign to defeat it. Congress and President Obama now have every reason to show these crooks the door, and they should do so immediately.

A call for health reform

Statehouse crow details system's faults, horrors, urges change

By Daniel Barlow
Times Argus (MONTPELIER, Vt.)
January 13, 2010

MONTPELIER – Hundreds of Vermonters filled the Statehouse Tuesday for a public forum on health care reform, with a vast majority urging lawmakers to adopt a single-payer system.

The Vermont Legislature’s two health care committees scheduled the forum to get direction from residents as they prepare to study a host of dramatic changes to Vermont’s health care system, including a single-payer system, a public option and other proposals.

U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent, was the first speaker at the forum. Hoarse from a cold, Sanders defended his vote in favor of the national health care reform bill and told lawmakers that the country will now be looking to the states to lead for more progressive reforms.

“At the end of the day, it will be a state that will lead the country to a rational health care system,” Sanders said. “We have an opportunity here for America to show them what a comprehensive, universal system looks like. If Vermont leads, other states will follow.”

Many of the supporters of a single-payer system – a health insurance program run by the state or federal government that guarantees access, paid for via taxes – wore red shirts declaring that “health care is a human right.” The effort is part of a movement started by the Burlington-based Vermont Workers Center.

Nancy Welch, a Burlington English professor, told the crowd about how her insurance company tried to fight treatment for her husband’s kidney and brain cancers. She said the company appointed her husband a caseworker who would routinely deny him coverage for procedures that his doctors recommended.

She pointed out that Medicaid, the government-run health insurance for low-income people, only spends about 3 cents from every dollar on administrative costs. Most private insurance companies spend between 15-30 cents, she said.

“The insurance companies were squeezing profits from the health care system while trying to run down the clock on my husband’s life,” she said.

Dr. Deb Richter, a resident of Montpelier with a practice in Cambridge, rolled out a pile of paper that was nearly 200 pages long detailing all the different insurance companies and plans that her small office needs to bill after it sees patients.

As Richter spoke, single-payer supporters passed the unfurled scroll of paper across the room. At its full length, it could have run from one side of the House chambers to the other. Under a single-payer system, billing would probably only cost her office about 3 cents from every dollar, she said.

“I could probably see 20 percent more patients if it wasn’t for this paperwork,” she said.

Not everyone supported a single-payer system. One woman in the crowd waved a sign that said “health care is a privilege, not a right.” Bill Day, who said he was a former state health official, said a government-run health care system would lead to the rationing of care and a doctor shortage.

“This will give bureaucrats the power over life and death,” he said.

And the Vermont Republican Party, in a statement released shortly before the forum began, criticized Democrats for holding the session and not focusing on the $150 million budget hole. Republicans said lawmakers should let Washington, D.C. finish its debate before considering further action in Vermont.

“Rather than wasting time scoring political points with special interest groups, the health care committees in this building should be evaluating every department, division, and agency over which they have jurisdiction in order to restructure and find the efficiencies and critical savings we need,” said House Republican leader Patti Komline.

But many Vermonters who attended Tuesday’s forum said health care – and sometimes the lack of health care – were among the top issues facing the state and the country.

Peggy Safire of Craftsbury said she drives her husband, who has been diagnosed with bladder cancer, to a New Hampshire hospital for treatment because local ones don’t accept Medicaid payments. If a single-payer plan was passed in Vermont, she wouldn’t face a regular four-hour round trip, she said.

“You have it in your power to be courageous in this Statehouse,” she told lawmakers. “We’ll be watching to see what you do.”

Tuesday’s forum was scheduled by Sen. Doug Racine, D-Chittenden, and Rep. Steve Maier, D-Middlebury. Racine, a gubernatorial candidate and chairman of the Senate Health Care Committee, has said the two groups would spend the session working closely together to investigate a number of possible reforms.

The committees are expected to begin that work today with hearings on at least six different health care proposals – including single-payer and public option plans – in Room 11 at the Statehouse at 1:30 p.m.

Daniel.Barlow@timesargus.com

http://www.timesargus.com/article/20100113/NEWS/100119988

Health insurers fund Chamber attack ads

Health Insurers Funded Chamber Attack Ads

By Peter H. Stone
National Journal
January 12, 2010
Just as dealings with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats soured last summer, six of the nation’s biggest health insurers began quietly pumping big money into third-party television ads aimed at killing or significantly modifying the major health reform bills moving through Congress.
That money, between $10 million and $20 million, came from Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint, according to two health care lobbyists familiar with the transactions. The companies are all members of the powerful trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans.
The funds were solicited by AHIP and funneled to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help underwrite tens of millions of dollars of television ads by two business coalitions set up and subsidized by the chamber.
In late October, (AHIP President Karen) Ignagni wrote in a letter to the Washington Post defending a health insurer-funded study critical of congressional cost estimates, “Let me be clear and direct, health plans continue to strongly support reform.” However, by that time money was already flowing through AHIP to the chamber to fund its negative ads.
The fundraising started last September and continued through December using AHIP as a conduit to avoid a repeat of the political flak that hit the insurance industry after it famously ran its multimillion-dollar “Harry and Louise” ads to help kill health care reforms during the Clinton administration.
http://undertheinfluence.nationaljournal.com/2010/01/health-insurers-funded-chamber.php
AHIP’s December 2008 proposal for reform (pages 7-11):
http://www.americanhealthsolution.org/assets/Uploads/ahipreformpolicyproposal.pdf

This is not a simple Gotcha! The largest private insurers in the nation have been caught red-handed, secretly passing funds through their lobby organization, AHIP, to the United States Chamber of Commerce to help fund the Chamber’s advertising campaign opposing the reform proposal currently before Congress.
AHIP’s Karen Ignagni repeatedly has professed publicly to “strongly support reform,” yet has now been caught in this dishonest scheme campaigning in opposition to the current proposal. When you read AHIP’s proposal for reform (link above), you will see that it almost could be used as a description of the legislation. That is no surprise since it essentially was written by the private insurance industry. The legislation contains virtually every major policy that they requested.
So why should the insurers be involved in this effort to sabotage the bill? The answer is in two parts: what they don’t like about the current legislation, and what they do like about the status quo.
As the bill moves along in the late stages towards enactment, Karen Ignagni has stated many times that this bill does not require the government to do enough to control health care spending. The industry has been struggling with innovations in health plans to slow the increase in premiums, which are already placing a strain on individuals and businesses. Health care costs are so high that they can no longer provide insurance products with affordable premiums if those products are designed to provide adequate protection from financial hardship for those who actually need health care.
Working with Congress, the Congressional Budget Office, and now academically-compromised Jonathan Gruber, the industry has seen that their proposal must leave perhaps tens of millions without insurance, and leave the majority of working families with plans set at actuarial values that are so low that anyone who needs health care will still face major bills. The answer to this problem was to be found in the subsidies, but for them to be adequate would require a massive increase in government spending. Neither Congress nor the Obama administration were willing to consider the massive tax increases that would be required to make this work.
Increasingly unaffordable premiums for plans with diminishing benefits increases the instability of the private insurance market. The insurers should rightfully fear that the time is not far away when our policy makers would decide that we finally would have to replace the insurance industry with an efficient single payer system that actually would provide everyone the essential care that they need. They know that they cannot possibly deliver of the promise of affordable health care for everyone.
So what do they like about the status quo? The largest, healthiest, least expensive sector – the employer-sponsored market – is still working very well for them. In fact, that market would change very little with the current legislation, though the insurance industry would be inconvenienced with some additional regulatory oversight. The private Medicare Advantage plans are working well for them as well, but they would not be as lucrative under the reform proposal. The individual market works well for them because they can skim off the healthy, but they would have to include the high-cost chronically ill under the reformed system, making plans even less affordable.
Why would they want to comply with all of the other measures in this bill when they already have most of what they want, and they are very effectively avoiding what they don’t want? If they can kill this bill, they would be much better off.
What we have now is not working – too many are uninsured, and too many of the insured still face excessive medical bills. What this legislation proposes will not work – too many would remain uninsured, and too many of the insured would still face excessive medical bills. What we could have, an improved Medicare for everyone, would work – everyone would be insured, and no one would have to face excessive medical bills. Furthermore, as a nation, it would provide us with a financing system that we could afford, unlike our current system or the system in the flawed proposal.
AHIP, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint have lied to us, telling us that they support reform while secretly spending millions on a campaign to defeat it. Congress and President Obama now have every reason to show these crooks the door, and they should do so immediately.