PNHP

Time for Universal Care

Time for Universal Care

By Pat LaMarche
Bangor Daily News
2/17/09

Very few people in the United States remember the Great Depression. And to our discredit, we don’t spend much media time hearing from those seniors. Most of us have to learn the details from history books or even novels on the subject.

Put “The Grapes of Wrath” back on your reading list. Even if you read it back in high school, you’ll find it eerily poignant reading it again. Especially the early chapters where Steinbeck goes into great detail discussing the powerful banks, how much more important they are than people and how much sway they have over government officials.

Oddly enough, most of the scary conditions in the book already were in place before our own great depression hit this past fall. Millions homeless, hundreds of thousands of them our military veterans, people dying for want of medical attention, smart kids unable to pursue an education because the price tag has outstripped their earning potential: we’ve got it all.

The one remarkable thing about our times is that our economic collapse may have brought us to the tipping point. Our society and our individual consciences have long tolerated a certain amount of tragedy when it happens to somebody else. But now that the rest of us — from fat cats to the middle class — are losing wealth, homes and health insurance, it appears that everyone is headed for the Dumpster. Consequently, our economy, our society and our government are finally prepared to make corrective changes, hoping to avoid universal calamity.

Perhaps you watched the president’s speech from Elkhart, Ind., on Feb. 9.

I have to watch; it’s my job. And anyway, it’s like a car wreck — except that this mess we’re in right now was no accident. We picked a fight halfway around the world, hired no-bid contractors with money we borrowed from often unfriendly foreign countries and removed the safeguards from our financial system. All so we could lull ourselves into believing that we would become a more flourishing and robust nation by doing so.

With unrighteous hands we cracked the whip on “terrorism” and now the lash has recoiled and struck us in the back. And that backlash hurts.

The president told us that 598,000 U.S. jobs were lost in January. All these newly unemployed workers won’t create homelessness or food insecurity or health care shortages in the U.S. They’ll just swell the ranks of the millions already experiencing those nightmares.

That’s when the tipping point appears. And it’s the tipping point that the folks in charge want to avoid, no matter what.

So the president stood in Elkhart and enumerated the many ways the stimulus money would stave off further cataclysm, including millions and millions of dollars to pay COBRA bridge health insurance premiums for the workers who recently lost their jobs.

U.S. taxpayers, many of them from the same pool as the nearly 50 million Americans currently without health insurance, will be borrowing money from their grandchildren — after first indebting them to China — to pay insurance premiums.

And it’s not because a half-million more people without health insurance matter one fig when put up against 100 times that many who already live in fear of illness or injury.

And it’s not that the insurance companies and drug companies and all the rest of the for-profit medical establishment don’t want to lose the revenue the recently laid-off generated as workers.

And it’s not even that insurance companies who sell COBRA make so many campaign contributions that they can pretty much tell Congress what to do.

No, it’s because our bloated, costly exclusionary and at times deadly health care financing system is teetering at the brink and may tip over.

It’s because this year, as he has for many years, Michigan Rep. John Conyers has introduced HR 676, which already has garnered nearly 50 co-sponsors — a bill that restructures our health care system much like the rest of the civilized world and guarantees health care for all Americans.

And it’s because poll after poll, like the October 2008 ABC News poll, shows that two-thirds of Americans support changing our current system to a universal system.

Call Congress and the White House. Tell them to pass HR 676. The tipping point has come.

Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of “Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States.” She may be reached at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.

Members of Congress Offer Prescription for General Motors’ Competitive Disadvantage

Washington D.C. (February 19, 2009) — Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and two other Members of Congress today sent a letter to the CEO of General Motors, Mr. Richard Wagoner, Jr., to propose a different kind of auto industry rescue plan that eliminates the competitive disadvantage of inflated health care costs.

As health care costs continue to spiral out of control, the brunt is borne in large part by employers that provide health care. General Motors and other U.S. automakers have significantly higher health care costs than their international competitors — as much as $1400 per car. In the letter, Members of Congress point out that the adoption of H.R. 676, the United States National Health Care Act, would level the playing field and stimulate the economy.

Under H.R. 676, all American residents would receive a National Health Insurance card. The card would be good for health care services at all health care facilities across the country in the National Health Insurance system. Families would be able to choose any licensed doctor and any hospital. There would be no premium, deductible or co-payment. No one would receive a bill for any medically necessary health care services, and by eliminating inefficiencies, the plan would cost the same amount of money that is now spent on health care.

Representatives Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and John Conyers (D-MI) also signed the letter.

The full text of the letter follows:

February 19, 2009
G. Richard Wagoner, Jr.
Chief Executive Office, General Motors
300 Renaissance Center
Mail Code 482-C39-B50
Detroit, MI 48265

Dear Mr. Wagoner:

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that the auto industry continues to be competitive, we write to engage you in a discussion about solutions. With a difficult economic outlook, plummeting auto sales, efforts already underway to cut costs relative to the competition, and health care costs rising faster than inflation, there has never been a more prudent time for GM to endorse H.R. 676, the United States National Health Care Act. We invite you to meet with us to discuss the matter in person.

You have convincingly articulated the effect of health care costs on GM’s competitiveness for years. Though the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW) has provided some short-term relief of health care costs by relinquishing financial responsibility for retiree care, the health care costs of current employees remain. Unless those costs are controlled, financial relief will be temporary.

As the nation’s largest provider of health care in the U.S., GM is likely to have captured the majority of the efficiencies that can be gained under a system with multiple, competing insurers. If true, systemic health care reform is the remedy of choice. There is a model for health care finance that has proven in several countries to control costs, provide health care to all, and increase the quality of care: national health insurance, which is embodied in H.R. 676.

One such success story can be found in Canada, where Canadian GM, Ford and Chrysler have publicly declared their support for Canada’s health care system specifically because of the competitive advantage it gives them over their American counterparts.

If H.R. 676 was implemented, the benefits to GM would not be limited to cost control. H.R. 676 would reduce liability insurance & workers compensation costs; eliminate the cost and inconvenience of running a health benefits bureaucracy; eliminate employee concerns about rising premiums and co-pays and conflicts with labor unions over benefit cuts; free up money for consumer spending; reduce absenteeism; and produce a healthier, more productive work force.

Momentum behind H.R. 676 is increasing by the day. It garnered 93 cosponsors in the 110th Congress including multiple Chairs of committees and subcommittees of jurisdiction. Fifty-nine percent of all physicians and about 60% of the American public now support a national health insurance plan like H.R. 676. The California State Assembly has twice passed such a bill in the last three years. National health insurance is supported by the deans of prominent medical schools, a former New England Journal of Medicine editor, a Nobel Laureate, a former Surgeon General, the US Conference of Mayors, the US Presbyterian Church, the League of Women Voters, Consumer’s Union, and the UAW.

Please consider meeting with us at your earliest convenience to discuss the issue further. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Dennis J. Kucinich
Member of Congres

John Conyers, Jr.
Member of Congress

Marcy Kaptur
Member of Congress

America’s Economic Future Requires Health Care Reform

Dr. Margaret Flowers
Maryland Commons
February 23, 2009

We are told reforming health care is impossible in tough economic times. However, it is not only possible, it is necessary for economic recovery.

Health care costs are rising 2.5 percent faster than the nation’s gross domestic product. At this rate, health care will consume as much as half of household income by 2018.

In a global economy, American businesses cannot compete when the cost of health care is so high. Does it make sense for the auto industry to spend more for health care than for steel?

The current situation is unsustainable; we must enact fundamental, comprehensive reform to create a system that works.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why Americans spend two to three times more for health care than other industrialized nations. These nations have better health outcomes with longer life expectancy, fewer infant and maternal deaths and fewer preventable deaths. Yet in America, we spend more.

* Private health insurance companies spend 31 percent of their dollars on administration, much of it to deny or restrict needed health care. In the private, investor-owned health insurance world, profits come before health care. As a result, from 2000 to 2004, the top 14 health insurance corporations in the United States had profits of 117 percent, greatly outstripping the 5 percent profits seen by the Standard & Poor’s 500 corporations. In contrast, public programs, such as Medicare, spend 3 percent on administration.

* Americans pay up to nine times more for medications because prices are not negotiated. Other industrialized nations use bulk purchasing to make medications affordable while allowing pharmaceutical companies to make healthy profits.

* Because of co-pays and deductibles, Americans often delay getting medical care early in an illness, when it is usually easier and less expensive to treat. Many wait so long that their illness becomes life-threatening.

* Americans do not get adequate preventive care. Even those with health insurance only receive about half of recommended preventive care. Prevention is the key to keeping people healthy and saving money.

How did this situation happen?

With health insurance tied to employment, the U.S. is unique. To attract and keep employees during World War II, when wages were fixed, employers offered extra benefits, such as health insurance. Around that time, other nations created health systems independent of employment.

In the 1980’s, Wall Street investors were trained to take on health care as a profit-making venture, thus causing the shift to viewing health care as a commodity and patients as consumers. Since then, health care costs have skyrocketed and the health of our society has plummeted.

The U.S. is ranked 37th in the world; Maryland, despite its wealth, is ranked 32nd in the nation for health outcomes.

Currently, when a person becomes seriously ill or injured and loses his or her job, health insurance is lost. This may mean dying from lack of care or suffering great financial hardship. If the goal of having health insurance is to get health care when it’s needed, the market approach has failed.

We need bold reform, not tinkering around the edges. The government must play a larger role, not to correct the market, but to remove medically necessary care from the market; it didn’t belong there in the first place. Access to health care is a public good. A healthy society is a productive society, and a productive society can turn the economy around.

Private health insurers function to finance health care. Instead of trying to regulate private insurers, which is costly, the most efficient way to finance health care is to use a single public payer, such as Medicare. Medicare for all would pay health care providers directly and providers would remain the same. A single public payer would save around $400 billion per year in administrative costs and allow bulk purchasing of medications, further reducing costs.

Did I say remove health care from the market? Yes, that is, for medically necessary care. Private insurers would still provide supplemental plans for the rest, such as elective surgery.

There are more reasons why using a single public payer is better. The existence of hundreds of different insurers and plans costs the average doctor’s office 20 percent of its overhead for paperwork. And private insurers undermine the integrity of the physician-patient relationship by refusing to pay for care, essentially practicing without a medical license. This is causing physicians to go into “boutique practices,” or leave clinical medicine altogether.

Maryland has a serious physician shortage. Insurers also restrict where patients can go, charging more if the patient goes “out of network.” Under a single public payer, patients would choose their health care provider without penalty, leading to healthy competition among providers.

For businesses, many of which are crushed by health care costs, removing this burden would allow wage increases and the hiring of more employees. There would be less incentive for American businesses to move offshore, where health care costs are lower, such as Europe or Canada.

There is a state bill called the Maryland Health Security Act (HB 1186, SB 881) and a national resolution called HR 676. Both would create a health system based on a single public payer. To learn more or become involved, go to www.mdsinglepayer.org and www.guaranteedhealthcare4all.org

It is time to set aside ideology and enact health care reform to provide everyone with continuous access to health care from birth to death, simply and less expensively. This is what a civilized society does.

Massachusetts’ 2006 Health Insurance Law Not A Good Model for National Health Care System Reform, Physicians Say

Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report
Feb 23, 2009

Modeling the U.S. health care system after Massachusetts’ health insurance law would leave many residents without affordable health coverage, according to analysis by three Harvard Medical School physicians and a letter signed by 500 state physicians sent to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the Boston Globe’s “Political Intelligence” blog reports. According to “Political Intelligence,” portions of the insurance law — which requires most state residents to obtain health coverage and provides subsidies for some residents who cannot afford coverage — have been praised by President Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.), “making it likely to influence any effort to overhaul the national system.”

While the letter urges Kennedy to consider proposing a Medicare-for-all style national health care system, the Globe reports that this “something Congressional leaders and the White House have rejected as politically unworkable.” According to the letter, “Any plan that retains private insurers will add layers of bureaucracy and fail to control costs, dooming the noble effort to assure good care for all.”

In an analysis, Rachel Nardin, a neurologist and an assistant professor, and Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, both primary care physicians and associate professors, question the quality of state data that show all but 2.6% of Massachusetts’ residents are insured, saying that the number is probably 5% or more. In addition, they claim that insurance coverage under the new law has created unaffordable out-of-pocket costs for lower- and middle-class residents, particularly those with chronic illnesses. The new law also is more costly than expected, which has resulted in reductions to state funding of “safety net” providers that offer no-cost care to low-income residents, the physicians said.

Jonathan Gruber — an MIT economist and a board member of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, which administers the Massachusetts law — said the physicians “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Gruber said the Connector has capped out-of-pocket costs and premiums for low-income residents with annual incomes up to three times the poverty level at 10% of their income. However, those who earn between three and five times the poverty level may have more difficulty finding affordable health coverage, he said.

Jon Kingsdale, executive director of the Connector, also said that the physicians’ analysis did not accurately portray the cost of subsidized health coverage in fiscal year 2008, which was $800 million, not more than $1 billion (Wangsness, “Political Intelligence,” Boston Globe, 2/18).

Online The analysis is available online (.pdf). The letter also is available online (.pdf).

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=57114

Who is behind those closed doors in the Senate?

Health Care Industry in Talks to Shape Policy

By Robert Pear
The New York Times
February 19, 2009
Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.
The 20 people who regularly attend the meetings on Capitol Hill include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20health.html?ref=politics

What?! In this time of transparency and Change, when we have an open window of opportunity to finally fix our very sick health care system, we are reverting to a closed door process dominated by the most powerful lobbyists in the nation whose interests take precedence over the American patient?!
Robert Pear reports that they are inching toward a consensus, but read his description of the memorandum prepared by director of the health staff of Senator Kennedy’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. They have agreed on almost nothing. “…the sense of the room is that an individual obligation to purchase insurance should be part of reform…” is as close as they have come, and, even there, there is no agreement on what that coverage should be and on how you would enforce it.
At best, this process can end only with recommendations for a few tweaks in our system, just as the window slams shut and everyone walks out.
Have these people no decency?!
A few in the room do, but they are overpowered by those who… Well, you know. People can go broke and die for all they care, as long as we keep our public institutions out of their private businesses.
Stall and walk out. How’s that for CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN?

Who is behind those closed doors in the Senate?

Health Care Industry in Talks to Shape Policy

By Robert Pear
The New York Times
February 19, 2009

Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.

The 20 people who regularly attend the meetings on Capitol Hill include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20health.html?ref=politics

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

What?! In this time of transparency and Change, when we have an open window of opportunity to finally fix our very sick health care system, we are reverting to a closed door process dominated by the most powerful lobbyists in the nation whose interests take precedence over the American patient?!

Robert Pear reports that they are inching toward a consensus, but read his description of the memorandum prepared by director of the health staff of Senator Kennedy’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. They have agreed on almost nothing. “…the sense of the room is that an individual obligation to purchase insurance should be part of reform…” is as close as they have come, and, even there, there is no agreement on what that coverage should be and on how you would enforce it.

At best, this process can end only with recommendations for a few tweaks in our system, just as the window slams shut and everyone walks out.

Have these people no decency?!

A few in the room do, but they are overpowered by those who… Well, you know. People can go broke and die for all they care, as long as we keep our public institutions out of their private businesses.

Stall and walk out. How’s that for CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN?

Single payer would improve health care for everyone

By Madeline Zevon
Lower Hudson Journal News
February 19, 2009

The recession has been taking a toll on New York businesses, but it isn’t the only thing ailing us; the high cost of health care and the lack of access to care dog businesses and individuals. Here is a commentary from the League of Women Voters on single-payer national health insurance, a leading solution to the cost and accessibility problems plaguing health care in New York, where an estimated 1 in 6 people lacks insurance.

What is single payer? It refers to the administration of health-care funds by one payer, rather than by the current multiple insurance companies. This payer would be the federal government. Think of single payer as enhanced and improved Medicare for all. The League of Women Voters of Westchester, New York state and the U.S. League all advocate for single-payer health care.

Can we afford covering the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured nationwide? Yes, we can. Currently insurance companies have an overhead of approximately 30 percent, which is spent on marketing, administration, shareholders dividends and exorbitant CEO salaries. Medicare’s overhead is approximately 3 percent. We could save about $350 billion annually, enough to cover the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office say the U.S. could insure everyone for the money we’re paying now to insure seniors only.

Is this socialized medicine? No, it is not. With socialized medicine, doctors and hospitals are owned by the government. As with Medicare, hospitals would be semi-private just as they are now, and doctors would be in private practice just as they are now. Single payer would replace the costly, inefficient system of private insurance. Paperwork would be greatly reduced because there would be only one entity to deal with.

Fifty-nine percent of physicians support legislation to establish national health insurance; 65 percent of Americans agree that the U.S. should adopt a program like Medicare for all. We spend twice as much on health care as other industrialized nations, and they cover all of their population. Every other industrialized country in the world has national health insurance. We are the only country that uses private, for-profit insurance to finance health care for the majority of our population.

Do we need to improve our current Medicare system? Yes, we do. Medicare is suffering financially because of the intrusion of private health-maintenance organizations, which were initially put into place as a cost-effective system, but were actually less cost effective. HMOs are subsidized by the government, cherry-pick healthy patients, and yet their costs are 12 percent more than traditional Medicare. This system costs the taxpayers $15 billion a year.

Each year, half of all personal bankruptcies are caused by medical bills, and 75 percent of those bankrupted were insured when they got sick. Insurance premiums go up each year for policies that cover less and less. The goal of insurance companies is to make a profit for their shareholders and CEOs.

All of these issues obviously affect residents of the Lower Hudson Valley and New York. More and more groups are petitioning for single payer:

– The Westchester division of the League of Women Voters has a very active group working on this issue.

– Single Payer New York, an Albany group, has urged President Barack Obama to reject a Massachusetts-style plan and it urged Gov. David Paterson to provide leadership for single payer.

– In the Legislature, dozens of lawmakers in both the Assembly and Senate have sponsored single-payer legislation.

– Physicians for a National Health Program, a group of more than 15,000 physicians nationally and more than 1,000 from the New York metro area, has actively campaigned for single payer for several years. It is estimated that today’s physician spends about one-third of his or her time satisfying insurance company regulations and seeking approval for treatment, time that could be better spent with patients.

– Single payer would save New York $5 billion annually in administrative waste.

The government already pays for a significant proportion of our health care. Since 60 percent of our health-care system is financed by public money – Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs and insurance for public employees. It makes sense to expand this coverage for all.

Major stumbling blocks are the drug and insurance companies. These industries spend more than any other industry lobbying Congress. They succeeded in making Medicare part D a windfall for drug companies. Both former Sen. Hillary Clinton and President Obama have said in the past that single payer makes the most sense but is not “politically feasible” at this time. The flaw in both their proposed health-care reforms (as seen during their respective campaigns) is that they involve insurance companies in the system, making reform financially unaffordable. This approach is not viable, as numerous state-based experiments have shown. Such plans fail because of the cost.

All we need is the political will.

The writer is vice president of the White Plains League of Women Voters and a member of the LWV of Westchester Health Committee.

http://lohud.com/article/20090219/OPINION/902190354/1076/OPINION01

Former journalist crusading for affordable health care

Health care activist visits Fort Collins

BY PAT FERRIER
Fort Collins Coloradoan
February 7, 2009

T.R. Reid is uncharacteristically angry.

He’s angry the richest country in the world cannot provide efficient, affordable health care to all its residents.

He’s angry the World Health Organization ranks the U.S. 37th for the cost, quality and coverage of its health-care system.

And, he’s angry the U.S. health-care system has failed the roughly 47 million Americans who lack health insurance.

Reid, a journalist and author, has lived and worked in England and Japan, experiencing firsthand their health-care systems.

He shares those experiences and interviews from several other countries in his 2008 PBS documentary “Sick Around the World,” and his upcoming “Sick Around America” that will air March 21 on PBS.

On Feb. 19 he will be in Fort Collins to discuss the U.S. health care system and its need for substantive and sweeping changes.

He’s come to the consensus that to create an efficient and fair health-care system that covers everyone, the payment system has to be nonprofit.

“If you have for-profit health insurance as we have today, insurance companies do their best not to cover anyone who might need their product,” he said.

“They employ armies of underwriters to deny claims. It’s cheaper for them to write a letter denying a claim than paying it.”

Like any other publicly held company, the mission of for-profit insurance companies is to pay a dividend to their stockholders, he said. “In other countries … it’s to pay for health care. It’s a fundamental difference between us and everyone else.”

As long as the U.S. relies on existing for-profit health insurance companies, the health-care system can’t work, he said.

Reid, a former bureau chief for the Washington Post stationed in Denver, is well-known for his commentaries on National Public Radio from England and Japan.

He spends much of his time now writing books and making documentaries.

Health care became an interest when he lived in Japan and “got marvelous health care. The bills were so small I thought they just dropped a couple of zeroes by mistake.

“In Britain, we’d call the doctor and say the kid has an earache; the doctor would come to the house, treat the kid and walk out the door, and there’s no bill.

“I’m looking at the two countries saying how come they can do this and the U.S., the richest country in the world, can’t do this?

“I am so angry about the U.S. health-care system. It is shocking what these insurance companies do to people.”

Dr. Janet Seeley, a Fort Collins physician who invited Reid to Fort Collins, said most physicians agree health care in the U.S. needs a major overhaul, but they can’t agree on what form that overhaul should take.

Reid breaks health care around the world into four models, each less expensive and more expansive than the U.S., which spends between 18 and 25 percent of its costs on administration.

Canada, Britain and Japan spend 5 percent and Japan spends 3 percent on administrative costs, he said.

“Our current private health insurance is the cruelest and most expensive in the world. Unless we go after that, we can’t fix it.”

Reid worries the Obama administration, which had hoped to tackle health-care reform in its first 100 days, will get derailed by an economy in shambles and billions of dollars diverted into stimulus packages.

“If a new president takes it on early during the honeymoon period when he still has the political mandate, it’s probably the best time. I’m worried Obama won’t get to it soon enough.”

What Obama can learn from us

David Olive
Business Columnist
Toronto Star
Feb 18, 2009

Ahead of his brief Ottawa visit tomorrow, Barack Obama is getting the message from influential U.S. voices that Canada — and Toronto in particular — are models for the American social and economic renaissance the new U.S. president is pledged to bring about.

“If President Obama is looking for smart government, there is much he, and all of us, could learn from our quiet — okay, sometimes boring — neighbour to the north,” writes Fareed Zakaria, bestselling author (The Post-American World) and chief international columnist for Newsweek.

Zakaria notes that, in the industrialized world, only Canada has experienced no bank failures or government bailouts.

Canada’s Big Five banks made a combined profit of $8.2 billion (U.S.) last year, while the top five U.S. banks lost a total of $8.3 billion.

“One of the things that I think has been striking about Canada is that in the midst of this enormous economic crisis,” Obama told the CBC yesterday, “Canada has shown itself to be a pretty good manager of the financial system in the economy in ways that we haven’t always been here in the United States.

“And I think that’s important for us to take note of, that it’s possible for us to have a vibrant banking sector, for example, without taking some of the wild risks that have resulted in so much trouble on Wall Street.”

For 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s banking system the healthiest in the world. The U.S. ranked 40th, and Britain 44th.

In advance of the next Group of 20 summit, in April in London, a G20 working group headed by Tiff Macklem and Rakesh Mohan has been asked to devise a blueprint for more robust regulatory supervision and greater transparency to prevent future global banking crises.

The selection of these two co-chairs is telling. Macklem is Canada’s associate deputy minister of finance. Mohan is deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, another nation whose banks did not load up on subprime, or junk, mortgages; collateralized debt obligations (CDOs); and other “toxic waste” now crippling world banks.

The record-sized U.S. housing bubble that burst in 2007 originated with Bush-era policies intended to help people realize the American Dream of home ownership. Regulatory laxity earlier this decade gave rise to a proliferation of subprime mortgage lending. U.S. homeowners also benefit from the longstanding U.S. policy of tax deductibility of mortgage interest, a middle-class entitlement program in everything but name that costs the U.S. government about $100 billion (U.S.) a year. As a result, 68 per cent of Americans own their homes, but that figure predates the millions of home foreclosures anticipated this year and next. In Canada, without those inducements, the home-ownership rate is 68.4 per cent.

But Zakaria points to many other things the Great White North is getting right. A more open-door immigration policy than its “brain-dead” U.S. counterpart that welcomes rather than shuns skilled émigrés. A reformed national pension system now in robust fiscal health compared with a near-insolvent U.S. Social Security system.

And “Canada has been remarkably responsible over the past decade or so,” Zakaria notes, citing 12 years of federal budget surpluses. Which means Ottawa “can now spend money to fuel a recovery from a strong position.” The U.S., by contrast, braced for a $1 trillion (U.S.) federal deficit even before Obama yesterday signed into law a $787 billion (U.S.) economic stimulus package.

Looking further ahead, Richard Florida, the urban economics guru, sees Toronto angling for the same global heft as Chicago and Tokyo. “I sense we are in great shape to move up in the global ranks,” says Florida, now based at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Florida followed the example of his mentor, the late urbanologist Jane Jacobs, in relocating two years ago to Canada from his native U.S.

Like New York and London, Toronto is a finance, media and entertainment centre, forecast to be among the fastest-growing business sectors over the next generation. Unlike those cities, Toronto also has an abundance of technological research, and more social stability and ethnic diversity. And in recent years the city’s cultural amenities have expanded considerably.

Florida readily concedes that stubborn problems like income inequality and a deteriorating basic-industry sector have yet to be tackled. But in a cover-story essay in the current Atlantic magazine, the venerable U.S. public issues journal, Florida identifies Toronto among fast-growing “mega-regions” most ideally suited to rapid growth. Atlantic gave Florida’s article four covers, showing the skylines of North American cities with the best prospects for sustained prosperity — Toronto, New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

Yet Florida discourages U.S. comparisons. “Stop looking south for models,” says Florida, based for 17 years at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. “They ain’t there. The U.S. is in very deep crisis. It’s time for Toronto to break out and lead.”

For Zakaria, health care is likely Canada’s high card.

“Canada’s health-care system is cheaper than America’s by far (accounting for 9.7 per cent of GDP, versus 15.2 per cent here),” Zakaria writes, “and yet does better on all major indexes.”

Obama once said if he was designing a U.S. health-care system from scratch, it would be modeled on Canada’s universal single-payer formula. But that model is too easily demonized in the U.S. as “socialized medicine” to be politically viable.

So Obama is instead pushing a clumsy public-private hybrid designed to at least provide coverage for the 46 million Americans without health insurance.

Still, Obama finds the “socialized-medicine” bogeyman risible. In an interview in the liberal U.S. journal Nation three years ago, the then-U.S. senator from Illinois was asked if the single-payer option “is revolutionary or reformist.”

“Anything that Canada does can’t be entirely revolutionary, it’s Canada” Obama laughed. “When I drive through Toronto, it doesn’t look like a bunch of Maoists.”

Insurance industry is intimidating lawmakers

Kennebec Journal / Morning Sentinel
Feb. 19, 2009

Under pressure from the insurance industry, Obama’s health-care reform is poised to completely exclude a single-payer “improved Medicare for all” option. Such a program would save enough money to provide comprehensive benefits for all Americans.

Yet opposition from insurance and drug industry giants continues to intimidate lawmakers. Only the voice of the people, our voices, can fortify our leaders to stand up for the health of the American people rather than the wealth of our richest firms.

Every other developed nation sees health care as a “right” and has some form of national health insurance (NHI). Plus, most spend less than half what we do per person.

Nearly a third of U.S. health-care spending is wasted on administration. In their drive to enroll healthy, profitable patients and screen out the sick, private insurers consume vast sums of money that sustain profits, enrich CEOs and divert resources from patient care. The paperwork they inflict on doctors and hospitals costs billions more each year. This “profit first” mentality has broken our health-care system and led the world into financial crisis.

Only single-payer NHI can fix this broken system and save thousands of lives each year. The concept is popular with the American people and enjoys the support of most doctors.

Right now, “improved Medicare for all” bills are taking shape in the U.S. House and Senate and in the Maine Legislature. Our leaders need to hear from you. Contact them. Voice your support.

Dr. John Benziger
South China

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/view/letters/5966278.html

Massachusetts is no model for national health care reform

Physicians, public interest group urge Sen. Kennedy to introduce single-payer legislation

For Immediate Release
Feb. 20, 2009

Contacts:
Rachel Nardin, M.D.
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D.
Mark Almberg, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org

WASHINGTON – The Massachusetts health care system, widely regarded as an example of how to provide universal coverage and keep costs low, is in fact faltering badly and should not be held up as a national model for reform, according to a study released this week by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and Public Citizen.

The study comes at a time when the health insurance industry is reportedly weighing in heavily in secret talks on Capitol Hill in favor of an individual mandate, a legal obligation requiring persons to have or to buy health insurance. The insurance industry’s position was described in today’s New York Times.

However, such mandates – which have been a cornerstone of the Massachusetts health reform – have failed to assure universal coverage, the new study says. For example, the state’s most recent figures show that it had to exempt 79,000 residents from the mandate in 2007 because they could not afford to buy insurance.

The Massachusetts plan has also failed to make health care sufficiently affordable or to control costs, the report says.

The groups urged Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to reject his home state’s approach and, instead, introduce Senate legislation crafted after the House’s United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676, which would implement single-payer financing of health care while maintaining the private delivery system. The two groups also released a letter to Kennedy signed by approximately 500 Massachusetts physicians and health professionals urging the senator to embrace single-payer reform.

“Massachusetts physicians have the unique opportunity to observe the effects of this reform on patients every day,” said Dr. Rachel Nardin, president of the Massachusetts chapter of PNHP and lead author of the study. “The nearly 500 doctors who have signed the open letter to Sen. Kennedy see that the reform is deeply flawed.”

PNHP’s study of the Massachusetts model found that the state’s 2006 reforms, instead of reducing costs, have been more expensive than expected. The budget overruns have forced the state to siphon about $150 million from safety-net providers such as public hospitals and community clinics.

Many low-income residents, who used to receive completely free care, now face co-payments, premiums and deductibles under the new system – financial burdens that prevent many of them from receiving necessary medical treatment. Since the state’s reforms passed, premiums under the state insurance program have increased 9.4 percent. The study found that if a middle-income person on the cheapest available state plan got sick, he or she could end up paying $9,872 in premiums, deductibles and co-insurance for the year.

Many residents remain uninsured or have inadequate insurance.

Under a single-payer system, doctors, hospitals and other health care providers are paid from a single fund administered by the government.

“We are facing a health-care crisis in this country because private insurers are driving up costs with unnecessary overhead, bloated executive salaries and an unquenchable quest for profits – all at the expense of American consumers,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group. “Massachusetts’ failed attempt at reform is little more than a repeat of experiments that haven’t worked in other states. To repeat that model on a national scale would be nothing short of Einstein’s definition of insanity.”

The study reported that a national nonprofit single-payer system could save Massachusetts about $8 billion to $10 billion a year in reduced administrative costs. Currently, Americans spend 31 cents of every health care dollar on administrative costs, by far the highest rate in the world and much higher than the 17 cents spent in Canada, which has single-payer universal health care.

“Big hospitals and insurers have gotten rich off reform, but a survey shows that more people directly affected by it have been harmed than helped,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a PNHP co-founder and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who helped prepare the study. “We’re seeing patients who now can’t afford vital medications and treatments that they’ve been on for years because of the new co-payments and deductibles imposed by the law.”


Read the report, “Massachusetts’ Plan: A Failed Model for Health Care Reform.”

Read the letter to Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Read the labor letter to President Barack Obama.

Read personal stories from Massachusetts patients.

Single payer – over on the side table

Canada and the Recession: Angles of Deflection

By Nancy Folbre, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
The New York Times
Economix
February 19, 2009
As the economist (and fellow Economix blogger) Uwe Reinhardt explains, the single-payer Canadian health care system delivers very good results for about half the per-person cost of ours — with huge savings from reduced paperwork. Economic disparities in access to health care are significantly lower there.
President Obama promises to expand health insurance coverage in the United States with little threat or inconvenience to the private sector. But some Democrats in Congress, led by Representative John Conyers, advocate a single-payer “Medicare for All” bill strongly influenced by the Canadian model.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/canada-angles-of-deflection/?hp

And…

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
February 7, 2009
(Canada’s) health-care system is cheaper than America’s by far (accounting for 9.7 percent of GDP, versus 15.2 percent here), and yet does better on all major indexes. Life expectancy in Canada is 81 years, versus 78 in the United States; “healthy life expectancy” is 72 years, versus 69. American car companies have moved so many jobs to Canada to take advantage of lower health-care costs that since 2004, Ontario and not Michigan has been North America’s largest car-producing region.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/183670

And…

This Won’t Hurt a Bit

by Jonathan Cohn
The New Republic
February 18, 2009
Advocates of single-payer systems complain frequently that the mainstream political debate doesn’t give their idea the attention it deserves. They are right. Public insurance programs enjoy huge economies of scale; they don’t fritter away money on profits or efforts to skim healthier patients from the population. When it comes to billing, they tend to be a lot simpler than, say, a system with dozens of competing insurance plans. All insurance systems require providers to file a lot of paperwork; single-payer systems, though, require just one set. The centralized power of single-payer systems also gives them unparalleled sway over not just the amount of money they pay but how they dole it out; with that kind of leverage, they can push the medical system toward making key improvements in quality.
In an ideal world, then, single-payer would almost certainly be the best option. But is it politically feasible? Single-payer advocates like to point out that Representative John Conyers has a single-payer bill in Congress with close to 100 co-sponsors. But many of those co-sponsors have signed on because, until now, it has been a cheap, meaningless way to win points with liberal interest groups.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4d41ab07-8c25-4b22-81d2-02b4d149afe2

And…

How the U.S. measures up to Canada’s health care system

Interview of Uwe Reinhardt
Worldfocus
January 28, 2009
We have a Canadian health plan in America. It’s called Medicare. It works. Don’t tell me Medicare doesn’t work. Tell that to the elderly. One way to test it is to say “Let’s take it away.”
You have to, in the end, cover people. And if you, the private health insurance agency, are not able to do it, we can do it. The government can do it. And we’ll discover this more and more.
http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/01/28/how-the-us-measures-up-to-canadas-health-care-system/3783/

The good news is that individuals from the media and from the policy community are acknowledging, on the side, that single payer would cover everyone, would improve health outcomes, and would cost less than the other current proposals for reform. Today’s quotes are only a few examples of a multitude of such comments. Single payer has not been removed from the national dialogue on reform.
The bad news is that all too often these are only side comments as the discussion then moves forward with the need to support “feasible” approaches that do not cover everyone, waste tremendous resources, and cost far more than would a publicly-administered and publicly-financed system.
Are we such automatons that we need to set aside facts about an approach that would benefit all of us, and reflexly accept deficient, perverse policies that would benefit the private insurance industry? Why is gifting our funds to the private insurance industry feasible, while spending those funds on health care that people need is not?
As Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, we’re entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. Let’s dump the opinions and craft reform based on the actual facts. Seriously!