Member Resource Archive - Page 907 of 1212

Only national insurance can fix broken system

Letter to the Editor
Kennebec (Maine) Journal
08/12/2008

More than 11 million of America’s 47 million uninsured have chronic physical illnesses like heart disease, diabetes and asthma and are not getting the life-saving medical care they need.

According to a recent article in Annals of Internal Medicine, a leading medical journal, uninsured adults with chronic illnesses were nearly four times more likely than the insured to have not seen a health professional within the past year (22 percent vs. 6 percent). They were also six times more likely to identify an emergency room as their standard site for care (7.1 percent vs 1.1 percent).

“We have made dramatic advances in treatment of chronic illnesses like heart disease and high blood pressure,” said Dr. Andrew Wilper, the study’s lead author. “But many Americans are locked out of the system because they are uninsured and cannot afford this life-saving care. Many end up with preventable ER visits, hospitalizations, amputations, kidney failure or worse because their chronic condition has gotten out of control,” he said.

Some claim that uninsured Americans can get the care they need in emergency rooms. But ERs may provide too little, too late for the millions of uninsured with chronic conditions. They need regular medical monitoring and medications to control their illnesses and a whole array of services they cannot afford.

Our profit-driven health care system leaves tens of millions vulnerable. Only single-payer national health insurance can fix this broken system and save thousands of lives each year.

Dr. John Benziger
South China

Copy Massachusetts' health reform? Not so fast, researchers say

For full text of the study: https://pnhp.org/states_flatline/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug. 11, 2008

Contacts:
David Himmelstein, M.D., (312) 782-6006
Benjamin Day, (617) 777-3422, director@masscare.org
Mark Almberg, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org

Citing the failure of seven state-based health reforms over the past two decades – initiatives that bear a strong resemblance to the Massachusetts health reform of 2006 – a group of Massachusetts-based researchers cautions that early declarations of the latter’s success may be premature.

In an article titled “State Heath Reform Flatlines,” published in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Health Services, three researchers, two of whom teach at Harvard Medical School, examine the experiences of earlier reforms in Massachusetts, Oregon, Minnesota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington state and Maine. The plans were enacted from 1988 through 2003.

All seven reforms, which when launched were widely trumpeted by political leaders and leading newspapers as breakthroughs in providing universal health care, were based on the expansion of private insurance coverage, the authors say. But in each case the plan had little impact on the state’s number of uninsured persons and produced no sustained improvements in delivering care.

Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study, said the 2006 Massachusetts reform appears poised to follow the pattern of the 1992 Tennessee plan, which featured a large expansion of coverage under a Medicaid-like program. “In Tennessee, the number of uninsured dipped for two years, then rose to levels higher than ever,” he said. “And the plan proved to be unaffordable in the long term.

“According to the latest figures on Massachusetts from the National Health Interview Survey,” he continued, “the uninsurance rate has fallen by only 2 percent, from 7.7 percent to 5.8 percent, since the reform was passed, while the plan is already $147 million over budget.”

Himmelstein, who is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge, Mass., said the seven failed plans incorporated virtually all of the reform elements being advanced today by leading Democrats, including Sen. Barack Obama. The problem, he said, is that such reforms leave the private health insurance industry in a dominant position.

“Politicians like to claim they’ve passed bold health reforms, but they’re afraid to rock the private insurance boat,” he said. “So they keep pushing gussied-up versions of reforms that have failed time after time. Our health care system is sick to death, and our politicians keep prescribing placebos.”

The authors note that all of the failed plans included expansions of Medicaid or similar programs for the poor and near-poor. Three states’ reforms (Massachusetts in 1988, Oregon in 1989-1992 and Washington state in 1993) included mandates requiring employers to cover their workers, and the Massachusetts and Washington plans also included an individual mandate on the self-employed.

The authors analyzed Census Bureau data on uninsurance rates in each of the seven states. Massachusetts’ uninsurance rate rose from 7.2 percent to 9.7 percent in the three years after the passage of then-governor Michael Dukakis’ universal health care reform in 1988. Uninsurance went from 14.1 percent to 14.7 percent in the three years after implementation of Oregon’s universal health care reform in 1993. The percentage of residents lacking coverage in Washington state increased from 10.7 percent to 11.6 percent in the three years after passage of its universal health care initiative.

Similar patterns occurred in Vermont and Maine. Tennessee’s program (which included the largest Medicaid expansion) was probably the most successful, dropping the share of uninsured in the state from 12 percent to 9 percent in its first year, before a rebound to 14 percent by year three. (See charts in links below.)

All of the plans eventually “flatlined,” or died quiet deaths, the authors said.

According to Benjamin Day, executive director of Mass-Care, a health care advocacy coalition based in Boston, “It’s easy to build political consensus for expanded health coverage. But experience shows that you can’t achieve universal coverage at an affordable price unless you throw out the insurance companies with their massive overhead and profit, and replace them with a more efficient single-payer national health insurance program.

“Senator Obama should learn this lesson,” Day said. As for Sen. John McCain’s health care proposals, “they are so obviously unworkable that it’s hard to take them seriously.”

*******

The text of the study is available in PDF to the press at www.pnhp.org/states_flatline

Additional charts in PowerPoint format are available at www.pnhp.org/five_states

“State Health Reform Flatlines,” Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH; Benjamin Day; and David U. Himmelstein, MD. International Journal of Health Services, Vol. 38, No. 3.

Physicians for a National Health Program, a membership organization of over 15,000 physicians, supports a single-payer national health insurance program. To contact a physician-spokesperson in your area, visit www.pnhp.org/stateactions or call (312) 782-6006.

Vital signs for national health insurance

By Lance Dickie
Editorial Columnist
Seattle Times
Friday, Aug. 8, 2008

Headlines about job losses and a slumping economy sharpen interest in universal health-insurance coverage.

Searing headlines about local job cuts sharpen interest in universal health-insurance coverage. The topic grabs the attention of those vulnerable families and voters broadly defined as the middle class, the engine of change.

Increasingly, the focus is on national single-payer health insurance. Acceptance of the concept is growing, especially among a key constituency: doctors.

Two years ago, I opined the health-care system was not yet bad enough for real change to occur. The economy was propped up by easy credit and the soon-to-be-exposed liar loans of a fraudulent housing boom. The link between having a job and access to medical care was still secure for so many.

Well, yes, the number of Americans without health insurance was estimated at 47 million — a staggering figure — but the topic and threat seemed comfortably distant from most households.

At the same time, coverage was eroding for many wage earners. Benefits were being cut, insurance exclusions were mounting, co-payments and deductibles were climbing, and children of the middle class were entering a stark economy where employers can no longer afford to offer coverage.

Single-payer health insurance is about who pays the bills, not who provides the medical care. Instead of having private insurance, everyone pays into a common fund. Nothing about the health-care-delivery system changes.

No one is employed by the government except the people who write the checks. Call it Medicare for everyone. Instead of waiting until age 65 for decent medical care, everyone — everyone — has access to a doctor.

The public’s interest in guaranteed health insurance has been picking up in polls, but a significant change was reported this spring in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a leading medical journal. A study found 59 percent of U.S. physicians now support national health insurance, a jump of 10 percentage points in five years.

Support for national health insurance — private doctors paid by a federally administered plan — has gained support across medical specialties, according to Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research at Indiana University’s School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

Doctors have layers of frustrations with the current system of private insurers, Carroll said in a telephone conversation this week. Serving on the front lines of the medical system, they see the toll on patients without insurance and on the underinsured.

For all the grousing about reimbursement rates paid by Medicare, Carroll said doctors work within an operating model that is easier to navigate, and with vastly lower overhead expenses than hundreds of private insurers. Doctors are fed up with the hassles and billing refusals by different people at different companies with different procedures.

Carroll even sees a national single-payer health-insurance plan offering relief for such knotty problems as malpractice insurance. Most of the legal battles focus on the cost of future health care after a bad outcome. Universal coverage resolves that issue. That leaves a much smaller pool of cases where the fight is over punitive payments for true negligence.

The professional and political mosaic of a national single-payer health system is taking shape. In January, the American College of Physicians endorsed single payer as a pathway to universal coverage. In June, the U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution in support of HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, is an articulate proponent of the legislation.

So far, the presidential candidates are behind the curve on health-care reform. Dr. John P. Geyman, professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington, laments that Republican John McCain offers no new ideas and Democrat Barack Obama’s incremental approach falls short of a fix.

Geyman argues the inefficiencies and high overhead of the current health-care system have led to under-use of essential care for vulnerable populations, and a significant amount of unnecessary and inappropriate care for those who can pay for it.

Change is coming. McCain and Obama owe voters a coherent health plan. Their future employment depends on it.

Lance Dickie’s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is ldickie@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera

The Polling Is Quite Clear

The American Public Supports Guaranteed Healthcare on the “Medicare for All” or “Single-Payer” Model

Click here to download the flyer from California Nurses Association / National Nurses Organizing Committee

City of Austin backs 'single-payer' health plan

For Immediate Release:
August 7, 2008

Contacts:
Bill Holloway, Health Care for All Texas (HCFAT), (512) 744-7487, bill.holloway@gmail.com
Ana Malinow, M.D., Physicians for a National Health Program and HCFAT, amalinow@bcm.tmc.edu
Mark Almberg, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org

AUSTIN, Texas – Affirming that “every person deserves access to affordable, quality health care” and noting that area residents are not getting it, the Austin City Council called today for the enactment of a nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance program.

At its regular Thursday meeting, the Council voted to endorse the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and 91 other members of Congress. The vote was six in favor and one abstention.

In taking the action, Austin joined at least 24 other municipalities, including Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco and Louisville, Ky., that have called for the bill’s passage.

Also known as the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, Conyers’ bill would guarantee everyone access to all medically necessary care, including prescription drugs, with no co-pays or deductibles. It would contain costs by eliminating the administrative waste and bureaucracy associated with the private insurance industry, and it would assure patients their personal choice of doctor and hospital.

Speaking to a local reporter shortly before the vote, Council Member Lee Leffingwell, a co-sponsor of the resolution, said, “This is not socialized medicine. It is basically the same system we have now in the form of Medicare, just more broadly applied.”

Leffingwell told KLBJ-AM radio he was reluctant to get involved in national issues, “but … about 20 percent of our residents don’t have health insurance, and that puts a heavy burden on our area hospitals and our network of social service providers.” Council Members Mike Martinez and Randi Shade joined him in co-sponsoring the measure.

The Council’s action follows on the heels of a similar endorsement by the U.S. Conference of Mayors at its June meeting in Miami. Several religious denominations, most recently the Presbyterians and Unitarian Universalists, have also endorsed the single-payer approach, as have over 400 labor organizations, according to the resolution’s backers.

Bill Holloway, an activist with Health Care for All Texas who helped promote the Austin resolution, said: “This vote is a major victory for those who want to see a more just, rational and compassionate health care system in our state and nation. The resolution makes it clear that managed care and other private insurance company schemes have been miserable failures when it comes to providing care or containing costs.”

“We need to convince our lawmakers in Washington that a more equitable and sustainable system of publicly financed care is possible not tomorrow – but today,” he said. “The people of Austin have spoken: we want single-payer health care.”

Dr. Ana Malinow, a Houston-based pediatrician who serves as chairperson of HCFAT and president of Physicians for a National Health Program, said: “As a physician, I see the toll our broken health care system takes on people’s lives every day – too often leading to their financial ruin, unnecessary suffering, early disability or death. The Austin City Council, by its vote today, has pointed the way forward to a cure – single-payer national health insurance.”

*****

Health Care for All Texas (www.healthcareforalltexas.org) is a statewide grassroots coalition that believes health care is a human right.

Stephanie Woolhandler shares her views on universal healthcare

Harvard Medical Labcast

Click here to listen to the podcast (mp3)

Stephanie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at the HMS-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance, investigates disparities and inequalities in healthcare and medicine. In recent years, she has published studies on the relative cost and effectiveness of the Canadian healthcare system. In published editorials and on Capitol Hill, Dr. Woolhandler has argued for full-scale reform of the current system here in the U.S. Last year, she uncovered insurance shortfalls for American military veterans, and her most recent research found unexpected disparities in the way free prescription drug samples are distributed.

As part of her ongoing efforts to increase care for the underserved, Dr. Woolhandler helped found Physicians for a National Health Program in 1986. The group is a single-issue organization that advocates single-payer national health insurance for all Americans.

Uninsured Americans Carry Large Chronic Disease Burden

By John Gever
MedPage Today
Published: August 05, 2008

Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 5 — Nearly one-third of uninsured Americans under age 65 reported having cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, or some other chronic condition, researchers here said.

Action Points

* Explain that the study found that almost one-third of non-elderly adults without health insurance had at least one major chronic disease.

* Explain that the result refutes suggestions that the uninsured are largely healthy people who do not often need healthcare.

Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) showed that percentages of uninsured people reporting a chronic condition ranged from 11.9% for hypercholesterolemia (95% CI 9.3% to 12.6%) to 19.3% for asthma and COPD (95% CI 16% to 22.3%), reported Andrew P. Wilper, M.D., M.P.H., of Cambridge Health Alliance, and colleagues in the Aug. 5 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

Percentages for other chronic diseases were:

* Cardiovascular disease, 16.1% (95% CI 12.6% to 19.6%)

* Hypertension, 15.5% (95% CI 13.4% to 17.6%)

* Diabetes mellitus, 16.6% (95% CI 13.2% to 20%)

* Previous cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer), 15.4% (95% CI 11.5% to 19.3%)

Some 31.3% of the uninsured had at least one of the six conditions (95% CI 28.7% to 34%), the researchers said.

“These findings counter notions that persons without insurance are a largely healthy population with little need for ongoing medical care,” Dr. Wilper and colleagues wrote.

The researchers said 45.4% of insured patients had at least one chronic disease. The higher percentage was likely because they were older on average than the uninsured, they said.

In June, the CDC reported that about 43 million Americans, 14.5% of the overall population, were uninsured in 2007. (See Southwest Lags in Health Insurance Coverage)

According to the NHANES data — from surveys conducted from 1999 through 2004 — 20.8% of the non-elderly adult population, or 36.4 million individuals (95% CI 33.1 to 40 million), were without health insurance.

The study was only the second to examine the burden of chronic disease in the uninsured, Dr. Wilper and colleagues said. The earlier research, covering 1997 and 1998 with a different data set, found substantially lower rates of chronic disease, suggesting a trend toward poorer health status among the uninsured.

The NHANES survey obtained data on health insurance status and other health-related information from 12,486 respondents.

Dr. Wilper and colleagues found that, after adjusting for age, sex, and race/ethnicity, lack of insurance significantly predicted a lower likelihood of seeing a health professional in the past year (6.2% versus 22.6% for the insured, P<0.001). Those without insurance were also more likely to name an emergency department as their standard site of care (7.1% versus 1.1%, P<0.001) and to report not having a standard site of care (22.6% versus 6.2%, P<0.001). "For some of the 11.4 million uninsured Americans with serious chronic conditions, access to care seems to be unobtainable; many may face early disability and death as a result," Dr. Wilper and colleagues wrote. They pointed out that treatments for the six chronic conditions are both standard and a national priority. The researchers suggested that a healthcare system with a de facto exclusion based on insurance status is unethical. In an accompanying editorial, Marshall H. Chin, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Chicago, commented that ensuring good treatment for chronic disease will require more than health insurance reform. "It will not be sufficient unless it is coupled with quality improvement efforts targeting the reasons that vulnerable populations with access to care often do not receive optimal care," he wrote. He noted that quality of care varies among facilities and regions. For example, he said, recent budget cuts have hit public clinic and hospital systems in Atlanta and Chicago. "Healthcare reform must ensure that adequate resources flow to healthcare organizations and providers that serve a disproportionate share of vulnerable patients," Dr. Chin said. Programs to reduce disparities in care can improve outcomes for the uninsured immediately, even in the absence of insurance reform, he said. The study was funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration. No potential conflicts of interest were reported.

Primary source: Annals of Internal Medicine

Source reference:

Wilper A, et al “A national study of chronic disease prevalence and access to care in uninsured U.S. adults” Ann Intern Med 2008; 149: 170-76.

Additional source: Annals of Internal Medicine

Source reference:
Chin M “Improving care and outcomes of uninsured persons with chronic disease … now” Ann Intern Med 2008; 149: 206-207.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/HealthPolicy/tb/10436

'Single Payer New York' to be founded on Sept. 13

Albany Catholic
August 6, 2008

ALBANY, N.Y. — On Saturday, Sept. 13, single payer advocates from across New York will meet here to form a new statewide organization. Our aim: to build an unbeatable movement for a single payer public system that would fully fund comprehensive health care, including prescription drugs, for all. We invite all single-payer supporters to join us!

Private insurance has no legitimate role to play in the care of patients. We believe it must be replaced by a public program of health financing. Under a single-payer health care system, we’ll spend our health care dollars on care, not on bureaucratic waste, profit-making and corporate gain.

Our grassroots movement has gained momentum in 2008. Healthcare-NOW and other groups organized a nationwide protest on June 19 in support of single-payer health care. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, the New York State Assembly, and a growing number of unions and central labor bodies have all endorsed H.R. 676, the National Health Insurance Act.

New studies found that a majority of physicians support national health insurance. And there is renewed support for single-payer among important groups like the League of Women Voters, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Presbyterian Church USA.

Looking ahead, health care will continue to be a central issue in the presidential election. And New York State, with a new governor and a changing Senate, has initiated an official evaluation and discussion of proposals for universal health care. Now is the time to strengthen grassroots activism in support of a single national, publicly-financed health care plan.

Already a wide diversity of groups and individuals across New York are working for H.R. 676, and also for a New York state-based single payer system. We have worked together spontaneously, organically, and successfully. We also work with many other groups that promote “universal health care” or “affordable health care,” but not necessarily single payer. We are appreciative of their efforts. But the evidence is convincing that single payer reform is crucial for our state and our nation.

A formal statewide grassroots coalition will allow us to share resources, local news, publications, speakers and more. We have much to learn from one another – and from other successful state-based single payer organizations. Together we can build a vigorous single payer voice in every county in New York State–and, ultimately, a new health care system.

Please join us!

New York State Nurses Association * Mike Keenan, President, Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO * Kathleen Scales, Executive Director, Capital District Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO * Healthcare-NOW * Health Care Work Group of Otsego, Delaware & Chenango Counties * Mark Dunlea, Executive Director, Hunger Action Network of New York State * Tompkins County Health Care Task Force * Senior Legislative Action Committee of Sullivan County * League of Women Voters of Saratoga County * Patricia Friedland, member, Healthcare-NOW * Rev. Cass Shaw, Albany Presbytery * Long Island Coalition for a National Health Plan * Citizens for Universal Healthcare, Kingston * Joel Schwartz, President, CSEA Local 446, Staten Island Council * Christy Staats, Clifton Park Single Payer Committee * Barbara Warren, Executive Director, Citizens’ Environmental Coalition * Jeff Vogel, Delegate Assembly member, 1199 United Healthcare Workers East / SEIU * New York Metro, Syracuse, Capital District, and Finger Lakes chapters of Physicians for a National Health Program * Douglas Delong, MD, Physicians for a National Health Program, Cooperstown * Richard Propp, MD, Capital District Alliance for Universal Healthcare, Inc. * Doug Bullock, 8^th District Representative, Albany County Legislature * Rochester Interfaith Health Care Coalition * New York Statewide Senior Action

SINGLE PAYER NEW YORK

Founding conference

Albany Medical College

Saturday September 13th

10am to Noon — Healthcare-NOW Roadshow, featuring Donna Smith of â€œSicko”

Noon — lunch, please RSVP if you would like a box lunch

1pm to 4pm – organizing and strategy meeting

To join Single Payer New York, and for further details about September

13th, please contact one of the following:

Dr. Andy Coates pnhpcapitaldistrict @gmail.com
Rebecca Elgie healthylink@ earthlink.net
Mark Dunlea dunleamark@aol. com
Courtney Morrow pnhpmetro@nyc. rr.com

‘Single Payer New York’ to be founded on Sept. 13

Albany Catholic
August 6, 2008

Please join us!

SINGLE PAYER NEW YORK

Founding conference

Albany Medical College

Saturday September 13th

10am to Noon — Healthcare-NOW Roadshow, featuring Donna Smith of â€œSicko”

Noon — lunch, please RSVP if you would like a box lunch

1pm to 4pm – organizing and strategy meeting

To join Single Payer New York, and for further details about September

13th, please contact one of the following:

Dr. Andy Coates pnhpcapitaldistrict @gmail.com
Rebecca Elgie healthylink@ earthlink.net
Mark Dunlea dunleamark@aol. com
Courtney Morrow pnhpmetro@nyc. rr.com

Recovering Rush seeks care for all

Congressman declares himself cancer-free

By Azam Ahmed
Chicago Tribune
August 4, 2008

U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) declared himself cancer-free on Monday at the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine at the University of Chicago and challenged Barack Obama and John McCain to push for national health care for all Americans.

After a five-month battle with a rare form of cancer, U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) returned to the political scene Monday declaring himself cancer-free and challenging the presidential candidates to make national health care a centerpiece of their campaigns.

“I am a member of Congress, and I have access to the best medical care in the nation,” said Rush, 61, who continues to struggle with his speech since doctors removed a half-inch tumor near his jaw five months ago. “I can’t be satisfied until every American has access to the same kind of care.”

Speaking before a small crowd Monday at the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine at the University of Chicago, where he was treated, Rush’s dark gray suit swallowed his diminished frame. His face appeared sallow and his voice tenuous, owing to the 14-week battery of radiation and chemotherapy he endured after his surgery.

Behind his lectern, a banner depicting a shoulder-length picture taken before the cancer hung from the wall, a sharp reminder of the cancer’s toll.

Yet Rush struck a triumphant note about his recovery and return to office last Wednesday, laughing with his doctors, whom he referred to as the “Dream Team.” He clasped his hands together, lifted his head and thanked God.

Rush, who started his own church in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, said the experience brought him even closer to God, and has made him prioritize things differently in his life. “Every day matters to me now,” he said.

The eight-term congressman, who soundly defeated Barack Obama in 2000 when the Democratic presidential candidate challenged him for a congressional seat, voiced his frustration with the Illinois senator as well as Republican nominee John McCain.

“I’m quite disappointed with the whole political scene, where neither of the candidates has shown [a] political commitment to nationalized health care,” he said. “If we can spend trillions in Iraq . . . then we can conquer this dreaded disease.”

Specifically, Rush said, Obama should “be talking about national health care as one of his priorities.”

Questioned about the risk of his quick return to public duties, his surgeon, Dr. Elizabeth Blair, joked, “Nothing you can do in D.C. is as bad as what we did to him here.”

Blair, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center, likened the past several months of Rush’s intensive care to being run over by a Mack truck twice. The surgery required cutting into Rush’s face, where a tumor in his saliva gland was hidden beneath his lymph node and his facial nerve, which controls facial movement.

During Rush’s battle, there was speculation that Ald. Sandi Jackson (7th), the wife of Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), could be his potential replacement. Rush said he was “disappointed” that the congressman would “even think along those lines” but said he “soon got beyond it.”

The Jacksons released a statement Monday saying they were not involved in spreading the speculation.

Rush’s doctors said that a recent CT scan showed no evidence of the disease remaining, though they will continue to monitor the congressman’s health on a regular basis. He is currently seeing a speech therapist and will soon begin physical therapy.

Growing emotional, Rush recalled a moment during his treatment when he realized the extent of cancer’s blight.

Heading to treatment, Rush said he spotted a tiny hospital bed and inquired about it. He was told that it belonged to a 3-year-old cancer patient, whose condition did not look good, he said.

“This 3-year-old baby had not had a chance to experience any of life, and yet was confronted with this disease,” he said. “It moved me.”

Keep Medicare as a family

By RICHARD PROPP
Albany Times Union
First published: Sunday, August 3, 2008

Dear Medicare:

Happy birthday!

Since I first met you on July 31, 1965, I have been smitten with your looks, your fairness, your support of the elderly without regard to social or economic status, skin color, ethnicity, intellectual IQ, emotional IQ, address, clubs, choice of transportation, hobbies, reading list, or favorite restaurant. You took care of our grandparents, our parents, and now you are taking care of us!

Your birth was not without pain. Some of the Southern congressmen could not stand the idea of people with differing skin colors being in the same hospital room. Eventually President Lyndon Johnson, his staff, and senior citizen groups, wore down Congress, the insurance industry, the unions, and the American Medical Association, and Medicare, health care for all Americans aged 65 and over, became law. It was implemented in July of 1966. Health care was not just a necessity, it was now a right for these folks.

In July of 1965, I was moonlighting as a substitute physician in Ravena in southern Albany County with Dr. John Mosher and Dr. Ira Lefevre while I was chief resident at Albany Hospital, now known, of course, as Albany Medical Center Hospital. (Dr. Richard T. Beebe was chief of medicine at Albany Hospital and allowed us to make ends meet in this way.) More than half of our patients in Ravena who were over 65 couldn’t pay for their needed medical care and instead left vegetables and chickens at Mrs. Mosher’s back door. When Medicare came in, it allowed older folks to be treated as paying patients, restoring their dignity and their ability to be diagnosed and treated at an early stage of their illness. Countless lives were saved and diseases prevented. Practitioners and hospitals flourished.

Through the years, dear Medicare, you have been declared broke and broken, and somehow in response to pressure by physicians and patients, wise and compassionate politicians have patched you up and you carry on.

In 2003 you were “modernized” by radical conservatives and the drug and insurance companies, and, frankly, you were exploited. We are just now waking up to the fact that the real goal of this “modernization” was privatization. We are now paying private insurance companies 13 percent more to deliver benefits to those 65 and older through these private Medicare Advantage plans than through traditional Medicare. This wasteful and unnecessary payment scheme was highlighted in the recent struggle over Medicare physician reimbursement rates and hopefully will be addressed through the political process over the next year.

Those of us who believe health care is not just a necessity, but should become a right for all, hope that sometime soon you will have a baby and expand your family!

That baby is already in gestation stage as HR676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All.

More than 90 members of Congress have signed on in support of this legislation, and there is a strong and growing wave of grass-roots support, as well as in the medical community, local governmental entities, and the labor movement. Your overhead of 4 percent, dear Medicare, is one-sixth that of private insurance plans, and one third that of not-for-profit plans. Among its many benefits, socially and economically, single payer improved and expanded Medicare for all would eliminate the huge administrative expense in time and staff to deal with myriad insurance company plan requirements and reduce overhead. Hospitals would have a guaranteed budget, and rural and urban physicians and other practitioners will have patients for whom they will get full reimbursement. At least 22,000 lives will be saved and over 500,000 medical bankruptcies will be avoided each year. Job mobility and the economy will improve as health insurance becomes separated from employment.

New opposition groups are arising, however, who are very clever about espousing “universal health care”, but, upon scrutiny, what they are really supporting are private insurance-based plans and the status quo.

This is really like putting lipstick on a pig. Even with lipstick, pigs are still pigs.

Forcing everyone into private insurance plans is not the solution to our health care crisis for anyone except the insurance industry. We, your family, dear Medicare, seek to expose these efforts as the cynical delay and denial tactics they represent. We will not let your estimable reputation and outstanding 43 years of success be besmirched, or curtailed by your undermining and privatizing adversaries.

Medicare, we still love you.

Happy birthday, and many more!

Dr. Richard Propp is chair of the Capital District Alliance for Universal Healthcare, Inc.

Millions With Chronic Disease Get Little to No Treatment

By REED ABELSON
New York Times
Published: August 5, 2008

Millions of Americans with chronic disease like diabetes or high blood pressure are not getting adequate treatment because they are among the nation’s growing ranks of uninsured.

That is the central finding of a new study to be published Tuesday in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study, the first detailed look at the health of the uninsured, estimates that about one of every three working-age adults without insurance in the United States has received a diagnosis of a chronic illness. Many of these people are forgoing doctors’ visits or relying on emergency rooms for their medical care, the study said.

The report, based on an analysis of government health surveys of adults ages 18 to 64 years old, estimated that about 11 million of the 36 million people without insurance in 2004 — the latest year of the study — had received a chronic-condition diagnosis.

“These are people who, with modern therapies, can be kept out of trouble,” said Dr. Andrew P. Wilper, the study’s lead author. Therapies for someone with diabetes and hypertension “are routine and widely available, if you have insurance,” said Dr. Wilper, a medical instructor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The most recent government estimate of the number of people in this country without health insurance is 47 million, which means that if the proportions found in the study have remained constant, there might be nearly 16 million people in this country with a chronic condition but no insurance to pay for medical care.

Nearly a quarter of the uninsured with a chronic illness who were surveyed said they had not visited a health professional within the last year. About 7 percent said they typically went to a hospital emergency room for care.

“A lot of people are suffering from a lack of health insurance,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, another of the study’s authors, who is a physician and associate professor of medicine at Harvard.

People with high blood pressure, for example, are at risk for catastrophic medical events like a stroke if they are not getting the drugs they need or having a doctor monitor their disease, said Karen Davis, the president of the Commonwealth Fund. The fund, a foundation in New York that specializes in health care research, has done its own research into the lack of adequate medical care among the uninsured.

The study, being published Tuesday, may have underestimated exactly how many people who are uninsured have a chronic illness, because it includes only those who have already received such a diagnosis, the authors said. Individuals who have not had their conditions diagnosed because they are not seeing a doctor or nurse are not included.

The study’s authors say that their findings cast doubt on the common assumption that many of the uninsured tend to be young and healthy, requiring little in the way of medical care. Because so many actually have chronic conditions that may be expensive to treat, the cost of covering the uninsured is often underestimated, said Dr. Woolhandler, who advocates a nationalized system of health care.

In Massachusetts, she said, the state’s effort to overhaul its health insurance system to cover more residents is costing much more than expected and has not led to universal coverage because policy makers assumed that more people would be healthy. “The state experiments have all failed because of cost,” she said.

The study describes harsh consequences for neglecting easily treatable diseases in so many people. “For some of the 11.4 million uninsured Americans with serious chronic conditions, access to care seems to be unobtainable; many may face early disability and death as a result,” the study’s authors said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/05health.html?ref=business

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