Category: Healthcare

Plurality Support “Socialized Medicine”

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EzraKlein has found this study by the Harvard School of Public Health, which shows that a plurality support “socialized medicine” even when it’s called “socialized medicine”.

Here is the picture:
[img]http://pic60.picturetrail.com/VOL1689/10590113/18913141/304823818.jpg[/img]

and here is why the picture looks that way:

This is important because “SOCIALIZED MEDICINE” has been the scare word used by Republicans for years to kill any healthcare reform, and now nearly half of the people have a favorable opinion of this, even when it’s called by those scare words.

Krugman Looks at Insurance Mandates

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Well, Krugman nails it again.

First, he cites a study that predicts that, a plan without mandates would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, and one with mandates would cost only $2,700, because the young and healthy will take their chances, leaving only those already needing medical treatment on the plan.

His summation nails it:

But while it’s easy to see how the Clinton plan could end up being eviscerated, it’s hard to see how the hole in the Obama plan can be repaired. Why? Because Mr. Obama’s campaigning on the health care issue has sabotaged his own prospects.

You see, the Obama campaign has demonized the idea of mandates — most recently in a scare-tactics mailer sent to voters that bears a striking resemblance to the “Harry and Louise” ads run by the insurance lobby in 1993, ads that helped undermine our last chance at getting universal health care.

If Mr. Obama gets to the White House and tries to achieve universal coverage, he’ll find that it can’t be done without mandates — but if he tries to institute mandates, the enemies of reform will use his own words against him.

If you combine the economic analysis with these political realities, here’s what I think it says: If Mrs. Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, there is some chance — nobody knows how big — that we’ll get universal health care in the next administration. If Mr. Obama gets the nomination, it just won’t happen.

Got your back, Doc.

Harry and Louise and Barack Obama

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Well, in the annals of right wing memes embraced by Obama, I come across this, care of Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein.

Here is the Obama ad:

Look familiar?

Just to jog your memory, here is the 1993 Harry and Louise ad:

Yep, it’s the same damn thing.

So we have his health plan, which eschews mandates, which means that adverse selection will make it a failure, and he’s campaigning in a way that will provide ammunition to enemies of healthcare reform.

This is crap. When people talk about scorched earth campaigning, there is nothing more scorched earth, or sodden earth in the case of Hurricane Katrina, than the Republican side on all of this.

We need the Republicans out of the white house, and increasingly it looks like Obama wants to be another Republican.

US Healthcare Sucks

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France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

I am totally not surprised. The US has coasted for 50+ years on the fact that we as a nation were so damn wealthy that we could subscribe to a system that is inefficient and cruel.

That time has passed. There are transactions, healthcare being one, where the classic free market simply fails.

Whether its single payer or a National Health Service (my favorite), it’s clear that, to quote Pete Townshend, The Music Must Change.

Bush and His Evil Minions™: Poor Children Should Die

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Fresh off of denying health care to the children of the working poor, Bush is now doing his level best to make sure that even poorer children die.

They have set impossible criteria, because they believe that people are poor because they are evil, and because they believe that the government helping poor people compounds that evil.

It’s the worst characteristics of 1500s Calvanism with a Texas twang.

Of course it also helps out the health insurance companies, who are big Republican donors. So you get more dead kids and more dirty insurance money, which is a win-win for Republicans.

Why We’re All Going to Hell, Part 54,302

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John Scalzi, in his blog post, Why We’re All Going to Hell, Part 54,302, makes the point that should be made: When the press covers someone giving away billions of dollars to the hungry, sick, and infirm, and the big story for the media is, “What does this mean for his narcissistic no-talent grand daughter?*“, we are all going to hell, particularly the wankers in the media who have decided to cover it this .

I might further argue that we are already in hell.

*Early in the brief 7 ½ month history of this blog, I made a promise not to mention She Who Must Not Be Named, which was expanded a while back to They Who Must Not Be Named. Therefore, I will not mention her name, or their names, unless they run for office.

California Court Rules That Health Insurance Company Cancellations Frequently Illegal

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This is good news for our friends in California.

The substance of the ruling:

  • Insurance companies must check the accuracy of the applications before accepting the people for coverage.
  • That the insured must be shown to have wilfully misrepresented their health status.
  • That the low rescission rates upon application implied a deliberate policy of waiting until the claims rolled in to cancel.

A health plan, the court went on, “may not adopt a ‘wait and see’ attitude after learning of facts justifying rescission.” The court said companies could not continue to “collect premiums while keeping open its rescission option if the subscriber later experiences a serious accident or illness that generates large medical expenses.”

On the Death of Nataline Sarkisyan

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My condolences on the Death of 17 year old 19 year old Nataline Sarkisyan.

She died of liver failure resulting from complications of her bone marrow transplant for leukemia, after having a transplant denied (the decision was reversed yesterday) by CIGNA.

That being said, I do not see this indicative of the failure of the health insurance.

Let’s be clear, I do see private health insurance in the US as the primary cause of escalating health care costs, and a reduction in the availability of reasonable health care of a more basic nature.

Unfortunately, the pre and neonatal deaths from lack of prenatal care, and the injuries from things like lack of immunizations do not have faces, but they kill more, and cost us more than this one case.

In any realistic competent healthcare system, she should not have gotten a liver transplant. It was simply too expensive, and the potential to save her life, given that she had leukemia, and her immune system had been largely destroyed by the bone marrow transplant procedure.

Her case actually strikes relatively close to home to me.

From 1982 through 1987, I was actively treated for chronic non-A Non-B hepatitis*, first with steroids, and then with immune suppressants†.

Based on this, I believe that my chance of experiencing liver failure over the course of my life is significantly more than that of the general population.

I do not believe that many of these high tech interventions, and I would include liver transplantation, are an efficient or effective way to spend a limited healthcare dollar.

*I have been regularly tested since, but my numbers have been fine, and so, apart from not giving blood and having annual liver function tests, I am now unaffected by this. I’m allowed to drink.
†Basically, it was treated as an immune system/connective tissue problem, my ANA was at one point 4,000,000:1 (IIRC). It appears that my body was attacking my liver. Except for weight loss, I was asymptomatic, though the steriods (40mg prednisone) was no fun while I was on it.

Whisky Tango Foxtrot: The Dems Cave on SCHIP????

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What the hell are they thinking????

They just passed a bill extending SCHIP as it currently exists until March 2009. This is acutally a cut, because Bush has issued executive orders to reduce the scope of the existing program.

I understand the extension, but they could have extended it for 3 months, or 6 months, or 9 months, and forced the Republicans to come back to this tremendously popular program, again, and again, and again.

Instead of this, which is a win-win, the kids get their insurance, and the Republicans shoot themselves in the foot, they took it off the table.

**sigh**

Bush Water Bill Veto Overriden

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The vote was 361-54, and the Senate is expected to override too.

This bill has broad bipartisan support, and big spender Bush vetoed it because he is having to pretend that he gives a damn about the budget to reinforce his own delusions of manhood.

Why this is significant is because once he is overridden, it will become progressively easier for it to happen in the future.

There are already reports that there is an S-Chip bill that will get a veto proof majority in the works. It gets much harder for the Republicans to whip the vote when they have already helped override a veto.

Edwards Proposed 2 Year Ban on Direct to Consumer Drug Ads

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I’m not sure if the courts would shoot this one down, the SCOTUS lately has been very much in favor of “commercial speech”, but it could be tied to the expedited drug approval processes used. His point is a valid one though, many of these drugs have, at best, a limited improvement on effectiveness for some people (tests on blood pressure medication found no benefit from the newer drugs.

It is the consumer who pays for these ads, both just covering the costs, and through people demanding new drugs from their doctors when the old drug works as well.