HEALTH CARE IS "LIEBERDIZED"

For the first time since the election, I feel truly upset and defeated. More than anything else, I just really wanted true health care reform with a public option that would finally put those bastard insurance companies in their place. But thanks primarily to that tool of a jerk, Joe Lieberman, that is not going happen.

There was a great write-up by Bob Cesca on Huffington Post this morning that captured my feelings quite well. Here's part of it ...

I'm pissed off.

I'm pissed off at health care reform. I'm pissed off at this endless process of emotional highs and lows and exhilaration and dejection and history and infamy.

I'm pissed off that President Obama "thanked" the independent senator from Connecticut even though the senator nearly killed health care reform this week.

To that point, I'm pissed off at Joe Lieberman. I'm pissed off at his childish, vengeful, opposite-day hackery. I'm pissed off at his giant pie-shaped head and his passive aggression. I'm pissed off that he enjoys government-run Medicare benefits while opposing government-run insurance for the rest of us.

I'm pissed off at the Senate. The whole Senate. The rules, the senators, the color of the walls, the fact that a doof like Chuck Grassley can actually be elected to it. Multiple times. I'm pissed off that even though we finally have a 60 seat supermajority, it's dysfunctional and Harry Reid is in charge of it. I'm pissed off that senators of both parties receive government-run primary care from the Office of the Attending Physician, while denying it to everyone else.

I'm pissed off at cable news and the establishment press for focusing more on The David Letterman & Tiger Woods Underpants Party than the substance of health care reform.

I'm pissed off at Rahm Emanuel and I'm pissed off at the "scary profane a-hole" mythology that's built up around him, and how he only seems to use his powers of intimidation to bully the left.

I'm pissed off at the Republicans. I'm pissed off at their ongoing self-contradictions and lies and bumper sticker sloganeering. I'm pissed off that around 55 Republicans are on Medicare, yet they oppose government-run health care for the rest of us.

I'm pissed off at Tom Coburn's bulbous Dirk Diggler haircut.

I'm pissed off at having to compromise while a handful of lopsidedly powerful conservadems get whatever they ask for.

I'm pissed off at the Senate health care reform bill. I'm pissed off at the House health care reform bill. I'm preemptively pissed off at the conference report, too, and I don't even know if we'll even get that far.

Exactly! And even though I just want to say "screw it" to any kind of reform at this point, I suppose I have to agree with Mr. Cesca on this point as well ...

And I'm pissed off that my progressivism leads me to the unavoidable conclusion that if we don't pass health care reform now, innumerable bad things will continue to happen due to the fact that there's a very serious health care crisis in America. I'm pissed off that I can't, in good conscience, allow my anger to coerce me into believing that we should "kill this bill." I'm pissed off about that, too ... But it undeniably makes sense to take the deal. If progressives successfully convince enough Democrats to kill the bill, do we really want to be the group that plunged the last blade into the back of reform?

Anyway, I don't know, maybe Glee will cheer me up ...

AN AMERICAN IN LONDON

In light of today's Senate Health Care debate, I thought I would post this funny comic strip sent to me by Queen Whackamole

Truth is an Absolute Defense

Freshman Florida congressman Alan Grayson went to the House floor yesterday and described the Republican health care plan as "don't get sick, and if you do, die quickly." The Average Man promptly went to his website and gave him twenty bucks. Apparently I wasn't the only one, as he raised $100K yesterday!

Now, even better -- he goes on the Wolf Blitzer show and Does. Not. Back. Down!



YEAH!!!

Now let's see if some other Dems will learn a lesson.

WHY PRIVATE INSURANCE IS EVIL

In honor of Obama's health care speech today, I thought I would do another quick post on this all so important debate. First, I want to give a shout-out to a nice little article that I read on the Indy's site today; it really hits home all the reasons we need to get this thing done. Here's my favorite part ...

I trust the V.A., Medicare, and Social Security far more than an industry that takes profit made by denying coverage to millions and hands it over to lobbyists to make sure that the common guy doesn’t ever get a break.

One of the saddest things I see recently are the misinformed people at political rallies shouting down politicians trying to express themselves. They say they are afraid of socialism while they collect their Social Security checks and rely on Medicare. They say they don’t want a government plan, but they are willing to let a CEO making $30 million a year decide that millions of people be denied insurance so their profit margin moves up. I don’t think they are hypocrites, I think they really must be afraid.

I think that pretty much says it all. But, if this guy's story doesn't get you, then watch ...



We are better than this!

HEALTH WARS: A NEW HOPE

So, it looks to me like the health care debate took an interesting turn recently. Outside of Teddy's unfortunate demise, I've noticed a little bit of a sea change in some recent town hall meetings. Before I get into that, however, I want to repeat my disgust for those right wing organizations and satanic insurance companies that encourage clueless nutjobs to crash real health care discussions and yell things like "I want my country back" or "Obama is a Nazi." I mean, I'm all for a constructive argument, but what do these kind of comments have to do with anything remotely health care related?

Okay, back to my original point ... I was perusing The Huffington Post the other day and saw the headline McCain Evicts Angry Woman From Town Hall ... Honestly, I almost didn't read the thing, because I was sure the woman in question was probably ejected for stating her support for the public option or something of that nature. But it turns out that the post was actually quite interesting. Here's a couple quotes I really liked:

After McCain opened it up to questioning, one man angrily pointed at him and asked the senator why he deserves a better health care plan than him.

"I'm trying to get it for you," McCain told him. "We'll do it for you. We'll make it affordable and available to you."

Other audience members in the crowd of 2,000 told McCain about their medical problems, such as HIV and multiple sclerosis.

McCain urged them he would fight for health care reform but reiterated his opposition to President Barack Obama's plan to create a government option to compete with private insurers, arguing that it would be the eventual end of private insurers in the U.S ...

... When McCain was trying to answer questions from reporters after the town hall, one audience member yelled at him that he gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from insurance companies every year.

In a voice of feigned surprise, McCain said "Really? I didn't know that."

So, here's my question: What exactly are you trying to do to help those people, Senator McCain? Because all I see from you and your party is a group of selfish politicians agreeing to vote against any Democratic proposal and going out of their way to protect private insurance companies that (frankly) could care less about the people of Arizona.

Anyway, after reading that, I was like, "Finally, some genuine anger about real health care issues!" But wait: it gets better ... Not too long before McCain's town hall, there was actually another one held by Senator Tom Coburn where a woman in the audience cried when she told her story of a sick relative and health costs. Coburn answered with the following:

"What's missing from the debate is us as neighbors helping people who need help," he said.

I think the absolute absurdity of this was expressed quite well by a blogger named Kitty commenting on another site:

How's that, senator? Is the solution to throw a bake sale every time one of our neighbors gets sick? How many cupcakes will it take to defray the cost of a heart transplant? How many cookies do we need to bake to pay for a child fighting leukemia? Should a neighbor stop by to hook up a patient to the chemotherapy bags? Maybe we should do away with Medicare and get all the grandmas in the kitchen cooking up goodies to pay for all these health costs, including their own.

Very well said.

So, here's the thing ... When Republicans are confronted with real people fighting real health problems, they clearly have no solutions and no compassion. Let's just hope that a few more of these kind of town halls make people wake up to that fact.

HEALTH SCARE

So, I'm still really upset about the whole health care debate, but my anger has now shifted from Obama and Democrats to the American people themselves ... Based on polling, it seems that the non-stop lies and scare tactics used by conservatives is actually working; the public has started to back off from their desire for real health care reform and a strong public option. What just drives me crazy, though, is the fact that the folks being tricked by these talking points are the same exact people whom the insurance companies are going to screw as soon as they get sick. Why don't people understand that!?

Anyway, here's Keith Olbermann's Special Comment On Health Care Reform. Once again, he's right on ...

PUBLIC OPTION NOT OPTIONAL!

I need to vent for a couple minutes here ... I am becoming increasingly annoyed and frustrated with the health care debate going on in Congress right now. Specifically, I am tired of Obama and the spineless senators in Washington being so wishy-washy on the public option. They keep talking about bipartisanship and compromise, blah, blah, blah ... Look, what we should have in this country is a single payer system that covers everyone. Since that is "off the table," however, then a public option IS THE COMPROMISE!

There was a great editorial in the New York Times recently that outlined some of the horrible tactics used by private insurance companies. Here's a piece of it ...

A House oversight subcommittee took a close look at a particularly shameful practice known as "rescission," in which insurance companies cancel coverage for some sick policyholders rather than pay an expensive claim. The companies contend that rescissions are rare. But Congressional investigators found that three big insurers canceled about 20,000 individual policies over a five-year period — allowing them to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims.

The companies typically argue that the policyholders withheld information about pre-existing conditions that would have disqualified them from coverage. But the subcommittee unearthed cases where the pre-existing conditions were trivial, or unrelated to the claim, or not known to the patient. When executives for the three companies were asked if they would be willing to limit rescissions to cases where the policyholder deliberately lied on an application form, all said they would not. This tactic will not be ended voluntarily.

Meanwhile, the Senate Commerce Committee was getting an earful from a former head of corporate communications for Cigna, a big health insurer. He charged that the industry deliberately confuses its customers by making it hard to obtain information about its practices and issuing incomprehensible documents.

He also charged that the companies "dump the sick," through rescissions and by purging small businesses whose employees’ claims exceed what underwriters expected. They are often hit with huge rate increases intended to force them to drop coverage.

I'm sorry, but that is simply unacceptable ... which is why I'm feeling much the same as Bob Cesca in his recent Huffington Post column. Here's a bit of it ...

If President Obama is truly serious about changing the way Washington operates, he'd begin to aggressively hector the entourage of lawmakers that I've not-so-affectionately nicknamed the "Coalition of the Corrupt and Spineless" (COCS) -- the Democratic Senators who have very obviously been bought off by the healthcare lobby, along with other almost-as-awful Democrats whose cowardice is only matched by their weakness of will.

Throw down, Mr. President ...

... There can be no denying that the COCS are flagrantly and unapologetically legislating against -- what's the word? -- overwhelming super-majority popular support for the public health insurance option. And why is that? I can't recall another example in recent memory when the collusion of lobbyists, corporate PACs and members of the United States Senate has been quite this obvious.

We can only conclude that the COCS are entirely ignoring the will of the American people because they're hiking the Appalachian Trail with the healthcare industrial complex.

Here's the thing ... Every single one of us is probably going to get pretty sick one day, and I'm tired of feeling like that event will be filled with non-stop insurance nightmares. I actually have a great insurance plan (generally speaking), but I don't feel at all comfortable. Why? Because -- if I were to need thousands of dollars worth of medical care -- I think my insurance company would drop me in a second (or maybe refuse to pay large chunks of my medical bills).

The fact is that 76% of Americans want a public option, President Obama wants a public option, and pretty much everyone thinks that insurance companies are the devil.

So, why is this so f'ing hard to get done!

GUPTA MAKES ME ILL

I'm a little behind on this story, but I wanted to make a quick comment about Obama's pick of CNN star Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General. Generally speaking, I don't have anything major against the man. But -- immediately upon hearing his name -- I was reminded of the the following exchange between Dr. Gupta and Michael Moore (discussing his film, Sicko) ...



As I blogged about at the time, the big problem I have with Mr. Gupta is that he (and many others) seemed to care much more about attacking Michael Moore than getting fired up about our crappy health care system. Here's what I said at the time ...

The best example of this phenomenon is the recent debate between Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Michael Moore on CNN. Dr. Gupta, who generally agreed with the message of the film, could have spent his energy talking about the corruption in hospital administrations and insurance companies. But he chose, rather, to discuss some nonsense about how some of Moore's numbers were from the BBC and how other reports had slightly different numbers. Nobody fudges numbers better than the Bush administration, but I never see CNN challenging them so aggressively?

It seems that there are a number of people in the Senate unhappy about this pick; I for one won't be overly upset if they don't confirm him.

I NEED A SHIELD AGAINST BLUE CROSS

I've written several posts on this blog regarding the controversial topic of universal health care (if you're interested in a couple of them, click here or here). The tone of those posts was more on the "hey, here's some information" side of things ... but now I'm genuinely angry. On the front page of Tuesday's Los Angeles Times was a little gem of a story titled Doctors balk at request for data. I highly recommend reading the story yourself, but here's a quote that sums it up quite nicely:

The state's largest for-profit health insurer is asking California physicians to look for conditions it can use to cancel their new patients' medical coverage.

Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose "material medical history," including "pre-existing pregnancies."

"Any condition not listed on the application that is discovered to be pre-existing should be reported to Blue Cross immediately," the letters say. The Times obtained a copy of a letter that was aimed at physicians in large medical groups.

I have to be honest here: I read things like this, and I have to ask why anyone on either side of the political spectrum would say that this way of doing business is, um, healthy for our nation. In Michael Moore's movie Sicko, he emphasizes early on that the film isn't about the people without health care; it's about people with it. This letter to doctors by Blue Cross is exactly the type of thing he's talking about. You see, Blue Cross and their ilk have a great little scam going: don't cover anyone with pre-existing conditions. And if someone gets really sick, try everything in your power not to cover them any longer. Another quote from the article:

Patients in a raft of lawsuits accuse the insurers of canceling coverage over honest mistakes and minor inconsistencies on applications that they contend are purposely confusing. Victims of cancer and other serious medical problems often are unable to get new coverage once their insurance has been rescinded and they may go without treatment when they need it most. Suddenly swamped by medical debt, some people have lost homes and businesses.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are running around in Texas and Ohio right now trying to convince you that this needs to change. But all it seems to take is someone like Rudy Giuliani to yell, "Socialized medicine! Socialized medicine!," and we all run in fear. Well, let's get real .... Blue Cross doesn't care whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. If you have a pre-existing condition, they don't want to have anything to do with you. And if you have insurance -- and get really sick -- they will try to drop you. It's that simple. This letter reveals their true intentions.

People who don't want to change the state of our current health care are afraid of government bureaucrats running the system. Fine, I get that. But I ask you to think about Blue Cross's actions and ask yourself if corporate bureaucrats controlling your health is any better? The fact is that a corporation will do everything they can to maximize profits, because that's what they do. And you know what: that's okay. However, in the case of medical insurance companies, that means only covering healthy people. And that's wrong!

For what it's worth, I'm writing this as someone with a good job and top-of-the-line private insurance. And, yet, I still worry ... for all of us.

NOT SICK OF UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

After Hillary Clinton's failed attempt at Universal Health Care back in the early nineties, it seemed that the issue would be forever off the table (kind of like impeachment). Things have certainly changed since then. The rising cost of health care, the number of uninsured in the U.S., and the resurgence of the DemoctratIC party have brought this important issue back to the forefront.

Of course, The Right hates this concept to their core, and they have wasted no time in extracting their false claims and misinformation to convince the public that this is a horrible idea. A couple months ago, I posted a blog entry about Rudy Giuliani's trip to Montecito where I pointed to the following comment made by the distinguished mayor:

Who has the best health care in the world? Who has a better health care system? Is there one we should borrow from somewhere else? Do you want the health care system they have in England? Or Germany, or Canada, or anyplace else?

Then a few weeks later, I had a less than civil debate on the Independent's web site with a right wing guy who goes by the name of "mcconfrontation." Amongst other ... um ... things, he said the following:

... and as for the UHC they propose.... my god. what is this Canada?

Poor Canada. How did they become the health care punching bag for conservatives? As I stated before, this just makes me laugh. There are never any facts to back up these kinds of statements, so instead, they just say it in such a way that you can't help but think it's true ... WHO WOULD WANT TO GO TO A DOCTOR IN CANADA!? OH, THE HORROR!

Now, let's talk truth. Last week, MSN had a great article on this subject with the title Report: U.S. health care expensive, inefficient. I would recommend that you read the whole thing, but if you don't, here's one of many good quotes:

Americans get the poorest health care and yet pay the most compared to five other rich countries, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Germany, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada all provide better care for less money, the Commonwealth Fund report found.

“The U.S. health care system ranks last compared with five other nations on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and outcomes,” the non-profit group, which studies health care issues, said in a statement.

Interesting how three of those five countries made Giuliani's list, huh? The other interesting fact is that all five of them provide universal health care to their citizens. But that's not all the article points out:

The current system leaves about 45 million people with no insurance at all, according to U.S. government estimates from 2005, and many studies have shown most of these people do not receive preventive services that not only keep them healthier, but reduce long-term costs ...

... “It is pretty indisputable that we spend twice what other countries spend on average,” she said.

So, there you have it: we spend way more on health care but are way less healthy as a country. Period.

Now, I know what the Republicans are going to say: "But Trekking Left, we have the best hospitals and the best doctors in the world. When people are really sick, why do they come to the U.S. for treatment?" Good question. The answer is, yes, we do have great health care ... if you can afford it. And that's the problem. We are only providing that awesome health care to our wealthy citizenry. If we were giving it to everyone, then we surely wouldn't be last on that list. Plus, as the article intimated, we spend more on the uninsured anyway because we only treat them after they are really sick. Preventative care saves money!

The more I think about this, the more I wonder why anyone opposes it. Think about this: one of the reasons stated by GM that they are having such a difficult financial situation has to do with the amount of money they spend to insure their employees. What if GM didn't have to worry about that and, instead, could just focus on making cars? Seems to me like universal health care is a win-win for everybody.

So, in conclusion, I'd like to answer Giuliani's question ... "Do you want the health care system they have in England? Or Germany, or Canada, or anyplace else?"

Yes, please.