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Where Will The Sick Go Now?

The striking characteristic of American health care is not its cost—which is, admittedly, very high—but its disparity . You can watch the care gap widen right now in the Washington area.

On Wednesday, officials of the Prince George's County hospital network announced that the system was on the verge of shutting down. Majority African-American Prince George’s County in suburban Maryland is short on medical facilities and long on uninsured and indigent patients. Closing the county hospitals is not a negligible act. As The Washington Post said:

The Prince George's system treats 180,000 patients a year—many of them uninsured. Where would they go? What would happen to the 3,100 trauma patients a year taken to Prince George's Hospital Center's busy emergency room in Cheverly? And what about the 3,500 babies born each year at the hospital?

Although Prince George’s is not poor overall, it ranks high in accidents, homicides, infant mortality and diabetes, and, for the Washington Metro region, low in educational attainment.

See complete article HERE.

Hospitals that attract a high rate of Medicaid and noninsured are often forced out of business because they can't make ends meet. If we had a single payer system that would not happen. If all they had were Medicare patients, they'd do all right. They'd all get the same amount of dollars for treating the same amount of patients.

A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States -- Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent. Thanks to Dr. Don McCanne for this link to http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1

The cost disadvantage of "Medicare Advantage" - The struggle in Congress over whether the government overpays Medicare Advantage plans (sometimes referred to as Part C) is really a struggle over the future of Medicare itself and whether there will be a future for publicly supported universal health coverage.

I know, many of you have a Medicare Advantage plan (an HMO or PPO) and want to hang onto it. For the price of a Part B premium, and, in some cases, a Part D premium, and maybe a little more, you have medical, hospital and drug coverage you're comfortable with, and it's all in one convenient policy, with one insurer.

If you were lucky, your doctors, labs, hospitals and other medical facilities that you use are in your plan's network. And although the referrals can be a bother and the co-pays add up, it seems less expensive and less complicated than having separate coverage from traditional Medicare, a Medigap policy and a Part D drug plan. That's why 8.3 million Medicare beneficiaries have left Medicare for a Medicare Advantage plan.

So what's the problem? Why are so many Democrats in Congress and health care advocates unhappy with Medicare Advantage? One big reason is the cost. On average, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), Medicare pays the Advantage plans 12 percent more per patient than it pays for traditional fee-for-service Medicare.

This is an excellent piece for those considering changing from Medicare to Medicare Advantage. See complete article HERE.

Medicare Advantage is essentially Medicare contracted out to private HMOs. It would not be my first choice, and according to this article and other comments I've received back it is not a good choice at all. But I do have friends that use it and are happy, but they are also relatively healthy and don't cost them much. Clearly, if they had to abide ny the same guarantees of care that Medicare does, and it were not 12.5% more costly, it might be suitable.

April 21, 2007

Editorial

The Medicare Privatization Scam

If private health plans are supposedly so great at delivering high-quality care while holding down costs, why does the government have to keep subsidizing them so lavishly to participate in the Medicare program?

About a fifth of elderly Americans now belong to private Medicare Advantage plans, which — thanks to government subsidies — often charge less or offer more than traditional Medicare. As Congress struggles to find savings that could offset the costs of other important health programs, it should take a long and hard look at those subsidies.

The authoritative Medicare Payment Advisory Commission estimates that the government pays private plans 12 percent more, on average, than the same services would cost in the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program. The private plans use some of this money to make themselves more attractive to beneficiaries — by reducing premiums or adding benefits not covered by basic Medicare — and siphon off the rest to add to profits and help cover the plans’ high administrative costs.

Although the insurance industry insists that the subsidies are much lower and are warranted by the benefits provided, Thomas Scully, who headed the Medicare program for the Bush administration until 2003, told reporters recently that the subsidies were too large and ought to be reduced by Congress.

The largest private enrollment is in health maintenance organizations, which typically deliver care a bit more cheaply than standard Medicare and should not need their 10 percent subsidies, on average, to compete. The biggest subsidies — averaging 19 percent above cost — go to private fee-for-service plans, which are the fastest-growing part of the Medicare Advantage program. Unlike the H.M.O.’s, which at least manage a patient’s care and bargain hard with doctors and hospitals, these plans ride on the coattails of standard Medicare, typically providing access to the same doctors and paying them at the same rates. Thanks to the big subsidies they get, such plans are often a good deal for beneficiaries, charging less for the same benefits or adding benefits without raising prices.

The main losers are the beneficiaries in the standard Medicare program, whose monthly premiums are roughly $2 higher to help pay for the subsidies, and the taxpayers who pick up part of the tab. The subsidies also erode the long-term solvency of Medicare, which needs to rein in costs, not increase them with handouts to insurance companies.

When the Democrats first won control of Congress, it seemed possible that they might eliminate the subsidies — saving some $54 billion over five years — to finance a $50 billion expansion of a health insurance program for low-income children. But the insurance industry has mounted a furious lobbying campaign to head off any cuts.

Congress ought to eliminate the subsidies completely unless it is willing to subsidize the same benefits — at enormous cost — for the far greater number of people enrolled in standard Medicare. It is time to level the playing field and force private plans to really compete with traditional Medicare.

The NYT is absolutely correct. Taxpayers are paying 12.5% more for Medicare Advantage than for Medicare itself, and to an industry with the freedom to deny care when a member's costs get too high. That is, when they really need it.

Medicare Advantage is useful for only one purpose, to feed money to the insurance industry temporarily while we transition to a Medicare-for-all system. But the insurance industry will continue its $50 million in campaign contributions to keep Advantage alive. Whether your congressman is on the take or not CALL him or her and let them know that is not an acceptable alternative.

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Be sure to sign up to the excellent Quote of the Day health care newsletter by Dr. Don McCanne on the PNHP website. He makes great comments at the end of each article (and I promise to steal from him when appropriate!). Thanks Dr. McCanne!

Also see health care articles galore at http://www.healthcare-now.org/news.php

Fighting The Pharma Goliath - Bill Scher - April 05, 2007

Bill Scher blogs for the Campaign For America's Future. He also founded the blog Liberal Oasis.

If you watch a lot of CNN or MSNBC, you’ve probably seen the pharmaceutical lobby’s ads warning about “changes” to Medicare prescription drug program, because the program is “working.” (Then again, you might have heard a few notes of the off-the-shelf Muzak-folk music not good enough to be used in ads for Nexium or Lipitor, and tuned the ads out.)

See complete article and links HERE

Health Courts: The Way of the Future?

Barely one-half of all Americans are satisfied with their jobs, and only 14 percent of those who say they are content also say they are “very satisfied.” And workers in Maryland face some of the worst job commutes in the nation.

So Paul Barringer is a lucky man. As general counsel for Common Good, a national nonpartisan legal reform coalition, Barringer loves going to work every day. After bicycling into his Washington, DC, office from nearby Silver Spring, Maryland, he spends his time promoting an initiative he believes in: replacing our current approach to medical liability with administrative health courts.

See complete article and links HERE

Study finds lack of health insurance may be associated with increased rates of stroke

Date: 4/2/2007
Contact: Jerry Berger
Phone: 617-667-7308
Email: jberger@bidmc.harvard.edu

BOSTON – The lack of health insurance prompts people to forego routine physical exams and have a reduced awareness of cardiovascular risk factors and is associated with increased rates of stroke and death, researchers have concluded.

A study in the April issue of the Journal of the Society of General Internal Medicine found people without health insurance are more likely to forego routine physical exams and had a higher risk of being unaware of a personal diagnosis of high blood pressure, diabetes or high cholesterol levels – all risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

See complete article HERE

Thanks to Dr. Don McCanne at http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/quote-of-the-day for this link

Insurers to Get Higher Medicare Payments

Shares of some of the largest health insurers rose Tuesday after the government announced higher-than-expected payment increases for companies that operate private Medicare plans.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said late Monday that preliminary payments to companies that run Medicare Advantage programs will rise 3.5 percent for 2008. The payment boost, made to insurers for each Medicare participant they cover, is less than last year's 3.9 percent update, but above Wall Street estimates of a 2 percent to 3 percent increase.

See complete article HERE

What's this about private industry being more efficient than government? Medicare Advantage is an option Medicare patients have. They can sign up to a qualified HMO and receive additional services or less co-pays, but they give up physician and hospital choice.

New Urgency in Debating Health Care

Since Hillary Rodham Clinton’s effort to overhaul the nation’s medical system was rejected in 1994, most big employers have stayed out of the debate on health care reform.

But with their medical costs ballooning, top executives of large companies are starting to speak up again — and many are calling for a national approach to fixing health care. Few advocate a wholesale shift to government-directed medicine, but most are seeking broad changes in the employer-subsidized health system, which they regard as unsustainable in its current form.

See complete article HERE

Why should businesses embrace single-payer?

By Jack E. Lohman

The global marketplace requires a totally fresh look at how we provide health care in the U.S., but are business leaders really ready for it?

You would think so, at least the non-healthcare sector of business. But they must demand a comprehensive fix that is less complicated than what we have. Simplicity is beautiful and simplicity doesn't break. That's why single-payer health care makes absolute financial sense, as a look at the benefits and some common misconceptions will demonstrate:

·         It reduces labor costs by 10-12% (a 3% additional tax on wages versus today's 15% of wages for medical insurance).

·         It reduces liability and auto insurance costs, and reduces workers compensation costs.

·         It eliminates health benefits management costs and yearly insurance company and labor contract negotiations for health care.

·         It creates healthier personnel, reduces absenteeism, and eliminates employer health system complaints.

·         It reduces the need for part-timers, and provides easier recruiting (no pre-existing disease issues).

·         It eliminates employee health-related debt and personal bankruptcies.

·         It will expand the U.S. economy and business climate by freeing up family income to purchase needed products and services.

·         It is not socialized medicine, as are the VA, Bethesda Naval Hospital and other armed forces health care systems; it is a single payer system like Medicare.

·         All hospitals and physicians remain private and are paid under today’s guaranteed, fee-for-service and DRG programs (thus eliminating bad debt and cost shifting).

·         Medicare has no wait times or rationing of care -- and won't with proper funding.

·         100% of the population will be covered for the same costs we are spending today (no more Medicaid or BadgerCare costs, no more needless ER visits).

·         Any of the current non-profit insurance companies can competitively bid on the management of the system (WPS now administers Wisconsin's Medicare).

·         The current private insurance systems consume up to 31% of health care dollars to cover non-healthcare administration costs (marketing, broker commissions, high executive salaries, gatekeepers that deny care, actuarial costs, and high shareholder profits).

·         The equivalent single-payer administrative costs will be about 9-10% and will save money by eliminating the gigantic waste and duplications of the current system. The savings will offset the coverage of the currently uninsured.

·         Canadians have wait times on elective procedures because their system is underfunded. That's because they spend 10% of GDP compared to our 16%. Nonetheless, over 80% of Canadians prefer their system to ours. In a survey of 18,000 Canadians, only 20 came to the US for care.

What's not to like about that? The United States is the only country in the industrialized world that does not have universal health care, and we pay a hefty price for it. The World Health Organization has ranked us at 37th in efficiency and quality: we have 2 years lower life expectancy and 35% higher infant mortality because (in large part) we cover only 85% of our population.

We can do better, and it is time for business leaders to sideline their associations (who are conflicted with members who are health care providers), and do what's right for their company, the public, and the economy as a whole.

We cannot go another year with our antiquated health care delivery system. We must sideline the special interests and get this done today. There are two bills that should be supported: the Health Security Act proposed by state Sen. Mark Miller and Rep. Chuck Benedict (SB51/AB94), and the Improved Medicare For All bill by US Rep John Conyers (HR676).

Jack Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate and volunteers for www.WisconsinHealth.org. He can be reached at jelohman@gmail.com

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If your senator or assembly representatives are not listed, please call them today.

Here is the DRAFT bill. You may get a warning, but the files are safe.
Draft = http://tinyurl.com/yud7mr
Factsheet = http://tinyurl.com/27bg2u
FAQ = http://tinyurl.com/2gg9st

Click on the PDF below for the complete bill description.

2007 SENATE BILL 51

http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2007/data/SB-51.pdf
Link to Bill History = http://tinyurl.com/2gutad

February 20, 2007 - Introduced by Senators Miller, Risser and Carpenter,
   cosponsored by Representatives Benedict, Berceau, Black, Boyle, A.
   Williams, Hebl, Parisi, Pocan, Pope-Roberts, Zepnick, Sinicki, Hilgenberg,
   Fields, Kessler and Grigsby. Referred to Committee on Health and Human
   Services.

2007 ASSEMBLY BILL 94

http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2007/data/AB-94.pdf
Link to Bill History = http://tinyurl.com/26swze

February 22, 2007 - Introduced by Representatives Benedict, Boyle, Black, Hebl,
   Parisi, Pocan, Pope-Roberts, A. Williams, Zepnick, Hilgenberg, Berceau,
   Sinicki, Fields, Grigsby and Kessler, cosponsored by Senators Miller, Risser
   and Carpenter. Referred to Committee on Health and Healthcare Reform.

Pg1Ln1   An Act to amend 15.01 (3), 15.01 (4) and 59.17 (2) (c); and to create 15.07 (1)
Pg1Ln2   (a) 7., 15.07 (2) (n), 15.07 (5) (m), 15.07 (5m) (c), 15.20, 15.207, 20.430, 59.53 (25),
Pg1Ln3   62.09 (8) (cm) and chapter 152 of the statutes; relating to: establishing a
Pg1Ln4   publicly financed health care system for residents of this state, creating the
Pg1Ln5   Department of Health Planning and Finance, Health Policy Board, and
Pg1Ln6   regional consumer health councils, granting rule-making authority, and
Pg1Ln7   making appropriations.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=584662

No 'health savings' scams; time for single-payer is now

By JACK E. LOHMAN

So what's the skinny on health savings accounts?

Anything having to do with "savings accounts" would seem like a hit, until you remember the garbage President Bush tried to feed us with his privatized Social Security plan. HSAs are just more of the same - privatized health care with a big up-front cost - and some legislators are behind a bill to make them more attractive through state tax breaks.

It's not that HSAs don't have at least some appeal. If you are wealthy, they make great tax shelters. If you are not, they will most certainly benefit the banks, credit card companies and bankruptcy attorneys when your health starts failing and they start collecting.

HSAs focus on money and are bad for health care. When patients must cover the first $2,000 to $5,000 of medical bills, they tend to deny themselves and their families care when it is most needed; early in the disease process. HSAs are designed to keep you away from the doctor, which they do very well, even when they shouldn't. Patients too often wait until treatments become more costly or diseases become untreatable. Or they die - which, after the attorneys finish, may be a welcome reprieve.

A RAND Corp. study demonstrated that when hypertensive patients had to pay part of the bill, they had a 10% higher death rate. Certainly if people die earlier we will reduce our health care costs, but that sounds too much like a Philip Morris study I once read. We can do better.

Even partial payment by the patient can be counterproductive, like co-pays, which usually cost more than they save. It was shown in a Kaiser Family Foundation study that mothers in low-income families will too often forego their blood pressure medicine to put food on the table, and then they have a stroke or heart attack or, worse, die. This sounds neither compassionate nor conservative.

So let's call HSAs what they are: an opportunity for employers to offload their health care costs to their employees. It is certainly cheaper to coax or force them into an HSA than it is to provide full medical coverage.

Why would politicians support HSAs over a system that would really work? Because the world is full of opportunities and theirs is to tap the insurance industry, which state legislators have done to the tune of $817,239, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign database. Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle didn't do too badly at $352,000, nor did my own Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) at the top of the legislators' list with $29,028. And when you add the cash from the banking, credit card industry and bankruptcy attorneys, well, you get the point. It's not a pretty sight. Plus there's the $1.4 million the health care industry makes in annual campaign contributions just to keep the system broken. Good things just never end, do they?

Better is a single-payer system that provides health care to 100% of the population for the same dollars we are spending today, as in the proposal by state Sen. Mark Miller (D-Monona) and state Rep. Chuck Benedict (D-Beloit). The Health Security Act does just that, and all state politicians should support it. This is a real solution they owe to the public, today.

They also owe the public something else: the Clean Money Elections bill as proposed by Madison Democrats Sen. Fred Risser and Rep. Mark Pocan. If politicians are to be beholden to their funders, those funders should be the taxpayers, and at $5 per taxpayer per year, it's a terrific bargain. Had this system been in place over the past decade, we'd have fixed the health care system long ago. Since the Republicans now claim that reform is high on their list, there is no reason for them not to aggressively support this bill.

Jack E. Lohman of Colgate is a retired business owner and author. He operates the Web site www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org

Universal health plan could yield savings

Study: Spending could be cut by $60.7b per year

By Bloomberg News | March 20, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Expanding government health insurance coverage to all Americans could reduce healthcare spending by as much as $60.7 billion a year, according to a study by a nonpartisan research center.

The estimated savings would include a $33.9 billion cut in the cost of prescription drugs, the New York-based Commonwealth Fund said in a report yesterday . The organization evaluated proposals introduced in Congress in recent years, including some that would allow everyone to enroll in Medicare, the government health insurance program that now serves older Americans and the disabled.

Congress and President Bush are debating what to do to help America's uninsured, about 47 million people. Polls show Americans are concerned about rising healthcare costs, which make up about 16 percent of total US spending.

"We wanted to highlight that there were feasible bills introduced to Congress over the past two years that would incrementally or more fundamentally expand coverage," Sara Collins, the fund's assistant vice president, said in a telephone interview.

The study examined 10 proposed plans and assumed each was fully in place in 2007. The research was carried out the Lewin Group, a health consulting firm based in Falls Church, Va.

The $60.7 billion in savings was based on legislation proposed last year by Representative Pete Stark, a Democrat from California, that would allow everyone to get insurance through Medicare or government-approved private plans under Medicare. Employers with 100 or more workers could keep paying for private coverage or contribute to a fund to have employees covered through the government.

Bush's healthcare proposal, calling for a tax deduction for health insurance, would cover 9 million people that are now uninsured and save about $11.7 billion a year, the study said.

Don't miss this excellent piece in The American Prospect Online

The Wisconsin Way

by Roger Bybee

For strategic lessons in pushing for progressive universal health care, look north.

Volcanic pressure is building up nationwide over soaring health care premiums and fast-shrinking coverage, but George W. Bush will surely plug up any eruption of reform at the national level during the remainder of his term.

What he can't prevent is the pressure already breaking through at the state level, which will likely intensify as the Democratic presidential candidates continually reinforce the reform message. As we've seen, even Republican governors in Massachusetts and California are implementing reform plans, though both of them carry profound flaws. Thus far, the efforts of Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger have garnered the most attention -- but progressives have reason to look closely at some very exciting developments in Wisconsin, where a major push for statewide universal health coverage is underway.

See the complete article at http://tinyurl.com/2byyf6

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The Moral Hazard Myth ' Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and writer for the New Yorker, provides interesting arguments on our health care system at http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_08_29_a_hazard.html ''' or ''' http://www.gladwell.com/pdf/hazard.pdf for printing.

Why Does American Health Care Cost So Much? Ezra Klein writes about it at http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/why_does_americ.html and points to an excellent McKinsey study at Synthesis (PDF - 1.54 MB) or Full report (PDF - 5.75 MB). It claims that if physicians have a financial stake in the lab they order tests from, which includes their own internal labs, they are anywhere from two (2) to eight (8) times more likely to order a test than a doctor who is independent of the lab.

"The fee-for-service reimbursement system creates an incentive for physicians to see more patients. This is magnified by physician co-ownership of these facilities, which offers a strong incentive to self-refer cases - physicians who own imaging equipment refer between two and eight times more tests than their peers without equity interest. Furthermore, manufacturers of imaging and diagnostic equipment advertise to physicians the financial advantages of pursuing additional testing. Ultimately, the excess installed capacity (the US has three to six times more scanners than Germany, UK, France and Canada) with low utilization further increases the pressure to generate more demand in order to justify the investments made. The vicious circle is not easily interrupted by a reduction of reimbursement fees, since revenue levels can be maintained through incremental demand fueled by clinical discretion."

Ref: http://www.themonroetimes.com/v0305hue.htm

Huebsch is wrong on Health Care solution

By Jack E. Lohman

Rep. Mike Huebsch is absolutely correct when he says the health care system is broken. But his logic is reversed and he doesn't seem to accept that state politicians trashed the system when they lifted the certificate of need and allowed the so-called "free-market" to take control.

Moving to the for-profit, free-market system over the last decade is exactly the reason costs have increased at five times the rate of inflation, and we don't need more of the same. We also don't need employers offloading their health care costs to employees via Health Savings Accounts, or as Huebsch and George Bush calls them, "personal savings accounts."

The banks, credit card companies, and bankruptcy attorneys will have a field day with HSAs as they dangerously refocus the issue from providing needed health care to cutting care and costs. HSAs make sense only if you are young, healthy and wealthy. Read the code words and don't be fooled by right-wing rhetoric.

When patients must decide on the dollars they spend, they too often delay care until it is more costly to treat or it becomes untreatable. A RAND study demonstrated that when hypertension patients had to pay part of the bill, they had a 10% higher death rate. Most certainly if people die earlier we will reduce our health care costs, but that sounds too much like a Philip Morris study I once read. We can do better.

Understand this: there is no such thing as competition in the health care system. Period! Never has been and never will be, at least not in this decade. Most patients trust their physicians to do the right thing, and few will seek the lowest bidder. The vast majority of consumers are not equipped to second guess their physicians, though they should indeed research their diseases and potential treatments, and they should live healthier lifestyles.

Rep. Huebsch lambastes a government solution, but in fact every other system in the world that exceeds US quality and efficiency (which is the top 36 systems) are either total government or a combination public-private systems like Canada's. According to the World Health Organization, the US ranks 37^th, Canada ranks 5^th and France is in first place with its Medicare-type of system. Longer life expectancy and reduced infant mortality are hallmarks of the systems better than ours, and we have 18,000 people per year dying because they lack health coverage.

Though not perfect '' because Canadian politicians have underfunded it and wait times exist for non-urgent procedures '' over 80% of Canadians still prefer their system to ours. Its costs are 10% of gross domestic product compared to our 15%, and ours is projected to rise to 20% in the next decade thanks to our free-for-all approach and turning it over to for-profit corporations.

If Huebsch really wants to fix health care he'll support the Medicare-for-all system proposed by Sen. Mark Miller and Rep. Chuck Benedict. Fund it properly and we'll have 100% coverage with no wait times, yet the same costs as today's. This is the most business-friendly and public-friendly approach possible, and it makes sense to everyone except those profiting from the current mess.

Contrary to the anti-government rhetoric, Medicare is the only part of our health care system that does work well. It treats the most costly of patients and the end-of-lifers '' it does so efficiently and without rationing '' and seniors are not complaining. I know because I'm one of them.

But at the very least Assembly Speaker Huebsch should let the Miller-Benedict bill receive a fair public hearing and not block its progress to a floor vote. And he and the other Republicans should start by refusing the $1.4 million the health care industry makes in annual campaign contributions, and start thinking about a real public solution instead.

Barring that public commitment, perhaps we could reconsider Huebsch's position if he and his cohorts first passed a law mandating health savings accounts for all state legislators. Let them experiment with their own families before passing it to the public.

President Rejects Health Care Proposal: WASHINGTON '' The Bush administration on Wednesday rejected key recommendations from a citizens' group asked by Congress to find out people's health care wishes.

Suggestions included guaranteeing health coverage for specific checkups and treatments and protecting consumers from high medical expenses. The group released its report Sept. 29 after hearing from about 6,500 people at 84 meetings.

See complete story HERE.

Income inequality and child mortality in wealthy nations: Relationships between income inequality and various health indicatorshave been the subject of much study and some controversy. Weinvestigated associations between child mortality and incomeinequality amongst the wealthier OECD countries as well as changesin their relative child mortality rankings over time.

Conclusions: The results strengthen the existing evidence linking child mortalitywith income inequality in wealthy nations, and add to the evidencethat sociopolitical factors are important in this regard.

See the complete report HERE.

Thanks to www.toomuchonline.org for this link.

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NY Times coverage

Most Support U.S. Guarantee of Health Care

A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

While the war in Iraq remains the overarching issue in the early stages of the 2008 campaign, access to affordable health care is at the top of the public's domestic agenda, ranked far more important than immigration, cutting taxes or promoting traditional values.

Only 24 percent said they were satisfied with President Bush's handling of the health insurance issue, despite his recent initiatives, and 62 percent said the Democrats were more likely to improve the health care system.

U.S. HEALTH CARE SYSTEM NEEDS....

Minor changes
8%
Fundamental changes
54%
To be completely rebuilt
36%

SHOULD GOVERNMENT GUARANTEE HEALTH INSURANCE FOR ALL?

Yes
64%
No
27%

WHICH IS MORE SERIOUS?

Providing health insurance for all
65%
Keeping health care costs down
31%

PARTY THAT WOULD IMPROVE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

Democrats
62%
Republicans
19%

See complete article HERE and video at http://tinyurl.com/2x5asr and http://tinyurl.com/2kymxr

Complete results HERE

So it's up to the Democrats? I think they can do it, but will they? And if the R's stand in the way? Well, turnover time again in 2008!

But we have to be careful of political games. For example, the Dems could attach poison pills that make the bill untenable by all, and force the R's to block it. We will be monitoring this closely. Not to say we don't trust either party, but ......

In a private conversation with a state senator, he said he didn't sign on to SB51 because he felt the lack of co-pays and deductibles would drive costs through the roof. This is a common misconception. I wrote him the following:

"I have serious concerns about the lack of co-pays and deductibles in Mark's bill too, but for different reasons than yours. The main one is that legislators are going to see it as a public giveaway rather than for what it really is. You could amend co-pays into the bill and I'd support it just to get it passed, but in time you'll find that they cost more money than they save. Studies have shown that they deter care until that care is far more expensive to treat or becomes untreatable, so they have a long-term negative cost value. Some mothers even go without their blood pressure meds to save money, resulting in a costly stroke or death."

A health care solution everybody can love

By Jack E. Lohman

Here we go again. Health care is at the forefront and three state plans to choose from. Let's compromise on a workable and fair solution, because people are really dying for us to get this done.

According to the World Health Organization France is ranked #1 in health care. Better outcomes and lower costs, all with a public-private system and public-private funding. So let’s steal some ideas.

Let's establish our own state-run Medicare-for-all system, which is 20% co-pay or optional Gap insurance. We'll provide 100% vouchers to those under the poverty level and a 50% voucher if under twice the poverty level. Throw in 100% relief when a family is hit with a catastrophic illness, and let's develop a reasonable end-of-life solution (ie, automatic no-code on people over 90 unless the family is able and agrees to absorb future costs). Just 5% of the population consumes 70% of our health care, and most of that is by us old geezers.

Let's mitigate the overbilling and fraud by retraining those displaced from the insurance industry to a Medicare oversight commission. Even let private insurers bid on that since they will no longer benefit from the current inefficiencies. Let's have medical courts to lower tort abuses and excessive costs of defensive medicine, and give any punitive damages to the health care fund rather than to the attorneys and patients who have already been compensated.

I'd keep an option like Medicare Advantage. Even though it costs 12.5% more than Medicare, it gives patient’s other choices and private insurers a role. The private insurers can even bid on the administrative contracts.

The fraud in nursing homes and home health agencies must be eliminated and prosecuted, and we should pass a law that requires employees to be educated on the whistle-blower statutes and rewards. Let the employees provide the oversight, though with such a law I expect the owners to clean up their act fast.

Reimbursements in Medicare (or our version of it) should be increased to ensure top pay for good doctors. State sponsored rebates of health care educational costs should go to all resident students who finish in the top 10% of their class, providing they agree to a two-year state internship.
We also need a patient database for transparency of physician utilization, best practices, practice variations, medication conflicts, and etc, with patient names kept secure unless released by the patient for travel purposes. That software is already available, free, from the VA.

I don't like co-pays and deductibles, but it’s the only way to achieve political acceptance. Eliminating them is not a liberal giveaway, and in time we'll find that they cost more money than they save. Studies already show that they deter care until that care is more expensive to treat or becomes untreatable, so they have a long-term negative cost value. Some mothers even go without their blood pressure meds to save money, resulting in a costly stroke or death. We can do better.

What we have is not working and those standing in the way of change should be sidelined. This is the most business friendly and public friendly solution available, and even the insurance industry wins something here. It would reduce the maze of physician and hospital paperwork, and substantially reduce our excessive administrative costs. For the same dollars we spend caring for 85% of the population today, we could care for 100%.

Though initially we’d need the employers’ help in transitioning – say, with a payroll tax – we should phase them out over five years and make it 100% taxpayer funded. As it is employers just add their costs to their product price and we reimburse them at the cash register. We don’t need these middlemen because they don’t really reduce our costs, and by making them more profitable, more jobs would move to Wisconsin and fewer will leave. At least until other states catch on to us.

-- Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate, author of "Politicians - Owned and Operated by Corporate America" and founder of http://www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org. He can be reached at jelohman@gmail.com.

Cisco Health Management - “Measuring the benefits of online health management” - January 2007 - A survey

See: http://austin.illuminas-global.com/cisco_health_management.htm

ACTION ITEM: Here's a cigarette tax that even smokers can like. Doyle wants to increase cigarette taxes by $1.25 per pack to (1) help insure 185,000 of 250,000 uninsured residents, and (2) send some of it back to smokers in the form of smoking cessation assistance. This is not just a fund-raising tactic. It is to slow the rate of new children smokers and to increase the rate that current smokers quit, and the smoking cessation assistance will help current smokers. It is also a public health issue, and it will help reduce health care costs and deaths in the future.

Register your support (or objection) by contacting your state senator and assembly person today. See:

Wisconsin State Assembly pages: http://www.legis.state.wi.us/leginfo/contact/legislatorslist.aspx?house=assembly

Wisconsin State Senator pages: http://www.legis.state.wi.us/leginfo/contact/legislatorslist.aspx?house=senate

Medicare scammers use billing to snare unsuspecting victims

And here's even more on Medicare Fraud

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The Miller/Benedict Universal Health Care bill has been introduced as SB51 and AB94. (Thanks to Rich Bogovich I'll remember these by Hwy 51 and Interstate 94... Just gotta remember which is which.)

Please again contact you state senator and assembly person for support. Sponsors are Senators MILLER, RISSER and CARPENTER, cosponsored by Representatives BENEDICT, BERCEAU, BLACK, BOYLE, A. WILLIAMS, HEBL, PARISI, POCAN, POPE−ROBERTS, ZEPNICK, SINICKI, HILGENBERG, FIELDS, KESSLER and GRIGSBY. Referred to Committee on Health and Human Services.

Once again, if your senator or representative is not listed above, a quick email may yield reasons. I sent this to Darling and Jeskewitz:

I am obviously disappointed that your name was not on the list of sponsors. For the record, what health care proposal are you supporting.

An interesting paper presented at Pacific Northwest Regional Economic Conference (though it was done in 2001): http://www.pnrec.org/2001papers/DaigneaultLajoie.pdf

Why is France's health care considered #1 by the World Health Organization? Read an excellent paper HERE.

* Medicare-for-all-PLUS (covers more procedures than does Medicare)
* Universal coverage without a single payer system
* Basic health care is a government run monopoly, private companies cannot offer competing services (why would anyone buy them anyway?)
* Their National Health Plan covers most costs and most services
* But co-pays are covered by private supplemental insurance (thus the public-private relationship)
* Provides 100% coverage of population
* No opt-out, but you can buy a heavier-than-normal supplementary plan. Spend to your heart's content.
* Funded partly by employers and partly by taxes
* Extra coverage is offset by substantially lower physician salaries (by 66%, US are 5.9 times average workers versus 1.9 in France)
* Patients pay physicians directly then recover costs from the health fund (thus they know the costs)
* Heavily controlled by government
* National fee schedule for reimbursements
* Both public and private hospitals, the latter with negotiated per-diem charges
* Hospitals provide all drugs for inpatients
* Escalating coverage as patients become sicker
* Co-payments, but they disappear after 30 days in hospital
* 2/3 of population is "fairly satisfied" with system
* Some geographic areas not as well covered as others
* Lower level of micromanagement of doctors than in US
* Strong price controls and capital controls
* Occasional physician strikes

Sources:
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/93/1/31.pdf
http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2006/04/on_doctors_sala.html

CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER

Why Obama, Edwards, Hillary, Romney, Schwarzenegger Don’t Support Single Payer? It Would Mean the Death of the Health Insurance Industry, and Reduced Profits for Big Pharma (21 Corporate Crime Reporter 9, February 21, 2007)

The majority of the American people want a single-payer health care system – Medicare for all.

The majority of doctors want it.

A good chunk of hospital CEOs want it.

But what they want doesn’t appear to matter.

Why?

Because a single-payer health care plan would mean the death of the private health insurance industry and reduced profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

Click HERE for the complete article.

Healthcare -- Reform Starts Here (from Grassroots Northshore)

Let's Do Something about It

Sunday, March 18th, 2007
Northshore Presbyterian Church – 4048 N. Bartlett/Shorewood
Doors Open at 6:00pm -- Program at 6:30pm

It’s time.

We are fed up with the rising cost of healthcare and people all across the state – and the country knows about it. Most importantly the seats in the state legislature are tipping in our direction.

So let’s talk about it.
I'm not sure if I can make it yet, but I highly recommend your attendance if possible. This is a good group.

Can doctors learn to love Electronic Medical Records? Yes, if:

http://trusted.md/blog/hippocrates/2005/12/15/can_doctors_learn_to_love_emrs_yes_if

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WPR Interview - January 3, 2007 Joy Cardin and Jack Lohman on Universal Health Care - Click HERE

8:00 AM Joy Cardin - 01/03C

Universal health care is a top priority for state lawmakers... but what would it look like? Joy Cardin and her guest look at different universal health care plans in the works.

Guest: Jack Lohman, former health care executive. Author, “Politicians: Owned and Operated by Corporate America.” Executive director, Wisconsin Clean Elections Coalition. Founder of the website, ThrowTheRascalsOut.Org

Recent newspaper articles:

Jack Lohman, Wisconsin State Journal (you may have seen this one already)
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/forum/index.php?ntid=119334&ntpid=1

Sally Pipes at Wisconsin State Journal opposing view at
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/forum/index.php?ntid=119335&ntpid=2

Sally is president and CEO of Pacific Research Institute, a right-wing think tank that receives support from insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and it should surprise no one that she'd like to leave the free-market system just as it is. Well, with perhaps one change: She'd like the government out of the equation altogether.

The Health Care Racket

An excellent article in the NYT with these excerpts:

“Like denial management, however, marketing and underwriting cost a lot of money. McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, recently released an important report dissecting the reasons America spends so much more on health care than other wealthy nations. One major factor is that we spend $98 billion a year in excess administrative costs, with more than half of the total accounted for by marketing and underwriting — costs that don’t exist in single-payer systems.”

and

“And this is just part of the story. McKinsey’s estimate of excess administrative costs counts only the costs of insurers. It doesn’t, as the report concedes, include other “important consequences of the multipayor system,” like the extra costs imposed on providers. The sums doctors pay to denial management specialists are just one example.”

See complete article at: www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org/NYT_Health_Care_Racket.htm

A Health Care Plan So Simple, Even Stephen Colbert Couldn’t Simplify It

In his State of the Union address, President Bush proposed tax cuts to make health insurance more affordable for the uninsured. The next day, Stephen Colbert had this to say on his show on Comedy Central: “It’s so simple. Most people who can’t afford health insurance also are too poor to owe taxes. But if you give them a deduction from the taxes they don’t owe, they can use the money they’re not getting back from what they haven’t given to buy the health care they can’t afford.”

See the complete article HERE

Health Spending Projections Through 2016: Modest Changes Obscure Part D's Impact

Growth in national health spending is projected to slow slightlyfrom 6.9 percent in 2005 to 6.8 percent in 2006, marking thefourth consecutive year of a slowing trend. The health shareof gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to hold steady in2006 before resuming its historical upward trend, reaching 19.6percent of GDP by 2016. Prescription drug spending growth isexpected to accelerate to 6.5 percent in 2006. Medicare prescription drug coverage has dramatically changed the distribution of drugspending among payers, but the net effect on aggregate spendingis anticipated to be small. [Health Affairs 26, no. 2 (2007):w242-w253 (published online 21 February 2007; 10.1377/ hlthaff.26.2.w242)]

Source: http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/hlthaff.26.2.w242

Private Health Insurance Is Not the Answer
By Phil Mattera, Corporate Research Project. Posted February 23, 2007.

Why are we keeping a hopeless, for-profit health insurance system alive?

Funny he should ask that; it's called Follow the Money!

Source: http://www.alternet.org/stories/48371/ (Note that this is more of a history of how health insurance grew over the years as opposed to itemizing their costs to patient care.)

From a Blogger at http://www.alternet.org/stories/48371/

"I have spent a good part of my life in Europe and own property in France. It is a source of disbelief in those countries that the US has allowed ghoulish middle men to interpose themselves between a sick person and the physician who treats him or her. By what logic or right does a profit-grubbing insurance company middle man with no medical training determine what treatment is appropriate, what price is appropriate, what follow-up care is appropriate, what medication is appropriate? And all with his and his company's profit margin as his sole concern. This US system of providing health care is truly nuts at it core, and hugely expensive, but also hugely profitable for the insurance companies, obviously. Insurance companies are truly ghoulish enterprises which profit from the misfortunes and anxieties of the public. They are in the business of collecting premiums and serving their bottom line, and not in the business of paying out benefits and serving the public."

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Insurance Broker Fraud: Think you're covered? Think again. Only wreckage remains when insurance agents breach trust. "After an accident at work that could have killed him, Gary Davis of De Soto discovered that he had purchased bogus health insurance policies for his auto repair shop from an agent who shouldn’t have been licensed." Go HERE for story.

This is another part of our defective system that would be eliminated with a Medicare-for-all system.

Interesting. Now that Bush has given all of his tax breaks to wealthy campaign contributors, his new budget proposal is now reconciling the taxpayer losses with a $12 billion cut in Medicare and Medicaid. That's my kinda guy!!!

1/8/2007

Universal Health Care Is Most Business Friendly

By Jack E. Lohman

With the vast majority of the public -- and even the "non-healthcare" business leaders -- supporting universal health care, why are our politicians not on board?

It makes every bit of financial sense for businesses to get out of providing health care and to turn it over to the most successful ever public-private venture: Medicare. As a Medicare patient I have the same coverage and physician choice I had before retiring. It's just managed by a single payer: WPS in Madison.

Don't think for a moment that single-payer is just another liberal giveaway; it is the most fiscally conservative way possible of financing health care for Wisconsin citizens, and Sen. Mark Miller and Rep. Chuck Benedict have a Medicare-like proposal on the table for consideration that deserves top consideration.

Medicare-for-all would do wonders for businesses by reducing labor costs by 15 percent; reducing worker compensation costs by 50 percent; and cutting their and everybody else's auto insurance rates in half. With these reduced costs they could add jobs in Wisconsin rather than sending them to other countries. Health care would no longer be a labor union negotiation and job changes would not involve gaps in insurance, preexisting disease exclusions or delays, or COBRA costs.

New jobs would mean new tax revenues, increased property values, and less unemployment, welfare and associated costs. New businesses will move to Wisconsin and old businesses will keep their doors open. And when businesses no longer have to add their health costs to the price of their product, we will see lower prices at the cash register and greater competitiveness against foreign products that aren't burdened with health care costs.

Who wouldn't like these single-payer benefits?

For one, the insurance companies that are currently reaping 20-30 percent of health care dollars won't like it a bit, and neither will the politicians who receive campaign contributions from health care interests. Nor will the board members that sit on both health care and non-health care corporate boards, though business associations that serve both factions owe it to the latter to sit this issue out. The conflicts of interest that stand in the way of good public policy abound.

If corporations are not willing to provide employee health care at least equivalent to Medicare, they should get out of the way and let the government do it. We don't want their inadequately funded solutions or a mish-mash of prohibitively expensive half-way measures. Or health savings accounts that are time bombs waiting to explode in credit card debt and bankruptcies.

Nor do we want an incremental approach that will not cover all citizens and is sure to fail. The public wants it done right and wants it done now.

Think about it. For the same amount of money we are paying to cover 85 percent of the public now, we could cover 100 percent under a single-payer plan like Canada's -- but without the wait times. Over 80 percent of Canadians prefer their system to ours. Their life expectancy is two years longer and infant mortality 35 percent less than ours -- mostly because everybody is insured under a single-payer plan.

Canada spends 10 percent of its gross domestic product on health care while we spend 15 percent of GDP and get less for it. They cover 100 percent of their people and we cover 85 percent and that is shrinking. Their administrative costs are 10 percent compared to our 20-30 percent. They have no wait times for urgent procedures, and those for elective care could be eliminated with a simple increase in funding by 10 percent -- to 11 percent of GDP. While their problem is funding, ours is systemic.

Businesses would fund our transition 100 percent but could phase out over a five-year period. But the sad truth is that ours is not a financial problem, it is political. Or should I say the only financial issue is the $1.4 million in cash that flows from the for-profit health care interests to our state politicians. Anything they can do to delay a fix or make it overly complicated and expensive is well worth their investment in politicians.

With new faces in the state Legislature we stand a reasonable chance of positive movement. And if we don't see it in solid health care and election reform, the voter's option in 2008 is a repeat of 2006: more firing of conflicted state legislators. We now know how that game is won.

-- Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate, author of "Politicians - Owned and Operated by Corporate America" and founder of http://www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org. He can be reached at jelohman@gmail.com.

Source: http://wisopinion.com/index.iml?mdl=article.mdl&article=6227

New: Health Insurance Company Protection Act!

By Jack E. Lohman

Of all of our health care needs, government protection of insurance company mega-profits is not a needed reform. But that apparently won't stop President Bush, who has proposed an annual $7500 single and $15,000 family tax credit for citizens who are either unemployed or whose employer has dumped their health insurance. This would enable them to purchase directly to help insurance companies stay in the loop and retain their profits. Bush also made his usual plug for health savings accounts, for which Wall Street, the credit card industry and bankruptcy attorneys will forever be in his debt.

Tax credits are not the answer. We should be providing health care directly to the patient, not through employers or third-party insurance companies that drain resources.

Follow the money. These are taxpayer assets being given to the insurance industry for non healthcare services -- when instead, the insurance industry shouldn't be getting a penny of our health care dollars. They consume 20% of health care dollars yet provide absolutely zero health care benefits to the patient.

That's a shameful waste. We need administration; not insurance companies. We should totally eliminate the unnecessary costs that are consumed by marketing, salesman commissions, underwriting costs, huge executive salaries, and high corporate profits. None of these would exist under a single-payer system like Canada's. With a strong political will we could mimic Canada's system and extend health care to 100% of the public, and we'd spend the same amount of dollars we are spending today to cover only 85% of the people. To boot, we can do it without Canada's wait times! The money saved would be spent on more doctors and more nurses to serve more patients.

The state must implement a universal health care system, and the proposal by Sen. Mark Miller and Rep. Chuck Benedict provides the mechanism to bring health care to all residents by July 1, 2008. The logical approach would be to contract with an administrative service, like Medicare does with WPS in Madison, and today’s insurance companies would be candidates to serve the state in that capacity. But whenever waste is trimmed people are displaced, and some of those people can be used in administering the new program and others retrained for more critical jobs like nursing, medical technologists, and even by moving some into higher paying programming positions that will be needed to convert our massive paper-based medical records system to an electronic patient database to track practice variations and success rates.

There are other health care proposals, but none are as extensive and none are as simple. With added complexity comes costly administration, the very thing we must eliminate if we are to afford the system. With single-payer, the patient receives services and the administrator writes the check. It's that simple. We'd incorporate BadgerCare and Medicaid patients, and we'd cut worker compensation and auto insurance rates in half because the medical portions of those are handled by the universal system. And we'd not be hampered by federal laws that prohibit negotiating for lower drug prices, so our single-risk pool would enable us to maximize the economies of scale.

The Miller-Benedict proposal is not just the best system for the public, it is also the most business friendly proposal on the table. It will attract more companies and more jobs to the state than the others, and fewer businesses and jobs will be lost. Initially it would be funded by a payroll tax and the transfer of funds from the other systems it replaces.

What's not to like about that?

Our current problem is not funding, it is political. Some politicians claim that the government can't do anything right and they will fight to privatize the system. I'd probably buy that argument were it not for the fact that government-run entities cannot give campaign contributions and private corporations and their executives can. And they do, because the last thing in the world they want to see is our health care system made more efficient.

But it is time for politicians to put politics aside and do what's right for the state.

-- Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate, author of "Politicians - Owned and Operated by Corporate America" and founder of http://www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org. He can be reached at jelohman@gmail.com.

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Add a fourth health care proposal in Wisconsin: Wisconsin Healthcare For All -- Universal healthcare coverage in Wisconsin: It's not just a dream. It's a possibility – without reworking the existing healthcare system. In making this proposal, we recognize the existence of all players in the health care system, and attempt to work with them to achieve the goal of health care for all. 91% Wisconsin residents already have health care – let's complete the job by covering everybody!

They are seeking local solutions as a beginning point, but would support a state or federal solution. See their website at: http://wisconsinhealthcareforall.org

Having spent 25 years manufacturing cardiac monitoring devices, I never once built a product "half way." It seemed silly to spend a lot of time engineering a product that I knew was going to be inadequate and would require re-engineering next year. Or worse, fail in the marketplace because it was inadequate to do the job. So from day one it was the best that technology would allow.

So I am not sold on the compromises we have in these four bills. Somebody is going to be left out, unless it is done the right way from the start.

But many of our state legislators seem content with accepting a half loaf, or at least the moneyed health care interests have convinced them that a little tweak is okay. These moneyed interests have but one goal, of course, and that's to delay the inevitable, efficient system. They know that some day the government is going to get it right, but if they can delay efficiency (which would cost them money) they can justify their high lobbying and campaign investments.

There only two "best ways," and the one that keeps our current flexibility is a Medicare-for-all system that covers 100% of the public, offers 100% portability when changing jobs, eliminates preexisting exclusions, uses private doctors and hospitals, does it all for for the same costs that we are paying today, and removes the cost burden from employers. The other way is socialized medicine like the VA Medical and armed forces systems, each of which have higher patient satisfaction ratings than our private system.

We must remove all costs that are unnecessary (administrative, marketing, exorbitant profits and executive salaries and stock options) that do not contribute to the providing of health care, and that requires minimizing the role of the politically (and financially) powerful insurance and HMO industry and the for-profit hospitals. A Medicare-for-all system will do that, and leave Gap insurance to the 450 Wisconsin insurers to provide.

If you are new to this newsletter don't miss the page at www.throwtherascalsout.org/health_care.htm and be sure to follow the related links.

Don't for a moment believe that having employers fund the system is a good idea. It is the worst idea possible. Follow the dominoes and the only logical conclusion under that scenario is an HMO-for-all system governed by corporate profits (those of the business leaders that fund the system).

As it is, businesses pass their costs to the public anyway, so we would be better off removing this "middle man" cost. That can be done with a simple Medicare-for-all system.

Report: The Cost of Privatization: Extra Payments to Medicare Advantage Plans — Updated and Revised by the Commonwealth Fund

Medicare Advantage is a system of private HMOs that provide health care to Medicare patients under contract to the government, but now it has been found that its costs are 12.5% higher than Medicare would have spent itself. Who said the privatized free market would save money?

CT census: number of CT studies growing - HERE is the business to be in!

Health fraud suit is tossed - Couple wasn't duped by insurer, judge says. Go HERE for story.

They thought they had adequate insurance but didn't. That's how the free market works.

Let’s stop this Health Care nonsense

By Jack E. Lohman

It’s just a matter of time before health care is taken over by the business sector; and not just by providing expensive insurance to pay outlandish medical costs that have been increasing at 15% per year. That’s what we have today, and businesses are mad as hell and are not going to take it any more.

Wisconsin’s business leaders are well positioned to pool their resources and create their own managed care facilities for employees, even buy their own hospitals if they want. They’ll control the costs because they control the money.

This would be, of course, all aimed at sidelining the for-profit health care interests that are currently bleeding the system, and the insurance companies that represent the 30% of administrative costs. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is enough bad management and profit-taking to spread around to all providers of health care, including poorly run hospitals, physicians who order too many high-profit tests, and bankers and insurers pushing health savings accounts to get their piece of the national health care pie at the expense of the patient.

That pie now represents 15% of our gross domestic product and promises to reach 30% within the next decade. It is absolutely unsustainable, and it does not have to be that way.

Business leaders should not look to reduce health care costs, they should instead look at getting out of the health care business altogether. Whatever their costs, high or low, they are simply added to their product price and consumers reimburse them at the cash register. So let’s eliminate the middlemen and have the taxpayers pay directly. Let’s allow businesses to better compete with foreign products that do not have health costs built into them. Let’s keep the profits and jobs in the US, and keep and attract more businesses to Wisconsin in the process.

Notably, for the same 15% of GDP we are spending today to cover 85% of our population, we could serve 100% of the people through a universal health care system. Think “Canadian-style without the wait times!”

Canada provides 100% of its population with a Medicare-for-all system, and Canadians enjoy a 35% lower infant mortality rate, two years longer life expectancy, longer hospital stays, and more per-capita doctor visits, all at 50% lower costs (10% of GDP compared to our 15%). While their wait times for urgent care are the same as ours, zero, if they’d increase their spending by just 10%, to 11% of GDP, they could also match our wait times for elective procedures. Still, well over 80% of Canadians prefer their system over ours. What’s not to like about that?

Importantly, any universal health care system we create must be kept simple. Simple is less costly, simple works, and simple doesn’t break. It makes zero sense to make complex and costly compromises to satisfy the special interests, which is what we have done to date. It should instead be designed to maximize results, and the best approach is the Miller-Benedict universal health care bill.

But fixing the system requires political will, and that’s difficult to muster when the health care interests are giving $1.4 million annually to state politicians to keep the system as it is; expensive, inefficient, complex and dysfunctional.

Hopefully our new state legislature has politicians with enough wisdom to recognize that the fuse has been lit and they had best fix the system under their watch. If they don’t, 2008 is just around the corner, and we may have to throw a few more of the rascals out.

Jack Lohman is a retired business owner who lives in Colgate, and is the founder of ThrowTheRascalsOut.org and the author of the book “Politicians – Owned and Operated by Corporate America.”

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An excellent video on Single-payer health care: Click HERE to play.
Another video describing health care costs, click HERE and HERE.

Health care for all: We need only the will

By Jack E. Lohman

The health care system is broken, and it will get worse before it gets better. We can fix the system overnight or we can make it a 10-year project, which the for-profit health care interests would like to drag it out to.

There are many areas that must and can be fixed, but simplicity is the key. Simple is less expensive and simple doesn't break. And the simplest system already exists; it's called Medicare-for-all. We don't need complicated insurance pools or anything else; we need to provide health care, and here's the best way:

• Single-payer delivery system: The simplicity of a Medicare-for-all system can provide health care to 100 percent of our population for the same money we are paying for 85 percent coverage today. Means-tested co-pays will help keep costs to a minimum. Transfer all Medicaid and BadgerCare patients into this single system.

Alternatively, find a mechanism to expand the medical systems for the military and veterans to replace our private sector health care needs.

• Who should pay for the health care system? The taxpayers rather than employers, though some phase-in will be necessary. We are paying now when employers add their costs to the price of their products and we reimburse them at the cash register. By eliminating the costly middlemen, we can cut the costs by a minimum of 30 percent.

We could help fund the system with a surcharge added to criminal fines and by diverting punitive damages from malpractice awards. A tax-free charitable endowment can also be established.

• Medical education: We could increase the availability of doctors and nurses by providing free college education to high school students who both rank in the top 10 percent of SAT scores and maintain college grades of A or B. Give those in the C range some debt assistance.

The better students should be allowed into the specialties and the poorer students required to serve longer internships and perhaps even be limited to lower level positions that cannot endanger patients.

• Universal IT: We must maintain all patient, doctor and hospital information in a highly secure universal health database. Start with the patient answering a lengthy on-screen health questionnaire, add the physician's diagnosis and treatment. The system can provide the physician a list of treatments provided by other physicians around the country and under the same circumstances, and alert the physician when medications are incorrect or will interact with other meds the patient is on. This will reduce practice variations, medical and prescription errors, and give the patient cost and quality of treatment transparency of the physician.

• Certificate of Need: We should require all major hospital expansions and purchases of high-tech equipment to be approved by a (re-established) CON board of review.

• Physician self-referrals: We should prohibit payment for tests using their own high-tech equipment ordered by physicians and clinics (because the tests become profit-making cash cows that result in over-ordering and wasteful spending under the current fee-for-service structure). Referring patient testing to well-equipped hospitals or independent labs has always worked well.

• Medical malpractice: We should replace the 12-person jury system on malpractice cases with a three-person panel staffed by retired (or at least non-conflicted) physicians and nurses. If guilt is determined, all awards should be set by this panel. Economic damages shall consist of the patient's out-of-pocket expenses, reasonable pain and suffering, and reasonable legal costs.

If punitive damages are to apply, they should not go to the patient, who has already received economic damages, but instead paid into the universal health care fund.

So now we will learn whether Democrats and Republicans can work together in the best interest of their constituents, or whether the $1.4 million in yearly campaign money from health care interests carries greater weight.

Jack Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate and founder of www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org. E-mail: jelohman@gmail.com

Published: November 16, 2006, The Capital Times

Drug Industry Is on Defensive as Power Shifts WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 — Alarmed at the prospect of Democratic control of Congress, top executives from two dozen drug companies met here last week to assess what appears to them to be a harsh new political climate, and to draft a battle plan. See complete article HERE.

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As Drug Prices Climb, Democrats Find Fault With Medicare Plan - NYT - For big drug companies, the new Medicare prescription benefit is proving to be a financial windfall larger than even the most optimistic Wall Street analysts had predicted. But those gains may come back to haunt drug makers if Democrats take control of Congress this week. Democrats, who have long charged that the drug industry is profiteering at taxpayers’ expense, say they want to introduce legislation to revoke the law that bars Medicare from negotiating prices directly with drug makers like Pfizer for the medicines it buys. See complete article HERE.

Running on Empty: Healthcare As the Engine of the Economy - by Brian Klepper, Ph.D., and Alain Enthoven, Ph.D.) Recently, a flurry of national articles has explored the notion--held by several prominent economists--that increased healthcare spending reflects the choices of an affluent population, and will continue to drive a strong economy. Many healthcare professionals--physicians, hospital executives, insurance administrators and analysts--see it differently. As one colleague bluntly puts it, “It's a train wreck everyone knows is just around the corner." Healthcare insiders know that the industry's rosy prospects can continue only if its funding remains stable. Most also acknowledge that the dollars are not likely to flow as they have in the past. See complete article HERE.

Healthcare crisis countdown - By David R. Francis - The healthcare system in the United States is eroding. Costs are rising too fast. More and more people lack health insurance. Companies are dumping or shrinking employee health plans. Deductibles and copayments on medical services are rising. That's the widely agreed-upon scene. Yet chances are slim that Americans will go for a far less expensive "single payer" health system, as in Canada, Britain, or Australia, anytime soon. See complete article HERE.

Now that the Dems control the state senate, let's hope the universal health care bill by Mark Miller gets traction. But like campaign and ethics reform, it is going to take massive pressure to override the special interests.

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How Doctors Are Yielding Their Profession To The CEOs (By Jack Lohman) Eleven facts about our health care crisis, why doctors should care, and what will save the profession -- Strong opinions are offered on the health care crisis. On one side are those employed in health care and currently benefit from its high cost, and on the other side are the consumers and employers that bear these high costs. While they have different motives, let’s look at some facts:

"The Word of Those With Whom We Do Business:" The State of Ethics in Healthcare - By Fred Goldstein, for HealthLeaders News, Apr. 14, 2006. This is not a pretty sight.

Health-care crisis for business - Business leaders must push reform to rein in costs and protect coverage -- By Brian Klepper -- Last September the CEOs of several Fortune firms -- Costco, Verizon, Honeywell, Starbucks, Drugstore.com -- met in Washington to register alarm over unrelenting health-care cost growth. The meeting sent two important messages. First, if not restrained, health-care costs will trump every firm's profitability and competitiveness. No commitment to generous benefits can withstand them. Over the last five years health-care premiums -- where all health-care costs converge -- have risen 5.5 times as fast as general inflation, 4 times as fast as workers' earnings and 2.3 times as fast as business income growth. Second, rather than sending subordinates, the CEOs went to Washington themselves. This conveyed that the crisis now warrants the focus of our most influential business leaders and immediate attention on the national policy agenda. See the complete article HERE.

Democrats Critical of New Medicare Guide -- WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 — Congressional Democrats say a new government publication being sent to all Medicare beneficiaries inappropriately favors private insurance plans over the traditional government-run program. See the complete article HERE.

“You have your choice of a weekly pay check or health insurance. ”

October 25^th, 2006 - Now is the Time to Win a Single Payer National Healthcare System!

Finally, the time has come, and Healthcare-NOW has been front and center – refusing to accept the “general wisdom” that we just couldn’t do it --insisting for the past three years that we should not wait to build this movement until there was a positive government -- free of the private profiteers.

So, now the movement is growing by leaps and bounds. Through our rapid response network and the Citizen/Congressional Hearings, both major media and many Members of Congress have become convinced. Through your stalwart efforts, your constant advocacy and your creative organizing events, “single payer” has become the buzzword that people now understand. You’ve helped many sectors, particularly the labor movement (thanks to our Kentucky organizer, Kay Tillow) and the “barely insured middle class” to understand that we are all in jeopardy but that there is a solution.

Does this mean that we are almost there? Not hardly. Does it mean that the health industrial complex will just roll over and quit lobbying state and federal legislators to sign onto plans that will keep their profits growing? That’ll be the day!

The industry’s private profiteers are trying all kinds of schemes to keep themselves in control of our healthcare dollars and our healthcare system. But more and more thousands of people are “onto them”…becoming aware that we don’t need them. What we need is a “single payer” solution that we can afford and that will work for every person in this country. And by the way, our success on this issue will have a positive effect for people all over the world, particularly in poor countries who are struggling to get the profits out their healthcare systems.

What can you do? Get out the vote. Talk to everybody. Be sure that all the people who support us are elected or re-elected. Be sure they know we expect them to fight for us once they get into office. Then get ready to work harder than ever to organize the people, participate in organizing, push through the hearings, and foment the legislative debate that will get us where we need to be in 2008.

Healthcare-NOW organizers will be having a National Strategy Meeting the weekend after the election. At that time, we will be deciding together on the strategies we will pursue during the coming months. Send us your ideas. Send us some money! It is an opportunity for you to step up to the plate and play a strategic role. I don’t like to ask for money, but please, send us some money! We can’t do any of this without you! Just go to our website and put in your credit card number on the “Donate” button now. Or write a check. www.healthcare-now.org Then, call us up or send us an email to share your strategy ideas. We really want to hear from you.

Healthcare-NOW is a movement of volunteers working very long hours. Already, we have coalitions in about 120 cities. Remember, “Movement Building” is the way we have always won people’s victories in this country. That’s why you as a volunteer organizer and all the people you talk to in your own community are so important. You are a part of a growing movement. Now is our time, perhaps the only time we will have in the near future! We are closer to a national healthcare system than we have been in 50 years. But it won’t come easily. You can play a strategic and historic role in winning the right to health care and defeating the healthcare profiteers. Do it NOW at the polls and NOW with your contributions and ideas. Don’t wait. Our combined efforts are essential. We probably won’t have this opportunity again for a very long time. Write us; call us; join us now. www.healthcare-now.org

Marilyn Clement, National Coordinator
Healthcare-NOW info@healthcare-now.org
339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012
1-800-453-1305

Healthcare-NOW supports (as do I) the John Conyers Medicare-for-all bill, HR676. Ask your US congressman to sign on as a co-sponsor.

And don't miss Paying More but Getting Less by Tom Daschle

Healthy skepticism - MASSACHUSETTS is in the midst of yet another healthcare experiment. By July, all residents will be legally required to have health insurance -- a so-called "individual mandate." The bill's sponsors believe that the uninsured can buy their way out of their predicament. As doctors in an urban hospital, we are not optimistic about this proposal. We care for uninsured and underinsured patients who often lack the resources to eat well or find proper child care, much less to buy insurance. The individual mandate is another ill-fated Band-Aid. See complete article HERE.

Forcing people to invest in health care insurance, when that is the system consuming the 30% of administrative costs, is falling into the hands of the insurance industry. Why have "insurance" at all, when a Medicare-for-all system could be had for the same dollars expended today? Follow the money!

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We need health cost containment before fixing the payment method - By Jack Lohman

Let’s take a time out.

As the nation struggles with how to pay for health care costs that are spiraling upward at an annual rate of 17%, five times the rate of inflation, we are virtually ignoring the reasons behind the escalating costs in the first place. We are engrossed in payment methods rather than cost containment, all while the industry seeks innovative ways of taking home a bigger piece of the national pie.

Massachusetts -- A healthy direction - By John McDonough | October 14, 2006 - IT HAS BEEN six months since Governor Mitt Romney signed health reform into law, and Massachusetts is engaged in an unprecedented experiment to expand affordable health insurance coverage. Thousands have realized new benefits, much progress has been made, and difficult issues remain unresolved. It's a work in progress and residents should take pride in accomplishments to date. See complete article HERE.

Healthcare Economist on P4P (Pay-for-Performance): TheHealthCareBlog.com, an excellent resource and discussion Blog, discusses an article from the Healthcare Economist about why P4P isn’t enough and implicitly why we need budget and supply constraints to get health care costs under control. (Hint, it isn’t always possible to tell when the curve is flat or heading downhill).

Good Links: http://healthcare-economist.com/2006/10/12/p4p/ and Pay for Performance - does it work?

Comments: In my mind the most valuable addition to health care would be that of a national patient database operated by Medicare or the VA (or Halliburton, if you are of that persuasion) and would include all of the nation's patients. Of course a patient opt out is necessary, and heavy security with a triple password would be needed.

The process would start with the patient sitting in front of a computer and answering a lengthy questionnaire that the physician could use for assessment. Given all of the patient's answers and physician remarks the system would then provide a list of theoretical solutions from the medical books plus a list of treatments used by physicians across the country (physician and patient names excluded). If your physician's ideas are out of the norm, s/he might reassess them. If s/he decides to move forward anyway it becomes a matter of record and is passed to the next physician thousands of miles away. If the drugs that are being prescribed have nasty side effects or are contra-indicated, a flag would be automatically raised. Deaths due to medical errors would be drastically reduced.

Your physician may be perfect and never need guidance, but others are not and especially new physicians are not. This would serve as an excellent tool to minimize practice variations and to train new physicians.

As for the Pay-for-Performance system above, I'd like to see physician referral patterns as a consideration. Being able to decide between two physicians, one never referred to and the other always referred to, would be helpful. But the downside is that new physicians are at a distinct disadvantage and that type of system can turn into a popularity contest and back-scratching tool.

I also worry that physicians and hospitals will avoid difficult patients so as to not negatively affect their stats.

27-1

Fact: Hospital patients are at great risk of contracting an opportunistic infection -- and often die from that instead of from the ailment that initially caused their hospitalization.

Tip: If you or a loved one ends up in the hospital, make sure you have a bottle of Purell with you and insist that everyone, including doctors, nurses, aides, etc., who enters the room rub their hands with Purell.

Consumer-Driven Medicine Is Not The Answer - By Maggie Mahar - Consumer-driven medicine is seen, by many, as the answer to our health care crisis. Put the consumer in the driver’s seat, we are told, and patients will drive down costs by insisting on the very best value for their dollars. See the complete Blog HERE.

This from one of our subscribers: The following is an interesting issue, especially when our nation's leaders proclaim that their job is to "Keep Americans safe." That only seems to mean keeping us safe from "terrorists" (i.e. Islamic fundamentalists) and not from health and safety risks created by what I consider corporate terrorists and medical mercenaries, like those who are, in essence, running the FDA and, in fact, much of Congress and the administration.

Study Condemns F.D.A.’s Handling of Drug Safety

By GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — The nation’s system for ensuring the safety of medicines needs major changes, advertising of new drugs should be restricted, and consumers should be wary of drugs that have only recently been approved, according to a long-anticipated study of drug safety.

The report by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, is likely to intensify a debate about the safety of the nation’s drug supply and the adequacy of the government’s oversight. The debate heated up in September 2004 when Merck withdrew its popular arthritis drug Vioxx after studies showed that it doubled the risks of heart attacks.

See complete article HERE.

And see the New York Times coverage HERE.

Cynical me. In the case of drug companies, they give millions of dollars in campaign contributions designed specifically to encourage a hands-off policy by government regulators, and it works as intended. I have not seen any political money trying to block the US protections from foreign terrorists. Am I missing something here?
Me-too drugs are new formulations of old drugs, changed just slightly to warrant a new 20 year patent life. Once the original patent runs out, generic manufacturers can copy it. But the me-too formula can be marketed as a "new and improved" drug, even if it isn't as good. The FDA should require these new formulas to be tested not against placebos, which is now a cake-walk since they've already done this once, but against the drug it replaces to determine if the new formulation is a step forward or instead a less effective drug.

Don't miss The Corruption of Medicine that appeared in The Week, an excellent weekly for those looking for a capsule of news. HTML version is HERE.

And the NYT report F.D.A. Says Bayer Failed to Reveal Drug Risk Study

26-1

Prescription for Excellence: How Innovation is Saving Canada's Health Care System -- Free Download -- Thanks to all of you for buying the book and visiting my website. The reviews are in and even the National Post says, "It's pleasing to hear someone offer solutions to problems Canadians want solved, instead of plaintive whining and condemnation." The hardcover and the paperback are now sold out! I have decided to make the book available to everyone through this website. Please download a free PDF copy of Prescription for Excellence!

How doctors are yielding their profession to the CEOs -- Ten facts about our health care crisis, why doctors should care, and what will save the profession -- Strong opinions are offered to solve the health care crisis. On one side are those employed in health care and currently benefit from its high cost, and on the other side are the consumers that bear these high costs. While they have different motives, let’s look at the facts HERE:

Luring Customers From Medicare - By Milt Freudenheim - For years, private insurers have offered alternatives to the federal Medicare program that are meant to give patients lower-cost options than the government coverage provides. More than 7 million people now subscribe to such plans, out of a total Medicare population of 42.5 million. But suddenly a type of private insurance plan is gaining ground that looks very similar to the basic coverage long available to anyone with a federally issued Medicare card. And the government is paying the private insurance industry a subsidy of 11 percent per patient, on average, to provide it.

See the complete article HERE.

U.S. Health-Care System Gets a “D”

By Catherine ArnstThu Sep 21, 3:08 AM ET

The U.S. health-care system is doing poorly by virtually every measure. That’s the conclusion of a national report card on the U.S. health-care system, released Sept. 20. Although there are pockets of excellence, the report, commissioned by the non-profit and non-partisan Commonwealth Fund, gave the U.S. system low grades on outcomes, quality of care, access to care, and efficiency, compared to other industrialized nations or generally accepted standards of care. Bottom line: U.S. health care barely passes with an overall grade of 66 out of 100.

The survey was carried out by 18 academic and private-sector health-care leaders, who rate the system on 37 different measures. The poor grade is particularly discomfiting, the researchers note, because the U.S. spends more on medicine, by far, than any other country. Approximately 16% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) is devoted to health care, compared with 10% or less in other industrialized nations.

Health care is also responsible for most new job creation, according to BusinessWeek’s Sept. 25 cover story (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/25/06, “What’s Really Propping Up The Economy”). Yet the U.S. ranks 15^th out of 19 countries in terms of the number of deaths that could have been prevented. The study estimates that each year 115 out of 100,000 U.S. deaths could have been avoided with timely and appropriate medical attention. Only Ireland, Britain, and Portugal scored worse in this category, while France scored the best, with 75 preventable deaths per 100,000.

Below Potential. The U.S. ranks at the bottom among industrialized countries for life expectancy both at birth and at age 60. It is also last on infant mortality, with 7 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 2.7 in the top three countries. There are dramatic gaps within the U.S. as well, according to the study. The average disability rate for all Americans is 25% worse than the rate for the best five states alone, as is the rate of children missing 11 or more days of school.

The report found that quality of care and access to care varied widely across the country, and it noted substantial gaps between national averages and pockets of excellence. The authors concluded that, if the U.S. improved and standardized health-care performance and access, approximately 100,000 to 150,000 lives could be saved annually, along with $50 billion to $100 billion a year.

The Commonwealth Fund, which studies health-care issues, commissioned the report last year as part of an effort to come up with solutions to the nation’s troubled health-care system. The report “tells us that overall we are performing far below our national potential,” says Dr. James J. Mongan, chairman of the team that pulled together the study and chief executive officer of Partners Healthcare in Boston. “We can do much better and we need to do much better,” he says.

Among the reports’ findings:

· • Only 49% of U.S. adults receive the recommended preventive and screening tests for their age and sex.

· • Only half of patients with congestive heart failure receive written discharge instructions regarding care following hospitalization.

· • Nationwide, preventable hospital admissions for patients with chronic health conditions such as diabetes and asthma were twice as high as the level achieved by the best performing states.

· • Hospital 30-day re-admission rates for Medicare patients ranged from 14% to 22% across regions.

· • One-third of all adults under 65 have problems paying their medical bills or have medical debt they are paying over time.

· • Only 17% of U.S. doctors use electronic medical records, compared with 80% in the top three countries.

· • On multiple measures across quality of care and access to care, there is a wide gap between low income and the uninsured, and those with higher incomes and insurance. On average, measures for low income and uninsured people in these areas would have to improve by one-third to close the gap.

· • As a share of total health expenditures, insurance administrative costs in the U.S. were more than three times the rate in countries with integrated payment systems.

Fear not, the politicians get a "D" too. But theirs stands for the millions of Dollars in campaign contributions they've received from the health care industry to leave our highly inefficient and profitable system in place.

24-2

Health Care: It's What Ails Us
by Doug Pibel and Sarah van Gelder

For Joel Segal, it was the day he was kicked out of George Washington Hospital, still on an IV after knee surgery, without insurance, and with $100,000 in medical debt. For Kiki Peppard, it was having to postpone needed surgery until she could find a job with insurance -- it took her two years. People all over the United States are waking up to the fact that our system of providing health care is a disaster.

An estimated 50 million Americans lack medical insurance, and a similar and rapidly growing number are underinsured. The uninsured are excluded from services, charged more for services, and die when medical care could save them—an estimated 18,000 die each year because they lack medical coverage.

But it’s not only the uninsured who suffer. Of the more than 1.5 million bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, about half are a result of medical bills; of those, three-quarters of filers had health insurance.

This is a Must-Read article HERE:

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Has Canada Got the Cure?
by Holly Dressel

Publicly funded health care has its problems, as any Canadian or Briton knows. But like democracy, it’s the best answer we’ve come up with so far.

Should the United States implement a more inclusive, publicly funded health care system? That's a big debate throughout the country. But even as it rages, most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn't already have a fundamentally public--that is, tax-supported--health care system.

That means that the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans' mortality rates--both general and infant--are shockingly high.

This is a Must-Read article HERE:

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HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS UNLIKELY TO SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE HEALTH CARE SPENDING Click HERE

A bibliography of papers debunking the HSA myths

23-1

Health Care - Action Item

Health care should be a social service, not a for-profit commodity

By Jack E. Lohman

On Monday August 28^th, the Committee on Health Care Reform will meet to hear testimony on reform recommendations from Medicaid and other health care providers. But is this just formality?

First let’s look at the problem, the best solution and then the reality.

The problem is that health care reform is critically needed. Easily 15% of our population is uninsured, another 15% is underinsured, and health care costs are rising at 12% per year (five times faster than inflation). Our health care costs represent 15% of Gross Domestic Product compared to 10% in Canada and many other industrialized countries. And for its 10% of GDP expenditure, Canada covers 100% of its people, has a life expectancy 2 years longer and an infant mortality 35% less than ours. Even with its longer wait times (which could be corrected by increasing its costs to 11% of GDP), over 90% of its population still prefer the Canadian system over ours.

The solution in Wisconsin (and the US, for that matter) is a universal health care system. Not socialized medicine, but a Medicare-for-all system where physicians and hospitals remain independent but the 1500 for-profit insurance companies are replaced with one administrator, as Medicare has now. With that alone we’d see a 15% cut in administrative costs. Some insurance company personnel will be displaced, and they can be retrained for higher-paying nursing and medical technician positions currently in shortage. The remaining can be assigned to facilitate Gap insurance. That’s what we call adapting to progress.

And this universal coverage should be virtually 100% taxpayer supported, just as it is in Canada and other industrialized nations. Taxpayers already are paying these costs -- when manufacturers add their health care costs to their product price -- so let’s eliminate the middleman and pay for health care up front. Let manufacturers be more competitive and reduce their need to send jobs offshore. The Big Three auto manufacturers already assemble more cars in Canada where their employee health care costs are just $800 per year compared to $6500 in the US.

But now the reality. We also have politicians who must run costly campaigns to get re-elected, and the for-profit health care industry (that wants to remain a for-profit health care industry) gives $1.4 million per year to Wisconsin legislators. According to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign the Co-Chairs of the committee, Sens. Alberta Darling and Carol Roessler, both Republicans, have received $119,639 and $39,521, respectively, over the past decade from health care and insurance interests.

These contributions don’t necessarily influence legislators, but I would be a lot happier if political cash were not changing hands when public-necessity and budget decisions are being made. That means zero private money. We wouldn’t allow it in the private sector when purchasing executives are making corporate decisions, and we shouldn’t allow it here. Political campaigns would cost taxpayers a fraction of the cost if they funded them directly, rather than through the government-giveaway system we have now.

That said, neither Darling nor Roessler have supported a universal health care system. Of the other members, Ronald Brown (R), Jon Erpenbach (D) and Tim Carpenter (D), only the Democrats have taken proactive positions both on universal health care and campaign reform. As a center-right Republican, I wish this had been solved under the GOP watch, but we’ll now have to wait for the November elections.

But think about this for a moment. IF we had a universal health care system – one which our corporations were not obligated to fund – can you imagine the significant increase in business and jobs Wisconsin would attract?

Why isn’t the business community demanding this?

Why aren’t our politicians?

-- Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate and founder of www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org. He can be reached at jelohman@gmail.com

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Action Item (this week please): If you are a constituent of Senators Darling, Roessler, Brown, Erpenbach or Carpenter, PLEASE CALL THEM and ask that they support only a universal health care plan such as AB807:

2005 ASSEMBLY BILL 807
Link to Bill History

November 3, 2005 - Introduced by Representatives Benedict, Berceau, Black,
Boyle, Fields, Grigsby, Kessler, Parisi, Pocan, Pope-Roberts and Sheridan,
cosponsored by Senators Miller, Carpenter, Erpenbach, Risser, Robson and
Wirch. Referred to Joint Committee on Finance.

Who to Contact:

sen.darling@legis.state.wi.us	(608) 266-5830
sen.roessler@legis.state.wi.us	(608) 266-5300 (888) 736-8720 (toll free)
sen.carpenter@legis.state.wi.us Is already a co-sponsor of AB807, Ask him to hold tight on his bill	(608) 266-8535 (800) 249-8173 (toll free)
sen.erpenbach@legis.state.wi.us Is already a co-sponsor of AB807, Ask him to hold tight on his bill	(608) 266-6670 (888) 549-0027 (toll free)
sen.brown@legis.state.wi.us	(608) 266-8546 (877) 763-6636 (toll free)

Obviously, a 3-2 vote matters here. The Republicans outnumber the Democrats.

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Employers shift health insurance costs onto workers

By Lawrence Mishel
Economic Policy Institute

Fewer employees receive health insurance through their employers now than in the past, as coverage has declined from 61.5% in 1989 to 58.9% in 2000 and down to 55.9% in 2004 (the latest data available). Less well known is the fact that those who still receive employer-provided coverage are now paying a larger share of those insurance costs.

See complete article and charts at: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060816

22-2

Health Care

David Sirota: Addressing the country’s health care taboo - Here’s an idea rarely discussed in our nation’s capital: Health insurance should not be a for-profit industry.

Think that’s a radical concept? If so, then the majority of Americans are radicals. According to a national Harris poll in 2003, a strong majority of American “would prefer health care services to be provided by non-profits or government.”

The public’s sentiment is understandable, given the facts. Take, for instance, a recent Reuters story on a major university study. “For-profit nursing homes and hospitals on average provide an inferior quality of care compared with their nonprofit peers,” the news service reported, adding that “Nonprofit hospitals are also better at keeping costs down.”

See the complete article here.

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For an interesting discussion on single-payer health insurance see TPM Cafe

21-5

On Health Care: Wisconsin Can Lead the Way on Health Care Reform (By Judy Robson) You know what’s wrong with our health care system? We spend too much money on paperwork and red tape. The billing bureaucracy – in hospitals, clinics, and insurance companies – takes up far too much of every dollar spent on health care. See the complete article here.

Russ Feingold has introduced a bill to get us closer to universal health care. To sign the petition go here.

20-1

Health Care

Mastectomies: On a note many of you may be concerned about, insurance company dollars are in the process of buying congressional legislation to allow them to make mastectomies an out-patient procedure, thus eliminating the 1-to-2 day hospital recovery. If you object, as I do, please write your congressman and sign the petition here.

Report Finds a Heavy Toll From Medication Errors: (NY Times): Medication errors harm 1.5 million people and kill several thousand each year in the United States, costing the nation at least $3.5 billion annually, the Institute of Medicine concluded in a report released on Thursday. See complete story here. (Only campaign dollars could ease regulation in this area, and the new bankruptcy laws will surely add industry protection.)

Specialty-Service Lines: Salvos In The New Medical Arms Race: Hospitals And Physicians Organize And Market Services Targeted At Specific Diseases, Organ Systems, And Populations, Raising Cost And Quality Concerns - Bethesda, MD -- The proliferation of heart institutes, cancer centers, orthopedic hospitals, and other niche specialty centers signals an escalation in a new medical arms race as hospitals and physicians develop and market profitable specialty-service lines, according to a study by Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) researchers published today as a Health Affairs Web Exclusive. This is a must read at Medical Arms Race by Health Affairs and the complete report here.

19-1

A MASSIVE AMOUNT on Health Care

Is there any wonder why health care costs are going through the roof?

If you've ever wondered why health care is so expensive, this doctor explains it well. Do not miss the complete article.

Dollars for Doctors

'First, make a profit' seems to be the mantra for shrewd health-care executives and certain physicians. All the while, patients suffer. Here's what drives this travesty.

By Tom Von Sternberg (A physician in Minneapolis)

The pursuit of excessive profits in health care isn't healthy. Care is increasingly unaffordable, and many people don't have insurance coverage at all. Employers are dropping coverage or shifting health care costs to employees in the form of high deductibles and coinsurance. Simultaneously, shrewd health care executives and certain physicians are getting rich at the patients' expense. It seems that success in health care has been defined by money and by Wall Street, not by the overall improved health of patients. This is disturbing to me as a physician. How can it be considered acceptable or reasonable? There are three trends in particular that demonstrate how money and profits have become too influential in the health care system.

See the complete article here. This is an absolute must read:

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Medicare's Hollow Heart

Britt Cass (July 13, 2006)

Britt Cass is the National Academy of Social Insurance intern at the Campaign for America's Future. CAF has released a new report, Falling into the Doughnut Hole: How Congress and the Drug Industry Created a Trap for American Seniors and People with Disabilities.

Everybody has heard of the costly and inefficient failure of the Republican Medicare prescription drug plan, Part D. But few people understand how for many Americans, even as they continue to pay a monthly premium, Part D provides no coverage at all.

See the complete article here, and the complete report here.

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A Windfall From Shifts to Medicare

By MILT FREUDENHEIM New York Times

The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to reap a windfall from a surprisingly lucrative niche market: drugs for poor people.

And analysts expect the benefits to show up in many of the quarterly financial results that drug makers will begin posting this week.

The windfall, which by some estimates could be $2 billion or more this year, is a result of the transfer of millions of low-income people into the new Medicare Part D drug program that went into effect in January. Under that program, as it turns out, the prices paid by insurers, and eventually the taxpayer, for the medications given to those transferred are likely to be higher than what was paid under the federal-state Medicaid programs for the poor.

See the complete article here

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Sen. Lieberman Literally in Bed With Drug Lobby

By Joe Conason

Truthdig's Editor’s note: In this column, Conason points out that the Connecticut senator who would lecture us on ethics drafted a bill in 2005 that made generous giveaways to pharmaceutical companies—one month after his wife went to work in the pharmaceuticals division of a major lobbying and PR firm.

Whenever Sen. Joseph Lieberman complains that he is the target of a 'single-issue' challenge by upstart millionaire Ned Lamont, the three-term incumbent proves he doesn't quite get what is happening to him. It is true that the Lamont campaign began as a protest against his slavish support of the war in Iraq. It is untrue that growing antiwar sentiment is the sole reason for his peril in next month's Democratic primary.

See the complete article here.

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If you haven't learned by now, you can be sure that when Bush wants changes they ARE NOT going to be in the best interest of the public. Cutting payments to hospitals and physicians is one step in the process of gutting the effectiveness of the Medicare system. Yes it needs fixing, but I would not put Bush in charge of the job. He'll throw the baby out with the bathwater. See also the next item; this is one of the ways Bush is balancing the tax giveaways to the rich.

Bush Administration Plans Medicare Changes

From New York Times

By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, July 16 — The Bush administration says it plans sweeping changes in Medicare payments to hospitals that could cut payments by 20 percent to 30 percent for many complex treatments and new technologies.

The changes, the biggest since the current payment system was adopted in 1983, are meant to improve the accuracy of payment rates. But doctors, hospitals and patient groups say the effects could be devastating.

Federal officials said that biases and distortions in the current system had created financial incentives for hospitals to treat certain patients, on whom they could make money, and to avoid others, who were less profitable.

Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said the new system would be more accurate because payments would be based on hospital costs, rather than on charges, and would be adjusted to reflect the severity of a patient’s illness. A hospital now receives the same amount for a patient with a particular condition, like pneumonia, regardless of whether the illness is mild or severe.

Medicare pays more than $125 billion a year to nearly 5,000 hospitals. The new plan is not expected to save money, but will shift around billions of dollars, creating clear winners and losers. The effects will ripple through the health care system because many private insurers and state Medicaid programs follow Medicare’s example.

See the complete article here.

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Just what we needed; more conflicts in the health care industry, from hospital CEOs this time.

Hospital Chiefs Get Paid for Advice on Selling to Hospitals

From New York Times

By WALT BOGDANICH
One recent sun-splashed afternoon, executives who run some of America’s leading nonprofit hospitals met at a stately Colorado resort for an unusual mission: to advise companies confidentially on how best to sell their drugs, medical devices and financial services to hospitals.

The hospital executives were rewarded with more than a chance to indulge in a “harmonic” hot stone massage or mountainside golf.

They were also paid thousands of dollars for the advice they offered to dozens of companies, like Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. The hospital officials and their spouses received a free trip to the luxury resort, where they could join the Morgan Stanley Tennis Tournament or the GE Healthcare Barbecue. All of this came courtesy of the Healthcare Research and Development Institute, a for-profit company that is owned by about three dozen hospital executives, but underwritten by 40 or so of its handpicked corporate members, all suppliers to hospitals.

See the complete article here

___________________________________________

Medicare patients: 10 REASONS WHY THE NEW MEDICARE LAW SHOULD MAKE YOU MAD

14-1

Health Care

Health Care Morality
by Jim Hightower

Contrary to the "contrived wisdom" of the Powers That Be, providing health care for everyone is not an economic or even a health issue – it's a moral issue.

Notice that corporate chieftains and the the political elites all have the Rolls Royce of health care – while most Americans are trying to make do with a sputtering Yugo, and while millions of our people are walking barefoot. This crass inequality on such a basic human need is a moral abomination.

See the complete article and listen to the commentary at http://www.JimHightower.com/node/5806

When Drug Firms Pay Off Competitors
NY Times Editorial, June 8, 2006

We hope that the Supreme Court agrees to take up a pivotal drug patent case brought by the Federal Trade Commission against Schering-Plough. Otherwise, the commission may find itself powerless to block one of the more underhanded tactics used by brand-name drug manufacturers to keep generic competitors off the market.

The tactic is brutally simple. A company that holds a patent on a brand-name drug, often a blockbuster that rakes in huge profits, pays a generic manufacturer to delay the sale of a competing product that might grab a big slice of the business. The patent holder makes so much money by delaying competition that it can easily afford to buy off the generic company, with the result that both companies share the wealth. The only losers are the consumers who must continue to pay high drug prices.

See balance of article at: http://tinyurl.com/nu5oc

13-3

Health Care reform

Government-Funded Care is the Best Health Solution -- Multiple Insurers, Multiple Plans Create Expensive, Draining Hassle -- April 18, 2006 ---- See: http://tinyurl.com/gcd89 - Write to Dr. Benjamin Brewer at: thedoctorsoffice@wsj.com (This is an excellent article from a physician fed up with the current system.)
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Outsourcing Your Heart? Elective surgery in India? Medical tourism is booming, and U.S. companies trying to contain health-care costs are starting to take notice (An excellent piece, especially for employers and the self-insured http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1196429,00.html)
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The 4^th Street Forum had an excellent panel on May 25^th discussing the four proposals for health care reform in Wisconsin, plus follow-up questions from the audience. If I had to sum up the best questions into one, it is essentially “With the health care interests giving $1.4 million in campaign financing to block health care reform, what makes any one of you think your proposal has a chance of passing?” Representative Curt Gielow’s aide, who was sitting in for him, said that was off the subject and didn’t even want to consider campaign reform as a sticking point. With Gielow being a Republican, I can understand why. But we all know it is the only thing standing in the way of an intelligent decision by the state legislature. For those interested you can see the various plans at:

Coalition for Wisconsin Health: Dr. Linda Farley, www.wisconsinhealth.org/wiplan.html

Wisconsin Health Care Partnership Plan: David Newby, AFL-CIO, www.wisaflcio.org

Wisconsin Health Plan, David Riemer, www.wisconsinhealthproject.org/plan/index.htm

Governor Doyle’s plan: www.dhfs.wisconsin.gov

To be advised by email of future 4^th Street forums, go to http://www.milwaukeeturners.org/fourth-street-forum/

I’ve also written on the single-payer plan that Dr. Farley presented: See http://www.throwtherascalsout.org/health_care.htm and the associated links at the top of that page.

I’d also encourage you to ask: Why do we have corporations providing health care. See http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2005/09/05/editorial4.html?t=printable

12-2

Drugs for the Money

By Eric Lotke

The deadline for signing up for prescription drug coverage under Medicare Part D is looming, and senior citizens are unhappy. The very people who clamored for the benefit are among Part D’s most vocal critics. To understand why, it is necessary to look behind the curtain—to examine who wrote the law and who benefits from it.
.

Part D is proving to be costly and confusing. Senior citizens derive some advantage, sure, but they are paying top dollar for a middling benefit. The real winners are the drug companies, insurance companies and HMOs. They got the best drug benefit money could buy.
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Right now, the most urgent problem is the May 15 deadline. Seniors who don’t sign up by that date will pay penalties of no less than 7 percent of their premiums every month for the rest of their lives. Unlike traditional Medicare, people are not automatically enrolled on their 65th birthday. They must sign up—though half of them don’t know even about the deadline. The Bush administration often minimizes this problem by citing figures that show overall enrollment figures, which are dominated by people automatically enrolled as part of previous coverage under Medicaid, TriCare or other programs. Among voluntary enrollments, only half of eligible seniors have signed up.

See complete article at http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/05/11/drugs_for_money.php

10-2
Health care news: Another piece on the "Massachusetts Miracle"

By Robert Kuttner

Is the new Massachusetts new health plan really a model for reform nationally? Advocates of universal health coverage feel they finally have their nose under the tent. The question remains, however: is this the right tent?

The design of the plan was drastically constrained from the beginning by Governor Romney Mitt who started with three dubious assumptions. First, he insisted that basic health insurance could be had for $2,400 a year. As any employer or individual who actually buys insurance knows, minimally decent coverage costs around $4,000 for an individual and double that for a family. The rhetoric about basic “Chevrolet policies” versus “Lexus policies” is blarney. Any policy that costs only $2,400 has astronomical out-of-pocket payments. It simply shifts medical costs to individuals.

See complete article at: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11375

9-5

On Universal Health Care 1

Massachusetts Health Reform, A false promise of Universal Coverage
Published on Thursday, April 6, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
by Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. and David U. Himmelstein, M.D.

It’s a stirring scene. The Governor, legislative leaders and leaders of Health Care For All standing in the State House Rotunda declaring victory in the fight for universal health coverage. Unfortunately, this week’s tableau merely repeats one from 20 years ago when Governor Dukakis was celebrating passage of his universal healthcare bill. That plan imploded within two years, and today about 250,000 more people are uninsured in Massachusetts than the day it was signed. Unfortunately, Massachusetts’ new health reform legislation looks set to repeat that disaster.

What's in the New Bill?
What's Wrong With This Picture?
What Are the Alternatives?

Read the complete article at: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0406-35.htm

Note: Drs. Woolhandler and Himmelstein are co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Plan (www.pnhp.org)

On Universal Health Care 2

The Massachusetts Miracle
By Jack E. Lohman

Of course health care is a mess, and for the same reason everything else is a mess: politics and greed. Health care is no longer a humanitarian service; it is a profit-making industry, and a very profitable one at that. Having just retired from after 35 years in the industry, I'd encourage you to break the crisis down to two questions.

1) Why is health care so costly in the first place?

2) What is the best and most humanitarian way to deliver it?

It is costly as hell because Congress has changed many of the rules at the behest of major contributors of campaign cash. More than $100 million per year from health care interests (hospitals, medical associations, HMOs, insurance and the pharmaceutical giants), all to make the for-profit system more profitable. They like to spin it as "market driven," but make no mistake, that means for-profit. They know it and you should too.

See the complete article at http://www.fightingbob.com/article.cfm?articleID=515

9-2
Health care news from The Center for Public Integrity

Drug Companies Put $44 Million into State Lobbying Efforts: Campaigns push back against moves to cut prices, spending on medication

Fighting a flurry of legislative and public policy initiatives aimed at reducing prices and slicing drug budgets, the pharmaceutical industry spent more than $44 million on lobbying state governments in 2003 and 2004, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of lobbying records has found. The industry also funneled more than $8 million to the campaigns of candidates for various state offices over the same period, according to a Center analysis of state campaign money. Complete report at http://www.publicintegrity.org/rx/report.aspx?aid=794

Deep Pockets Contribute to Success: Industry spends millions on state campaign donations, Calif. Fight

The pharmaceutical industry, which mounted a huge lobbying campaign to thwart attempts by states to reduce drug prices, also has spent tens of millions of dollars on campaign contributions and fights over ballot initiatives, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of state campaign funds has found. Complete report at: http://www.publicintegrity.org/rx/report.aspx?aid=795

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States See Importation as Solution to High Drug Costs: Several seek, have plans despite federal and industry opposition

Pursuing average savings of 25 percent to 50 percent belowU.S. prices, many states have defied the federal government and turned to countries such as Canada for access to affordable prescription drugs for their citizens. An analysis by the Center for Public Integrity disclosed that 34 states have implemented or considered bills relating to the importation of prescription drugs since 2003. Complete report at: http://www.publicintegrity.org/rx/report.aspx?aid=793

7-1

Gladwell vs Gladwell (on single-payer)

By DAN MITCHELL

SIX years ago in the Washington Monthly, Malcolm Gladwell faced off against Adam Gopnik, his fellow New Yorker writer, in a debate over Canada's single-payer health care system. Mr. Gopnik favored it; Mr. Gladwell opposed it vigorously. "Canada has achieved a wonderful thing, which is universal health care coverage," he said then. "But it has achieved it at a price, and that is quality of care."

On the blog he started last week (gladwell.typepad.com), Mr. Gladwell noted that the blogosphere has, for some mysterious reason, picked up on the debate. "But wait!" he wrote. "That was six years ago! I've now changed my mind. I now agree with virtually everything Adam said and disagree with virtually everything I said. In fact, I shudder when I read what I said back then."

In 2000, Mr. Gladwell recalled a bicycle accident he had at 16 in Ontario. "I ran off the road and I basically impaled my eye on a stick," he says. It took 9 days and a 120-mile trip to Toronto for him to get a CAT scan. The doctor declared that he "clearly suffered irreversible brain damage." His recovery, he said, was due more to luck than to the care he received.

In the United States then, CAT scan equipment proliferated. In Canada, it was rare. The United States is where medical discoveries are made. Countries like Canada don't make discoveries, they only benefit from those made in the United States. So argued Mr. Gladwell in 2000.

And now? By 2005, in a New Yorker article, Mr. Gladwell was arguing for health care reform with a vehemence he did not exhibit when he was on the other side of the question. One of the "great mysteries of political life in the United States is why Americans are so devoted" to a health care system "of increasing complexity and dysfunction," he wrote.

Why the change? "I woke up one day," he wrote in his blog, "and realized what much smarter people than me (Adam Gopnik) realized a long time ago, which is that the idea of employer-based health care is just plain stupid. And only our familiarity with it and sheer inertia prevent us from rising up in rebellion."

7-2
Gladwell vs Gladwell (Continued)

February 26, 2006

I [Gladwell] realize I forgot to provide a link to the long-ago debate between me and Adam Gopnik on the Canadian health care system. Here it is.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0003.gladwellgopnik.html

Why have I changed my mind? Some of my reasons are in the piece on moral hazard I wrote for the New Yorker last summer.

http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_08_29_a_hazard.html

The bigger reason is simply that I woke up one day and realized what much smarter people than me (Adam Gopnik) realized a long time ago, which is that the idea of employer-based health care is just plain stupid--and only our familiarity with it and sheer inertia prevent us from rising up in rebellion. I always try to think of a suitable analogy and fail. The closest I can come is to imagine if we had employer-based subways in New York. You could ride the subway if you had a job. But if you lost your job, you would either have to walk or pay a prohibitively expensive subway surcharge. Of course, if you lost your job you would need the subway more than ever, because you couldn't afford taxis and you would need to travel around looking for work. Right? In any case, what logical connection is there between employment and transporation? If you can answer that question, you can solve the riddle of the U.S.health care system. And maybe I'll change my mind back.

The comments from readers are also of interest; see

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/02/gladwell_v_gopn_1.html#comments and

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/03/canadian_health.html#comments

6-2

State may tackle catastrophic health care

By John Torinus

Potentially the most far reaching idea in Gov. Jim Doyle's "state of the state" message got the least attention.

Though put forward in only the broadest of terms, his proposal for coverage of catastrophic health costs is a concept that could touch every resident in the state, directly or indirectly. It could have major appeal in segments of the Wisconsin business community and among advocates for more government involvement in health care payments.

<snip>

See the complete article at: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=402478

John Torinus is chief executive officer of Serigraph Inc. of West Bend. Contact him at torcolumn@serigraph.com

4-2
Letter, USA Today, 1/26/2006

Fix U.S. health care

How many more jobs in the auto industry must we lose before we fix the health care system? Between General Motors and Ford, about 60,000 jobs are slated to be cut.

But guess what? In 2004, Ontario, not Michigan, was North America's leading car producer. GM's health care costs, for example, are about $6,500 per employee in the USA compared with only $800 in Canada. That's because Canada has a universal health care system, while we have a for-profit, free-market system that is perpetuated by tens of millions of dollars per year in campaign contributions. So jobs are heading north and to other countries whose companies do not have to add health care to their bottom line.

Why is the business world not demanding a similar universal health care system in the USA? Right now, businesses are adding their health care costs to the price of their products and the public reimburses them at the cash register.

Where are our heads? It would cost the public no more to pay for this cost with higher taxes, but we'd keep jobs in the USA as companies could better compete with foreign products.

As a Medicare patient, I can attest to the fact that a Medicare-for-all system would be totally acceptable to the public. The hospital, HMO and pharmaceutical industries would oppose it, but who is Congress responsible to?

Jack E. Lohman, Colgate, Wis.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-01-25-letters-ford_x.htm

2-1
Op-Ed in Eau Clare Leader-Telegram and Racine Journal Times
December 9. 2005

Health care should not be a business burden

What else can we expect than to lose 30,000 General Motors jobs in theUS? Ontario now makes more Big Three autos than does Detroit, all because their health care costs are $6500 per employee in Michigan compared to $800 in Canada. In Wisconsin the costs are $9,321, making employers truly desperate and driving businesses and jobs out of the state (actually, out of the country).

But we fail both businesses and the public when we ignore the obvious: Why are we burdening businesses with health care costs in the first place when no other country does this? That $9,321 is simply added to the price of their products and the taxpayers pick up these costs at the cash register. In the meantime we force employers to compete both globally and against imports that do not have health costs built into their prices! This makes no sense at all.

Why have our business leaders not demanded a national, universal health care system like that in Canada? Of course Canada’s is not a perfect system, but that’s because their moneyed special interests have succeeded in getting their politicians to underfund it, thus their wait times are longer than they should be.

But get this: Canada’s life expectancy is two years longer than ours; its infant mortality 35% lower; its administrative costs are 8% compared to our 30%, they have one insurance administrator per province versus our 1500 insurance companies in the US, their health care costs are 10% of GDP versus our 15%; and they cover 100% of their citizens compared to our 85%! What’s not to like about that?

Canadians are 90% in support of their system over ours, but they are fighting the special interests who want to open their health care to profit-taking as their brethren south of the border enjoy. And our free-market for-profit health care providers are waiting anxiously at the border with NAFTA in hand to see that happen. It’s not a pretty sight.

Our business leaders must sideline our for-profit health care promoters and fix the American system once and for all. Our free-market health care system is killing our free-market business profitability and forcing jobs abroad.

What we need is a national Medicare-for-all system, but with fairer reimbursement than we have today. That’s not socialized medicine; it is socialized insurance that leaves hospitals and physicians independent from government. It would eliminate our Medicaid and BadgerCare systems, cut worker compensation costs by 40%, cover 100% of the people and eliminate the rationing common with today’s HMO systems. The only thing stopping this is the $100 million per year that health care interests plow into lobbying and campaign contributions, thus a national solution may not be forthcoming soon.

In the meantime Wisconsin business leaders and politicians should support AB-807, the Wisconsin Health Security Act. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist (or CEO) to realize that fixing the state’s health care system will keep businesses in Wisconsin and attract new businesses from other states. That means new jobs and tax revenues. I don’t expect hospital interests to support this, but physicians must surely have seen the handwriting on the wall by now. They are increasingly becoming “corporatized” and they face a better future in the hands of the independent health care board as proposed under AB-807.

Who is going to move this forward? I’d like it to be the current Republican legislature, but they will have to decide whose campaign contributions are more important to them; the businesses who are being bled to death or the health care interests that are doing the bleeding.

Jack E. Lohman is a retired business owner and now executive director of www.WiCleanElections.org. He volunteers for Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and can be reached at jelohman@gmail.com.

All Health Care Articles

Where Will The Sick Go Now?

The Medicare Privatization Scam

Fighting The Pharma Goliath - Bill Scher - April 05, 2007

Health Courts: The Way of the Future?

Study finds lack of health insurance may be associated with increased rates of stroke

Insurers to Get Higher Medicare Payments

New Urgency in Debating Health Care

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=584662

No 'health savings' scams; time for single-payer is now

By JACK E. LOHMAN

Universal health plan could yield savings

Study: Spending could be cut by $60.7b per year

A Health Care Plan So Simple, Even Stephen Colbert Couldn’t Simplify It

New: Health Insurance Company Protection Act!

Health fraud suit is tossed - Couple wasn't duped by insurer, judge says. Go HERE for story.

They thought they had adequate insurance but didn't. That's how the free market works.

Let’s stop this Health Care nonsense

Health care for all: We need only the will

We need health cost containment before fixing the payment method - By Jack Lohman

U.S. Health-Care System Gets a “D”

Health care should be a social service, not a for-profit commodity

Employers shift health insurance costs onto workers

Dollars for Doctors

Medicare's Hollow Heart

Britt Cass (July 13, 2006)

When Drug Firms Pay Off Competitors NY Times Editorial, June 8, 2006

Drug Companies Put $44 Million into State Lobbying Efforts: Campaigns push back against moves to cut prices, spending on medication

Deep Pockets Contribute to Success: Industry spends millions on state campaign donations, Calif. Fight

.

States See Importation as Solution to High Drug Costs: Several seek, have plans despite federal and industry opposition

7-2 Gladwell vs Gladwell (Continued)

6-2

4-2 Letter, USA Today, 1/26/2006

Fix U.S. health care

Health care should not be a business burden

When Drug Firms Pay Off Competitors
NY Times Editorial, June 8, 2006

7-2
Gladwell vs Gladwell (Continued)

4-2
Letter, USA Today, 1/26/2006