Category: Health Care

Gov. Howard Dean: The Democrats Need to Grow a Pair

August 17, 2009
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I had the privilege of attending Netroots Nation Friday as a member of the media for Turning Left. Former Governor Howard Dean held a town hall meeting at 9:00 a.m.  I’m currently working on transcribing his comments, and I’ll publish that story tomorrow.

However, I want to share one quote that Dr. Dean shared with me when I had the opportunity to speak with him during the book signing that followed his presentation.

I stood in a rather long line, and Dr. Dean was extremely gracious with each person who came for his autograph in the book Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer.  When I finally reached the good doctor, I shook his hand and thanked him.

I then told him, if I had the chance during the large town hall meeting, I would have asked him, “When are the Democrats going to grow some, stand up, and fight for health care reform?”

Dr. Dean responded by reiterating what he said to the larger group,  “The Blue Dogs are Democrats,” he said.  “They are Democrats.”

“Ideologically?”  I asked.

“They are Democrats,” Dean repeated.  “But, you’re right.  They do need to grow a pair.”

Those were his exact words.

In the town hall gathering, Dr. Dean told Netroots Nation that the “Conserva-Dems” have done us a favor in the health care reform debate.  Dean noted that the Conserva-Dems are the only group at the table truly representing conservative Americans.  The Republicans have removed themselves from the table, Dean said.  They have chosen to not participate in the health care reform debate.  The Conserva-Dems, or Blue Dogs, are the only truly conservative voice at the table.

That being said, Dean told Netroots Nation the Democrats have already compromised with conservatives in that single-payer health care is off the table.

“There will be no more compromise,” Dean said.

It’s time for the Democrats to fight for the change this country needs.

Stand up now, Dems! And grow a pair.

At Least 4 Democratic Congressman Receive Death Threats Over Health Care

August 12, 2009
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The fringe right wing of movement conservatism is dangerous.

Glenn Beck jokes about poisoning Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and gets to keep his show.

Congressman David Scott had a 4-foot swastika painted over a sign in front of his office.

Congressman Scott is black.

Watch Rachel Maddow in the video above, and be careful.

And speak the TRUTH in the face of these violent, desparate lies.

UK Newspaper Dispels Myths About National Health Care

August 12, 2009
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I’ve had it with the fringe right-wing health-insurance-industry-paid screaming white lunatics screaming at congressional town hall meetings.  Homeland Security needs to keep an eye on these nuts and their racist-driven attacks.

Calmer minds are prevailing in the media.  The UK’s The Guardian has begun taking these arguments to task.  Even the United Steel Workers are standing up to unmask the lunatic fringe doing the bidding of the for-profit health insurance industry:

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley has claimed that U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, 77, would not be treated for his brain tumor if he was in Britain because he is too old.

The newspaper reports that this is just not true, according to Britain’s Department of Health. “There is no ban on anyone of any age receiving any treatment,” said a spokesman. “Whether to prescribe drugs or recommend surgery is rightly a clinical decision taken on a case by case basis.”

An e-mail circulating in the U.S. claims that in England, anyone over 59 years old cannot receive heart repairs, stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed. The Guardian reports that this is totally untrue.

“Growing numbers of patients over 65 with heart conditions are having surgery, including valve repairs and heart bypass surgery,” says Professor Peter Weissberg, the British Heart Foundation’s (BHF) medical director. For example, the average age at which people have a bypass operation has risen from 58 in 1991 to 66 in 2008.

San Francisco-based thinktank Pacific Research Institute has been saying that in Britain, breast cancer kills 46 percent of patients, compared with 25 percent in the U.S. They claim prostate cancer kills 57 percent of the Britons it strikes, compared with 25 percent of American victims; and that Britain’s heart attack fatality rate was 19.5 percent higher than America’s in 2005.

Breast cancer does claim more lives, proportionally, in the U.K. than in the U.S., but no where near the difference some claim, according to the 2002 database run by the World Health Organisation’s cancer advisers. For example, 19.2 of every 100,000 Americans die of breast cancer disease, compared to 24 percent in Britain. With heart attacks, 40 percent of Britons who suffer one die from it compared to 38 percent in the States.

And there’s more.

The violent and threatening thugs are not mainstream America.  They are servants of the health insurance industry, and they are getting dangerous, bringing firearms to congressional town hall meetings.

And it turns out everything they say is laughably unscientific and false.

Here’s Your Health Care Reform: Medicare for Everyone

August 7, 2009
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That’s it.  Final solution.

Fix the health care system with one simple bill that eliminates the requirement that all Medicare participants be 65 years-of-age or older.  Just open Medicare for everyone.

Problem solved.

Get over it already.  If the Republican-coveted insurance companies want to survive, they’ll have to be competitive.

Personally, I don’t think they have it in them.

So, forget about them.

Open Medicare for everyone.

Problem solved.

Clarence Page is Spot On with GOP Health Care Scare

August 5, 2009
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Stop by the the Chicago Tribune.  Clarence Page wrote a column about the scare tactics the birthers and other GOP servants are spreading regarding any attempts at true health care reform currently before congress.

From Clarence Page:

They have been aided in this mission by a key figure in the killing of Bill and Hillary Clinton‘s proposed health-care reforms in the early 1990s. Former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, a conservative health-care specialist, lit the spark on various op-ed pages and talk shows, including former Sen. Fred Thompson‘s radio talk show.

There she told Thompson that “Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.”

McCaughey added that the bill “expressly says if you get sick somewhere in that five-year period, you have to go through that session again, all to do what is in society’s best interest or your family’s best interest and [basically] cut your life short.”

Nonsense. The provision would require Medicare to pay for advanced-care consultations, but it does not requireindividuals to take advantage of the benefit.

Nor does it require that a government bureaucrat intervene among the patient, the patient’s family or a doctor or nurse practitioner, as McCaughey insists it does.

Look: read Mr. Page’s column.  We have to stay on message.  We must reform health care.  This will not be a repeat of the Clinton-era attempts at health care reform.  We know those who object to reform for who they are: they serve the health insurance industry.

They do not serve the American people.

Angry White GOP Health Insurance Co. Thugs Disrupt Dems’ Town Halls

August 5, 2009
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Who are these angry white Republicans who are disrupting Democratic congressmen and women at their town hall meetings?

Turns out they’ve been sent to these meetings by D.C. lobbying groups with ties to the health insurance industry.  Shouting out spoon-fed talking points from the insurance industry, they’re defending the millions of dollars these for-profit companies take in over our dead bodies.

Olbermann unmasked the Dems and GOP members of congress on the take from the health insurance industry.  Now Rachel Maddow exposes the lying liars recently heard screaming for the corporations at these town hall meetings.

Watch this video closely.  The insurance industry is actually claiming the proposed health care plans before congress with mandate sex change operations.

Don’t believe me?  Let’s go to Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.  Here’s their list of congressional town hall meetings.  Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is a Washington D.C. -based lobbying organization that’s run by Richard Scott, a former hospital executive.  According to Rachel Maddow, Scott was forced out of that company in the midst of a fraud investigation that resulted in the company paying a $1.7 billion fine.

That’s who these angry white Republicans are taking tap dancing lessons from.  As Maddow reports, “This is a health care industry-linked lobbying group organizing uprisings at town hall events.”

Let’s look at Freedom Works, which gives instructions on how to scream and shout at town hall meetings for that perfect YouTube sound bite, ensuring there will be no discussion, no civil discourse, at these events.

Republican strategists are claiming these shouting matches are simply Democracy in action.  What they are in fact is the absence of Democracy, wild attempts to stop dialogue, to make sure no intelligent discussion takes place. They scream and shout when anyone with a view different from their own begins to speak.  They are the voice of the health insurance industry clamping down on Democracy and each and every one of us, the American people, doing everything possible to shove us down and shut us up, so the industry can pick our pockets at will.

We see them for who they are.

So we call out these GOP insurance-industry-worshipping know-nothings, and applaud the Democrats and Republicans in congress who are seeking true healthcare reform.

Republicans: Defending the Insurance Industry Over Your Dead Body

August 1, 2009
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Watch and enjoy as Rachel Maddow once again brialliantly unmasks Republican lies on the health care debate.

Republicans: defending the insurance industry over your dead body.

GOP, Conservative Media Trying To Scare Granny to Death

August 1, 2009
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The GOP and conservative media are falling all over each other trying to save the for-profit health insurance industry from having to compete with a modestly-run government health insurance program similar to Medicare.  Their efforts will no doubt become even more frantic in response to a just-released New York Times/CBS News poll:

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insuranceand that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care.

That paradox was skillfully exploited by opponents of the last failed attempt at overhauling the health system, during former President Bill Clinton’s first term. Sixteen years later, it underscores the tricky task facing lawmakers andPresident Obama as they try to address the health system’s substantial problems without igniting fears that people could lose what they like.

Across a number of questions, the poll detected substantial support for a greater government role in health care, a position generally identified with the Democratic Party. When asked which party was more likely to improve health care, only 18 percent of respondents said the Republicans, compared with 57 percent who picked the Democrats. Even one of four Republicans said the Democrats would do better.

The ruling ultra-conservative wing of the GOP is doing everything possible to scare seniors to death over the proposals.

From MSNBC:

A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama’s calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life “rationing” and even “euthanasia.”

The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills. Under the plan, Medicare would reimburse doctors for one session every five years to confer with a patient about his or her wishes and how to ensure those preferences are followed. The counseling sessions would be voluntary (emphasis added).

But on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as “guiding you in how to die,” “an ORDER from the Government to end your life,” promoting “death care” and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to “kill Granny.”

Note again, “The counseling sessions would be voluntary.”

I’m lucky, my doctor also teaches other doctors.  He loves to talk and teach.  Many physicians charge for advice.  These sessions offer simple counseling about end-of-life options that no one likes to think about in advance, but we all know it’s wise to do so.  A Living Will is a good thing.  Right now Medicare does not cover this counseling.

Why would Republicans and the conservative media want to deny Granny and Grandpa the ability to receive counseling from the professionals uniquely qualified to offer such advice? Rachel Maddow calls this malicious crowd the “deathers.”

Granny and Grandpa can relax. And change the channel: turn off FOX Noise, shut off Rush. Watch Rachel and Keith.

They might also want to call their congressman and tell them to back health care reform.  This plan is a huge step forward for all Americans.

Weekly Address: President Obama Outlines $300+ Billion in new Medicare. Medicaid Savings

June 13, 2009
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Washington, D.C.- June 13, 2009. Last week, I spoke to you about my commitment to work with Congress to pass health care reform this year. Today, I’d like to speak about how that effort is essential to restoring fiscal responsibility.

When it comes to the cost of health care, this much is clear: the status quo is unsustainable for families, businesses, and government. America spends nearly 50 percent more per person on health care than any other country. Health care premiums have doubled over the last decade, deductibles and out-of-pocket costs have skyrocketed, and many with preexisting conditions are denied coverage. More and more, Americans are being priced out of the care they need.

These costs are also hurting business, as some big businesses are at a competitive disadvantage with their foreign counterparts, and some small businesses are forced to cut benefits, drop coverage, or even lay off workers. Meanwhile, Medicare and Medicaid pose one of the greatest threats to our federal deficit, and could leave our children with a mountain of debt that they cannot pay.

We cannot continue down this path. I do not accept a future where Americans forego health care because they can’t pay for it, and more and more families go without coverage at all. And I don’t accept a future where American business is hurt and our government goes broke. We have a responsibility to act, and to act now. That is why I’m working with Congress to pass reform that lowers costs, improves quality and coverage, and protects consumer health care choices.

I know some question whether we can afford to act this year. But the unmistakable truth is that it would be irresponsible to not act. We can’t keep shifting a growing burden to future generations. With each passing year, health care costs consume a larger share of our nation’s spending, and contribute to yawning deficits that we cannot control. So let me be clear: health care reform is not part of the problem when it comes to our fiscal future, it is a fundamental part of the solution.

Real reform will mean reductions in our long term budget. And I have made a firm commitment that health care reform will not add to the federal deficit over the next decade. To keep that commitment, my Administration has already identified how to pay for the historic $635 billion down payment on reform detailed in our budget. This includes over $300 billion that we will save through changes like reducing Medicare overpayments to private insurers, and rooting out waste in Medicare and Medicaid.

However, any honest accounting must prepare for the fact that health care reform will require additional costs in the short term in order to reduce spending in the long-term. So today, I am announcing an additional $313 billion in savings that will rein in unnecessary spending, and increase efficiency and the quality of care – savings that will ensure that we have nearly $950 billion set aside to offset the cost of health care reform over the next ten years.

These savings will come from commonsense changes. For example – if more Americans are insured, we can cut payments that help hospitals treat patients without health insurance. If the drug makers pay their fair share, we can cut government spending on prescription drugs. And if doctors have incentives to provide the best care instead of more care, we can help Americans avoid the unnecessary hospital stays, treatments, and tests that drive up costs. For more details about these and other savings, you can visit our website: www.whitehouse.gov.

These savings underscore the fact that securing quality, affordable health care for the American people is tied directly to insisting upon fiscal responsibility. And these savings are rooted in the same principle that must guide our broader approach to reform: we will fix what’s broken, while building upon what works. If you like your plan and your doctor, you can keep them – the only changes that you’ll see are lower costs and better health care.

For too long, we have stood by while our health care system has frayed at the seams. While there has been excuse after excuse to delay reform, the price of care has gone up for individuals, for business, and for the government. This time must be different. This is the moment when we must reform health care so that we can build a new foundation for our economy to grow; for our people to thrive; and for our country to pursue a responsible and sustainable path. Thank you.

Source: whitehouse.gov

Faith Based Initiative Seeks Alternatives to Incarceration at Drug Policy Conference

June 11, 2009
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Turning Left is helping to get the word out about this conference.  The organization Protestants for the Common Good is working towards the legalization of marijuana:

Chicago, IL– State-wide education and advocacy organization, Protestants for the Common Good, is hosting a drug policy conference at Roosevelt University the morning of Friday, June 12th to explore new directions for drug policy and alternatives to incarceration. A diverse group of experts will highlight strategies employed locally, nationally and internationally for coping with issues related to incarceration due to illegal drug use and abuse.

“By hosting this conference, we hope to inspire a new initiative for Illinois drug laws, one which focuses on street level intervention initiatives, no?entry strategies, and successful reentry programs, ”says Rev. Alexander Sharp, Executive Director of PCG.

“Our faith tells us that all individuals in society deserve a second chance, and current social systems are not only discriminatory, but work in exactly the opposite direction.”

The program will also bring forward the personal testimonies of two Chicagoans whose lives were altered by addiction, and will include information from Roosevelt University’s Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy Research.

Key policy alternatives such as decriminalization and legalization will be discussed, with special guest Rep. Jeffrion Aubry (D?35) from the New York State General Assembly speaking to the recently repealed Rockefeller Drug Laws. These laws enforced mandatory sentencing and lowered trigger amounts leading to mass incarceration over the past 30 years. Similar laws exist in Illinois, and have exacerbated the problem by emphasizing a punitive solution.

Featured speakers on the agenda include: Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director, Drug Policy Alliance: Rep. Louis Lang (D?16), Illinois General Assembly: Don MacPherson, Drug Policy Coordinator, Vancouver, Canada: Rep. Arthur Turner (D?9) Illinois House of Representatives, and Pamela Rodriguez, Executive Vice President, TASC?Illinois.

The event speaks directly to crucial issues for PCG, an organization that has worked for the past decade to reform injustice where it appears in the police, judicial, and penal systems, to reestablish rehabilitative resources and services in jails and prisons, and to remove legal and employment barriers for ex?offenders so they may become productive contributors to the common good.

“We have become a prison nation in the past 30 years, and people are incarcerated with a racial disparity that is immoral. There are far better alternatives than recycling individuals through prison, with enormous cost to society and with little or no opportunity to flourish for the rest of their lives,” concludes Rev. Sharp.

Local government, community organizations, and faith leaders will be in attendance.

Source: Protestants for the Common Good