EU-DIGEST

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada — which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.) So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a “Medicare-like plan” that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn’t be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and … you know the rest. So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves. But even the House’s shrunken and costly little public option is too much private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and “centrists” in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans. Yet Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson mumble darkly that they may not even vote to allow debate on the floor of the Senate about the bill if it contains this paltry public option. And Republicans predict a “holy war.” But what more can possibly be compromised? Take away the word “public?” Make it available to only twelve people?

Note EU-Digest: As Mr. Reich concluded in his report: "private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to … the US private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the taxpayer". Looking at it from this side of the Atlantic it seems very much like a major corporate scam.

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

Public Option Essential - More than 60 million Americans have no insurance

For the complete report fom the Huffington Post click on this link

US Health Care Reform - Growing Momentum for Public Option - "Without Public Option Health Care Reform Is Worthless"

In a surprising vote Tuesday, ten Democrats voted to add a public option to the most conservative of the five health insurance reform bills working their way through Congress. That's just two votes short of passage. This robust support for the public option -- in what most observers consider the most conservative committee in the Senate -- signals a sea change in Congressional opinion toward the public option. The odds are now very high that some form of public health insurance option will be included on the final bill when it emerges from a House-Senate Conference Committee later this fall and is ultimately passed by Congress.

Labels: Health Care Reform, Public Option, US

Barack Obama Speaking To US Congress On Health Care Reform

EU-Digest

Obama To Explain His Vision On Remake Of US Health Care Tonight - European Interest To Focus On Similarities With EU Health Care

Tonight, in a special joint session of Congress US President Barack Obama will explain what White House spokesman Robert Gibbs during a Press briefing yesterday called,"not a bill of his own, but what he considers reform to truly be."

In Europe the interest for the US Health Care Reform has mainly focused on two issues. One being, what model US Health Care Program the US will eventually implement. Is it going to be a totally new program, or will it be modeled on an existing European Health Care Program like the Dutch have? The other issue Europeans are looking at is how Obama will emerge from this very important political battle? For additional information on the issues at hand as to the US Health Care Reform, also see the report in the Koster Insurances BV Sure publication.

Labels: Barack Obama, EU, Health Care Reform, Koster Verzekeringen BV, US Congress

US Health Care Reform: Mr.Obama - A cake knife is useless in a gunfight. On health-insurance reform, Obama has mainly his own high-minded fecklessness to blame. To alter the cliche, he hasn’t just brought a knife to a gunfight, he’s brought a cake knife. The GOP’s armed for war; he’s showed up with a multi-layered birthday cake of a bill hardly anybody understands. While insurance reform’s opponents peddle hysterical falsehoods, Obama counters with professorial explanations. Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley’s shameful endorsement of “death panels” should have taught him the futility of making nice.

f President Obama expects Congress to pass a health-insurance reform bill worth signing, he’d better grasp that “bipartisanship” is a means, not an end. After eight years of cheering themselves hoarse over one catastrophic Bush blunder after another, Republicans will start dealing with reality only when they’re afraid not to. Right now, it’s their talk-radio/Fox News-hypnotized base that’s got GOP congressmen running scared.

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

In a combative Labor Day speech, President Obama said that the healthcare debate had gone on too long and accused opponents of spreading "lies" meant to persuade Americans that his proposed overhaul would cruelly deny care to the elderly.

The president, speaking at an AFL-CIO picnic, said that "special interests" were determined to "scare the heck out of people." "I've got a question for all these folks who say, you know, we're going to pull the plug on Grandma and this is all about illegal immigrants -- you've heard all the lies," Obama said. "I've got a question for all those folks: What are you going to do? What's your answer? What's your solution? "And you know what? They don't have one."

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

Bill Moyers on the health care debate, Democrats, and Afghanistan - by Glenn Greenwald

On what's really happening in the health care fight:
MOYERS: I don’t think the problem is the Republicans . . . .The problem is the Democratic Party. This is a party that has told its progressives -- who are the most outspoken champions of health care reform -- to sit down and shut up. That’s what Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff at the White House, in effect told progressives who stood up as a unit in Congress and said: "no public insurance option, no health care reform. And I think the reason for that is -- in the time since I was there, 40 years ago, the Democratic Part has become like the Republican Party, deeply influenced by corporate money. I think Rahm Emanuel, who is a clever politician, understands that the money for Obama’s re-election will come from the health care industry, from the drug industry, from Wall Street. And so he’s a corporate Democrat who is determined that there won’t be something in this legislation that will turn off these interests. . . .

Money in politics -- you’ve had in the last 30 years, money has flooded politics . .. the Supreme Court saying "money is free speech." It goes back to the efforts in the 19th Century to give corporations the right of personhood -- so if you as a citizen have the right to donate to campaigns, then so do corporations. Money has flowed in such a flood into both parties that the Democratic Party gets a lot of its support from the very interests that -- when the Republicans are in power -- financially support the Republicans.

You really have essentially -- except for the progressives on the left of the Democratic Party – you really have two corporate parties who in their own way and their own time are serving the interests of basically a narrow set of economic interests in the US.

Note EU-DigestIn a way this is also happening in Europe and to a lesser extend in China. Politicians are no longer serving their constituents but mainly those wo fill their coffers.

Labels: Corporate Interest, Democrats. Republicans, Health Care Reform, US Administration

Big Bang Healthcare - by Kevin Drum

It's worth pointing out that most of the great universal healthcare systems of Western Europe took the slow route. The French, for example, began covering lost wages from illness in the late 20s, and then began constructing a genuine national healthcare system shortly after World War II. But that was just a start. It took nearly 50 years before it became truly universal.

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

Obama's (Republican) foes turn to '60s radical for tactical tips - by Edward Luce and Alexandra Ulmer

Opponents of Barack Obama's healthcare proposals are using the tactics of Saul Alinsky, the renowned leftwing activist who helped inspire the US president when he was a young community organiser, says Dick Armey, head of Freedom Works, a group fighting against universal health care. Mr Armey, who was the Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives for most of the 1990s, said his group, which is behind many of the "tea party" protests that have disrupted town-hall meetings in the past two weeks, draws consciously on the forms of agitation pioneered by Mr Alinsky.

"What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," said Mr Armey, who was one of the leaders of the "Contract with America" Republican landslide in 1994.

Labels: Barack Obama, Health Care Reform, Republicans, US Administration

US Health Care Reform: Oh say, can you eat? Follow the Scandinavian example.

If Americans could be weaned off greasy food and smoking, the resulting health benefits we'd enjoy would probably enable us to provide cradle-to-grave medical insurance for everyone in this country, without breaking the bank. The Scandinavians manage to do this, but then again, a Norwegian's idea of a Happy Meal is a plate of smoked herring. As they say in Oslo, "Fuggedaboudit."

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

The brutal truth about America’s health-care

They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life. In the week that Britain's National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an "evil and Orwellian" example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.Although the Americans spend more on medicine than any nation on earth, there are an estimated 50 million with no health insurance at all. Many of those who have jobs can't afford coverage, and even those with standard policies often find it doesn't cover commonplace procedures. California's unemployed – who rely on Medicaid – had their dental care axed last month.

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

US Politics : Corporate Media, Sellouts in Congress and Industry Bigs Have Hijacked the Health Care Debate - by Joshua Holland

"If you can frame the terms of a debate, you've gone a long way towards winning it before you've begun. In the US, tragically, Republicans, the health care industry and business-friendly Blue Dog Democrats have largely been able to do exactly that, with a substantial assist from the corporate-owned media. They’ve successfully focused the health care debate on the short-term costs to the federal government’s bottom line, obscuring the potential impact that a meaningful realignment of the health care system would have on the economy as a whole. In so doing, opponents of reform have hoodwinked much of the public into believing that investments in America’s national health care system will wind up costing individuals more than they’d gain from the effort.

In fact, they’ve done such a good job that much of the discourse has revolved around what is arguably one of the least relevant aspects of the proposals being debated in Congress: whether they “cost too much” or are “deficit neutral” in terms of their impact on the federal budget over the next 10 years.

Note EU-Digest: If the health care debate does not turn out in favor of the Obama Administration, it will not only demonstrate the overwhelming strength Corporate America has over the US political establishmen, but also be an indication that the Democratic majority in the Congress and Senate can be expected to crumble in the next Congressional elections.

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

US Politics: Dangerous Alliance of Health Industry and Right-Wingers Will Stop at Nothing to Derail Progressive Reforms - by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

The Republican strategy is almost identical to the way they turned health care into Waterloo for Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1993. Back then, one of their chief propagandists, William Kristol, urged his party to block any health care plan for fear that Democrats would be seen as "the generous protector of middle class interests." Now he's telling the GOP to "go for the kill ... throw the kitchen sink ... drive a stake through its heart ... We need to start over."

As the Republicans fired away, big business stepped up the attack too, their lobbying and advertising guns blazing. The Chamber of Commerce, for one, announced a major campaign of rallies and print and Internet ads to crush the White House plan for a competitive public option allowing consumers to choose between a government plan and private health insurance. In key states where members of Congress remain on the fence, the airwaves are vibrating with television commercials aimed at shifting hearts and minds away from any change that might threaten profits.The big drug companies are already so pleased with what they've been promised that they've brought back Harry and Louise -- the make-believe couple who starred in TV ads that helped torpedo the Clinton health care plan -- but this time they're in favor of reform.

According to The Associated Press, the drug industry's trade group PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) and the drug company Pfizer "reported spending more money than other health care organizations on lobbying in the second quarter of this year" - $6.2 million from PhRMA, $5.6 million from Pfizer.

Labels: Health Care Reform, US

The Netherlands and France: Healthy examples: Plenty of countries get healthcare right - by Jonathan Cohn

No serious politician is talking about recreating either the British or the Canadian system here. The British have truly “socialized medicine,” in which the government directly employs most doctors. The Canadians have one of the world’s most centralized “single-payer” systems, in which the government insures everybody directly and private insurance has virtually no role. A better understanding for how universal healthcare might work in America would come from other countries - countries whose insurance architecture and medical cultures more closely resemble the framework we’d likely create here.Last year, I had the opportunity to spend time researching two of these countries: France and the Netherlands. Neither country gets the attention that Canada and England do. That might be because English isn’t their language. Or it might be because they don’t fit the negative stereotypes of life in countries where government is more directly involved in medical care.

Labels: EU, France, Health Care Reform, Netherlands, US

Health care needed in the US - Why change? The US has the 37th best health care system in the world

Yes, it is true that the US has the 37th best health care system in the world, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO). Fortunately for the ego of the United States, the WHO stopped doing the ranking in 2000 due to the difficulty of compiling the data. The top ten are France, Italy, San Marino, Andorra, Malta, SIngapore, Spain, Oman, Austria, and Japan. 11-20 are Norway, Portugal, Monaco, Greece, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Switzerland. 21-30 are Belgium, Columbia, Sweden, Cyprus, Germany, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Morocco, and Canada. 31-40 are Finland, Austalia, Chile, Denmark, Dominica, Costa Rica, United States of America, Slovenia, Cuba and Brunei

The health care industry is going to spend billions of dollars to defeat health care reform. Thousands of “Health Scare” stories will be published in our newspapers and magazines. Millionaire lobbyists in high priced suits will be paying lots of visits to your elected officials. Advertisements will be all over the television, radio, and the internet. All of the effort will be made to convince the American public and their elected representatives that reforming health care would be too costly. And it would be too costly… to the health care industry.

The reason the folks in the health care industry are going to spend billions to defeat health care reform is because it works. Time and time again, the best interests of 300 million Americans have been pushed aside for the welfare of the very few. One of the leaders of the fight against reform is Rick Scott. He founded a group called "Conservatives for Patient's Rights," whose motto is "Tell Congress to listen, too."

Labels: Health Care Reform, Healthcare, US