HEALTHCARE THREAD

“One of the reasons I have long supported Mrs.Aminata Ali from Cote D`ivoire (Ivory Coast) is that she is a widow being that she lost her husband some year's ago that had a foreign account here in Cote D'Ivoire(Ivory Coast) up to the tune of $5m which he told the bank was for the importation of cocoa processing machine.However,due to her bad health situation occassioned by cancer, she wish me to do me a favour to receive this fund to a safe account in our country or any safer place as the beneficiary so that I will invest it in a good business venture for the benefit and education of her son,Mustafa, who will be coming to stay under our kind custody after the transfer for his education and future because my health is failing me.” This written statement by Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina on the health care bill was identical to one by Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer and used language suggested by lobbyists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/14/AR2009111402597.html?hpid=topnews

VRWC alert

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124253/Say-Health-Coverage-Not-Gov-Responsibility.aspx

The Dems have run on an openly 'pro-reform' attitude to health care. They won - both the presidency and the rest. They don't need to monitor polls - they have a straightforward and obvious mandate for change. Elections are elections -the Right failed to convince the people to oppose health care reform. And that's that. Push it through, you have the mandate.

hmmmm i wonder why the lines look like this

http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/hjxlx9mrte-_aurevouwlq.gif

I'm shocked the GOP number is that high -- in 2001 or 2009.

CBO says Reid bill is under the budget ceiling and will reduce the deficit, debate to start within the next couple days...

How is Reid's plan different from the House plan, in terms of (a) the public option, (b) regulation of the insurance industry (e.g., prohibitions of denying coverage for pre-existing conditions)?

public plan allows for the states to opt out (a proposition I find totally lolsome), denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions is outlawed

"goole i believe most countries without government plans have essentially made it illegal to profit from health insurance, i.e. switzerland"

Very very wrong.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i198/Randall_Sandell/1250676334561.jpg

Elitist.

handy comparison between the bills, by topic (listed down the left-hand side). caveats and obvious problems stipulated, but i'm sort of pleasantly surprised by how strong both of them are overall. of course reid has to get his onto the floor, so i hope there's sufficient muscle on his side to bring bayh, lieberman, nelson, etc. to heel.

i'm sort of pleasantly surprised by how strong both of them are overall

Never waste a(n) (economic) crisis.

Nothing about the progress of the bills so far has made me change my mind about wishing men should by rights recuse themselves from limiting women's reproductive health choices.

^^^ i would tend to agree with that

Three Word Username - elaborate please!! i think most of us here wd like to be edjimicated on these things

i am v uneducated, but i think in countries that still retain private insurance companies (france, eg) those companies are still allowed, legally, to be for-profit

which would make the quoted statement in 3WUN's post at least factually incorrect

(but regs may be so tight that those private companies simply do not post profits with margins even approaching those seen in the US)

i thot that US health insurers don't have margins that amazing? like, not more that 4-5%?

hospital groups, device makers, PHARMA all do quite well, i believe.

Excluding the menz thing is tempting but unworkable, even if only because then it's like, well, who gets to vote on Alzheimer's research funding -- only people or family members of people with Alzheimer's? Or people with the gene showing that they MIGHT get it -- but when what if they vote unpopularly and then they NEVER get it, how can you justify their votes having counted? I mean it's just a prospective disaster.

is that the case, goole? honestly didn't know, i had blithely lumped them in with all the other players in the industry that DO post what are just jaw-dropping profit margins

i dunno there's probably an ezra klein blog post somewhere laying it all out

in countries that still retain private insurance companies (france, eg) those companies are still allowed, legally, to be for-profit

yes but france has a govt insurance system as well! in essence the private insurance is to cover your deductible, and the rest is covered by the government.

i was saying that the industrialized countries that DON'T have any govt. insurance scheme have incredibly tight regs on the private companies that in effect make them nonprofits HOWEVER that is just something i READ and could in fact be WRONGGO

u.s. insurance companies have something like 5-9% profit margins but as the "1st bank of change" from SNL says it's all about volume, baby

laurel: yeah, that's why i would ~tend~ to agree with suzy, but ultimately feel that any kind of healthcare plan that involves every person in america as a stakeholder will by necessity run into conflicts of interest in how we deliver care/research/etc. HOWEVER, i really believe that an individual woman's right to make decisions regarding her own body is qualitatively different than those situations you outlined. being a woman is not pathological (~somewhere, a cad makes a joke~), and it might not be useful to think of it in the same terms as, say, multiple sclerosis or something, you know? that is, including reproductive health measures into a public option (birth control, reg ob-gyn visits, abortions, etc) is just flat-out different from the apportionment of resources to investigate conditions that affect waaaay less than 50% of the population

(not that this is anything you really need to be told, obv! i'm just sorta being pedantic)

ahh, tracer, i see. i didn't realize that the euro countries in question had ONLY private insurance

(i rarely have time to actually ~read~ this thread, which is a bummer since that's why i started it in the first place. figured ilx would know a lot more about all this than i did)

shock at the SHAMBLES that is socialized medicine - many women in the UK have to wait UP TO THREE WEEKS for a FREE ABORTION:

http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/sexualhealth/Pages/Abortionyouroptions.aspx

gotta say that seeing a ".gov" address that ended in "Abortionyouroptions" would cause some major cognitive dissonance over here

xposts although having said that, I'm sure there are plenty of anti-abortion women who'd be only too happy to limit others' reproductive options because they're just sisterly like that. It's like feminism taking a hit because there are women who think pole dancing lessons are cool. Laurel, abortion itself is like no other medical issue because wrt Alzheimer's we all have brains but just over half of us have a uterus - what would be nice here is for men to accord the same respect to women as we accord to them - nobody is trying to limit men's reproductive choices with any coverage or legislation - and that can mean anything from vasectomy to Help! My Sperms Are Hiding to Viagra.

Having lived outside the US most of my adult life, I now find it culturally weird for my health history to be something my employer has to know about before hiring me, or a point of negotiation, at any rate - I would prefer that my health be a confidential matter between me and my doctor. I think it would be better for business if employers did not have to shell out for healthcare for their employees but instead paid a flat rate of social security whatever the number of employees, but that would mean insurers would starve OH NOES. In countries with single payer or socialized medicine, the public care provisions take care of the seriously ill that insurers in the US would baulk at and private care is a top-up offered by employers that might help with, say, not waiting ages to see a dermatologist, being a worried well person who'd like an MRI, or getting your eyes lasered.

I agree about the 50% thing, gbx, and also the non-pathologism of being female etc. But what conclusion you come to about that kind of depends on how you draw the lines between different "kinds" of people, ie what associations you privilege.

xposts although having said that, I'm sure there are plenty of anti-abortion women who'd be only too happy to limit others' reproductive options because they're just sisterly like that.

glad you raised this cuz I was gonna say... male lawmakers may be the face of anti-choice legislation but let's not kid ourselves that a solid majority of women are pro-choice

Sorry, the (deliberate?) misreading of the Swiss system by Democrats with ties to big insurance has lead to a great deal of misinformation floating about. Swiss insurance companies are not known for their charity, and are intended to be profit-making. Everybody knows by now that all Swiss residents are required by law to have health insurance. Companies which issue health insurance are required to have basic coverage policies available, from which they may not profit. These policies kinda suck, although they are not terrible, and folks who can afford to get more coverage (which is most folks in Switzerland) will pay more for better coverage. There's profit in those insurance policies.

The most important that gets left out when people talk about the Swiss system: the Swiss minimum wage, which most moderate US Democrats would find shockingly high.

My mom (for example) has moved from being totally pro-choice/fuck those guys with their signs into middle age to 'only in cases of rape or threat to woman's life' so I know women are hardly united and some like punishing other women for their life choices or accidents of circumstance. Maybe I'm just looking for even one male politician (who isn't Al Franken) to show some humility about something 35 per cent of women - including those who 'don't approve' - have to deal with at some point in their lives. And like I said, women don't generally act/have the power to limit things to do with men's reproductive health.

xp Is it? Wikiped thinks the gross annual wage in Switz is 15,551 International dollars, whatever those are when they're at home. (Note: apparently there is no statutory minimum wage but greater collective bargaining power to raise wages in general?)

TWU thanks - that makes sense. So there's a non-profit basic plan that these private insurers must offer, and then you can top that up with more enhancements later? I think France is not actually too different - only in that the basic plan is a government plan.

What I'd be interested in knowing is how expensive an average "top up" plan in Switzerland costs. I think in France it's something on the order of 80 euro a month.

Laurel what the fuck is an international dollar? Is that some kind of UN conspiracy?

I can't find any good English language sources on Swiss minimums, and Laurel is correct that they are a result of collective bargaining rather than statute, but dig out what little German you have and look here:

http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/03/05/blank/key/05.html

Not going to tell you dudes how much I pay for my supplementary stuff, but depending on what you want covered (hospital choice, private room, preventative stuff) it can get up there.

god shut the fuck up Droopy

I know I have a rep as a morbid playa hata or whatever but seriously would dance on this fucker's grave

A September Research 2000 poll found that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell would defeat both Blumenthal and Lieberman in a potential three-way 2012 matchup; the same poll found that 68 percent of the state’s voters support the public option.

^^^WAY TO NOT REPRESENT YOUR CONSTITUENTS asshole

I think you'd get a pass for that one. xp

http://i45.tinypic.com/vyr6mb.png

Downwardly Mobile: The Unexpected Cost of Being Uninsured

OK, I am waaaaay far left in regards to universal coverage, but I would never have claimed that the disparity of results was this bad when it comes to emergent trauma mortality rate (which seems like one of the few places where the playing field would approach evenness). And yet, there are the numbers. I am kind of stunned. This is amazing and ideally will be cited by every single senator who supports healthcare reform. (Also the coauthorship of Gawande makes me hopeful that this will turn into the cornerstone of a rad New Yorker article.)

whoa

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/11/19/quebec-facebook-sick-leave-benefits.html

when NPR pundits doubt that something as "EXPANSIVE" as the Senate bill will pass, you know we're fucked.

END THE TWO MOTHERFUCKING GIULIANI WARS, we can afford it.

Stupak-like motion tabled by Senate, 54-45. PHEW.

whoah was honestly not expecting that to happen

pleasantly surprised!