progressive involvement

Harry Truman is the "real daddy" of Medicare

 

Medicare bites back, big time

Medicare is one of the most popular programs in the nation's history.  Strong majorities of Democrats, Independents, Republicans support it, including my 90 year old mother--no ideologue she.

The GOP candidate in today's special election (New York's 26th), a heavily GOP district, was roundly defeated, 48-42%, because she drank the party's Kool-aid on Medicare.  Congresspersons who enjoy their jobs should take note.

Democrats must be pinching themselves at their good luck.  Who would have thought that the opposition would throw themselves off a political cliff and try to end Medicare?  As the New York Times report drily put it:

The results set off elation among Democrats and soul-searching among Republicans, who questioned whether the party should rethink its commitment to the Medicare plan, which appears to have become a liability as 2012 elections loom. 

Ya think?  Turnout was large.  Many Republicans crossed over.  The Buffalo paper reported that people stood in the polling lines--both Republicans and Democrats--chanting "Keep your hands off my Medicare."  This looks like a more genuine political movement than any of the various Koch-financed trumped-up outfits.

Image:  Former President Harry Truman looks on as President Lyndon Johnson signs Medicare into law in 1965.

People haven't known this?

News alert:  Psychiatrists don't do therapy; they dish pills.  This has been true for quite some time.  

Most of the research shows that a combination of talk therapy and pill therapy is the most effective.  As it happens, psychologists and social workers are often more widely trained in therapeutic technique anyway.   You go to a psychologist or social worker for talk therapy, and to determine if medication is indicated in your case.  If it is determined that this might be a helpful approach, you go to a psychiatrist.

It's not necessarily the world's worst system, but you do wonder why anyone would want to become a psychiatrist.  Who would want to spend each and every day managing 1000 med checks?

Yet another failure of imagination

House Republicans have scheduled a vote on something called the "Repeal of the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act."

That's the best they could do?  Why not:  "Repeal and Regurgitate the freedom-gutting Socialist Gulag of Private Insurers given access to 40,000,000 new customers Law Act Bill"?

The vote will be January 12.  The "law act" will never become law because the Senate won't pass it, and President Obama won't sign it.  Therefore, it's all for show.  The House Republicans can show their tea party backers a vote against health care reform.

They will also demonstrate to the rest of the country that they believe children with pre-existing conditions should be on their own, that it's OK to cancel someone's insurance when they get sick, that adult off-springs can no longer stay on their parents' insurance until age 26, that seniors no longer get free cancer screenings--oh, and health insurance companies may charge what the market will bear and don't have to worry about paying all those pesky claims.

UPDATE:  Opponents of health care reform won't have any success legislatively, but judicially is another matter.  I'd almost be willing to bet that the Supreme Court will declare the mandate to get insurance as unconstitutional.

People don't realize:  Power is more closely divided than people think.  Each party controls one-and-a-half of the three branches of government--the Senate and presidency for the Democrats, the House and the Supreme Court for the Republicans.  Has this court ever failed to rule, usually 5-4, in a way that supports the ideological position of the GOP?

 

Under tyrannical new law, health insurance companies must now pay for health care

Americans lost more of their freedoms today as seniors' receive more assistance to pay for pharmaceutical drugs, and a number of preventative services for seniors, such as mammogram screenings and annual physicals, go into effect.

Also going into effect is a provision that makes insurance companies pay out 80-85% of their premiums in actual medical care.  The oppressed CEO's now must take their multi-millionaire dollar salaries out of the remaining 15-20%.

Earlier, the repressive new law had allowed young people to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26, and children with pre-existing conditions could not be denied care even if their freedom-loving insurance company wanted to deny it. 

End-of-life counseling to be added to Medicare benefits

Under the new policy, doctors may counsel patients on end-of-life decisions.  This would include information about living wills, "do not resuscitate" orders, and other advance directives.

This is an eminently good idea, though you can bet that we'll be hearing more about supposed "death panels."  

“Advance care planning improves end-of-life care and patient and family satisfaction and reduces stress, anxiety and depression in surviving relatives,” the administration said in the preamble to the Medicare regulation...

 

Private sector efficiency is a ludicrous myth

Colorado Senatorial candidate Ken Buck says, "I don't believe that the federal government runs anything more efficiently than the private sector."  (Buck, incidentally, has been a public employee ever since he graduated from law school in 1985.) 

It used to be that the majority of people supported the government and even looked up to it.  If you're over 50, you may remember this yourself.  It was right before the government started enforcing civil rights laws.

Since then, the general public's esteem for the government has fallen dramatically, to the point that candidates for federal office regularly fall all over themselves to assert their hatred of the federal government, and go into paroxysms at the thought of living in that hell-hole, Washington, D.C.

Is it really true, though?  Is the federal government less efficient than the private sector?  Take health care.  The administrative costs for health care in the private sector run 20-30%.  Medicare is around 2%.  I don't know what the overheard costs for pension funds are, but I bet it's more than the less-than-1% at Social Security. 

Private contractors--"soldiers"--in Iraq and Afghanistan often earn six-figure incomes.  What do we pay the average Sergeant in the US Army?  Private sector more efficient?  I think not.  In fact, if the private sector was so efficient then bloated General Motors and bilious Wall Street would never have needed--oops!--government help.

Buck thinks privatization should extend even to veterans' administration hospitals, the National Science Foundation, and the Center for Disease Control.  He doesn't criticize these agencies, by the way, and neither has anyone else, to my knowledge.  That doesn't matter, though, because Buck's cause is ideological, not practical. 

Let's imagine the National Science Foundation as a private entity, perhaps funded by oil companies.  Think that might affect their assessment of the climate? 

Imagine Halliburton running the Center for Disease Control.  Here's something for your next nightmare:  What might Halliburton do with an ebola virus? 

  

As predicted

Health care reform is growing in popularity.

Politics as a "pre-existing condition"

Dr. Jack Cassell of Mount Dora, FL refuses to treat patients who voted for the President.  Doctors cannot refuse patients on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability, but since political affiliation is not specifically listed in the law, he can probably get away with it. 

Dr. Cassell is a urologist, and not a proctologist, as you might expect. 

In his waiting room, Cassell also has provided his patients with photocopies of a health-care timeline produced by Republican leaders that outlines "major provisions" in the health-care package. The doctor put a sign above the stack of copies that reads: "This is what the morons in Washington have done to your health care. Take one, read it and vote out anyone who voted for it."

He might be doing his patients a service.  Personally speaking, I would not want to trust my health to a doctor who believed GOP talking points on health care.  Criminy, they think there's a "death panel" in there.  "You voted for Obama?  To the 'death panel' with you!"

Here's the Hippocratic Oath, which includes:

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

 

Where do people get "government takeover of health care"?

In the first place, one-half of all health care dollars are spent by Medicare, so you could say that government took over one-half of health care back in 1965.

As for the other half, the current health care reform bill doesn't "take over" any health care.  In fact, it ensures that currently existing insurance companies will have 40,000,000 new customers. 

It's a strange "government take over" indeed when its chief feature is that the private sector gets a huge new market out of the deal.