Every month another 14,000 Americans lose their health care or are denied coverage for a specific, often life-saving procedure, even though they have paid for their insurance. This continues to occur while the Congress "debates" the merits of the single-payer option.
So what do the Democrats holding town hall meetings and the mobs trying to disrupt the meetings have in common? No matter which side wins, millions of Americans will still go without coverage, hundreds of thousands will go into financial ruin over health-care costs, and insurance CEOs will laugh their way to the bank.
Don't be fooled by President Obama's plan for "mandates" and promises of a "public option," which mean continued skyrocketing health-care costs and huge taxpayer-funded subsidies to insurance companies; the public option has been taken off the table.
The only real solution is the single-payer plan, which covers every American regardless of income, age or prior medical condition.
Under single-payer, physicians and patients make decisions about medical care, not government or corporate bureaucracies, and everyone can choose his or her own health-care provider. Single-payer will save billions of dollars, because it eliminates the administrative costs, waste and high CEO salaries of for-profit health insurance.
Single-payer could be Congress's gift to working people and businesses alike. Single-payer will boost the economy by relieving businesses of the costly burden of providing health benefits.
Whether the Obama plan passes or Republicans get their way and no health-care reform is passed, insurance companies will win and the American people will lose. The health of the American people is more important than corporate profits. Let's make health-care a right for everyone and pass HR 676, the single-payer bill. For more information, go to hr676.org.
MARIROSE WALKER
Concord
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Comments
no better than 36th or 37th?
By BillFromDover - 08/18/2009 - 2:19 am37th.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
Take that, Slovenia!
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you people who like the
By NH_Native - 08/17/2009 - 12:24 pmyou people who like the single payer plan...did you think who the payer is??
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Who do you think pays now?
By Bruce Currie - 08/17/2009 - 1:52 pmAnd who do you think pays now? The fact is we pay twice the average that other developed nations pay, yet rank no better than 36th or 37th out of over one hundred nations.
We can design a better system, one that incorporates the best features of both public and private programs. After this round of reform efforts that will result in little or no real change, we should have a blue-ribbon panel of physicians, economists and others take a close look at other nations' health care programs, at what works well, and what doesn't work well. Have them spend a year researching, then report back to the nation. Then we can design a system that incorporates many of the best ideas from both public and private sectors to create a system that covers everyone, and delivers high quality care without bankrupting the nation.
The hysteria generated by the modest reform efforts of Congress illustrates the power of the right to generate misinformation/disinformation/lies and block those reforms. Ten to fifteen percent of the population seems to have no critical thinking faculties, and bleats obediently in response to Rank Limberger, Newt Gingrich,Dick Armey, and the other talking heads of the right who piously spout their lies and deceptions (e.g.: "death panels").
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Good News !
By HSR0601 - 08/16/2009 - 3:38 pmA staff writer at The New Yorker and some experts have examined Medicare data from the successful hospitals of 10 regions, and they have found evidence that more effective, lower-cost care is possible. Thankfully, the provisions in the reform include more expansive policies than they have.
Please be 'sure' to visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13gawande.html?hp for credible evidences !
Some have followed the Mayo model with salaried doctors employed, Other regions, too, have found ways to protect patients against the pursuit of revenues over patient.
And a cardiac surgeon of them said they had adopted electronic systems, examined the data and found that a shocking portion of tests were almost certainly unnecessary, possibly harmful.
According to analysis, their quality scores are well above average. Yet they spend more than $1,500 (16 percent) less per Medicare patient than the national average and have a slower real annual growth rate (3 percent versus 3.5 percent nationwide).
Surprisingly, 16 % of about $550 billion (the total of medicare cost per year) is around $88 billion per year, except for Medicaid (total cost of around $500 billion per year), medicare 'alone' can save $880 billion over the next decade.
In addition, under the reform package, along with the already allocated $583 billion, the wastes involving so called "doughnut hole" , the unnecessary subsidies for insurers, abuse, exorbitant costs by the tragic ER visits etc are weeded out, the concern over revenue (below) might be a thing of the past.
(( Net Medicare and Medicaid savings of $465 billion + the $583 billion revenue package = $1048 billion - the previously estimated $1.042 trillion cost of reform = $6 billion surplus - $245 billion (the 10-year cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don
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Thanks for the link--good article
By Bruce Currie - 08/16/2009 - 8:13 pmGood article--all the authors are physicians, and Atul Gawande is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and a frequent contributor on health-related topics.
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America has spoken.. . .and we are still speaking
By steel11 - 08/16/2009 - 10:32 amWE DON'T WANT your single-payer universal healthcare! I enjoy my large family being covered under the best insurance plan that we have ever had. I don't mind paying $300 a month for my coverage. Please don't put hard-working families, like us, under the bus for the sake of covering people who choose not to get better coverage! The Government should focus on improving Medicaid, Medicare, VA instead of throwing these programs out. American's have the choice to have medical insurance and to decide which programs to use. I do, however, support reform without a complete government takeover. The Gov. regulates insurance companies, they do have the power to pass a bill that would not allow for such companies to deny coverage. But, instead, Obama wants more. . .. . .doesn't he always want more?
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Incredible.......
By Bruce Trivellini - 08/16/2009 - 10:09 am" Single-payer will save billions of dollars, because it eliminates the administrative costs,...."
Marirose, who or what are those administrative costs?
Once you eliminate all those administrative workers, are you going to pay for thier unemployment? Exactly where are they going to get a job?
And, the government as the single payer, they are just going to administrate out of thin air!
Are you prepared to pay for the governments management of the single payer system?
I can just see it now, obama news conference on why government run health care has raised the deficit and has increased taxes:
obama: look folks, when we took over the previous administration left us with the biggest mess in healthcare since the great depression. We put together a blue ribbon panel of experts to come up with the budget for our new system. It included a few tax cheats, a couple of senators who have tax problems, a economics professor fire from Harvard and a guy who was running the NY Federal Reserve at the time when his friends were running off with your life savings.
We passed the healthcare budget and now we realized that we didn't realize how bad the previous administration actually messed up.
So, I have to raise the deficit and increase your taxes, sorry Mr. & Mrs. under $250,000 income, I have to tax you too. I have to break this promise because all the other taxes I raised on those who were over $250,000 ain't making that much anymore!
Now hold on, one other bit of bad news. This single payer bill eliminated so much insurance capital going to Freddie and Fannie and Ginny and the rest of our economy. we once again have a banking crisis. This crisis is the worst we have seen since the last administration, I mean since the great depression. So now we must for the sake of our country have another bail out package.
We are currently working up the numbers and we will get back to you.
Meanwhile, I have ordered a rolling brown out to cover all government owned healthcare delivery facilities. We are not going to pull the plug on grandma, but we sure as hell are going to scale back some of that electricity she uses. Since tha silly cap and trade bill did nothing to improve our economy and now with this current over expenditures ,this rolling brown out should save us billions.
Robert Gibbs will have all the details sent to you in an email he and David Axelrod are preparing to send to all of you next week.
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Single Payer Voting Bloc
By pontesisto - 08/16/2009 - 7:52 amIf you would like to help pressure Congress to pass single payer health care in a democratic and constructive way please join our voting bloc at: http://www.votingbloc.org/Health_Bloc.php
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The health of the American
By Honest Abe - 08/16/2009 - 7:51 amThe health of the American people is more important than corporate profits. Unfortunately, those is power don't see it that way. I am beginning to doubt that we'll see reform for another generation; but by then the country will be totally bankrupt.
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Obama and the Democrats' great bait-and-switch
By sailmaker - 08/17/2009 - 6:12 amObama won the presidency under the persona of healer. He promised to unify a divided nation and said how he would do this by putting ideology aside to solve problems and bringing open, bipartisan governance to Washington, devoid of special interests.
Now, six months into this presidency we have exactly the opposite. Rather than temperatures dropping, they have steadily risen to their current fever pitch. Rather than becoming more unified, we've never been more divided.
The sheer arrogance of trying to rewrite the rules for almost one-fifth of the American economy, more than $2.5 trillion in annual expenditures, with a few weeks of deliberation is without precedent. How can such an effort be done openly or responsibly?
Democrats in Congress simply arent smart enough to re-write the economy because they are mostly made up of posturing lawyers that have never run a business or anything else for that matter.
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Bait and switch?
By Bruce Currie - 08/17/2009 - 2:14 pmYour post can charitably be described as divorced from reality. Obama is doing his best to work as a centrist. The fact he's getting flack from the left as well as the right illustrates this. And bipartisanship is a two way street; I can't see I've seen much of it from the GOP. The vote on Sotomayor is an example of its absence.
You'd likely be complaining loudly no matter what, after (or so I gather from the tone of your posts, if I'm wrong, please correct) watching in silent approval for 8 years as Bush/Cheney drove this nation into the deepest ditch since the Great Depression. For a dose of reality regarding Congress' health care plans (when last I checked Obama didn't have a specific proposal, and the fact you seem convinced he does, make me suspicious of your hold on reality) as well as Obama's 8 points he'd like any final reform measure to do, see this link:
http://www.kff.org/healthrefom/sidebyside.cfm
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super majorities
By sailmaker - 08/16/2009 - 8:21 amyou can pass anything you want - go ahead and pass anything you all want.....& then be prepared to own the consequences
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