Nice New Ad By John Edwards

Speechless

I apologize for not posting. If it's not one thing, it's another. My computer was having problems with random access memory this time. I think it's fixed now. I think.

I've also been doing a lot of reading and thinking; and spending my weekends traveling and cleaning.

I am back to posting about one of the issues that got me to start this blog: health care. Michael Moore has started a new web site SickoCure.org wherein he is trying to start an organized movement to pressure candidates for national office into taking a stand for universal health care.

A question for Hillary Clinton:


A question for Barack Obama:


A question for John Edwards:


And the Daily Kos has a new post today regarding Americans and Britons going overseas to India and other parts of Asia for cheaper health care. From the post:

You don't have to go far to find someone - George Bush, for instance - who will spout the typical propaganda: America has "the best health care system in the world." True enough if you're a Congressperson or hoi oligoi who can afford to pay for treatment at one of the nation's top medical centers. But, compared with other nations in the developed world, the U.S. does a rotten job of delivering good care to hoi polloi. As plenty of us know firsthand, even Americans with fairly decent health coverage often find it hard to get the treatment the "best health care system in the world" should be providing. When it comes to delivery, the American health care system is ... an outrage.

Bob Herbert: The Long, Dark Night

Read The Long, Dark Night for a sad story of financial disaster due to medical debt.

He reeled off a long list of charges that are coming at him like machine-gun fire, bills that he cannot afford to pay.

“So we’re selling the house,” he said. He sat quiet for a moment, then added in a soft voice, “You shouldn’t have to go live in a tent somewhere just because you don’t have insurance.”

Presidential Health Care Politics

Here is a quote from Paul Krugman's commentary today in the New York Times entitled Health Care Hopes

As Ezra Klein of The American Prospect cruelly but accurately puts it: “The Republican vision is for a world in which the sick and dying get to deduct some of the cost of health insurance that they don’t have — and can’t get — on their taxes.”

This is actually a less funny version of Stephen Colbert's take on the issue in response to President Bush's State of the Union Address.

Krugman continues:

But the G.O.P. nominee, whoever he is, won’t be trying to persuade the public of the merits of his own plan. Instead, he’ll try to scare the dwindling fraction of Americans who still have good health insurance by claiming that the Democrats will take it away.

The smear-and-fear campaign has already started. The Democratic plans all bear a strong resemblance to the health care plan that Mitt Romney signed into law as governor of Massachusetts, differing mainly in offering Americans additional choices. But that didn’t stop Mr. Romney from denouncing the Clinton plan as “European-style socialized medicine.” And Fred Thompson claims that the Clinton plan denies choice — which it actually offers in abundance — and relies on “punishment” instead.

These attacks probably won’t be effective enough to prevent a Democrat from winning next year. But that won’t be the end of the story: even if the Democrats take the White House and expand their Congressional majorities, the insurance and drug lobbies will try to bully them into backing down on their campaign promises.

But Krugman succinctly gives a voice to why I am reticent to support Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary:

That’s why the long delay before Senator Clinton announced her health care plan made supporters of universal care, myself included, so nervous — a nervousness that is not completely assuaged by the fact that she finally did deliver. It’s good to know that whoever gets the Democratic nomination will run on a very good health care plan. What remains is the question of whether he or she will have the determination to turn that plan into reality.

British Health Care and Other Health Issues: A Response to Redstater

Fellow Okie Blogger Redstater posted a comment to my post from February 1st Robin Meyers: He just doesn't get it.

In it, I agreed with Robin Meyers' statement:

We must remember, he said, "that the best health-care decisions are made not by government and insurance companies, but by patients and their doctors." The only trouble with this standard applause line is that the only way to get insurance companies and HMOs out of the picture is to make the payer a nonprofit entity, like the government, so that health-care "providers" don't make more money by being health-care "deniers."

To which Redstater posted a comment:

Have ANY of you known of ANYONE, ANYWHERE in the US that has been denied treatment for anything serious?

Illegal aliens with no job, no insurance and no money get free emergency room treatment... and beyond. Those that cannot afford to go can go anyway... what world are liberals living in?

Have you seen socialized healthcare in Canada or England?

Have YOU ever BEEN to the Department of motor vehicle?

If so, you wouldn't want the same people running your doctors office.

Robin Meyers is a shill for the democrat party from the pulpit "pulpit pundit" and the perfect spokesman for the so-called "New Christian Left" (Woody Guthrie-ism)

I am going to take the questions out of order because I want to draw upon my own personal experience first:

Have you seen socialized healthcare in Canada or England?

1) Yes, I have been to England (Queen's College, Oxford University, Oxford, England) and have been treated there for both an injury and an illness. I can tell you from personal experience that the treatment was prompt and adequate. Because I was an uninsured American, I had to pay for my treatment, but even as a starving college student, I was able to afford the cost (the doctor's visit was about $25 then, still less than half what my own doctor would have cost here: at the time, about $60), the prescription drugs cost $5 then.

I still remember the doctor's shock at 1) my concern that I wouldn't be able to afford the cost; and 2) that I would not get adequate treatment; and 3) how expensive a doctor's visit cost in the U.S. She could not understand how Americans would allow people to go without care. Even then the number of Americans without health insurance was staggeringly high.

I have never had the fortune to visit Canada. But let me just say that I have yet to meet a single Canadian who wants to abolish their Medicare system. Not one. And I ask every Canadian I come into contact with if they favor abolishing their national healthcare system. You should hear their responses. They say things like: "Not on your life!" or "Are you crazy?" I think that by itself speaks volumes about how "bad" the Canadian healthcare system is compared to the U.S. They are (so far) uniformly flabbergasted that Americans believe they want to abolish their healthcare system in favor of ours.

Have YOU ever BEEN to the Department of motor vehicle?

Yes. What's the problem? I have been there several times regarding some issue or another and left within 30 minutes almost every time.

Have ANY of you known of ANYONE, ANYWHERE in the US that has been denied treatment for anything serious?

Yes. I heard stories all the time while doing bankruptcy cases. People were denied treatment due to lack of insurance or inability to pay. You can also watch Michael Moore's movie SiCKO if you want to see several examples.

Illegal aliens with no job, no insurance and no money get free emergency room treatment... and beyond. Those that cannot afford to go can go anyway... what world are liberals living in?

Well, actually, they probably get billed for the services but just don't pay (especially due to the inability to pay). The cost then gets passed on to everyone else. But that isn't just an "illegal alien" problem; there are many Americans in the same boat. In my opinion it is better to have everyone pay up front for everyone's care. I think it is right thing to do.

I don't think anyone should ever be denied access to best feasible health care because of the inability to pay. I think that it should be guaranteed as a human right. We have the technology and ability to provide everyone in the U.S. with adequate care. Therefore we should do it because it is the right thing to do.

And do you really want people to go to the emergency room for the common cold? That's supposed to be for emergencies. But because we restrict medical care based on the ability to pay, those are the crazy kinds of situations we get.

And how about if they were to come down with smallpox? Would you rather they forego treatment and spread it everywhere? How about a more realistic example: tuberculosis? Highly infectious and sometimes very difficult to treat. Would you rather they infect others by turning them away from the doctor's office or emergency room? The real reason they are treated is that medical professionals know that by not treating them others can be harmed, things can become worse for the patient and there is that whole Hippocratic Oath issue.

There are real people out there who are suffering. Human beings just like you. They need help. They need our help. I think the best way to help them is by creating a complete medical care system that provides needed care to everyone...whenever they need it.

What's Wrong With America and What Will You Do About It?

I like the question asked and the answer given. We must answer this question to determine who we are as a people. It is central to our value system as a country.

The Perversity of Opposing Health Care for Children

From Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times today:

So what kind of philosophy says that it’s O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?

Well, here’s what Mr. Bush said after explaining that emergency rooms provide all the health care you need: “They’re going to increase the number of folks eligible through Schip; some want to lower the age for Medicare. And then all of a sudden, you begin to see a — I wouldn’t call it a plot, just a strategy — to get more people to be a part of a federalization of health care.”

Now, why should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further “federalization” of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.

And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.

This sounds like a caricature, but it isn’t. The truth is that this good-is-bad philosophy has always been at the core of Republican opposition to health care reform. Thus back in 1994, William Kristol warned against passage of the Clinton health care plan “in any form,” because “its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas.”

But it has taken the fight over children’s health insurance to bring the perversity of this philosophy fully into view.

There are arguments you can make against programs, like Social Security, that provide a safety net for adults. I can respect those arguments, even though I disagree. But denying basic health care to children whose parents lack the means to pay for it, simply because you’re afraid that success in insuring children might put big government in a good light, is just morally wrong.

You tell 'em, Paul.

***Update***

Scribe says:

It’s truly immoral that this administration does not want to spend the millions of dollars to provide healthcare to uninsured children, but doesn’t blink an eye in spending hundred-fold more in no-bid government contracts, where the waste alone surpasses the cost of such a program. What a perverse philosophy that promotes government handouts and policies that benefit soulless corporations at the expense of the very constituency that government is supposed to serve.

Great point.

YouTube Debate: Health Care

Regular readers of my blog know that I express the same outrage that John Edwards did and express the same need for a "national commitment that universal healthcare is an American value" that Hillary Clinton communicated in her speech regarding national healthcare.

I agree with John Edwards the most here. I think we have to have a mandate to get anything done. I also very much liked his relaying the personal story of the man born with a cleft palate and not being able to get it fixed. We have doctors here in America who fly all over the world to fix children's cleft palates and yet we can't find one to fix one poor American's condition until he is 50 years old.

This is not to disparage the work of Médecins Sans Frontières ("Doctors Without Borders"); Lord knows we need medical professionals to travel to destitute parts of the planet to provide medical attention to people who otherwise wouldn't get it. But this story illustrates how we need some of those same doctors right here in America.

The Prom Approach to Health Care

How Single Payer Works

Great animation explanation of how national healthcare would work under the system that I have been advocating.

UnitedHealth Profits Rise

From MarketWatch:

The managed-care bellwether's consolidated medical-care ratio stood at 80.5%, a decrease of 1.1 percentage points from the year-ago period and down 2.2 percentage points from thr first quarter.

That means there is a 19.5% profit margin, if I am reading that correctly. Imagine how many more people could be provided with health care if all of that money went to actual care.

The company generated quarterly revenue of $18.93 billion, up 6% from $17.86 billion.

That means that $18.93 x 0.195 = $3,691,350,000 in just one quarter could be used for all Americans to have all the health care they need from just one company!

That truly is SiCKO.

Hale "Bonddad" Stewart: Public Health Care Is Better

At the Huffington Post:

While I will almost always advocate for a market based economic approach to allocating resources, health care is not an area where the profit motive should dominate decision making. Simply put, the end product is a patient's health. Private health insurance has a conflict of interest between the insurance company and the insured which will be resolved in favor of the insurance company a majority of the time.

Let me paint a hypothetical picture to illustrate this point. Insured makes a claim with the insurance company, which is a publicly traded company. Because the insurance company is publicly traded they must turn a profit and increase their profits to maintain their share price. In order to make a profit they have every incentive to either

1. Deny the insured's claim, or
2. Delay payment to increase the possibility the insured will drop his claim

There are numerous stories about an insured making a routine claim only to be inundated with paperwork, or being told the policy doesn't cover that procedure, or being told the insurance company has to look into the claim to see if the insurance company can make a payment. In any of these situations the central idea of insurance -- to provide some safety for the insured at a specific cost -- is compromised.

Read the entire article along with the charts that he uses. It is an excellent market-based argument for national healthcare.

Medical Bankruptcy: Families At Risk

Click on the title to read the report.

The End of the Innocence

These are becoming turbulent times. We are constantly at war. And it's a war financed not by shared sacrifice, but by a massive debt that will be heaped upon an American populace already burdened by personal and consumer debt (at outrageous interest rates and fees). Americans feel like they are running faster but falling farther behind because of all their debt.

Things that used to be staples of the American dream are becoming out of reach. The college degree -- even a graduate degree -- no longer guarantees financial success. Schooling that used to be paid through tax dollars and scholarships have been replaced by student loans that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy if things go horribly wrong. The student loan payments become a house -- or at least a car -- payment. Such debt payments starting out in life increase the risk of failure. As I have said before, it creates a barrier to entry to American college graduates. Pensions that were part of the benefits promised by businesses to the workers can be paid to executives in bankruptcy proceedings. Health insurance that used to have some semblance of protection is now a sieve that helps almost no one, as Michael Moore's new movie SiCKO has shown.

There is a general feeling of malaise in the country. Everything is just out of whack. Our leaders, who have held themselves out to be paragons of virtue are turning out to be boors of vice. They often talk about "values," but they live lives that are the antithesis of those values. They oppose taxation to support programs to help their fellow man at their weakest, in favor of "private charities" which they do not support with their own wealth.

Frankly, I am tired of the hypocrisy. It is the very message that Jesus tried to convey in the Good Samaritan story. The Samaritans were considered a heretical group by other Jews, so by using a Samaritan for the parable, Jesus conveyed the idea that the most ungodly people could be more righteous than those who proclaimed themselves pious. Do you ever get the idea that God is trying to teach us this very same lesson all over again?

It makes me think of a song from the 1980s: Don Henley's The End of the Innocence. Some of the lines -- which I have bolded below -- have particular significance for us today. The song, originally written during the Reagan Administration, has come full circle -- although under somewhat different circumstances.

Don Henley - The End of the Innocence


Lyrics:

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn't have a care in the world
With mommy and daddy standin' by
But "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly

But I know a place where we can go
That's still untouched by men
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
You can lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

O' beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie

But I know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us
I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say goodbye

Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Bush To Veto Children's Health Insurance

From a New York Times article, Bush Is Prepared to Veto Bill to Expand Child Insurance:

The White House said on Saturday that President Bush would veto a bipartisan plan to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, drafted over the last six months by senior members of the Senate Finance Committee.

The vow puts Mr. Bush at odds with the Democratic majority in Congress, with a substantial number of Republican lawmakers and with many governors of both parties, who want to expand the popular program to cover some of the nation’s eight million uninsured children.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said: “The president’s senior advisers will certainly recommend a veto of this proposal. And there is no question that the president would veto it.”

The program, which insured 7.4 million people at some time in the last year, is set to expire Sept. 30.

...

“The proposal would dramatically expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, adding nonpoor children to the program, and more than doubling the level of spending,” Mr. Fratto said. “This will have the effect of encouraging many to drop private coverage, to go on the government-subsidized program.”

So much for "compassionate conservatism."

The Legal and Political Justification for National Healthcare

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

The purpose of the Commerce Clause was to eliminate the conflict between those states that had a commercial advantage as a result of their access to a major harbor, and the interior states that did not. That economic disparity was the source of many fights between individual states.

Health care currently takes up one-sixth of our economy. We are now seeing some states take action to guarantee their residents access to health care, while poorer states resist it. While health care is not limited to states that have major seaports, it is limited somewhat by wealth. Isn't it ironic that the wealthiest states -- which would have to pay higher taxes to provide health care -- are the bluest ones?

It is my assertion that health care, taking up such a large part of the U.S. economy, is too important to the unity of the country to be left to individual states. We cannot afford to have rich states with residents having guaranteed access to health care and poor ones where its residents do not.
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Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among several States, and with the Indian Tribes." The purpose of the Commerce Clause was to eliminate the conflict between those states that had a commercial advantage as a result of their access to a major harbor, and the interior states that did not. That economic disparity was the source of many fights between individual states. Health care currently takes up one-sixth of our economy. We are now seeing some states take action to guarantee their residents access to health care, while poorer states resist it. While health care is not limited to states that have major seaports, it is limited somewhat by wealth. Isn't it ironic that the wealthiest states -- which would have to pay higher taxes to provide health care -- are the bluest ones? It is my assertion that health care, taking up such a large part of the U.S. economy, is too important to the unity of the country to be left to individual states. We cannot afford to have rich states with residents having guaranteed access to health care and poor ones where its residents do not.

Now I realize that nowhere in the Constitution does it expressly state that every American has the right to access to health care. I am also aware that for the first 200+ years of our Republic that we have not had it. But it is also true that for much of our history, health care did not take up anywhere near one-sixth of our Gross Domestic Product.

I would suggest that access to health care today is just as important to our national unity as access to ports was back in 1789. It is for this reason that we need a national universal health care program now.

December 2, 1993 - Leading conservative operative William Kristol privately circulates a strategy document to Republicans in Congress. Kristol writes that congressional Republicans should work to "kill" -- not amend -- the Clinton plan because it presents a real danger to the Republican future: Its passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party.

Some are arguing that we should accept some piecemeal plan because we don't have the votes to override a Republican Senatorial filibuster. I disagree. I don't think we have the time to wait. Health care takes up too much of the American economy to handle this piecemeal. The whole purpose of the Commerce Clause was to create a nationally integrated economy. It was designed to prevent "rich states" and "poor states."

I don't doubt that Bill Kristol's strategy will be employed by all Republicans. That just means that next year we will have to work harder than ever to gain the 60 votes needed to cut off the debate ("cloture"). In the meantime, we need to speak out and make this a national issue. This needs to our "Contract With America." Any Democrat running for any national office needs to promise that, when elected, they will support the creation of a national universal health care program. Fully 70% of the American public supports the idea. Probably even more will after seeing SiCKO.

Besides, even Bill Kristol says that it will "give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party." If national healthcare scares the Republicans that much, you know it has to be good.

Cross-posted to Daily Kos.

Fear and Debt

From a SiCKO movie review in the Twin Cities Daily Planet

All of the pieces I've read about “Sicko,” have what I find to be a glaring omission.

Not one mentions the comments by Tony Benn, a former member of Britain's Parliament. Yet Benn's statements probably are the most profound element of the film.

He notes, as other good people often do, that “if we have the money to kill (in war), we've got the money to help people.”

But, more importantly, Benn tells Moore, that all of Europe and many other places have good health care systems while the United States lacks such a basic service because in Europe and elsewhere, “the politicians are afraid of the people” when the people get angry and demand some action. In the United States, he observes, “the people are afraid of those in power” because they fear losing their jobs, fear being cut off from health care or other services if they speak up and make demands.

“How do you control people?” Benn asks, and he answers: “Through fear and debt.”

His point is that in the United States we have a great overabundance of both.

Yeah, I know. I have written about it quite a lot. But James Fuller makes another point in his movie review that I think is worth mentioning:

[I]f the gutless Democrats went out and explained, clearly and often, how a government run single payer system actually works, and what it really costs, and what the people of Canada, France, Britain, Germany and other countries really think of their health care systems, the ignorance-rooted suspicion could be reversed in a matter of months. And I believe that is true even assuming the inevitable all-out ad and PR campaign by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to protect their enormous profits.

(Does it occur to anyone that the profits they suck from our system, while we struggle for and often are refused decent health care, are truly enormous if the industries are willing and able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to protect those profits?)

Every American I know is fed up with our present health care mess, and more and more are deeply angry.

I would use the term "taxpayer-funded" (not "government run") single payer health care program. The government doesn't need to "run" it, it just needs to be the payment mechanism. There is no doubt that SiCKO is raising the level of conversation on the issue of national health care. I just hope that it can lead to a policy change.

Michael Moore Responds To CNN Piece

Michael Moore at his website responded to assertions presented by Dr. Sanjay Gupta in his segment prior to Michael Moore's interview yesterday.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN: "(Moore says) the United States slipped to number 37 in the world's health care systems. It's true. ... Moore brings a group of patients, including 9/11 workers, to Cuba and marvels at their free treatment and quality of care. But hold on - that WHO list puts Cuba's health care system even lower than the United States, coming in at #39."

THE TRUTH:

* "But hold on?" 'SiCKO' clearly shows the WHO list, with the United States at number #37, and Cuba at #39. Right up on the screen in big five-foot letters. It's even in the trailer! CNN should have its reporter see his eye doctor. The movie isn't hiding from this fact. Just the opposite.

* The fact that the healthcare system in an impoverished nation crippled by our decades-old blockade (including medical supplies and drugs) ranks so closely to ours is more an indictment of the American system than the Cuban system.

* Although Cuba ranks lower overall than the United States, it still has a lower infant mortality rate and longer life span. (see below)

* And unlike the United States, Cuba offers healthcare to absolutely everyone. In an independent Gallup poll conducted in Cuba, "a near unanimous 96 percent of respondents say that health care in Cuba is accessible to everyone." ("Cubans Show Little Satisfaction with Opportunities and Individual Freedom Rare Independent Survey Finds Large Majorities Are Still Proud of Island's Health Care and Education," January 10, 2007.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brlatinamericara/
300.php?nid=&id=&pnt=300&lb=brla)

CNN: "Moore asserts that the American health care system spends $7,000 per person on health. Cuba spends $25 dollars per person. Not true. But not too far off. The United States spends $6,096 per person, versus $229 per person in Cuba."

THE TRUTH:

* According to our own government – the Department of Health and Human Services' National Health Expenditures Projections – the United States will spend $7,092 per capita on health in 2006 and $7,498 in 2007. (Department of Health and Human Services Center for Medicare and Medicaid Expenditures, National Health Expenditures Projections 2006-2016. http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/proj2006.pdf)

* As for Cuba – Dr. Gupta and CNN need to watch 'SiCKO' first before commenting on it. 'SiCKO' says Cuba spends $251 per person on health care, not $25, as Gupta reports. And the BBC reports that Cuba's per capita health expenditure is… $251! (Keeping Cuba Healthy, BBC, Aug. 1 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5232628.stm )

* As Gupta points out, the World Health Organization does calculate Cuba's per capita health expenditure at $229 per person – a lot closer to $251 than $25.

CNN: In fact, Americans live just a little bit longer than Cubans on average.

THE TRUTH:

* Just the opposite. The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report's human development index states the life expectancy in the United States is 77.5 years. It is 77.6 years in Cuba. (Human Development Report 2006, United Nations Development Programme, 2006 at 283. http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06-complete.pdf)

CNN: The United States ranks highest in patient satisfaction.

THE TRUTH:

* True, but even when the WHO took patient satisfaction into account in its comprehensive review of the world's health systems, we still came in at #37. ("World Health Organization Assesses The World's Health Systems," Press Release, WHO/44, June 21, 2000. http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/pr2000-44.html ).

* Patients may be satisfied in America, but not everyone gets to be a patient. 47 million are uninsured and are rarely patients - until it's too late. In the rest of the Western world, everyone and anyone can be a patient because everyone is covered. (And don't face exclusions for pre-existing conditions, co-pays, deductibles, and costly monthly premiums).

* It's not that other countries are unhappy with their health care – for example, "70 to 80 percent of Canadians find their waiting times acceptable." ("Access to health care services in Canada, Waiting times for specialized services (January to December 2005)," Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/82-575-XIE/82-575-XIE2006002.htm)

CNN: Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures, like hip replacement, cataract surgery, or knee repair.

THE TRUTH:

* This isn't the whole truth. CNN pulled out a statistic about elective procedures. Of the six countries surveyed in that study (United States, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Australia) only Canada had longer waiting times than America for sick adults waiting to schedule a doctor's appointment for a medical problem. 81% of patients in New Zealand got a same or next-day appointment for a non-routine visit, 71% in Britain, 69% in Germany, 66% in Australia, 47% in the U.S., and 36% in Canada. (The Doc's in, but It'll be AWhile. Catherine Arnst, Business Week. June 22, 2007 http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007/tc20070621_716260_page_2.htm)

* "Gerard Anderson, a Johns Hopkins health policy professor who has spent his career examining the world's healthcare, said there are delays, but not as many as conservatives state. In Canada, the United Kingdom and France, 'three percent of hospital discharges had delays in treatment,' Anderson told The Miami Herald. 'That's a relatively small number, and they're all elective surgeries, such as hip and knee replacement.' (John Dorschner, "'SiCKO' film is set to spark debate; Reformers are gearing up for 'Sicko,' the first major movie to examine America's often maligned healthcare system," Miami Herald, June 29, 2007.)

* One way America is able to achieve decent waiting times is that it leaves 47 million people out of the health care system entirely, unlike any other Western country. When you remove 47 million people from the line, your wait should be shorter. So why is the U.S. second to last in wait times?

* And there are even more Americans who keep themselves out of the system because of cost - in the United States, 24 percent of the population did not get medical care due to cost. That number is 5 percent in Canada, and 3 percent in the UK. (Inequities in Health Care: A Five-Country Survey. Robert Blendon et al, Health Affairs. Exhibit 5. http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/182)

CNN: (PAUL KECKLEY-Deloitte Health Care Analyst): "The concept that care is free in France, in Canada, in Cuba - and it's not. Those citizens pay for health services out of taxes. As a proportion of their household income, it's a significant number … (GUPTA): It's true that the French pay higher taxes, and so does nearly every country ahead of the United States on that list."

THE TRUTH:

* 'SiCKO' never claims that health care is provided absolutely for free in other countries, without tax contributions from citizens. Former MP Tony Benn reads from the NHS founding pamphlet, which explicitly states that "this is not a charity. You are paying for it mainly as taxpayers." 'SiCKO' also acknowledges that the French are "drowning in taxes." Comparatively, many Americans are drowning in insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays and medical debt and the resulting threat of bankruptcy – half of all bankruptcies in the United States are triggered by medical bills. (Medical Bills Make up Half of Bankruptcies. Feb. 2005, MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6895896/)

CNN: "But even higher taxes don't guarantee the coverage everyone wants … (KECKLEY): 15 to 20 percent of the population will purchase services outside the system of care run by the government."

THE TRUTH:

* It's not clear what country Keckley is referring to. In the United Kingdom, only 11.5 percent of the population has supplementary insurance, but it doesn't take the place of NHS insurance. Nobody in France buys insurance that replaces government insurance either, although a substantial amount buys some form of complimentary insurance. ( Private health insurance and access to health care in the European Union. Spring 2004. http://www.euro.who.int/document/Obs/EuroObserver6_1.pdf)

CNN: "But no matter how much Moore fudged the facts, and he did fudge some facts…"

* This is libel. There is not a single fact that is "fudged" in the film. No one has proven a single fact in the film wrong. We expect CNN to correct their mistakes on the air and to apologize to their viewers.

Health Care's Moral Argument, Part 2

Paul Krugman in his column in today's New York Times responds to the argument put forward by Fox News and followed by other conservative news organizations in the days afterward:

“National healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?” read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care promotes terrorism.

While this was crass even by the standards of Bush-era political discourse, Fox was following in a long tradition. For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens.

Then he makes the point that I made in one of my first posts on my blog: Health Care's Moral Argument, Part 1. Paul Krugman continues:

I say conscience, because the health care issue is, most of all, about morality.

That’s what we learn from the overwhelming response to Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” Health care reformers should, by all means, address the anxieties of middle-class Americans, their growing and justified fear of finding themselves uninsured or having their insurers deny coverage when they need it most. But reformers shouldn’t focus only on self-interest. They should also appeal to Americans’ sense of decency and humanity.

What outrages people who see “Sicko” is the sheer cruelty and injustice of the American health care system — sick people who can’t pay their hospital bills literally dumped on the sidewalk, a child who dies because an emergency room that isn’t a participant in her mother’s health plan won’t treat her, hard-working Americans driven into humiliating poverty by medical bills.

He concludes:

All of which raises the question Mr. Moore asks at the beginning of “Sicko”: who are we?

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.” So declared F.D.R. in 1937, in words that apply perfectly to health care today. This isn’t one of those cases where we face painful tradeoffs — here, doing the right thing is also cost-efficient. Universal health care would save thousands of American lives each year, while actually saving money.

So this is a test. The only things standing in the way of universal health care are the fear-mongering and influence-buying of interest groups. If we can’t overcome those forces here, there’s not much hope for America’s future.

I agree. I said myself when I posted about the meme saying that health care=terrorism that I thought that the argument was absurd. It still is.

While my first post argued from a more strictly Christian perspective, Paul Krugman has argued it on more general humanitarian principles. For Christians, my first post on Health Care's Moral Argument, Part 1 should suffice. For Humanists and people of other faiths, Krugman's argument today should show that moral arguments for a national health care system are universal.

Universal Healthcare As Terrorist Weapon Meme

Josh Marshall at TPM has found a meme that has started among news talk shows: terrorism as a natural byproduct of universal healthcare. See this from this morning's MSNBC show Morning Joe:



Josh says:

It's one of the features of our age that there's a very fine line separating ideas that are too silly to even take note of and ones that quickly began to have a real effect on the public policy debate. Here we have one that clearly should be in the former category but is more likely in the latter.

Seriously, is this what the Republicans are going to try to argue in the upcoming elections in 2008? I hope they do. If they think their prospects are bad now, just wait until the voting public hears this absurd argument in the next election. If there is any indication that the Republican's fitness to rule has passed, this is it.

Neil Cavuto: National Healthcare Will Lead To Terrorism

Hat Tip to Talking Points Memo.



Talk about tortured logic!

I will cover more about this later.