... d-day is liveblogging the House voting on health care deform.

Weiner amendment? No. Kucinich amendment? No. Stupak and the Republicans otoh are sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Again.

Stupak's amendment is all about making abortion more unavailable than it already is, and the Republicans, of course, want to make all health care more unavailable than it already is.

You can't make this stuff up.

via Balloon Juice

You may get the chance to be a guinea pig for those "cost-cutting" and "prevention and wellness" payment "innovations" the technocrats are so eager to try out on somebody [else].

Subtitle B—Public Health Insurance Option

[...]

SEC. 324. MODERNIZED PAYMENT INITIATIVES AND DELIVERY SYSTEM REFORM.

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Timothy Jost is an extraordinarily readable health care wonk [I've borrowed from him before on Switzerland and the Netherlands] and he has a 3-part series on HR 3962 at the Health Affairs blog, if you're interested.

He's apparently still planning to introduce both a full single payer bill in the Senate, a la Anthony Weiner's substitution move last I heard, and he's planning to introduce a Kucinich-style states' rights single payer amendment too.

By DANIEL BARLOW
Times-Argus (Vt.)
Oct. 29, 2009

MONTPELIER — U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders will likely make history this year when — for the first time ever — he brings a bill creating a national single-payer health care system to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

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The forced-birthers are out in force in the blogosphere, looking for federal funding of abortions in the bill, so I thought I'd help them out.

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The public plan and the exchange[s]

Oh well, at least it doesn't prohibit abortion coverage outright.

Crooks and Liars has the audio from Nancy Pelosi's conference call with some bloggers on the House health care bill.

Kudos to Chris Bowers for asking about the Kucinich amendment.

Chris' question was whether the Kucinich amendment was in the bill.

Short answer: No.
Longer answer: The Republicans supported it, and "this is probably one of those issues that they would like to use to take down the bill."

I'm really and truly happy whenever Democrats reject bipartisanshit, but golly gee whillikers. I can see why there seems to be no love lost between Kucinich and Pelosi [Kucinich has been critical of her move on the Weiner amendment].

Then there's this on the Weiner amendment...

If you want the Kucinich Amendment -- the one that would allow states to opt out of those stoopid exchanges and set up their own single payer systems -- to survive the next step in the melding process, call now!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
DC (202) 225.4965
SF (415) 556.4862

Representative George Miller:
DC (202) 225.2095
Concord (925) 602.1880

Representative Henry Waxman:
DC (202) 225.3976
LA (323) 651.1040

h/t National Nurses Movement

That's the kindest explanation I can think of.

Bloggeth the formerly-liberal perfesser a few days ago:

What this suggests is that the really important thing, for reformers, is to get the principle of universality established. Once that happens, there’s no going back.

Yeah, well, I guess it helps if you define universe.

[chart stolen adapted from the incomparable Ian Welsh]

You've read/heard the phrase bending the [cost] curve [downward] once or twice by now, and in case you've been a tad confused [or not] about what that means, basically it's what Canada did in 1970 when single payer went completely nationwide there.

Never let it be said that the scientists who publish in dry, staid medical journals lack a sense of humor. That resurrecting dead patients line is the title of an article that appeared in JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] a few years ago, and beyond the fact that it provided me with a snappy headline, gives me the chance to post one of my favorite lolcats [again], and is cited in another article in another journal, it has no further bearing on this post.

The another article in another journal, Looking Forward, Looking Back: Assessing Variations in Hospital Resource Use and Outcomes for Elderly Patients With Heart Failure, is monumentally less gripping than, oh, the last installment of Harry Potter, or even the labels on cat food cans, but it's nonetheless an important data point in the present health care deform reform debate.

To back up for just a moment, the Dartmouth Atlas Project is a massive gathering of data gleaned from Medicare spending records over many years. Mapping the data has produced the realization that Medicare spending varies widely throughout the country. Peter Orszag, President Obama, and Tom Harkin, to name just a few personages, are all quite taken with it, and with the Dartmouth researchers' assertions that the patients in higher-spending regions fare no better than those in lower-spending regions.

If only those spendthrifts in Miami and McAllen could be made to behave more like those prudent paragons living in Minnesota, we could save hundreds of billions of $$$$$ in health care spending every year.

Not so fast, corpus breath. The Dartmouth Atlas only catalogs dead people. The researchers looked back over the patients' lives for the 6 months [and for some purposes, 2 years] before they died. Concluding that since they all died anyway [duh!], the ones who got more care [and therefore cost more money], didn't really need all that extra care [and therefore we don't need to be spending that extra money on them].

It's an attractive notion, but one of the things the Dartmouth researchers didn't do so much of was looking forward.

... planting hemp seeds on the front lawn of DEA headquarters.

In NYC:

Send bail money.

Wednesday, Oct 15, is Lobby Your Representative Day

If you are in Washington DC and can join Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care in their lobbying efforts in support of Weiner's substitute single payer amendment and Kucinich's state single payer amendment, do so.

House lobby day – Wednesday, October 14th

* Lobby for Weiner HR676 substitute single-payer amendment votes
* Lobby for protection of Kucinich state single-payer option amendment

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Every health deform care wonk will tell you that unless we remake the US into one giant network of Mayo Clinics, we'll never get health care spending down to a reasonable level.

Meanwhile, although the original Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN and the satellite Mayo in Jacksonville FL haven't said anything, at least one Mayo in Arizona is opting out.

I've had the flu before, and as someone with chronic asthma problems, punctuated by the occasional bout of bronchitis or pneumonia to relieve the monotony, I'm always first in line for the flu shot du jour. Same for the swine flu shot/mist when it makes it to my town -- wild elephants will not be able to keep me away.

I'm truly baffled by people who would rather get the flu than suffer through a momentary jab with a miniscule sharpened object, but wev.

This, however, I did not know:

Obama, in the Rose Garden, speaking to a gathering of physicians today:

Every one of you here today took an oath when you entered the medical profession. It was not an oath that you would spend a lot of time on the phone with insurance companies. (Laughter.) It was not an oath that you would have to turn away patients who you know could use your help. You did not devote your lives to be bean counters or paper pushers. You took an oath so that you could heal people. You did it so you could save lives.

I live in a deeply red part of a purple state, heavily populated with warmongers and jesus freaks, just the kinds of people who are 'against' socialized medicine.

But of my friends and neighbors who have actual experience of medical care outside this country, it's the very, very conservative ones who admire, and want, the fully-socialized medicine of Sweden and England and the military. The liberals here all like the national health insurance / private practice models of France and Canada.

None of this wimpy I stand with Dr Dean weak tea for me.

Don McCanne:

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of listening to those who say that PNHP needs to get on board and support the public option, which is really saying that we need to support an individual mandate to purchase unaffordable plans. Those of you who were duped into supporting this model that can’t possibly work need to abandon that ship and get on board with us and our colleagues who will accept nothing less than health care justice for all.

Health care justice for all? Isn't that some kind of commie pinko socialism?!

[to be published 2009-09-21 06:24:48]

Okay, so it's unscientific as all get out, and charges of ballot-box stuffing are being freely bandied about, but here's an item from today's Helena [MT] Independent Record:

Last week's Question of the Week, "If there were a national referendum on single-payer health insurance for all, how would you vote? For, or against?" touched a nerve.

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[this is a test post]