Rally to support 'Medicare for All' planned for Journal Square in Jersey City

Supporters of a national single-payer healthcare system, also known as Medicare for All, will hold a rally in Jersey City's Journal Square at noon Saturday.

While Medicare covers everyone 65 and over, a single-payer system would extend Medicare coverage to everyone.

Well, folks, the Senate health plan is out. It's 2,074 pages long, and is even more crapulent than the House plan, from what I can tell.

Some of the awesome features:

1) Taxing more expensive plans that employers provide. The meme is that these are "Cadillac" plans, as if the people who are covered by these plans have any say WHATSOEVER in how much the programs cost.

2) Cutting even more from Medicare.

3) Offering an "opt-out" option for the states.

4) Forcing people to buy insurance, then penalizing them if they don't do so.

That's it!

Oh, wait. You wanted to know about that whole abortion thingy? Don't worry. The Senate has you covered!

deadline to register Wednesday

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Do you support a Medicare-for-all approach to health care but don't know how to persuade others it's the right thing to do?

Huntsville pediatrician Pippa Abston and North Alabama Healthcare for All are organizing speaker training on that topic the afternoon of Dec. 6.

Participants must sign up by end of business Wednesday by calling 513-9638 or emailing physicians [at] northalabamahealthcareforall [dot] org.

Who even knew there was a Nothern Alabama Healthcare for All?

Words cannot express the relief I feel at not having to read yet another access blogger's "progressive" screed on Senate process. Now, about the sausage?

First, phantom reform does give you choice, but it is the choice between many HMOs and other private, for-profit insurance plans. Real reform would give patients the choice they actually want, which is to choose their doctors and hospitals. Americans don’t want a choice of insurance company bureaucrats; they want a choice of health care providers.

Crossposted at ZBlogs, Firedoglake and TPMCafe

How can we get repealing bans on first cousin marriage on the US legislative agenda?

I think it would clearly help in getting started to consider why it has not already been raised as an issue, given facts like that no other Western country prohibits it and that the genetic arguments have been shown to be hollow.

I can see at least two big reasons why it's been neglected:

ubetchaiam

For those who argued we should just pass SOMETHING, even if it was a bad bill, because they said we could fix it later, this is what you
get from a strategy of perpetual compromise, a bill that is utterly
beyond redemption. It’s time to throw HR 3962 in the medical waste
bin, and do what should have been done in the first place, build a
new national health care system on what actually DOES work, by
extending the existing economical and efficient Medicare plan to all
ages.

Kip Sullivan at Firedoglake:

Via Avedon Carol, this little item from Caltics:

Now it looks like they're moving to up the Hooverite ante, and two of California's powerful federal politicians are at the center of the debate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is joining 6 other Senators to demand that Speaker Nancy Pelosi approve a commission to recommend cuts to Medicare and Social Security - or else they'll refuse to vote to increase the US government's debt ceiling: ...

audio by title hoosiers for a commonsense health plan single payer now

Senator Bernie Sanders:

In my view, the real solution to the problem of how to reform health care in this country is a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. We are going to try to at least give states the option to go forward and move toward a single-payer system. Whether it’s Vermont or somewhere else, if one state pulls it off it will spread around the country.

Look, I'm totally sure that paying to bail out the insurance companies by cutting Medicare won't have any real effects on old people who are going to die soon anyhow. Especially given this great news:

Senators from both parties on Tuesday put new pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to turn the power to trim entitlement benefits over to an independent commission.

Sens. Conrad, Gregg, Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) publicly vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling if a budget reform commission bill doesn't come along with it.

Six others had previously made such threats, bringing the total to 13 senators drawing a hard line on the committee legislation.

“You rarely do have the leverage to make a fundamental change,” [shock doctrine!] said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who said he hasn’t ruled out offering the independent commission legislation as an amendment to the healthcare reform bill.

Yay!

David Jenny writes* in the Bangor Daily News:

The president and Congress agree: Washington’s solution to 46 million uninsured Americans is to “mandate” that they all purchase health insurance from private companies, or — if the president’s view should prevail — a government-run “public option.”

Until now, our federal government has never claimed the power to compel individual citizens to pay insurance premiums to either private companies or government entities.

Astonishingly, no one is asking: “Does the federal government actually have the power to dictate that individuals purchase health insurance?” ....

John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich are correct, it isn't HR 676 and it's not as good as HR 676. It is however a very good compromise, and for all the incrementalists and political realists out there in TVland, it provides a good foundation to build on.

What it is is HR 676 with a chunk of HR 3200 added on at the end, some revenue provisions added, illegal aliens excluded, covered benefits slightly less generous, and the part about turning the hospitals and other institutions into non-profits removed.

This is a copy of the long reply that Maggie Mahar made to my post "Why Is Maggie Mahar Lying About Health Reform?" at TPMCafe. I've now gone through in turn and posted responses to her statements. I will not have time to do another round of replies, but hopefully this will be enough. I suggest that people show up to the Firedoglake book salon on November 9 and ask her to stop saying that the public "option" is anything at all like "Medicare E (for everyone)."

I am, of course, not lying about Health Care reform.

They came, they sat, they chanted:

8 Protesters backing a universal health care system briefly occupied Sen. Joe Lieberman's office this morning.

Protesters were arrested, one by one, and dragged out of his office amid chants of "Everyone in and noone out, universal healthcare now!" and "Represent Connecticut, not AETNA!"

Activists hopefully moving the Overton Window - in our case leftward - because too many Democratic party politicians were too stupid to do that on their own at the start of the healthcare debate.

On November 9, Maggie Mahar is doing a book salon at Firedoglake on her book Money-Driven Medicine. I think it probably contains many useful facts, and even decided to order it last week from Amazon. For example, it correctly points out that the largest problems in the American health care system today are unnecessary procedures and overpayment for services. However, I now know that I will need to closely scrutinize its every word before accepting it as true. Why will it be hard to take this book at face value? Because Mahar has lately engaged in a complete flight of fancy about the proposed "public option."

After all, single payer would only save $350 billion dollars a year! And where do we read about this? Our famously free press? Not. Our tribunes of the people on the "progressive" access blogs? You're joking. No, we hear it from a local PA blog with a union connection:

Word from the Physicians for a National Health Program is that the flood of calls has forced Pelosi to allow 20 minutes of debate and a vote on the floor for the Weiner amendment this Friday. This amendment will substitute most of the language of HR 676 for the current bill and establish a Medicare for All system of healthcare.

Swanson agrees, calling it kabuki.

Via email, Mobilize for Health Care:

Dear Friend,
CALL PELOSI NOW! (415) 556-4862 and (202) 225-0100
There are 8 people sitting in RIGHT NOW in Nancy Pelosi's Office in San Francisco!

They are not leaving until they get an answer to their demands! Their demands are that the Kucinich amendment MUST be in the health care bill that the House votes on, and that the House MUST vote on the Weiner amendment.

Pelosi PROMISED the American people that she would ensure BOTH of the above would happen, and she has betrayed us by renigging on those promises!

Holly Sklar:

Grandma could be dead from lack of health insurance before she turns 65 and gets Medicare - 80 percent of first-time grandparents are in their 40s and 50s.

I'm guessing that younger marriage is strongly class-based, and so the "grandmas" in their 40s and 50s are likely to be unterbussen, and hence not of concern to "progressives."

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.

A new poll on the Massachusetts Senate race has state Attorney General Martha Coakley dominating the field with 37 percent support from registered Democrats and unenrolled voters, who are eligible to vote in the primary. That is more than double her nearest challenger, with 14 percent backing Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca and 13 percent supporting Congressman Mike Capuano.

[A warm welcome to the usual suspects. What took you so long? -- lambert]

Mr. Bowers loses his touch, and makes a clumsy attempt to conflate snark in a Quick Hit with commentary: "Progressive bloggers don’t write about single-payer because they are afraid of Rahm"*.

Fortunately, I assumed that "progressives" like Bowers would stoop to outright censorship at some point, so here is the post Bowers censored in order to replace with that link:

So, the question's still on the table: Why don't "progressive" bloggers cover single payer?

And now, the badge of honor!

Banned!

Finally, here's the post that Bowers is concerned to avoid answering (it was at the other end of the "can't understand" link (I think) in the screen dump above). Let me just post that screen dump for the record:

Via ThinkProgress, both the Baucus Bill and the plan put forward by Pelosi will enroll some more people but most will not be in the Public Option and it will not cover everyone:

CBO: Public Option To Attract Only 6 Million Enrollees & Doesn’t Offer Lower Premiums

The public option would attract about 6 million enrollees by 2019 and charge premiums that are “somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges.” This is because the public option would “engage in less management of utilization” by its enrollees and “attract a less healthy pool of enrollees,” the office concludes. Moreover, since the House bill expands Medicaid up to 150% of the federal poverty line, it’s possible that the enrollees that would have enrolled in the public option went into Medicaid instead.

Below is a comparison of the relevant provisions in the House and Senate Finance Committee legislation:

	CBO Score Of House Bill	CBO Score Of Baucus Bill
Costs	Reduce deficits: $104B/10yrs Cost: $894B/10yrs Spends on subsidies: $605B/10yrs On Medicaid/CHIP: $425B/10yrs On Small Employer Credit: $25B/10yrs	Reduce deficits: $81B/10yrs Cost: $829B/10yrs Spends on subsidies: $461B/10yrs On Medicaid/CHIP: $345B/10yrs On Small Employer Credit: $23B/10yrs
Insured	Uninsured reduced by: 36M Uninsured in 2019: 18M In Exchanges: 30M | Public Plan: 6M In Medicaid: 15M	Uninsured reduced by: 29M Uninsured in 2019: 25M In Exchanges: 23M In Medicaid: 14M
Revenue	Mandate penalty: $33B/10yrs Pay-Play penalty: $135B/10yrs New taxes: $572B/10yrs	Mandate penalty: $4B/10yrs Free rider penalty: $23B/10yrs New taxes: $196B/10yrs
Medicare and Medicaid	Total savings: 426B/10yrs Medicare Advantage: $170B/10yrs	Total savings: 404B/10yrs Medicare Advantage: $117B/10yrs

With a Single Payer solution it would be everybody in and nobody out - AND it would save a heck of a lot more money for everyone.

The difference is not just everyone being covered but HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of DOLLARS saved every year:   Read more…

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...

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.

Ian Welsh:

Trust is earned. By making the economy work for banks and not for Americans; by refusing to put through a clean health care bill; by repeatedly not coming through on campaign promises and by not providing a clear alternative to Republicans, Democrats have lost the trust of Americans.

If Democrats want to turn this around they should simply start doing what they should have always done. Break up the big banks, institute real bankruptcy reform and other help for real Americans, pass a medicare-for-all bill, get out of Afghanistan and push through a real and effective stimulus bill immediately paid for it with a tax on America’s rich.

HuffPo:

[SANDERS] One of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all proposal is that it is much less complicated than what we are going to end up with in Congress. A single-payer approach saves hundreds of billions of dollars a year because you don't end up with thousands of different health insurance programs appealing to all different kinds of people and costing a fortune to administer. I am going to continue the fight for single-payer. I am cautiously optimistic that we may end up with legislation that will allow states to go forward with single-payer if they want to.