Levey, for reasons best known to himself, puts out this remarkably tone deaf report on the healthcare debate. I say this because in addition to the usual fear mongering, there are no quotes from any single payer advocate. Fourteen of the 93 cosponsors of HR 676 are from California, and that does not count newly elected single payer advocate Jackie Speier. Moreover, single payer legislation has passed the California legislature twice, only to be vetoed by the Gropenator. Clearly the remaining readers of the LA Times are familiar with this issue, familiar with the advocates of single payer (having repeatedly voted for them), and the LA Times looks just plain stupid when they allege that single payer is off the table. An editor should have more pride than to publish drivel like that.
Let's look at some highlights of this embarrasment of a newspaper article:
Hospitals and doctors fear another public program would reduce what they are paid, as Medicare and Medicaid have done. Insurers worry they could lose customers to the government.
The American College of Physicians has endorsed single payer. Surveys show that 59% of doctors support single payer. Hospital administrators are beginning to call for single payer. It is truly embarrassing for the LA Times that they would suggest otherwise when the facts are so easily obtainable.
Check out this fear mongering:
And few have tackled how the government will control costs and set standards of care, proposals that raise the unpopular prospect of federal regulators dictating which doctors Americans can see and what drugs they can take.
As opposed to the present wildly popular system of letting health insurance parasites write your prescription???
Check out the throwaway reference to single payer advocates:
At the same time, advocates for a single-payer system, including the California Nurses Assn., have vowed to continue pushing the idea next year along with many Democrats on Capitol Hill.
As I keep saying, Medicare for All has far more support in Congress than any competing proposal. Any news organization who fails to report that not insignificant fact is lying, and needs to be called on it.
"Increasing access for the uninsured is not going to come cheap," Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said at a recent hearing on healthcare reform. "And it's clear to me that our economy cannot stand much further deficit spending."
OK, we need our friends in Iowa to start calling Grassley on this lie early and often. It is true that covering everyone will not come cheap, but it will be far less costly than our present health neglect system. Say it with me, Medicare for All will save 350 BILLION a year. Anyone who favors a different proposal needs to explain how their idea is worth an additional $350 BILLION a year. If oppose single payer, you are NOT a fiscal conservative.
Fear mongering from Families USA, who should know better:
"There is a growing understanding that you have to give people choice and you can't take away what they have," said Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, an influential advocacy group for healthcare consumers that is working with a diverse collection of interest groups to build consensus. "One of the big no-nos is that you must not ever threaten the coverage that people have."
The sotto voce campaign against single payer is that you will have to give up something you have in order for other people to get. The truth is that you only THINK you're insured.
Check out the venal trade association:
"Doing this piecemeal is not going to work," said Todd Stottlemyer, president of the National Federation of Independent Business, which was also instrumental in defeating the Clinton plan.
Selling memberships with the possibility of discounted health insurance is a money maker for groups like the NFIB, so even though the current health neglect system is a huge drain on their members pockets, they oppose single payer because it would take away one of the reasons businesses join NFIB.
Please write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, especially if you live in Iowa or Montana. It is our best way to push this issue into popular consciousness.
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Thank you DCBlogger for your dedication to this issue.
Thanks to you, I'm much more informed than I ever expected to be on single payer.
I love this job!
You filleted this one beautifully,
and I would only add that when "Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said at a recent hearing on healthcare reform. 'And it's clear to me that our economy cannot stand much further deficit spending,'" he was talking the usual Republican idiocy on the economy. Deficit spending is the only thing that can help us now, according to the economists I read and have respect for. That's basic Keynes.
Yes, single-payer will save money, but some of the money flow will have to be diverted from the insurance companies to taxes. So it might lead to a higher federal deficit in the short run, depending on how tax laws are written. But in the current state of things that's not a bug, but a feature, if I understand Keynesianism correctly. Which I may not, so feel free to correct me.
Not only a great post, but you're really hitting your stride with the post titles, DCblogger.
Policy not party!
gob, I think you've got it
...based on my own crash-education (pun intended) in keynesian economics.
Jeffrey Sachs wrote a piece in the November 2008 Scientific American that gives another excellent way to look at the question of borrowing money (and that is what deficit spending is). It is asking future generations to pay off the cost of putting structural changes in place now that will make things better from now into the future. So the future is being asked, in effect, to be willing to pay later so that we can do things now to save them.
This only makes sense if the borrowing is to pay for things that act as "social capital". Meaning, investment in green energy, infrastructure, and certainly putting a good health care system in place. Borrowing to throw money into a black hole (Lester Thurow's characterization of the Reagan years as "we borrowed a trillion dollars from the Japanese and threw a party" comes to mind), leaving nothing in the way of social capital for future generations, is not good borrowing.
(Sachs's piece does not seem to be on the SciAm website, for some reason, although the hard copy magazine says it is. I would love to be able to point you to it, as it is well worth reading, and I haven't got the patience to type out the interesting bits. Maybe later.)
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!
Another Sachs article of interest
in particular because of where it was published:
The irony of George Bush is that the 9/11-engendered world-wide sympathy and good will he tried to destroy through unilateral expansion of empire has returned. It appears that the world still so admires America that they are not just willing to forgive our having elected Bush - twice - but are actually feeling sorry for us, sorry that we have been destructive to our own interests as well as those of the world at large.
The new administration has a unique moment in time, not unlike that which Bush had and squandered, to move in a multilateral way and to lead in a direction that is mutually beneficial for the whole planet and not as past administrations have in a misguided way that benefits America alone and then only in the very short term. All of Obama's words reflect - in my eyes - an understanding that this is an opening, a new beginning, and will have to be handled carefully. That recognition is IMHO a reasonable cause for hope, and I am certainly glad to have hope after all the years of dispair.
deficit spending and government regulation
Deficit spending is all we are doing right now. Billions of it. And economists seem to be pushing for more to get the economy going. PLus of course there's the argument that medicare for all will help the auto companies compete moreso than a bailout will...Grassley is speaking nonsense.
"...federal regulators dictating which doctors Americans can see..."
Right now my insurance company decides, by offering varied coverage, whom I can see. And you know what really dictates what doctors we can see? The lack of primary care doctors because, under our current reimbursement structure, invented by insurance companies, primary care doesn't pay enough to lure medical students.