Industry reps offer $2 trillion in health savings (AP)
Top representatives of the health care industry plan to offer $2 trillion in cost reductions over 10 years in a bid to help pass President Barack Obama's health overhaul, a source familiar with the negotiations said Sunday. Industry officials representing health insurers, hospitals, doctors, drug makers and a major labor union plan to be at White House on Monday to present the offer.
Lambert, at Corrente, lets the cat out of the bag:
Insurance proposal: $200,000,000,000 a year;
$2,000,000,000,000 over 10 years
Single payer: $350,000,000,000 a year;
$3,500,000,000,000 over 10 years
The difference? Profits for the insurance companies is a big part of it. Can it really be the position of the insurance industry that they have a RIGHT to profit from our illnesses?—Caro
Health care cost cuts could kick-start reform (AP)
The industry groups are trying to get on the administration bandwagon for expanded coverage now in the hope they can steer Congress away from legislation that would restrict their profitability in future years… There's a sense among some of the groups that now may be the best time to act before public opinion, fueled by anger over costs, turns against them.
Harry, Louise and Barack (by Paul Krugman)
Before we start celebrating, however, we have to ask the obvious question. Is this gift a Trojan horse? After all, several of the organizations that sent that letter have in the past been major villains when it comes to health care policy… I would strongly urge the Obama administration to hang tough in the bargaining ahead. In particular, AHIP will surely try to use the good will created by its stance on cost control to kill an important part of health reform: giving Americans the choice of buying into a public insurance plan as an alternative to private insurers. The administration should not give in on this point.
But let me not be too negative. The fact that the medical-industrial complex is trying to shape health care reform rather than block it is a tremendously good omen… And serious cost control would change everything, not just for health care, but for America’s fiscal future. As [Budged Director Peter] Orszag has emphasized, rising health care costs are the main reason long-run budget projections look so grim. Slow the rate at which those costs rise, and the future will look far brighter. I still won’t count my health care chickens until they’re hatched. But this is some of the best policy news I’ve heard in a long time.
Society for the Preservation of Insurance Company Profits:
Ex-Hospital CEO Battles Reform Effort (Washington Post)
The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn't get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment. "Before government rushes to overhaul health care, listen to those who already have government-run health care," intones Rick Scott, founder of a group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights. "Tell Congress to listen, too."
Congress Plans Incentives for Healthy Habits (New York Times)
Congress is seriously considering proposals to provide tax credits or other subsidies to employers who offer wellness programs that meet federal criteria. In addition, lawmakers said they would make it easier for employers to use financial rewards or penalties to promote healthy behavior among employees. Two Democratic senators working on comprehensive health legislation, Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Finance Committee, and Tom Harkin of Iowa, have taken the lead in devising such incentives. “Prevention and wellness should be a centerpiece of health care reform,” said Mr. Harkin, who regularly climbs the stairs to his seventh-floor office on Capitol Hill.
The White House agrees. One of President Obama’s eight principles for health legislation is that it must “invest in prevention and wellness,” a goal espoused in almost identical words by Republican senators like John Cornyn of Texas and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah.
We definitely need to start, as a nation, putting promoting health at least on an equal footing with fighting disease.—Caro
Why does Obama want your medical records? (by Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire)
James Bovard wants to alert you to another the Obama administration hopes to spy on you: Computerized medical records… One of the goals for the new federally subsidized computers is to create systems able "to exchange electronic health information with, and integrate such information from other sources." This is a huge step towards a national database. Goodbye doctor/patient confidentiality. Dubya was content with tapping your phone without a warrant; now Obama wants to take matters further.
Medical data does not simply track the number of times a person went to their doctor seeking a cure for a runny nose or stubbed toe. Medical records could include details on long-ago abortions, impotence or sexually transmitted diseases, anti-depressants and details of breakdowns, or HIV Positive status.
My comment: As an IT professional, I have to say that standardization of medical records makes sense for reducing cost and improving outcomes, not to mention the benefit of having a huge database for obtaining information based on statistical data. The ability to determine the effectiveness over time of certain medications, foods, food supplements, exercise regimens, and so on, controlling for a multitude of variables, has enormous potential for relieving human suffering and helping people live healthier longer.
My biggest objection to the medical records deal is that it will be touted as "change" and "reform" and used as an excuse to keep the same bloated, insurance profit driven system we have now. Isn't that what they're doing with the financial system?—Caro
Click here for more politics and media news headlines.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
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Caro, yes, Big Insurers are following the Banksters' game plan,
and implementing it through the Obama administration.
"Congress Plans Incentives for Healthy Habits"-to be implemented
through tax breaks for businesses which offer healthy lifestyle programs of some sort or another.
What about people who don't have health insurance through a business, dear Congress Critters?? Someone how the same tax savings offered to busineses have not been offered to the self-employed. I doubt these will.
SOL?
Not worth saving, maybe.
stop with the 'promoting health' meme already
that's just another one of those 'personal responsibility' dodges to avoid taking on the societal fixes we need to make.
poor people feed their kids too much popeyes fried chicken?
gee, it can't possibly have anything to do with the lack of affordable healthy food within walking distance of where they live, or the fact that their utilities get cut off if they can't afford the bills, so how are they going to cook, and later refrigerate the food, even if they could buy it? and you can't wash the dishes if the water got cut off.
exercise?
you gotta be kidding. poor people are too often consigned to living in dangerous neighborhoods, and even if they're safe neighborhoods, there are seldom parks and swimming pools and recreation centers, cuz poor people don't deserve such amenities. and for the better off, who has time to exercise? we work longer hours than almost anybody else in the developed world, and have fewer and shorter vacations too. top that off with the technology will save us all mindset and you get a bunch of sedentary workers chained to their computers for hours on end [and sedentary students too, since we're so gung ho on online learning and such; who needs field trips to museums when you can look it up online?]
if i hear one more we don't have health care in this country, we have sick care, i'm going to throw up. of course we have sick care. most of us can learn in grade school what constitutes healthy eating and healthy exercise [given an ideal world to live in] but few of us can diagnose our own diabetes, or operate on our own brain cancers, which is why a select few spend years and years and years of their lives in medical school.
i could go on at length....
Look, the gym would only cost a few hundred a month
What's wrong with you?
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
What? Some people don't have their own workout centers?
And personal trainers? Sheesh. Hoi polloi.
srsly... i tell ya...
what a bunch of lazy-ass america-hating traitors.
and on the related topic you[?] mentioned earlier, i'm so excited that some day my employer may be able to require me to work out at the company-provided gym, and probably on my own time too.
i know. i'm *such* a whiner,
wanting govt to fix all my problems.
So another potential good thing ...
... has to be turned into a bad thing because it MIGHT be used by SOME people as a way of avoiding real health care reform.
I say we need single payer AND standardized computerized medical records AND promotion of healthy habits in addition to fighting disease.
Why can't we fight for all of those things?
Whassup? This post shows up on the list of posts, but not on
the front page. And there was a big span of time when no posts appear. Was there a tech problem today?
The aphorism pictured is really neat.
I think I've been de-front paged, jawbone
I've been a very bad girl for not reading the right-wing blogs so that I can scrupulously avoid whatever they have to say, even on the rare occasion that I agree with them.
Take a break, Caro
You know very well what the issues were, and please don't, to put it gently, mischaracterize what I, and others, wrote. It's also clear, from your comment, that you have taken nothing that I, and others, said on past threads to heart. Finally -- this issue was also raised in past commentary, but assumes greater prominence now -- these posts are simply pasted in from elsewhere, as the links to Corrente make evident. Not only have many of the links previously been discussed here, the links to Corrente at Corrente make Corrente look ridiculous.
There is no technical capability in Drupal to front-page or de-front-page posts by account (at least in this installation). The default is to front-page; therefore, any post that is de-front-paged has to be individually examined, by me. I spent a few hours this week on a few of your posts, and because of RL demands, I don't have those hours to invest in your posts right now, whether editing them, or managing the comments. So the best compromise was to de-front-page and leave the post be (rather than deny posting privileges altogether, as many other blogs whose moderaters get fucked with are far more quick to do).
You are, of course, free to write a "lambert is teh suxx0r" post on your own blog; it's been done before, and I'm impervious. Or you might read the comments for the past few days and take the view that my responses, and the responses of others, are driven by a burning desire for quality posting, and act accordingly. So take a break, and consider.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi