Tag: Medicare

General interest
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Public Option: the Single Payer Salve

by Fran Johns

Single payer proponents are still stung by the loss of their big issue to other big issues — or big players, if you will — but the prospect of a strong public option is the balm that may still salve that wound. This was one of the messages delivered by Giorgio Piccagli, President of the California Public Health Association, North and member of the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association at a panel discussion tonight sponsored jointly by OWL of San Francisco (The Voice of Midlife and Older Women) and the League of Women Voters of San Francisco. Audience members were urged to fight, among other things, for retention of the provision which would allow states to have single payer. (A California single payer bill passed the Senate Health Committee this spring and will be heard by the full Senate in 2010.)

Fellow panelist Debbie LeVeen echoed the call, saying a “robust public plan” must be national, to insure it’s large enough, must have authority to set prices and to bargain on drugs, and use the Medicare provider network.

Backing his call for reform with increasingly heard data such as sobering figures about uninsured Americans (45 million uninsured and another 50 million under-insured, for a total of about 1 in 3 of us) Piccagli said the lessons of the past 40 years include the fact that classical economics of supply and demand do not apply to health care: increasing the number of doctors, or competition among hospitals, only results in rising costs.

If the energies formerly tied to single payer can be channeled into a push for a public option some feel a viable reform bill will emerge. The San Francisco audience, many of whom were fervent proponents of single payer (which was endorsed by both OWL and the League of Women Voters) and most of whom are seasoned activists, left the room armed with cards to send appropriate legislators and plenty of ammunition to support their call now for a public option.

Said the third panelist, Co-Director of the Center for Policy Analysis Ellen Shaffer, about prospects for a robust public plan, “I think it’s up to us.”

Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Obama plays the Medicare card

by Fran Johns
President Obama, with Vice President Biden and Speaker Pelosi behind him, delivers a joint address to Congress on September 9 (Alex Wong/Getty)
President Obama, with Vice President Biden and Speaker Pelosi behind him, delivers a joint address to Congress on September 9 (Alex Wong/Getty)

For almost anyone over 50, the central issue of health care boils quickly down to Medicare. Will I keep it? Will it be there when I need it? Will it change?

In his address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night, President Obama looked straight at the camera while saying he wanted “to speak directly to seniors: Medicare has been here for four decades, and is a sacred trust that must be passed down” to future generations. Then he pointed out to those seniors that the legislators opposing his reform plan are the same “folks who voted against Medicare in the beginning” and this year voted for a budget that would privatize it. He said also that much of the plan will be paid for by reducing waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid. Anybody who’s had (and thank you, I have) Medicare coverage for more than 15 minutes knows about waste and inefficiency. So cut those, and leave the system, and we should all be happy.

We should all be happy, that is, if such care extends to everyone. And if Mr. Obama’s references to the U.S. being the only developed country that lets its citizens suffer daily for want of adequate health care didn’t communicate the moral wrong that reform will attempt to right, you weren’t listening. What we heard was outline, and the president’s throw-away line about a few details yet to be worked out got an expected congregational chuckle. Some of us are more optimistic than others about whether any substantive change for the common good will remain by the time the final bill is drawn.

The details are ahead for the devil to be in, and he/she is surely ready. Whether public support will be forthcoming seems likely to boil down to a whom-to-believe game. Obama repeatedly stressed that “nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.” But in delivering the Republican response immediately after the speech, Representative Charles Boustany of Louisiana promised listeners that they would be in for “replacing your family’s current plan with government-sponsored healthcare.” Boustany also tossed in references to “rationing care” and to general “fear and anxiety,” giving a distinct impression that battle lines are still drawn.

About those battle lines: Republicans sat on their hands as Obama once again proclaimed the rumors about bureaucrats who would kill off senior citizens — he skipped dignifying Sarah Palin by using the death-panel words — to be “lies, plain and simple.” And although he got the other side of the aisle to stand when he insisted there must be reform of medical malpractice laws, there were no smiles when he pointed out that the cost of health reform will be less than the tax breaks for wealthiest Americans passed during the previous administration.

Somehow, what truths and certainties do exist must be kept alive in the fray: Medicare is not going away. End-of-life conversations won’t kill off grandma. (Sadly, this provision may be already dead anyway.) The plan’s not going to cover illegal immigrants or pay for abortions. Medical malpractice laws must be reformed. Nothing will adequately replace the public option. A health care plan that offers access to all, imperfect or not, is only common decency.

This senior’s trust is still in Barack Obama.

General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Healthcare: Sorting Fact from Fiction

by Fran Johns

House legislation on health reform is a win-some-lose-some proposition for those over 65. Especially, as outlined in The New York Times yesterday, when it comes to Medicare drug benefits.

Medicare beneficiaries would often have to pay higher premiums for prescription drug coverage, but many would see their total drug spending decline, so they would save money as a result of health legislation moving through the House, the Congressional Budget Office said in a recent report.

Premiums for drug coverage would rise an average of 5 percent in 2011, beyond the level expected under current law, and the increase would grow to 20 percent in 2019, the budget office said.

“However,” it said, “beneficiaries’ spending on prescription drugs apart from those premiums would fall, on average, as would their overall prescription drug spending (including both premiums and cost-sharing).”

The Congressional Budget Office report set off an immediate battle between Republicans and Democrats, each side eager to convince seniors — those vocal voters — that the other was representing the devil incarnate. Republicans swear the House bill will threaten Medicare beneficiaries in order to cover the uninsured, Democrats say the bill will help them by eliminating a gap in Medicare drug coverage.

On this particular segment of the impossibly complex bill, maybe seniors would do well to listen to their own purported champion:

Nancy LeaMond, an executive vice president of AARP, the lobby for older Americans, welcomed the report as evidence that “health care reform will lower drug spending.”

“Opponents of reform may use today’s projections to try to stall reform,” Ms. LeaMond said, “but we hope they will look at all the facts before jumping to a false conclusion.”

And there, some would suggest, is the problem. The facts have been virtually obscured by misstatements, misrepresentations and outright lies. Death panels? A lie that served its scary purpose. Rationing? It’s already here, folks; it’s done by insurance companies that deny coverage in sometimes arbitrary ways. Socialized medicine? Hello? Does anyone over 65 remember those screams before Medicare was signed into law in ’65? When half the population over 65 had no insurance coverage at all?

Set aside the fact that providing healthcare for all is simply the right thing to do. Millions of American seniors (whether you begin that definition at 65, 60 or — to their horror as it sometimes happens — 55) were motivated to support President Obama by not only their hearts but also their brains. If those brains can be called into play to sort fact from fear-mongering, we may yet get the health reform common decency requires of this otherwise civilized nation.

Health Bill Would Cut Drug Spending for Many on Medicare, Budget Office Says – NYTimes.com

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General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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More on Health Care: Where the Costs Are

by Fran Johns

A few interesting factoids were dropped into the health reform debate by New York Times writer Amanda Cox Tuesday:

In 2006, health care expenses among half the United States population totaled less than $800 per individual, according to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

For openers, that seems entirely reasonable. Would that we could actually care for the citizenry at $800 a pop. Keep reading.

But the expenditures were not uniformly distributed throughout the overall population. Spending was far higher among the elderly, the obese and people who identified themselves as unhealthy. Median spending in those groups totaled $2,300 per individual. Although these patients represent just one-third of the population, they accounted for almost 60 percent of health care spending.

I hate to stomp this nearly dead — oops, bad metaphor — horse even further into its grave, but a lot of us, given the chance to talk to our doctors about aggressive, invasive, often futile end-of-life treatments that are going to make our ends horrific might choose to go home and spend our remaining time with palliative care, at peace. A nifty way to cut that $2,300 back down to $800. But Senator Grassley and others think we should now allow those conversations.

The truth may be too obscured by the cleverly promoted lies, but the issue is about choice. Compassion. Comfort. Peace. Sanity. If anyone could get this truth across to seniors, that one critical segment of reform might still survive. And personally, I’d like to have the option of saving the rest of you taxpayers my $1,500.

via Making Sense of the Health Care Debate – Prescriptions Blog – NYTimes.com.

General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Health Policy: Is Altruism Dead?

by Fran Johns

Recently in this space the me-first word was brought up. (It does not abbreviate well.) Might as well say it out loud: health reform could surely be sunk by the Me-Firsters, those who would put personal desires above the greater good, whether those desires are for better pharmaceutical or insurance industry bottom lines or for some corner of personal coverage, senior or otherwise, that might be sacrificed in the future.

I am not above having those desires. My husband and I actually have a tiny bit of stock in a drug company thanks to some mergers and buyouts I do not pretend to understand (I also don’t mess with the family stock portfolio) and thus a decline could cost household income we can ill afford. Plus, I would hate having the excellent care I get from Kaiser (thank you, Medicare) curtailed and would be seriously bummed if suddenly stuck with paying 100% of my post-cancer meds. But if that, or something equally draconian, is what it will take to get health coverage for my currently-uninsured friends, I would like to go on record as supporting whatever we must do to get access for all. This is not noble, just minimally humane.

There are noble people out there, however. They sign up for Teach for America, they volunteer in nursing homes and day care centers and hospice programs, put in long hours at food banks or take to the streets in other, similarly un-chic endeavors.

Re the current health reform brouhaha, there are also noble people, or at the very least altruistic people, all over the country; you just don’t hear a lot about them. On August 19, for example, President Obama urged supporters of health reform to “speak facts and truth” in what he said was a “contest between hope and fear,” and tried once again to refute some of the misrepresentations still widely circulating. His comments were themselves fairly widely circulated. But unless you happened to run across them in this space you would not have known they were made to 140,000 members of faith communities and/or supporters of community-organizing nonprofits. The people of Sojourners, Faith in Action, PICO and other groups that put together the 40 Days for Health Reform conference call are not in it for personal gain; they happen to believe everyone in this country should have access to health care. The next day, Nancy Pelosi held a press conference reiterating her determination to keep a public option in the final health bill. But again, unless you happened to see it here you would not have known the event was sponsored by the San Francisco Interfaith Council with a lot of help from its friends in the San Francisco Organizing Project.

When the religious right goes on a tear against abortion or end-of-life choice (or for that matter, when the religious left goes head-to-head with its ideologically-opposed brothers and sisters) it makes news. When community organizers stage high-profile protests, the same thing happens. What does not make news is the enormous effort made by people of good will just to promote the common good — most recently, health reform.

Some opponents of Obama and his reform bills even have an altruistic bone or two. The reportedly calm, if badly misinformed, Bob Collier, featured in a front page New York Times article August 25, allowed that “we’ve got to do something about those people who can’t get insurance.” He qualified that later: “There has to be a safety net there. But I don’t want that safety net to catch too many people.” Somehow, Mr. Collier wants to separate out the “truly needy” from the “lazy and irresponsible people who play the system” and wouldn’t we all. The Times said that Mr. Collier gets his information from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge, none of whom I see as particularly altruistic. I would surely welcome him to True/Slant.

But the people cited above, people in faith communities (including many I disagree with and some I can’t pronounce), progressive nonprofits, community organizing groups and others just roaming the streets being kind, these people seek access to health care for everyone without worrying about who deserves it and who does not. A great many of them worked hard to put Obama in office, and are now working hard for health reform for no reason other than it is the right thing to do for someone else. Might be unrealistic but they keep at it.

My money is still on those people.

General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Tracking Down a Rumor

by Fran Johns

Rumors come, and don’t seem to go. Jim Rutenberg and Jackie Calmes of the New York Times have weighed in again today with a few facts… just in case anyone is interested in facts:

The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks.

Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Mr. Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality.

Rutenberg and Calmes point out that the doggedly persistent rumor “was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists.

Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor).

This is the core of what all reasonable people know:

There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure.

But as T/S Contributor Andy Geiger points out, the real issue in health reform is that people are suffering because they don’t have health coverage. Opponents to any reform at all have found a handy way to create this smokescreen by keeping everyone riled up with an utterly false rumor.

I’ve spent much of my adult life working for better end-of-life care, including being forever on a soapbox urging everyone, not just seniors, to consider their end-of-life options, have conversations, create advance directives and then get on with living. I strongly, fully support the good provision in the health care bills that may indeed now get cut.

But we need not to lose this forest for a tree. Rational people have got to continue fighting for a decent system, a decent bill.

False ‘Death Panel’ Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots – NYTimes.com.

Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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End-of-Life Care is Losing to Lies

by Fran Johns

Here is some of the current worst news on health reform:

The Senate Finance Committee’s health care plan will not include provisions dealing with end-of-life care, now one of the more controversial topics in the health care debate, the committee’s top Republican said on Wednesday.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa said in a statement that the committee “dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”

If anyone knows misinterpretation, it’s Senator Grassley. He’s the originator of such enlightened parting phrases as the one he tossed out at an Iowa meeting Wednesday, about not wanting a health plan “that will pull the plug on grandma.” There is, of course, no grain of truth in that phrase, but its repetition does exactly what Sen. Grassley and his ilk wish: whip the opposition to any real reform into an emotional, unthinking frenzy. And they are winning the war against reason one battle at a time.

A Senate Finance Committee aide confirmed that the panel was not discussing end-of-life measures, adding that they were “never a major focus” of the committee’s negotiations.

House committees have passed legislation that would provide Medicare coverage for optional counseling sessions on end-of-life services.

But as people like Senator Grassley, and former N.Y. Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey who sought fame and perhaps fortune by starting this whole flap, keep the country inflamed with misinformation the chances of decent legislation rising from these ashes grow dim.

The hopeless optimists of the land continue to believe that calls and letters and e-mails of sanity will convince our legislators that the country will rally around a decent bill… but Mr. Grassley and Ms. McCaughey are making optimism difficult.

via Senate Bill Will Not Address End-of-Life Care – Prescriptions Blog – NYTimes.com.

General interest
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Straight Talk Q&A on Health Reform

by Fran Johns

One of the best fact-checks re health reform I’ve seen lately was just sent out by Ricardo Alonso-Zalvidar for the Associated Press:

Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says the health care overhaul bill would set up a “death panel.” Federal bureaucrats would play God, ruling on whether ailing seniors are worth enough to society to deserve life-sustaining medical care. Palin and other critics are wrong.

Nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision. The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes. Here are some questions and answers on the controversy:

Q: Does the health care bill promote “mercy killing,” or euthanasia?

A: No.

Q: Then what’s all the fuss about?

And here’s where it all started:

A: A provision in the House bill written by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., would allow Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary counseling sessions that address end-of-life issues. The conversations between doctor and patient would include living wills, making a close relative or a trusted friend your health care proxy, learning about hospice as an option for the terminally ill and information about pain medications for people suffering chronic discomfort.

The sessions would be covered every five years, more frequently if someone is gravely ill.

Alonso-Zaldivar covers all the basics in this brief, to-the-point article. My personal favorite opinion is also in there. It’s a comment made by Monsignor Charles Fahey, 76, a Catholic priest currently chairman of the board of the National Council on Aging:

“What I have said is that if I cannot say another prayer, if I cannot give or get another hug, and if I cannot have another martini – then let me go.”

Maybe we should put that martini provision in the bill.

via Health care overhaul bill Q&A.

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