Tag: Speaker

General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Health Reform: The Mystery

by Fran Johns

Facebook friends of mine in the past few days have been turning up with a status line that reads, “No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree please post this as your status for the rest of the day.”

Well, I do agree. I haven’t posted it as my status yet, mainly because my True/Slant posts get posted as my status, and enough is probably enough. But I’ve been curious because friends who are not even Friends of friends have been posting it, some with additions (“I’m just sayin’…”) or (“E-mail your representatives!”)

So I just checked out Open Salon, and there’s OESheepdog’s blog reading “From my friend Leigh Bailey: “No one should die because… etc” followed by a long list of affirmative reactions. My personal favorite was John Blumenthal’s comment, “You’re right, of course, but I wouldn’t lose any sleep if someone took Glenn Beck’s insurance away. Pre-existing stupidity.”

But the question remains, Did OESheepdog’s friend Leigh Bailey start the whole movement? Kathleen Sebelius? Nancy Pelosi?

I’m just askin’.

Reforming US health care is not the end of the world – OEsheepdog – Open Salon.

General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Pelosi Reaffirms Public Option, Insurance Reform; Healthcare "A Moral Imperative"

by Fran Johns

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, addressing a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Health Summit in San Francisco this morning about Obama’s health reform, stressed elements of the three House bills that might seem palatable to her audience: cost containment, IT design and integration with existing systems to create universal access to care. But she did not back down on a few other consistent statements such as the assertion that no bill will pass the House without a public option.

“We will invest in medical research and technology,” Pelosi said; and will incorporate elements such as electronic medical records for individuals to speed care.

It was clear there were mixed levels of support for reform in her audience. California Pacific Medical Center CEO Warren Browner MD, MPH drew muted chuckles and no boos with a throw-away comment that President Obama had “spent more time on choosing a dog” than on crafting a health policy. CPMC, a Sutter Health Affiliate, was presenting sponsor of the event.

Speaker Pelosi, though, hammered away at the primary intentions of reform: “improve quality, expand coverage and contain costs” while providing universal access to quality healthcare. “We will,” she said, focus on “quality, not quantity; wellness of the person not utilization (of facilities and technologies); value, not volume; and a commitment to prevention and wellness.”

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom addressed the gathering earlier, touting the success of his “Healthy San Francisco” universal coverage program now in its second year. An independent Kaiser Family Foundation poll recently showed Healthy San Francisco to have a 94% approval record, prompting City/County Department of Public Health Director Mitch Katz, MD to ask when any program of any sort had ever gotten a 94% approval record. Citing the need for protection of such elements as in-home services in an aging population, Newsom said the program’s success was attributable largely to partnerships with local hospitals, clinics and medical facilities (CPMC is one), specifically singling out Kaiser Permanente, which signed on in July. The program does not offer a national model, Newsom said, but has many elements a national plan could adopt. Healthy San Francisco includes things that might not get into a national bill but are favorites with wellness proponents: community organic gardens, city-funded salad bars in schools and an ad featuring a soda-equipped young boy admitting to “a drinking problem.” Another key to the program’s success, Newsom said, is its ultra-simple one-page enrollment form.

Pelosi insisted that the final bill will include “insurance reform: no refusal based on pre-existing conditions, no co-pay for prevention, no cut-offs.”

And the major themes were reiterated: “As President Obama has said, universal healthcare is a moral imperative,” she said; “we are the only country in the developed world without it. I say to those who would have us do a little bit, and another little bit, and another little bit — Lyndon Johnson settled for half a loaf; this is the other half of the loaf.”

Politics & Causes
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Pelosi Sticks With Public Option

by Fran Johns
Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a gathering of interfaith leaders in San Francisco today (Justin Sullivan/Getty)
Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a gathering of interfaith leaders in San Francisco today (Justin Sullivan/Getty)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a press conference in San Francisco this morning at which she reiterated her commitment to a public option in the health reform bill and expressed hope, though with somewhat  lowered optimism, for coverage of end-of-life conversations. She did get in a dig at opponents of the latter: In response to a question about whether voluntary reimbursement for discussion of end-of-life care would stay in the bill, Pelosi said, “You know, the language is almost exactly the same as what the Republicans put into the prescription drug bill.”

The press conference, hosted by the San Francisco Interfaith Council, was an apparent reinforcement of the Democrats’ strategy of  broadening health reform support among members of religious communities. With leaders from the San Francisco Bay Area Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities arrayed behind her, the Speaker made repeated references to health care for all being a moral issue. Responding to the above question, she said, “People of faith, people in healthcare” and others know that “it makes life better if a person has expressed his or her own wishes. The key to this is that it is voluntary; it serves the purpose of saying what is your wish, rather than someone else having to make a decision you might not want. I don’t know what will happen (to the provision); I surely hope it will stay in.”

Pelosi was unequivocal, however, in her response to questions about the public option and to one reporter’s comment that “some Democrats and liberals are frustrated because it seems you are caving in to the far right.” “Is that you?” she repeated, pointing to herself. “The public option is the best way to go. If anybody can come up with a better alternative we’ll consider it. But the President is not backing off. The co-op might work in some states and that’s fine.  There is no way I can pass a bill on health reform without the public option.”

Pelosi was equally emphatic about her intention to retain the 400% of poverty measurement. Hesitantly using the term “seniors,” she said that many people between the ages of 50 and 65 have lost jobs, or may be making just $30,000 to $40,000 per year, and cannot afford needed medical care or prescription drugs. “I believe we have to have the 400% of poverty for them.”

Would the Democrats accept a scaled-down version of health reform? Pelosi repeated her litany of what is needed: reduced costs, improved quality, expanded coverage, affordable care for all; “What are you going to give up? At the end of the day, this is what we must have. And we must have reform of the insurance industry.”

In the small, carefully selected audience assembled at St. James Episcopal Church where her children attended preschool, Pelosi was on her own turf and among friends.  And she was characteristically upbeat. “Have we lost control of the debate? I disagree. I have 218 votes, and expect to have more. I am optimistic, and the President is committed to change.”

General interest
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Grassroots Healthcare Reform

by Fran Johns

If we get a health reform bill, it may be thanks in part to a push from the ground up. That belief is leading to a variety of grassroots support endeavors.

At a hospital-sponsored town hall meeting on the issue this week in San Francisco attendees were invited to take the microphone to tell their stories. Probably a bad idea at any meeting, since such an invitation guarantees off-point rambles and rages and this one certainly proved the point — but there were enough horror stories to assure everyone that our current non-system is a train wreck.

A cardboard cut-out of President Obama stood at the back of the room (there was a lot of photo-op going on before things got started) and the promise was that videos of the stories would go straight to Washington to help speed passage of the hoped-for health reform bill.

Participants told of needed care that couldn’t be found, needed drugs that couldn’t be bought and the widespread suffering of the un- or under-insured. A panel of local experts presented aspects of the hoped-for national plan and spoke of San Francisco’s own moderately successful effort to provide health coverage for all.

Speakers were asked to keep their remarks to under three minutes, another dictum doomed to failure, and a few did. My own plea (one minute, forty seconds) was for inclusion of some guarantee/protection of individual choice at the end of life. It stemmed from working for many years (as I still do) with terminally ill adults who seek options including hastening their dying. It was tempered in deference to the hosts, since St. Francis is a member of Catholic Healthcare West and the opposition of the Catholic Church was largely responsible for defeat of a widely popular physician aid-in-dying bill that narrowly failed in California two years ago. And the likelihood of such a controversial issue getting into the massively complex bill we may or may not get is somewhere between slim and none, but what the heck. With Mr. Obama standing there, I couldn’t resist.

At similar gatherings around the country, I suspect the message and the messengers are much the same. Health reform is a national need that translates in millions of heartbreaking individual stories.

My personal favorite message came from panel member Catherine Dodd, PhD, RN, District Chief of Staff for Nancy Pelosi in her pre-Speaker days. Dodd explained the current three-fold status (two in the Senate and one in the House) of the healthcare bill and defended its  probable cost. Then she threw out one new number: 19.7. After everyone had let 19.7 sink in, she told us that is the number of years it has taken this country, every time a health reform bill has been floated, to bring it up again. “We can’t afford another 19.7 years,” she said. I think she’s right.