[Peace-discuss] Fw: Tidbits - August 18, 2009

[unionyes]

> 
> ==========
> 
> * We can still make single-payer happen
> 
> As a 70-year-old progressive who backed both Obama's
> election and universal health coverage, I so wish that
> all the town-hall protests were only corporate/rightwing
> ploys and all the protestors' arguments solely hype.
> 
> Unfortunately, President Obama's proposed cuts in
> Medicare total at least 5 percent, only a small fraction
> to come by removing Medicare Advantage HMOs. The rest
> would come from making healthcare "more efficient," etc.
> Such trimming of "waste" would arise through bundling
> Medicare payments to doctors/hospitals on a basis of
> averaged cost-per-disease, rather than on what doctors
> on the spot might know pertains in a given case. It is
> hardly anti-reform to see that this change would
> endanger Medicare patients.
> 
> The administration claims that this policy is safe and
> can improve "quality" -- basing the claim primarily on
> the Dartmouth Health Atlas's study of regional and
> hospital variations in "intensity of treatment."
> 
> But the Atlas is not an outcome study (I have read it);
> it does not, and cannot, show that less intensive use of
> specialist visits and tests has the same outcome as more
> intensive usage.
> 
> In short, the administration does not know whether
> Medicare cuts would harm patients.
> 
> Further, any quality studies of the changed treatment
> models will take years to yield results -- years of
> protocols quite likely lethal to numerous persons.
> 
> But obviously, administration proposals are not alone in
> risking Medicare patients' health; similar cuts appear
> in every compromise and centrist reform proposal. H.R.
> 676, the Medicare-for-all plan, is the exception.
> 
> Further, the right wing's insistence on NO reform, or at
> least no public option, endangers the lives and health
> of 45 million Americans without health insurance - and
> the
> many more who may lose theirs or have inadequate
> coverage.
> 
> The only way to reform health care without pitting the
> needs of our old and most vulnerable citizens against
> the needs of our uninsured is to pay for reform not by
> "trimming" alleged "waste" from Medicare, but rather by
> letting our wealthiest citizens again pay their fair
> share -- by rescinding the tax breaks provided them by
> the Bush and Reagan administrations.
> 
> Even better, we can pay for excellent health care for
> everyone simply by cutting out the costs inherent in
> profit-taking insurance corporations -- that is, by
> creating a universal government-paid system with free
> choice of doctors and single-tier coverage. And since
> CEOs and government leaders too would be taking their
> health coverage from this same system, "trimming"
> benefits for "efficiency" would be most unlikely.
> 
> It is hardly only the right wing who can protest; they
> learned from us, after all. Let us now more strongly
> demand what people want and need, not "liberal"
> compromise or caving. We can still make single-payer
> happen.
> 
> Paula Friedman
> Parkdale, Oregon
> 
>