tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post8434817169077221612..comments2024-03-28T16:08:29.578-04:00Comments on Sardonicky: Krugman: You Can Have Single Payer Health Care When You're DeadKaren Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-37151921696315977852017-08-10T08:11:01.891-04:002017-08-10T08:11:01.891-04:00Yup, the NYT wasn't only trying hard to make T...Yup, the NYT wasn't only trying hard to make Trump the issue, but it turns out they got it wrong about the climate report itself. The Trump regime didn't miss any deadlines and didn't suppress the climate report. More fake news from the 'failing NYT' as DJT calls them. <br /><br />'New York Times Guilty of Large Screw-Up on Climate-Change Story'<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/08/09/new-york-times-guilty-of-large-screw-up-on-climate-change-story/?utm_term=.7425ee72a379<br /><br />annenigmanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-91959403373114185652017-08-08T13:37:02.660-04:002017-08-08T13:37:02.660-04:00@Kat
Lots of doctors, I mean those objecting to p...@Kat<br /><br />Lots of doctors, I mean those objecting to private or public insurance ever telling them which diabetic med to jot down on a prescription pad, just might be bought by the pharmaceutical company that makes that new and improved diabetic drug, which the doctor, for some reason, insists on prescribing. (As you know, the step programs were invented by healthcare panels, not bean counters.) So, in all, we have not only big pharma raising a hue and cry but also the docs who are in the pocket of big pharms along with the diabetics who were propagandized by big pharma's adds in the ADA journal.<br /><br />As indicated above, part tongue in cheek, I'm a little suspicious of calls for incrementalism on a program the US is generations late in enacting: healthcare as a right and properly funded. Are the forces against single payer concerned about the general welfare and good administration, or are they merely resorting to an old delaying tactic for private gain?<br /><br />In any event, if we must outfox the foxes to get moving on single payer, I offered another stepped approach (the adding of age cohorts one at a time) to avoid both the fake hues and cries of the compromised and uninformed as well as the real problem of bureaucratic overload. We saw what happened at HHS when the ACA overwhelmed the system trying to implement it. There are good reasons to phase in a giant program for 330 million people.<br /><br />As for those laid off insurance clerks, they are not the best argument for incrementalism. With age cohorts being added one at a time to Medicare, the lights won't go off everywhere at once across the insurance world. In any event, HR 676 already takes those clerks into account by setting aside a bundle of retraining money. Laid off clerks will number into the thousands; the sick of course are counted in millions. Priorities?<br /><br />Finally, we need to step back to understand why single payer never makes it to the table in the first place. The root problems are found outside the circle of stakeholders within the healthcare community. Andrew Bacevich has just put forward a 10-point platform to make America great again. <br />http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176316/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_the_great_hysteria/<br /><br />The Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Green parties are too compromised to be interested in the Bacevich Platform. Until an entirely new party rises up to put the US back on the tracks, the civic reforms advocated by Bacevich (and many others) will go nowhere. And because his platform hasn't got a chance, neither does Medicare for All.Jay–Ottawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360356126450612113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-57861857392201033532017-08-08T10:37:03.331-04:002017-08-08T10:37:03.331-04:00Someone mentioned Elizabeth's Rosenthal's ...Someone mentioned Elizabeth's Rosenthal's book "An American Sickness" a while back. I had read it. I don't necessarily agree with all her prescriptions, but I do think she does a generally good idea of describing the problem and the various interest groups. I would recommend it.Katnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-26749611716382624382017-08-08T10:08:30.074-04:002017-08-08T10:08:30.074-04:00I forgot to add that you can go to the diabetes as...I forgot to add that you can go to the diabetes association's web page and see how much pharma donates.Katnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-44315317862812541002017-08-08T10:07:11.037-04:002017-08-08T10:07:11.037-04:00Jay,
I don't think that was what was necessari...Jay,<br />I don't think that was what was necessarily meant by piecemeal. I do actually think lowering the age for medicare eligibility is one way to get a start, however. But more importantly I do think it is a good idea to consider all the opposition and how to proceed. I don't think Baker is shilling for Obamacare just because he raises some objections to immediately instituting medicare for all. There are many interest groups involved. Considering the number of doctors who complain about medicare reimbursement rates, you have to understand that many are part of the opposition. I did read that among physicians it is now 48/52 in favor/opposition to single payer which is as high as it has ever been. Probably some of this is due to the fact that physicians are now more likely to be employees of HCO's and probably some is due to the fact that there is now less disparity between what insurance pays and what medicare pays for procedures. (Probably having more women physicians than ever helps too.)<br />I read a letter to the editor from the American Diabetes Association. The writer was voicing their opposition to 'step therapy" where insurance companies require that doctors try the older cheaper drug before moving on to the newer (much more expensive) drug. So, this was characterized as bottom line focused executives intruding on the doctor's autonomy. here's the problem-- if the government was the main negotiator they would (rightly) do the same thing (older drugs are usually safer and SE's are more well known)and then can you imagine the hue and cry as pharma whips up a "patient advocacy group" discrediting "government buraucrats"? <br />Katnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-11860500965192656832017-08-08T08:14:12.562-04:002017-08-08T08:14:12.562-04:00Good point, Annenigma!
What I was thinking, but n...Good point, Annenigma!<br /><br />What I was thinking, but not expressing well, was of a sort of chelation therapy to remove all the toxins these chemical companies have made, not just to counteract them (a la drug therapy to counteract side effects from other drugs -- e.g. benztropine). <br /><br />The existence of these horrible chemicals is so acceptable in the U.S., I hear Roundup commercials on the radio. I remember a TV doctor once saying how eating fruits and vegetables with this stuff on them is better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all, as if it's a given we are going to have to live with things the way they are.<br />Elizabeth -- Marysvillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-37669458978882721442017-08-07T20:31:34.392-04:002017-08-07T20:31:34.392-04:00Elizabeth - Marysville wrote "Monsanto and th...Elizabeth - Marysville wrote "Monsanto and their ilk should be locked up, only allowed to see daylight when their scientists have developed the antidotes to their poisons." Don't give them any ideas!<br /><br />Too late I'm afraid. In true Capitalist/Wall St. fashion where profits are made both from creating and treating a disaster, they seem to be working on your suggestion - although the antibiotics may be *tainted. The pharmaceutical/chemical giant Bayer is merging with Monsanto, pending approval, in a $66B deal. <br /><br />From 'Bayer and Monsanto: A Merger of Two Evils'<br /><br />"Who thinks it’s a good idea to entrust the job of “feeding the world” to the likes of Bayer, a company that—as part of the I.G. Farben cartel in the 1940s—produced the poison gas for the Nazi concentration camps, and more recently sold *HIV-infected drugs to parents of haemophiliacs in foreign countries, causing thousands of children to die of AIDS."<br /><br />http://globaljusticeecology.org/bayer-and-monsanto-a-merger-of-two-evils/<br /><br />For more about Bayer, see Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayerannenigmanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-10636805016150741512017-08-07T19:06:57.580-04:002017-08-07T19:06:57.580-04:00I really don't think anyone is looking at Sing...I really don't think anyone is looking at Single Payer as the "slayer of neoliberalism". I didn't read the Nation article, so perhaps my strawman argument sniffer is misfiring.<br /><br />Capitalism is what it's all about. Services such as health care, education, safety (EMS services) should never be profit-driven. Quotas become important, leading to cherry-picking and weeding the neediest and/or poorest from necessary services.<br /><br />Neoliberalism allows the conditions for which people need health care: crop/food/livestock pharmaceuticals (chemicals); oil industry byproducts in our air, water, and plastics; etc.<br /><br />Neoliberalism allows for the crimes against humanity such as those perpetrated by Monsanto. Monsanto and their ilk should be locked up, only allowed to see daylight when their scientists have developed the antidotes to their poisons. They should be using their billions for this research and not be allowed to make one more cent of profit, EVER.<br /><br /><br />"Piecemeal", when MILLIONS are already being poisoned and cannot afford decent food to support a healthy immune system; when hundreds of thousands go bankrupt from ONE MAJOR ILLNESS or ACCIDENT; when MILLIONS still have no insurance whatsoever; when MILLIONS who DO have insurance don't see the doctor because of DEDUCTIBLES and COPAYS (which really should be called DISINCENTIVES)....is UTTER BULLSH*T.Elizabeth -- Marysvillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-59209664516624524552017-08-07T18:35:14.835-04:002017-08-07T18:35:14.835-04:00"If you read through it [the Nation article] ..."If you read through it [the Nation article] you can see what Dean Baker has to say about taking a more piecemeal approach."<br /><br />Over at the Jacobin, a den of commies if there ever was one, a labor representative is worried about the same thing: " As long as the ACA fire hose keeps spraying money at the health care industry, jobs will balloon accordingly. If the water pressure drops, the consequences will be real and drastic, even if the overall result is more equitable and more affordable health care."<br /><br />Yes! Agreed! Absolutely! I like piecemeal. Because if the fragile US tries to put every citizen on Medicare at once, its ERs will be drastically overwhelmed by hoards of displaced private insurance workers with heart palpitations, the first in line being their CEOs denied their obscene salaries. Do gooders must be careful about the unintended consequence they are so often to blame for. For instance, Ralph Nader's fixation about automobile safety did, among other unintended consequences, cause seat belts to wrinkle millions of freshly-ironed shirts morning after morning across the nation.<br /><br />So let's go along with the piecemeal approach Wells Fargo style (in slow and easy stages) suggested by Dean Baker and our favorite concern troll, Paul Krugman, who cares so very much he stoops first to help the wee ones in the crib-to-kindergarten cohort. Let's expand Medicare for all s l o w l y, one age cohort at a time, starting with those babies. Say otherwise and you're a Herod. Checkmate, Ryan, McConnell, Trump.<br /><br />That kind of piecemeal approach won't shake the health insurance money tree so hard it will drop all its leaves at once. Its army of clerks, who currently keep track of every damned band-aid and scalpel by patient ID, will thus have time––years even––to seek more productive work.<br /><br />Just keep that ball rolling slowly towards the goal. Once the nation gets over the initial jolt of caring for its littlest ones, we can go to the next age cohort, on and on, piecemeal, until by the time those wee ones reach 65, they will meet themselves coming down the hill of Medicare for seniors.<br /><br />Rome wasn't built in a day. BTW, neither was universal healthcare in the topmost nation of the Western Hemisphere. It was started by one provincial prime minister, Tommy Douglass of Saskatchewan, in the early 1960s. Then it was seen as a pretty good idea by other provinces and the federal government until, finally, all provinces had Medicare (that's what Canadians called it back then).<br /><br />We've read quotes from Baker, the Jacobin and Krugman. Time to quote a heavy like Laozi: " A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."Jay–Ottawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360356126450612113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-18130327133174420022017-08-07T17:03:39.409-04:002017-08-07T17:03:39.409-04:00"If an elderly but distinguished [economist] ..."If an elderly but distinguished [economist] says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."<br /><br />Arthur C. Clarke stranger in a strange landnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-62853087644415462092017-08-07T15:44:24.040-04:002017-08-07T15:44:24.040-04:00'Single Payer or Bust' should be the Dems ...'Single Payer or Bust' should be the Dems new motto, or 'No Guts, No Glory'.<br /><br />So what's wrong with Democrats that they won't latch onto the biggest issue of our time and run with it and on it?<br /><br />It's ALL about protecting Capitalism, not people. Phooey. annenigmanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-71345768150409439842017-08-07T12:49:15.371-04:002017-08-07T12:49:15.371-04:00I think he raises a few valid points, but for a be...I think he raises a few valid points, but for a better discussion of the issue the (sorry to say) Nation had a better article. If you read through it you can see what Dean Baker has to say about taking a more piecemeal approach. I agree with this. I don't think everybody would love Medicare right away. It would be under attack from day one. Plus, I think you underestimate the opposition. It is not just insurance companies that are against it. You have physicians, hospitals, pharma, medical device companies, durable medical suppliers, etc. <br />There are many ways to improve the health of our citizens. Improving access to medical care is just one way. <br />Single Payer is not the slayer of neoliberalism. After all, Australia, Canada, and Sweden have it. And hell, Great britain goes even further with a national health service-- hardly a socialist utopia there.Katnoreply@blogger.com