Adrian Campbell-Montgomery at East Lansing "Health Care for All" rally - Channel 6, Lansing, Michigan - see link below photos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTOiIWIO91M

State News - July 30, 2009: National health care advocates hold rally on streets of East Lansing.

National health care advocates hold rally on streets of E.L.

BC/BS sued for engaging in "life threatening business practices"

Urgency of public option: BC/BS sued for engaging in "life threatening business practices"

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/23/756690/-Urgency-of-public-option:-BC-BS-sued-for-engaging-in-life-threatening-business-practices

NPR shines harsh light on Baucus

NPR had a relatively objective and therefore devastating item on Max this afternoon. Covered his close ties with health industry lobbyists and the big bucks he gets from the industry. One point they made: only 13 percent of his campaign contributions come from inside his home state, Montana, more than 50 percent from special interests. Another point: Five of his former staffers, including two former chiefs of staff, are now lobbyists for the industry.

From the NPR report:

Paul Blumenthal, a writer for the nonpartisan watchdog the Sunlight Foundation, mapped Baucus' network of influence. (You can see the "Baucus influence map" at left).

"We have Max Baucus, who represents a single node, as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee," Blumenthal explains. On his computer screen, lines radiate from Baucus to five of his former Senate staffers. Two of them served as chief of staff to Baucus, the top job in his Senate office.

All five now lobby Congress for various interests. Among their clients: drugmakers Wyeth, Merck, Amgen and AstraZeneca, plus the third-largest corporation in the world, Wal-Mart.

They don't stop with Baucus. They use him as an example of Congress' conflicts of interest:

Backing up the access is money — and that puts Baucus at the heart of Congress' ethical conflict.

Baucus And Fundraising

Lawmakers have two constituencies: one, the voters back home; the other, the people and interests that finance much of their re-election campaigns. These donors often live out of state.

When Baucus ran for his sixth term last year, his campaign raised $11.6 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Nearly half of the funds came from out-of-state donors, including millions from health care and other industries overseen by Finance and Baucus' other committees.

Just 13 percent of Baucus' re-election funds came from Montana donors.

In all, it is great to listen to.

Listen here.

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=106655060&m=106894646

Big Pharma Cash Cow

The companies that make up the pharmaceutical industry are among the largest corporations in the world. In 2004 their combined global sales were over half a trillion dollars, with Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson leading the pack. Together, these businesses have come to be known as Big Pharma.

Between 1996 and 2004, industry spending on Direct ot Consumer Advertising (or DTC) rose over 500 percent. In this new landscape, the most vital question for American consumers is this: How might the influence of one of the most powerful for-profit industries in the world affect the way we think about our health and well-being?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOHNYHVEJkg&feature=related

Silencing Single Payer-Call to Action

Reforming the dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system is a major issue in the news these days. The goal of the reform efforts, we're told, is to expand coverage to the uninsured and to reduce costs. But what many experts and citizens see as the most sensible solution to these problems is kept out of the discussion by the corporate media.S

Single-payer national health insurance is a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors). Single-payer is favored by a majority of Americans and physicians, according to recent polls (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09, Annals of Internal Medicine, 4/1/08).

Yet a recent study by FAIR found that of hundreds of stories about healthcare in major outlets earlier this year, only five stories included the views of advocates of single-payer--none of which appeared on the TV networks. In May, news coverage of the arrests of single-payer advocates showed that practically the only way to get single-payer mentioned in the corporate media is to get thrown out of Senate hearings.

Let's send a message to the networks: The insurance lobbies and many politicians don't want to talk about single-payer. But that makes it all the more important that the media do. Sign our petition to ABC, CBS and NBC, demanding that single-payer be a part of their coverage of the healthcare debate. Add your name below to lend your voice to this effort to broaden the debate over the broken U.S. healthcare system.

Watch youtube video and then go to http://www.fair.org/ to sign a petition to tell the media to include Single Payer in the health care debate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wOz23QZmqs

WeWantThePublicOption.com

Add your name to the TV ad.

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5649/t/4612/content.jsp?content_KEY=2621&tag=po_main

Assessing a "Public Option" for Health Care

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who left the industry to become an advocate for health care reform. Potter discussed the industry’s history of denying care to members and its extensive efforts to prevent the federal government from creating a “public option” for health insurance to compete with private plans.

Click link to read complete article:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2009/07/assessing_a_public_option_for.html

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL Preview: Wendell Potter pt 2 PBS
Source: www.youtube.com
Health insurance companies vs. Michael Moore. Bill Moyers interviews former health insurance industry executive Wendell Potter, who left the field after almost 20 years to become a health reform advocate. ...

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=112959887358&h=goA5F&u=XqHEx&ref=mf

Naomi Klein and William Greidner on Charlie Rose

explaining the issues surrounding our financial crisis and how we need to rethink the nature of our public sector. This is not directly about health care, but it illustrates the issues surrounding our struggle. Highly recommended.

http://www.naomiklein.org/video-audio/naomi-and-william-greider-discuss-economic-crisis-charlie-rose

Health Care Reform Rally - State Capital June 27th

A 27-minute video of the highlights from Saturday's health care reform rally is available here: http://www.motionbox.com/videos/7a9cdfb31f1ee3c4f5

Shorter 10-minute videos from the rally will soon be available at the Peace Education Center's Youtube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/peacecenter.

What is Single Payer?

What is Single Payer? Watch youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAvy9jew9dM&feature=email

Share your Stories!!

The health care advocacy group, Families USA, has an on-line Story Bank, inviting people to tell their health care stories, adding their personal experiences to the policy discussion.

http://www.familiesusa.org/tell-us-your-story.html

Alarming video about the accepted practice of insurance companies of rescinding health care coverage when specific chronic and/or serious illnesses like cancer (over 200 illnesses) are submitted to insurance companies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_29CCVI1ao4

Call your congressperson and senator(s) today and tell them to stop giving all our hard earned money to insurance companies who leave our sick, infirm and disabled uncared for. Tell them to support and vote for HR 676, Medicre for All .


Insurance and Drug companies oppose HR 676, Medicare For All, and use money, fear, and misinformation to confuse and confound you to protect their wealth and power! The CEO of Aetna Insurance Corporation gets paid $65,000 a day, 365 days a year and he wants more of our money! Are you going to let him have it?

Why Does U.S. Health Care Cost So Much? (Part II: Indefensible Administrative Costs)

...A second, more recent study of administrative costs in the American and Canadian health systems was published in 2003 by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2003. The study used a measure of administrative costs that includes not only the insurer’s costs, but also the costs borne by employers, health-care providers and governments – but not the value of the time patients spent claiming reimbursement. These authors estimated that in 1999, Americans spent $1,059 per capita on administration compared with only $307 in purchasing power parity dollars (PPP $) spent in Canada.

More and more Americans are being priced out of health care as we know it. The question is how long American health policy makers, and particularly the leaders of our private health insurance, can justify this enormous and costly administrative burden to the American people and to the harried providers of health care.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/why-does-us-health-care-cost-so-much-part-ii-indefensible-administrative-costs/

Senate's Health-Care Draft Calls for Most to Buy Insurance, Nixes Obama's 'Public Option'

Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, June 19, 2009

A draft proposal in the Senate to overhaul the nation's health-care system would require most people to buy health insurance, authorize an expansion of Medicaid coverage and create consumer-owned cooperative plans instead of the government coverage that President Obama is seeking.

The absence of a "public option" marks perhaps the most significant omission. Obama and many Democrats had sought a public option to ensure affordable, universal coverage, but as many as 10 Senate Democrats have protested the idea as unfair to private insurers. In its place, the draft circulated yesterday outlines a co-op approach modeled after rural electricity and telecom providers, subject to government oversight and funded with federal seed money.

Read complete article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/18/AR2009061804053.html

Policy Brief in Health Affairs Journal about the Public Option

Provided by Joan Ilardo <ilardo@msu.edu> in an email today.
http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/61809healthaffairs3.pdf
This might help clarify some of the issues that currently are on the table.

Draft of Mission Statement

Mid-Michigan Coalition for National Health Care Reform believes that health care is a human right. We are working to implement expanded and improved Medicare for all U.S. residents. This system must reimburse medical providers and hospitals adequately so as to preserve their economic viability, and it must eliminate the waste, duplication and fraud in our current medical system. We believe that we must create a system which concentrates on prevention, fosters wellness and creates programs which will help individual to improve and preserve their health. Preventative care reduces health care costs.

note: This mission statement fulfills all three of Obama's stated three principles on health care reform.

Expanded justification/explanation:
example: This will greatly reduce administrative costs as Medicare costs roughly 3% to administer while private insurance company administrative costs policies run btw 25 and 30 %. THIS IS THE REAL WASTE AND FRAUD. We can have this system and reduce expenses. The problem with single payer and public option is no one knows what those terms really mean in practice.

PLEASE COMMENT BELOW SO THAT WE CAN HAVE A PRODUCTIVE DISCUSSION AND APPROVE A VERSION OF THIS MISSION STATEMENT AT MONDAY'S MEETING.

The Death Clock

How many people die in the USA because of our brutal health care system? The Death Clock is a work in progress, created by a Daily Kos blogger, Dburn

http://hc-dw.org/

Administrative Costs for Private Insurance Statistics

Please add any statistics for this topic below. Generally, administrative costs for our multiple private insurance system run 30%. This is a statistic that has been repeated over and over. Perhaps it is difficult to believe that we are paying that much just to administer our broken system.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2003/august/administrative_costs.php

ELIMINATING THIS WASTE WILL PAY FOR THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF A MEDICARE LIKE SYSTEM FOR ALL.

Switching to a single payer system would save that 30%. Using the Medicare system which is already in place would mean virtually no start up time!! THIS IS THE REAL FRAUD AND WASTE IN THE SYSTEM.

See Bill Moyers on this.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/profile2.html#sites

DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Somewhere down the line, we do. But at this point, we do so much useless and even harmful medical care. And we waste so much on bureaucracy. That we could actually do everything that we know is useful for every American for what we're now spending. Ten years from now, with my colleague's inventiveness in figuring out expensive new things to do. We're going to have to come to grips with that. But right now, we could reform this health care system. Do everything that's helpful for every American for what we're now spending.

DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: Here's an example of what David's talking about. Over the last 30 plus years there have been maybe two and a half, three times more doctors and nurses. Pretty much in proportion with the growth in population. There are 30 times, 3-0 times more health administrators. These people are not doctors. They're not nurses. They're not pharmacists. They're not providing care. Many of them are being paid to deny care. So, they are fighting with the doctors, with the hospitals to see how few bills can be paid. That's how the insurance industry thrives by denying care, paying as little out as it can, getting the healthiest patients, and yet getting reimbursed as though these patients were sicker than they really are.

So, it's a system that is guaranteed to waste a lot of money. And what we've said is that the amount of money that's just being wasted in one year is enough to pay for more than enough of the premiums for those that are uninsured and the people that are underinsured. So, it's not a matter of bringing more money. I mean, the industry is now saying, "We could save $2 trillion over the next ten years. Let us. Trust us. We will lower our costs and everything." The amount that can be saved over the next ten years by just eliminating the health insurance industry is $4 trillion, in one fell swoop.

.

Daschle Throws Public Option under the Bus

Daschle, Dole Say Public Option Must Be Scrapped ABC World News reported, "Former Senate leaders launched a bipartisan push for healthcare reform, but they took issue with a central feature of the President's plan, a public, government-run health insurance program." Bob Dole was shown saying, "If you want to stop this thing dead in its tracks, or dead on arrival, in my view, you put the public plan in it." ABC noted that even Tom Daschle, "once Obama's top healthcare adviser, said the public option probably needs to be scrapped." Daschle: "We've come too far and gained too much momentum for our efforts to fail over disagreement on one single issue."

http://www.usnews.com/...

Health Care Definitions and Comparison

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1515

Polls on Single Payer

The majority of Americans support single payer in poll after poll. Add your links to other polls below.

Here is the most recent I could find:

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/SunMo_poll_0209.pdf

HEALTH INSURANCE
Americans are more likely today to embrace the idea of the government providing health insurance than they were 30 years ago. 59% say the government should provide national health insurance, including 49% who say such insurance should cover all medical problems.
In January 1979, four in 10 thought the federal government should provide national insurance. Back then, more Americans thought health insurance should be left to private enterprise.

HEALTH INSURANCE: PRIVATE ENTERPRISE VS. GOVERNMENT?
CBS/NYT CBS/NYT
Now 1/1979
Private enterprise 32% 48%
Government – all problems 49 28
Government – emergencies 10 12
Don’t know 9 12