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/