Reid

Health Care Bill Fact Sheet

Broadcatching, Health Care Reform

The FDL health care team has been covering the health care debate in congress since it began last year. They have put together a fact sheet to help readers sort through the myths and facts of the health care bill:

Myth

Truth
1. This is a universal health care bill.
 The bill is neither universal health care nor universal health insurance.

Per the CBO:

  • Total uninsured in 2019 with no bill: 54 million
  • Total uninsured in 2019 with Senate bill: 24 million (44%)
2. Insurance companies hate this bill

 This bill is almost identical to the plan written by AHIP, the insurance company trade association, in 2009. The original Senate Finance Committee bill was authored by a former Wellpoint VP. Since Congress released the first of its health care bills on October 30, 2009, health care stocks have risen 28.35%.
3. The bill will significantly bring down insurance premiums for most Americans.
 The bill will not bring down premiums significantly, and certainly not the $2,500/year that the President promised.

Annual premiums in 2016, status quo / with bill:

Small group market, single: $7,800 / $7,800

Small group market, family: $19,3oo / $19,200

Large Group market, single: $7,400 / $7,300

Large group market, family: $21,100 / $21,300

Individual market, single: $5,500 / $5,800*

Individual market, family: $13,100 / $15,200*
4. The bill will make health care affordable for middle class Americans.
 		The bill will impose a financial hardship on middle class Americans who will be forced to buy a product that they can’t afford to use.A family of four making $66,370 will be forced to pay $8,628 per year for insurance. After basic necessities, this leaves them with $8,307 in discretionary income — out of which they would have to cover clothing, credit card and other debt, child care and education costs, in addition to $5,882 in annual out-of-pocket medical expenses for which families will be responsible.
5. This plan is similar to the Massachusetts plan, which makes health care affordable. Many Massachusetts residents forgo health care because they can’t afford it.A 2009 study by the state of Massachusetts found that:

  • 21% of residents forgo medical treatment because they can’t afford it, including 12% of children
  • 18% have health insurance but can’t afford to use it
6. This bill provide health care to 31 million people who are currently uninsured.
 This bill will mandate that millions of people who are currently uninsured must purchase insurance from private companies, or the IRS will collect up to 2% of their annual income in penalties. Some will be assisted with government subsidies.
7. You can keep the insurance you have if you like it.
The excise tax will result in employers switching to plans with higher co-pays and fewer covered services.

Older, less healthy employees with employer-based health care will be forced to pay much more in out-of-pocket expenses than they do now.
8. The “excise tax” will encourage employers to reduce the scope of health care benefits, and they will pass the savings on to employees in the form of higher wages. There is insufficient evidence that employers pass savings from reduced benefits on to employees.
9. This bill employs nearly every cost control idea available to bring down costs.
 This bill does not bring down costs and leaves out nearly every key cost control measure, including:

  • Public Option ($25-$110 billion)
  • Medicare buy-in
  • Drug reimportation ($19 billion)
  • Medicare drug price negotiation ($300 billion)
  • Shorter pathway to generic biologics ($71 billion)
10. The bill will require big companies like WalMart to provide insurance for their employees The bill was written so that most WalMart employees will qualify for subsidies, and taxpayers will pick up a large portion of the cost of their coverage.
11. The bill “bends the cost curve” on health care.
 The bill ignored proven ways to cut health care costs and still leaves 24 million people uninsured, all while slightly raising total annual costs by $234 million in 2019. “Bends the cost curve” is a misleading and trivial claim, as the US would still spend far more for care than other advanced countries.

In 2009, health care costs were 17.3% of GDP.

Annual cost of health care in 2019, status quo: $4,670.6 billion (20.8% of GDP)

Annual cost of health care in 2019, Senate bill: $4,693.5 billion (20.9% of GDP)
12. The bill will provide immediate access to insurance for Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition. Access to the “high risk pool” is limited and the pool is underfunded. It will cover few people, and will run out of money in 2011 or 2012Only those who have been uninsured for more than six months will qualify for the high risk pool. Only 0.7% of those without insurance now will get coverage, and the CMS report estimates it will run out of funding by 2011 or 2012.
13. The bill prohibits dropping people in individual plans from coverage when they get sick. The bill does not empower a regulatory body to keep people from being dropped when they’re sick.There are already many states that have laws on the books prohibiting people from being dropped when they’re sick, but without an enforcement mechanism, there is little to hold the insurance companies in check.
14. The bill ensures consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to challenge new insurance plan decisions. The “internal appeals process” is in the hands of the insurance companies themselves, and the “external” one is up to each state.
Ensuring that consumers have access to “internal appeals” simply means the insurance companies have to review their own decisions. And it is the responsibility of each state to provide an “external appeals process,” as there is neither funding nor a regulatory mechanism for enforcement at the federal level.
15. This bill will stop insurance companies from hiking rates 30%-40% per year.

 This bill does not limit insurance company rate hikes. Private insurers continue to be exempt from anti-trust laws, and are free to raise rates without fear of competition in many areas of the country.
16. When the bill passes, people will begin receiving benefits under this bill immediately
 Most provisions in this bill, such as an end to the ban on pre-existing conditions for adults, do not take effect until 2014. Six months from the date of passage, children could not be excluded from coverage due to pre-existing conditions, though insurance companies could charge more to cover them. Children would also be allowed to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26. There will be an elimination of lifetime coverage limits, a high risk pool for those who have been uninsured for more than 6 months, and community health centers will start receiving money.
17. The bill creates a pathway for single payer.

 Bernie Sanders’ provision in the Senate bill does not start until 2017, and does not cover the Department of Labor, so no, it doesn’t create a pathway for single payer.
 Obama told Dennis Kucinich that the Ohio Representative’s amendment is similar to Bernie Sanders’ provision in the Senate bill, and creates a pathway to single payer. Since the waiver does not start until 2017, and does not cover the Department of Labor, it is nearly impossible to see how it gets around the ERISA laws that stand in the way of any practical state single payer system.
18 The bill will end medical bankruptcy and provide all Americans with peace of mind.
 Most people with medical bankruptcies already have insurance, and out-of-pocket expenses will continue to be a burden on the middle class.

  • In 2009, 1.5 million Americans declared bankruptcy
  • Of those, 62% were medically related
  • Three-quarters of those had health insurance
  • The Obama bill leaves 24 million without insurance
  • The maximum yearly out-of-pocket limit for a family will be $11,900 (PDF) on top of premiums
  • A family with serious medical problems that last for a few years could easily be financially crushed by medical costs

*Cost of premiums goes up somewhat due to subsidies and mandates of better coverage. CBO assumes that cost of individual policies goes down 7-10%, and that people will buy more generous policies.

Documentation:

  1. March 11, Letter from Doug Elmendorf to Harry Reid (PDF)
  2. The AHIP Plan in Context, Igor Volsky; The Max Baucus WellPoint/Liz Fowler Plan, Marcy Wheeler
  3. CBO Score, 11-30-2009
  4. “Affordable” Health Care, Marcy Wheeler
  5. Gruber Doesn’t Reveal That 21% of Massachusetts Residents Can’t Afford Health Care, Marcy Wheeler; Massachusetts Survey (PDF)
  6. Health Care on the Road to Neo-Feudalism, Marcy Wheeler
  7. CMS: Excise Tax on Insurance Will Make Your Insurane Coverage Worse and Cause Almost No Reduction in NHE, Jon Walker
  8. Employer Health Costs Do Not Drive Wage Trends, Lawrence Mishel
  9. CBO Estimates Show Public Plan With Higher Savings Rate, Congress Daily; Drug Importation Amendment Likely This Week, Politico; Medicare Part D IAF; A Monopoloy on Biologics Will Drain Health Care Resources, Lancet Student
  10. MaxTax Is a Plan to Use Our Taxes to Reward Wal-Mart for Keeping Its Workers in Poverty, Marcy Wheeler
  11. Estimated Financial Effects of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009,” as Proposed by the Senate Majority Leader on November 18, 2009, CMS (PDF)
  12. ibid
  13. ibid
  14. ibid
  15. Health insurance companies hang onto their antitrust exemption, Protect Consumer Justice.org
  16. What passage of health care reform would mean for the average American, DC Examiner
  17. How to get a State Single Payer Opt-Out as Part of Reconciliation, Jon Walker
  18. Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies, CNN.com; The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Section‐by‐Section Analysis (PDF)

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Sidney Lumet's Classic "Network"

Health Care Reform

Network

1976
Essay by Greg Ng

Senses of Cinema

The 1970s in Hollywood were a fertile time. The emergence of the director, as a legitimate artist in his or her own right, shifted focus from the studios, which by the ’60s had grown formulaic and unadventurous in their output, to a new generation of writers and directors, whose concerns and experience were markedly different from the conservative voice of the movie industry at that point.

Due in part to falling profits and the rise of television, a vacuum arose in the industry that opened the door for fresh ideas. Hollywood was redirected and, as a result, American cinema entered a new age – an age when box-office success did not necessarily preclude sophisticated content in a movie, an age when political discourse was not relegated to non-existence or tokenism, or a niche-market. The period between 1969 and the beginning of the 1980s saw American cinema, inspired as it was by international filmmaking (such as the French New Wave), offering critical, ambiguous and highly artful movies.

At its most ambitious, the New Hollywood was a movement intended to cut film free of its evil twin, commerce, by enabling it to fly high through the thin air of art. The filmmakers of the ’70s hoped to overthrow the studio system, or at least render it irrelevant, by democratising filmmaking, putting it in the hands of anyone with talent and determination. (1)

However, as the decade passed, the promise of real change receded; the status quo prevailed. As Peter Biskind puts it, in his book Easy Riders and Raging Bulls: How the Sex ‘N’ Drugs ‘N’ Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood,

although the decade of the 70s contains shining monuments to its great directors, the cultural revolution of that decade, like the political revolution of the 60s, ultimately failed. (2)

Robin Wood, in Hollywood: from Vietnam to Reagan, argues that the Vietnam War, among other things, focussed Western society’s dissenting voices, simultaneously discrediting ‘the system’ and emboldening the dissenters. However, like Biskind, Wood acknowledges “this generalized crisis in ideological confidence never issued in revolution. No coherent social/economic program emerged.” (3)

Commercial imperatives once more came to play their part in shaping the output of the industry, as previously fêted directors suffered box office losses and investment money turned to more secure propositions. Thus, a central tenet of political economy – i.e., the inherent censorship of the mass market – prevailed. Ironically, one of the films that stands as a testament to ’70s Hollywood’s freedom and ambition, Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976), depicts precisely this phenomenon.

Network is an example of a hugely successful and critically acclaimed feature film that offers a critique of television, ideology, radical chic and the consequences of American-led post-war capitalism, whilst being funny – no mean feat, and something only barely achieved in the current day by the likes of Michael Moore, et al.

Lumet’s direction and Paddy Chayefsky’s script lambaste the ills of the modern world (couched within the fast-paced soliloquies delivered by the stellar cast of Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall and William Holden) and are oft times prescient, predicting the rise of ‘reality television’, and the subsequent decline of both production and social values.

One of the central themes of Network – the decay of society and of love, concurrent with a plunge in standards and morality of the audience, which represents the world (in keeping with the mindset of both the film and its characters) – proves salutary in explaining what happened to Hollywood after the ’70s. Just as the collapse of the old studio system in the ’60s was precipitated by a change in demography and values, so too has a drift toward social conservatism and the continuing project of marketising everything affected our age.

When Howard Beale (Peter Finch), the ageing news anchor for Union Broadcasting System, is fired due to poor ratings, he announces to his friend and network executive Max Schumacher (William Holden) that he intends to “blow my brains out, right on the air, right in the middle of the 7 o’clock news” (4).

Schumacher replies, “You’ll get a hell of a rating. I’ll guarantee you that. 50 share, easy.” He facetiously begins to run with the idea: “We could make a series out of it. ‘Suicide of the Week.’ Oh, hell, why limit ourselves: ‘Execution of the week.’”

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What Exactly Do The Insurance Companies Get From Health Care Reform? ~ Olbermann and Potter

AHIP, Billy Tauzin, Broadcatching, Health Care Reform, Kent Conrad, Rahm Emmanuel, Wendell Potter

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Conservative Democrats Signal They Won’t Block Public Option

Aetna, Alan Grayson, Barack Obama, Betsy McCaughey, Bill Nelson, Broadcatching, Charles Grassley, Cigna, Congress, Dylan Ratigan, FOX News, GOP, Health Care Reform, Howard Dean, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, Rahm Emmanuel, Republicans, Rick Scott, Senate, Shepherd Smith, United Health

R A W  S T O R Y
By John Byrne
Friday, October 23rd, 2009 — 8:07 am

elmo-swine-flu-ads

Conservative Democrats signal they wont block public optionSupport for including some version of a public option in the Senate’s version of a healthcare overhaul appears to be solider than initially believed.

In a series of comments that have received little attention, conservative Democratic senators — even those who’ve publicly said they oppose a public option — say they are unlikely to join a Republican filibuster to block it. Under Senate rules, Democrats would need to convince 60 members to support the ability to vote on healthcare legislation with the public option (cloture), and then just 51 to pass it.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) told a reporter earlier this week that she wouldn’t join Republicans in voting against cloture.

“I’m not right now inclined to support any filibuster,” Landrieu said.

“For the Republican Party to kind of step out of the game is very unfortunate,” she added, referring to the Senate Republicans’ intransigence on healthcare reform proposals. “I’m not going to be joining people that don’t want progress.”
Story continues below…

Indeed, Landrieu’s sentiment — that joining foes of healthcare reform would be an impediment to progress — may be the catnip that keeps Democrats on board.

Sen. Mark Pryor (R-AR), a moderate Democrat from the South, said Thursday he was open to some form of a government-run health insurance competitor.

“It depends on how it’s structured on whether I can support it,” Pryor remarked. “I just haven’t decided.”

But regardless of how he votes on the final package, he says he won’t join Republicans in filibustering the bill. Tellingly, he also signaled that he didn’t believe any other Democrats would either.

“I don’t think you’ll see me or any other Democrats do that,” Pryor told liberal blogger Mike Stark.

One conservative Democrat refused to tip his hand. Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) occasionally joins Republicans on controversial issues.

“I believe in playing chess, but that’s about three moves ahead of me, and I’m not prepared to make those moves until I see some other moves in between,” Nelson told a reporter this week.

Jake Thompson, Nelson’s Communications Director, told Raw Story that he “would decline to comment” about how Nelson will react to a potential Republican filibuster.

Arlen Specter (D-PA) has said he’ll support a public option as well. Specter defected from the Republican Party to the Democrats earlier this year, against the backdrop of a tough primary challenge from his right. In an interview Thursday evening with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz (video below), he sounded confident that Democrats had the 60 votes to prevail.

“We have 60 votes without Sen. Snowe, so we can still invoke cloture and move to a vote on the public option,” Specter said. “With 50 votes plus the Vice President and my vote is going to be for the public option, robust public option, we can get it passed, even without Sen. Snowe. I hope we have her, but we may be able to do it without her.”

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) was the only Republican to join ranks with Democrats in approving a version of healthcare legislation that passed through the Senate Finance Committee. That version didn’t include a public option.

That said, Democrats need lose only one member to lose the battle for the public option. A 60-vote majority would also need to include independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who’s tangled with Democrats on various issues in the past.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) won’t say how many votes he has in his arsenal on a government run plan. In a statement Thursday evening, he said only that he was looking to pass a bill with as many votes as possible.

“We’ll continue to work together to seek broad consensus on the key issues before us and to craft the strongest possible bill that can garner 60 votes,” Reid said. “We will also continue to do our best to represent the views of all members of the Senate who have a genuine desire to see reform succeed. But our mission is clear: the American people want quality, affordable health insurance and failure is not an acceptable option. I am optimistic that we are close to laying a proposal before the full Senate that will do just that.”

In the House, some version of a public option is almost certain to pass. The version will likely be more liberal than that of the Senate’s, as Democrats hold a larger majority in the lower chamber.

President Obama’s position on the public option remains unclear. A Politico report Friday said that Obama prefers a “trigger option,” under which a public insurer would only be created if private insurers fail to meet key pricing standards. The White House, however, says Obama hasn’t taken a position either way.

The following video is from MSNBC’s The Ed Show, broadcast Oct. 22, 2009.

Republicans in Congress Argue on Behalf of the Poor Insurance Companies

Barack Obama, Big Pharma, Gang of Six, GOP, Health Care Reform, Insurance Lobbyists, Max Baucus, Rahm Emmanuel, Rethuglicans, Wendell Potter

Healthcare Reform: What a Week

Billy Tauzin, Broadcatching, GOP, Health Care Debate, Insurance Companies, Malkin, Pharma, Politics, Rick Scott, StephaStabClinton, Tea-Baggers, Town Halls
by mcjoan at D A I L Y  K O S

George_Takei

Mon Aug 10, 2009 at 07:16:03 AM PDT

These are times that try a progressive healthcare blogger’s soul. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a political establishment that looks at the fact that the Bush administration, led by Dick Cheney in every venal step, decided to start torturing people picked up in Afghanistan to amass false confessions about connections between bin Laden and Saddam so that they would have their “justification” for their war on choice, with nothing more than a yawn can report as straight across “news” that Sarah Palin thinks Obama is coming to kill her baby. But it still astounds that this is the new “normal.” Just unfathomable. And that’s what last week was.

The image that will be indelibly linked in my mind I saw in one of the reports on the Rachel Maddow show with video from a townhall meeting held by Rep. John Dingell, and referenced in gdunn’s diary. There’s a young, disabled woman (pictured in the diary), speaking to the group propped up by her crutches, trying to explain what she’s been through since her insurance company dropped her last year and her inability to get coverage now because of her “preexisting condition.” She’s trying to tell her story, and an older woman stands a few rows back from her and screams, her face distorted and ugly in it’s anger and ignorance and selfish extremism, “I shoudn’t have to pay for your health care.” And these are normal, patriotic, “concerned” citizens? The ones abusing disabled people, hanging people in effigy, destroying property, making death threats. (Oh, and also insurance and pharmaceutical industry shills and Republican operatives.) This is political discourse now, and Cokie Roberts says it’s the liberals’ fault. I guess she and Rahm Emanuel have that in common.

That’s the week we had.

Other stuff happened, too. The obscene amounts of money was in the news again. Hmmm, suppose there’s a link between the $1.4 million plus spent per day by industry trying to kill this and the townhall screamers?

Max Baucus set deadline number 578 for when he’d be done with his bill, September 15. Jon Kyl took his turn as the GOP concern troll to say that there’s no way. And to add to the bipartsan fun, Chuck Grassley, in an extreme display of Senate comity and decorum, used his colleague Ted Kennedy’s illness to lie about the proposed public option. So Democrats want to kill granny, Sarah Palin’s kid, and Ted Kennedy, for those of you keeping score at home.

Bipartisan negotiations in the Baucus committee seemingly continue unabated.

Billy Tauzin created a stir when he leaked a White House/Baucus deal with PhRMA that would have blocked proposals in the legislation to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion through price negotiations or rebates. Then it got confusing, with some Dem Senators saying that the White House told them there was no deal, while at the same time the White House was reaffirming it. The week ended with the White House backing out of a chunk of the deal, and with many Dems (those not named Baucus) with a bad taste in their mouths. The most disturbing aspect of this story is the extent to which the White House is using Baucus, knowing what we already know about what is going to be lacking in the Baucus plan: namely, a public option.

This week, the primary media story is likely to continue to be the townhalls, since they’ll make good copy. The behind the scenes story will be the fight for a real public option, and not some watered down co-op system. Stay tuned.

What's Not to Love About Having Our Healthcare Decisions Made by Insurance Company Accountants?

Big Pharma, Birthers, Blanche Lincoln, Charles Grassley, GOP, Health Care Lobbyists, Health Care Reform, Insurance Companies, Kent Conrad, Lynn Samuels, Max Baucus, Salon, Tom Tommorrow

hcttTOM TOMMORROW in Salon

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