The banner made by Dr. Flowers and Dr. Paris that they carried to the Obama meeting site where they were arrested, now due to go on tour around the country.

Photo courtesy of: Jon Flanders

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Obama Should Seize Moment to Push for Medicare for All

Dr. Quentin Young comments on Massachusetts election, next steps for health reform

"President Obama and Congress should seize this moment to change course and re-inspire the U.S. public with a plan that is simple, clear, workable, fiscally responsible, comprehensive and truly universal -- namely, single-payer Medicare for All," said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Young dismissed suggestions by some that the House should adopt the Senate bill as it presently reads, send it to the president's desk, and have Congress improve upon it later. "The Senate bill is rotten," he said. "It's a huge financial handout to the for-profit insurers and big drug companies. If passed, it will still leave at least 20 million uninsured and millions more unable to afford the care they need.

"Yesterday's Supreme Court decision removing bans on corporate contributions in candidate elections will only make this fatally flawed bill even more difficult to improve upon," he said. "It's too laden with concession after concession to the private health industry to serve as a starting point."

"Instead, we need to start anew and build on a system that we know works well, is cost-efficient and that could quickly be extended to cover everybody," Young said. "That's the Medicare program, which was implemented within one year of its enactment in 1965 and now covers about 45 million people, mainly seniors and the totally disabled."

"Extending Medicare to cover the entire population would result in $400 billion savings annually by eliminating the administrative waste -- the unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy -- inflicted on the U.S. economy by the private health insurers," he said. "That would be enough to ensure high-quality coverage for everybody."

Young said it would be a mistake to interpret the election of Republican Scott Brown to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's seat as a rejection by voters of fundamental health reform. Many independents and Democrats voted for Brown or stayed home because of mounting economic insecurity and their belief that the health reform process led by the Democrats had been corrupted by the big insurance and drug companies, he said. Union voters were especially angry with the proposed excise tax on workers' health plans.

"It was more of a protest vote," he said.

Young pointed to a 2008 ballot initiative in 10 legislative districts in Massachusetts, including one that overlaps with Brown's state senatorial district, that asked voters if they support "legislation creating a cost-effective, single-payer health insurance system that is available to all residents, and oppose laws penalizing those who fail to obtain health insurance," i.e. an individual mandate.

"Seventy-three percent of Massachusetts voters in these districts voted for a single-payer program and against the individual mandate, a hallmark of their own state's plan," Young said. "The Massachusetts plan is now in financial trouble. It's fair to assume that those who voted this way in 2008, like many others in exit polls this week, believe the bills in Congress don't go far enough toward real reform."

"Nationwide," he said, "polls show about two-thirds of the U.S. population would favor a Medicare-for-All approach, and a solid majority of physicians now support efforts to establish national health insurance."

Young also pointed to the robust movement in several states, including California and Vermont, where physicians, among others, are pressing for single payer at the state level.

Nearly 1,000 health professional students and their allies rallied on the steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., on Jan. 11, in support of S.B. 810, a single-payer bill that was reintroduced Thursday in the Legislature, he said. Similar bills were approved twice by California lawmakers in recent years, only to be vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In Vermont, some 300 citizens bearing thousands of petition signatures flooded the chambers of the State Capitol in Montpelier on Jan. 12, calling for enactment of a similar proposal there. Many participants said the national bills were completely inadequate to address the state's urgent health care needs, Young said.

A bold policy shift to single payer on the national level is more plausible than many people think, given the public's support for such an approach, he said, and given the Medicare program's "44-year track record of proven success."

Whatever deficiencies the Medicare program presently has could be easily remedied in a streamlined, better-funded single-payer system, he said. "In fact, single-payer Medicare for All would yield enormous efficiencies and savings through measures like bulk buying and negotiated fees, benefiting everyone and making the program sustainable for future generations. It would also be a much-needed boon to our economy."

"The president and Congress, if they truly stand up against the insurance and drug companies and press for single-payer Medicare for All, will find a public and a medical community ready and willing to support them," he said.

Source: Commondreams.org

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Senate Speech Heralds a New Social Movement

By Margaret Flowers and Andy Coates

This week the sincere effort of millions of people across the nation once again proved effective in the face of determined opposition from the White House and Congress, as single payer health reform reached another milestone in its historic journey.

When the Senate initiated its debate on health insurance reform, Senator Bernie Sanders offered a single-payer amendment, with co-sponsors Sherrod Brown and Roland Burris. Initially Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid skipped over it, allowing other amendments to come to the floor instead.

But nationwide events on International Human Rights Day, the delivery of paper “bodies” to the senate offices, non-violent civil disobiedience including nine arrests at Senator Schumer’s office, and hundreds of thousands of emails and phone calls and faxes to the Senate evidently changed Reid’s mind.

When Sanders introduced his amendment the Senator from Oklahoma, Dr. Coburn, rose according to the rules of the Senate to insist that the bill be read in full. It was estimated that reading the 767-page bill would take days, stalling a galloping Senate process.

We wondered: Could this be an unexpected gift? If Senator Lieberman could make an intransigent stand on behalf of the insurance companies, would Sanders make a stand on behalf of the health of the people?

Reading the bill would prompt our movement to swing into action yet again. We would invite the nation to tune in to C-SPAN to hear how a national single payer health system would provide comprehensive high-quality health care to all citizens. Yet Coburn’s maneuver had its effect.

Reid demanded that Sanders withdraw the amendment, for the Senate timetable leading up to Christmas could not be delayed. Besides insurance reform, there was the pressing issue of funding the wars.

Within 3 hours Sanders agreed. In return he got 30 minutes on the Senate floor.

Sanders’ speech was riveting. He spoke the words that we have been waiting to hear for so long. He spoke about the beauty and simplicity of Medicare for All. He spoke about having the courage to stand up to the medical-industrial complex which profits at the expense of human suffering.

Most importantly, Sanders spoke about the national movement for single payer being led by nurses, doctors, medical students, faith and labor organizations and people across the land of all backgrounds and beliefs. He declared that this strong movement is not going away and he announced that we will succeed.

So we will remember December 16th, 2009 as a turning point in the struggle for health care justice. Single payer started this year “off the table.” But the accumulating efforts of millions of people delivered it to the floor of the United States Senate.

To win single-payer health reform it will take many more speeches on the floor of Congress. And the only force that will propel Congress forward is a great social movement. In 2009 we have seen that movement rising up – and getting results.

Every day more people see that an effective and just health system is already at hand: a single-payer national health program modeled on the Medicare system. And every day that the White House and Congress delay single-payer reform, people suffer needlessly and die preventable deaths. Yet the Senate blunders on, with a colossal gift to the insurance industry.

It is time for the health of human beings to prevail. It is time to end the insurance cartel. Please join us as we continue forge the movement that will win Medicare for All.

Onward to single payer.

Margaret Flowers is a pediatrician in Baltimore, co-chair of the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and PNHP Congressional Fellow. Andy Coates is an internist in Albany, secretary of the Capital District (NY) chapter of PNHP and co-chair of Single Payer New York.

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UNCARED FOR ON VETERANS’ DAY

Re-reported, edited with brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Nice holiday speeches but Washington politicians are at heart unconcerned about America's health.

"I feel a little bit like we're debating whether to give aspirin or Tylenol to a patient with breast cancer," Dr Steffie Woolhandler said about health care proposals moving pushed through Congress. "The patient needs surgery," she told interviewer Amy Goodman. "What's being debated in Washington is really Tylenol or aspirin...

"There are so many bad planks. This bill needs to be scratched and we need to start over."

The Democracy Now interview was pegged to a study by Harvard Medical School researchers that found an estimated "2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance and thus had reduced access to care." "More than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008." "More than twice as many as have died(911 as of October 31) since the war began in 2001."

VETERANS uncared for

The risk of dying elevates by about 40 percent among people who have no health insurance. Nationally a little less than 1.5 million veterans are uninsured. This means almost 2,300 veterans die every year due to lack of health insurance...

Many of these veterans would not be helped under the bills before the House and Senate... If they get subsidies at all, the subsidies will be too small to make health insurance affordable. These veterans are mostly working families, who don't have the money to buy private insurance but they have too much money to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA benefits.

… The Veterans Administration (VA) covers members of the armed services who have service-connected injuries (e.g., loss of limb) "[But] Many middle-income vets are not eligible for VA care - and that's who these uninsured veterans are..."

Veterans in middle-income ranges, out of the service for two, three or five years, working but not getting insurance through their work, these veterans could not qualify for VA care.

Moreover, there are a limited number of VA facilities. Though many cities have VA facilities, not all cities have them and many people just cannot get to a VA facility even if they were eligible.

"… The VA is a good system and actually a good safety net - if you can get access to it. Currently, however, there is just not the funding within the VA system to allow coverage of all veterans."

Many veterans "will continue to be uninsured under the House or Senate bills. Even if the bills work as planned - they will leave somewhere between a third and a half of all uninsured people still uninsured in the year 2020."

CARELESS SHIFT of WEALTH

Far from making health care affordable, private insurers, subsidized by taxpayers under legislation moving through Congress are getting millions of mandatory new customers.

"FIVE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS in subsidies to the private health insurance industry will have the effect of making the health insurance industry more powerful, making the health insurance lobby more powerful. Just as they've hijacked this process in Washington, it makes them more able to hijack political processes in the future."

From studies of bankruptcy - 62 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States are due, at least in part, to medical illness or medical bills; patients start their illness with private health insurance but are bankrupted anyway by coverage gaps: co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services - "we know that private health insurance is a defective product."

The House and Senate bills "do nothing to fix private health insurance; they merely make private health insurance mandatory for middle-income working people and force these people to take lots of money out of their pockets to buy this defective product."

Criminalization of health choice - the private health insurance industry's "number one demand was the so-called individual mandate that would make it illegal not to have health insurance. It will become a federal crime to be uninsured.

"If you have private health insurance through your work, and you hate your private health insurance, tough luck; you have to keep that insurance. The mandate means you have to keep it. You can't buy the public option. You probably won't be able to go through the exchange. So they've made private health insurance mandatory - giving them [private health insurers] hundreds of billions in new—mandatory new customers."

Physicians for a National Health Program wrote an "open letter asking President Obama "to Support Single-Payer Health Care." This is an excerpt.

"Democrats propose diverting additional billions to private insurers by requiring middle class Americans to purchase defective policies from these firms - policies with so many gaps and loopholes that they currently leave millions of our insured patients vulnerable to financial ruin.

"Moreover, a 'public plan option' would do little to mitigate the damage of a reform that perpetuates private insurers' dominant role. Even a robust public option would forego 90 percent of the bureaucratic savings achievable under single payer; and a kinder, gentler public option would quickly fail in a health care marketplace where competition involves a race to the bottom, not the top - where insurers compete by NOT paying for care.

"…This kind of public option would amount to a government-run clone of private insurance, reproducing the worst features of private plans."

Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH (co-editor, PNHP Newsletter) is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard and co-director of the Harvard Medical School General Internal Medicine Fellowship program. Dr. Woolhandler has worked as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation health policy fellow at the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Congress (1990-91) and has written extensively on health policy. She is co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and a current member of the group's Board.

Dr. Woolhandler says, "The plight of the veterans epitomizes what happens to working families generally. Working families get caught in the middle-

They can't get Medicaid.
They can't get means-tested VA.
They can't afford private insurance, and
House and Senate bills don't really fix that problem.

Physicians for a National Health Program is "the only national physician organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to implementing a single-payer national health program."

Since 1987 Physicians for a National Health Program has advocated reform in the U.S. health care system. Comprised of 17,000 members and chapters across the United States, Physicians for a National Health Program is a single-issue organization advocating a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health program.

The group's members perform groundbreaking research on the health crisis and the need for fundamental reform, coordinate speakers and forums, participate in town hall meetings and debates, contribute scholarly articles to peer-reviewed medical journals, and appear regularly on media programs advocating for a single-payer system. They work to educate physicians and other health professionals about the benefits of a single-payer system—"including fewer administrative costs and affording health insurance for the 46 million Americans who have none." Members and physician activists work toward a single-payer national health program in their communities.

Source: thepeoplesvoice.org

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Sit-ins call for Medicare for all

As a plethora of “health care reform” bills circulate through the halls of Congress, a new movement is emerging on the streets—taking the fight for health care reform directly to the doors of the health insurance industry giants who, for all too long, have put their profits before people’s care. Using tactics reminiscent of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Mobilization for Health Care for All has launched a “Patients Not Profits” campaign of sit-ins at insurance company offices across the U.S. to demand “Medicare for all.”

Launched at the end of September, when 16 activists were arrested for occupying the lobby of Aetna Inc. in New York to demand that the company approve immediate care for people with critical conditions, this movement has spread through coast-to-coast actions. On Oct. 15, sit-ins took place at offices of major insurers in nine cities. Since Oct. 28 direct actions against the health insurance industry and in favor of a single-payer health care system have been held in many others, including Augusta, Ga.; Columbus, Ohio; Sunrise, Fla.; Newark, N.J.; Seattle; Virginia Beach, Va.; and Warwick, R.I. More are planned through Nov. 4. To date, more than 200 people have risked arrest and the numbers are growing.

On Oct. 29 dozens marched outside the CareFirst office in Baltimore wearing bright yellow T-shirts with the slogan “People Not Profits,” while a smaller group went inside and got arrested. One arrestee was 81-year-old Charles Loubert, who was denied health care several years ago by his insurer. Dr. Margaret Flowers also took an arrest at the CareFirst office, despite the risk of a 6-month jail sentence for violating her probation from a previous arrest.

On Oct. 30 in Louisville, Ky., seven activists occupied the offices and lobby of the Humana Corporation for over 24 hours. They vowed to stay until Humana met their demands.

Outside the Blue Cross Blue Shield building in Philadelphia the same day, nearly 80 protesters picketed and chanted, “Let the corporate giants fall! Medicare for all!” in a spirited demonstration that drew in a number of passersby. Many were young adults from the population sector least likely to have employer-paid insurance. Members of the Student Healthcare Action Network were among 13 people arrested for blocking the building entrance.

Protesters have charged the health insurance industry with crimes including murder, breach of contract, theft and waste of U.S. health care dollars, and subverting democracy by spending huge amounts of health premium money on lobbying and contributing to politicians.

With all the congressional debate over a public option, these sit-ins are driving home the point that the real public option must be Medicare for all—a single-payer plan that cuts out the profits of the insurance company intermediaries.

Under the current system, at least 30 cents out of every dollar spent on health care goes to insurance company profits and administrative waste. According to health industry research firm McKinsey & Co., almost two-thirds of insurance company overhead goes to underwriting, sales and marketing—business costs that would not exist in a single-payer system.

While far more is spent on health care in the U.S. than in any other industrialized country, an estimated 50 million people are not insured and 45,000 die every year for lack of care. While providing everyone health care insurance, the single-payer plan would cut costs by using only one not-for-profit administrator.

The profits of the top 10 health insurance companies went up 428 percent from 2000 to 2007. CEOs of large health insurance companies typically make $7 million to $12 million a year or more in salaries. Aetna’s CEO, Ron Williams, made $24 million last year.

Mobilization for Health Care for All’s Web site notes, “The insurance companies are spending millions to confuse and scare the public to keep us from ending their grip on our health and our money. With tea-bagger town hall protestors and the right-wing noise machine on their side, they’re winning. We can’t let that happen. It’s time to take the fight to the real villain in the health care debate.”

These protests are also motivated by frustration over the slow progress and limited content of the bills in Congress that more and more appear to benefit the health insurance industry while still denying care to the millions in need.

Source: Workers World

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The Fight for Better Health Care

"One of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all proposal is that it is much less complicated than what we are going to end up with in Congress. A single-payer approach saves hundreds of billions of dollars a year because you don’t end up with thousands of different health insurance programs appealing to all different kinds of people and costing a fortune to administer. I am going to continue the fight for single-payer. I am cautiously optimistic that we may end up with legislation that will allow states to go forward with single-payer if they want to."
Bernie Sanders
Source: Senator Sanders Unfiltered

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Health Insurance and Mortality in US Adults

A Harvard study published in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health estimates nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.
The study found a 40 percent increased risk of death among the uninsured. As expected, death rates were also higher for males (37 percent increase), current or former smokers (102 percent and 42 percent increases), people who said that their health was fair or poor (126 percent increases), and those that examining physicians were in fair or poor health (222 percent increases).
Lead author Dr. Andrew Wilper, who worked at Harvard Medical School when the study was done and who now teaches at the University of Washington Medical School, said, "The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors and baseline health. We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes and heart disease-but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications."
Dr. David Himmelstein, study co-author and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, remarked, "The Institute of Medicine, using older studies, estimated that one American dies every 30 minutes from lack of health insurance. Even this grim figure is an underestimate-now one dies every 12 minutes."
A copy of the study is available at:
“Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” Andrew P. Wilper, M.D., M.P.H., Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., Karen E. Lasser, M.D., M.P.H., Danny McCormick, M.D., M.P.H., David H. Bor, M.D., and David U. Himmelstein, M.D. American Journal of Public Health, Sept. 17, 2009 (online); print edition Vol. 99, Issue 12, December 2009.

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