Candidate for 17th Congressional District......Dan Moadus

[irishbobcat]

The hijacking of health reform

By Susanne L. King, M.D.
The Berkshire Eagle
Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Headlines in the Berkshire Eagle recently proclaimed that Berkshire Health Systems (BHS) is cutting the equivalent of 65 full-time jobs, and will lose $3 million this year. This is neither good for employment nor for the health of our population in the Berkshires. The culprits are the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, the programs that cover 70 percent of the BHS population.

BHS president David Phelps reports that financial problems at Berkshire Medical Center have been aggravated by Massachusetts health care reform. While more patients have enrolled in insurance plans, the reimbursements for these plans are similar to Medicaid rates, which don't actually cover the cost of care.

As the major non-profit provider of health care for the Berkshire community suffers financially, the for-profit insurance industry, (which only administers the funds, and provides no actual health care services), is raking in the money. In the current economic and health care crisis, United Health Group, America's largest health insurance company, enjoyed an increase of 8 percent in revenues for the first quarter of 2009, with a net profit of $984 million. There is something wrong when the administrators of the health care funds are making exorbitant profits, while the providers of the health care services are struggling to remain solvent.

The private for-profit insurance industry diverts roughly $400 billion/year from medical services. In addition, the Senate Commerce Committee recently released a staff report about how health insurers have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers should have paid themselves.

Will the current health care reform being formulated in Washington address these issues? Not a chance, even if President Obama gets a public plan option into the reform legislation. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a founder of the 16,000-member Physicians for a National Health Program, stated in her testimony to Congress: "Insurers compete by not paying for care: by denying payment and shifting costs onto patients or other payers. These bad behaviors confer a decisive competitive advantage. A public plan option would either emulate them - becoming a clone of private insurance - or go under. A kinder, gentler public plan option would quickly fail in the marketplace, saddled with the sickest, most expensive patients, whose high costs would drive premiums to uncompetitive levels."

In addition, the overhead for a public plan option would be higher than for Medicare, which automatically enrolls seniors at 65, deducts premiums from Social Security checks, and does no marketing. The administrative costs for the whole health care system would remain astronomical, as health care providers would continue to struggle with mountains of paperwork and denials of payment from multiple insurance companies. A public plan option would not curb the escalating costs of new technology, and would not address variability in the quality of care.

The only way to attain universal health care coverage, while containing escalating health care costs and standardizing quality of care, is to eliminate the insurance companies, and establish a single-payer "Improved Medicare for All" program. Hospitals, doctors and other providers must be adequately reimbursed for their medical services. This would be possible if the profiteering and waste of the health insurance industry were eliminated, and those health care dollars went to the actual provision of medical care. And hospitals could be paid like fire departments, with a single monthly check and little billing. There is federal legislation for a national health program in both houses of Congress, John Conyers bill, HR 676, and Bernie Sanders bill in the Senate, S.703.

Last year a survey of doctors showed that 59 percent support a national health plan, up from 49 percent in 2002. (Only one in five doctors are in the American Medical Association, which opposes a national health plan). So why is single-payer health care reform "off the table"' as Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, said, before he threw eight single-payer advocates, including several doctors, out of a "public roundtable discussion" and had them arrested. Could it be related to the more than $1 million in donations Baucus received from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries in the 2008 election year cycle?

Wendell Potter, a former health insurance industry insider has this to say, ". . . big for-profit insurers have high-jacked our health care system and turned it into a giant ATM for Wall Street investors, and . . . the industry is using its massive wealth and influence to determine what is (and is not) included in the health reform legislation members of Congress are now writing."

What is going on in Washington right now is not in the best interests of patients, or the doctors and hospitals that serve them. Patients have no lobbyists speaking for their interests in Congress. Most doctors do not want the AMA to speak for them. Contact your congressmen and ask them to sponsor HR 676 and Bernie Sander's bill. (On his Web site, Sanders also has an online petition you can sign and pass along to your friends).

Susanne L. King, M.D., is a Lenox-based practitioner.

[irishbobcat]

Keep living in denial, Dan......Our health care system is broke.......and so is your campaign.

Single-payer is the only answer........

[Dan Moadus]

I can not imagine anyone not agreeing that we have the best health care in the world. It certainly has it flaws and shortcomings but it far surpasses anything in existence.

Detractors point to the uninsured, which they claim is approximately 47 million people. According to census data and other reliable sources, about 10 million of the uninsured are not even Americans, but people who come here illegally. Nearly 9 million consist of people who make between $50,000 and $75,000 a year who can afford insurance but choose to spend their money on other things. It is also estimated that fully 45 percent of those uninsured are people moving between jobs, who expect to regain coverage as they transition to new jobs.

Subtracting non citizens, and those who could afford insurance but choose not to purchase it, leaves about 20 million, or about 7 percent of our population. I certainly can not support upending the entire health care system just to insure coverage for 7 percent of our population.  We could just write checks to pay for their health care needs at a fraction of what the costs will be of a government funded and managed system.

I favor market based solutions that foster competition between insurers as well as providers. We should also help those who want to go into the medical profession by making sure they can afford the necessary education.

Though it did not get enacted, at least the plan put forward during the Clinton Administration, was developed and debated for months. This current Congress is racing ahead with its health care plans at a breath taking speed virtually insuring that any plan will be haphazardly constructed. Considering that our current system has served us for at least a century, I think we should be able to take our time on this issue so we don't worsen things.

And finally, I will support no plan unless Congress itself accepts it as their plan. Any plan that isn't good enough for them isn't good enough for the American people.

[Dan Moadus]

Tim Ryan appeared on the Matt Patrick show in Akron today. Patrick asked him, "Polls indicate that your constituents are not in favor of the health care bill being considered in Congress, will you still vote for it?"
Ryan answered "Yes", but added that he felt that his constituents really don't understand the importance of it.

Please visit:  http://www.danmoadus.org/

[Dan Moadus]

That's very funny Rick. Though you said it in jest, others are deadly serious.  Fortunately, I think they are still in the minority.

[Rick Rowlands]

But Dan.... you know its just not FAIR that you have a job when this poor sap next to you doesn't.  We have decided that your savings, assets and investments are more than you need to live on, and given your rather short remaining life expectancy we must take a good part of what you have and give to that fellow.   And Dan we don't want to hear that you worked hard for what you have.  It isn't this guy's fault that he never applied himself, if only we had the money that we said that we needed for his education perhaps he would have learned how to take care of himself.

After all its only FAIR! 

[Dan Moadus]

fairness breeds greater freedom for all......

Not if fairness consists of taking from one man, what he has earned, and giving it to another. No freedom in that.

[irishbobcat]

fairness breeds greater freedom for all......

[sfc_oliver]

Fairness to whom? To the lazy? Or to the guy who busts his butt to make a decent living? Again we are not all equal except under law. Financially you get what you work for not what Big Brother gives you.
And to me that's fair.

[irishbobcat]

with fairness comes freedom.....

[Dan Moadus]

Just wondering Dennis. Which do you think, we in America should value more, freedom, or fairness?

[Towntalk]

Life isn't fair, and you more than anyone else should know that.

Was your dismissal as a school principal fair?

Was your son's disability fair?

Life has a way of throwing raw deals our way, and I know of nothing that the Green Party can do to prevent them no matter how hard they try.

I would like nothing more than to live in an area of 100% clean air in a pristine forest, drinking crystal clear water out of a babbling brook and looking out my front door see beauty all around me, absent hundreds of thousands of pages of government regulations dictating my life from the moment I awake until I lay my head down for a good nights sleep.

I would like nothing more than to walk out to a garden briming with all sorts of fresh vegetables free of contamination, and free of all the bugs that damage crops, but I would not want some stranger dictating to me how I should care for that garden waving a fist full of regulations in my face.

I would like nothing better than to remain as healthy as I was fifty years ago and never grow old, but that's not possable unless the Green Party has found the Fountain of Youth and can guarintee me that it is both real and 100% pure.

[sfc_oliver]

Ah I knew that the gays would be next.

Up until the last 20 years or so Being Homosexual was defined as being a sexual deviant. So terribly sorry if I haven't kept up with the times.

Wasn't it called "newspeak" in George Orwells's 1984?

My Gay Stepson accepts my feelings and beliefs I wonder why heterosexual progressives do not?

At any rate Dennis this is an opinion which I share a large percentage of the country. Even many of your own. And some Conservatives disagree with me.

Funny thing about opinions when you have first hand knowledge and experience about the subject. People with intelligence tend to actually listen to you.
Gay Stepson and 22 years in the Military. Not just an opinion but an informed opinion. Doesn't mean it's right, but at least I've been there.

[irishbobcat]

Sarge...you still believe gays should not be in the military. You are a bigot and you discriminate.

[irishbobcat]

You simply can not pick a city, then cite it as a place where people die of cancer more than the national average. That was said of Girard as well, but it was studied and proved not true. The sky is always falling for liberals, er, excuse me, "progressives". Like the coming ice age of the 70's, or the hole in the Ozone layer, or acid rain, or bird flu. You just can not accept that living is dangerous, and life is not fair. Sit back and relax; no one gets out of this alive anyhow.