single payer

Yes We Can Save

July 8, 2009

You’ve heard all the good news coming out of Washington. al-PhARMA has generously offered to cut their theft by $80 billion over the next 10 years. The health insurance industry is promising to reduce their greed by 1.5% for the next 10 years. HCA and other the poor hospital corporations (ignore all of those construction […]

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Bait And Switch

July 3, 2009

Apparently lots of people are as gullible as Charlie Brown. How many of you remember the New York Times‘ poll last month? The exact question was, “Would you favor or oppose the government’s offering everyone a government-administered health-insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans?” Seventy-two percent favored such a plan. […]

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Putting The Pieces Together

June 24, 2009

I‘ve written extensively about healthcare reform. Those postings are full of numbers, arguments, observations and such. If your Alzheimer’s is temporarily predominant and you need some refreshing of those details, read or reread some of those articles. This post, based largely on those articles, is just to put all of the various options together in […]

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Take Two Aspirin

June 20, 2009

The President has a headache. His healthcare reform is in trouble. He can’t even get a bipartisan agreement that Dr. Seuss ate green eggs and ham. Two noted health reporters, the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic, this week had major articles marking the difficulties the President’s reform was running […]

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Yes, Virginia, There Is A Difference

June 18, 2009

The headlines say that 73% support a public option as a part of healthcare reform. That sounds good for advocates of reform. There is a problem though. Almost no one cheering this actually understands what a public option would be. There is also the question of a single-payer system. As one of the readers of […]

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It Ain’t No Game

June 16, 2009

A level playing field for healthcare reform is a myth. A public option is a scam. Or, maybe it’s a sham. It’s probably both. I was riding in the car, listening to an interview of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius on the local public radio station. Since I was not taking notes, my recitation of that […]

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Rope-A-Dope

June 10, 2009

Obama wants healthcare reform. I believe him. He says that, if he doesn’t get it this year, he will not get it during his first term. I believe that. Such a situation will inevitably lead to accepting anything that can be portrayed as reform. Put that together with his insistence on bipartisanship and you end […]

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A New, Improved Slingshot

May 14, 2009

Time’s up. The Goliaths of our healthcare system have stepped over the line. They told us how intelligent they think we are. It didn’t sound like a compliment. They told Obama with a straight face that they had a plan to help him get the reform he wants. They had their fingers crossed. They are […]

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Own Your Own Senator

May 11, 2009

Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) is Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The committee has 23 members. Senator Max, as the boss man, has a very high price tag. He has received more money from the healthcare industry than any other Democrat. You don’t want to know how much the entire committee raked in. After all, […]

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Foxes In The Hen House

May 4, 2009

Obama has promised healthcare reform. It seems likely that we actually will get reform. But, reform is a neutral word. The question is: What will the reform look like? Over the past weekend I heard that none of the Congressional committees holding hearings on the subject had scheduled any witnesses who supported a single payer […]

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