Health Care

Here are the questions. View the tape an let me know in the comments section if Carper's responses pass the smell test. MSNBC GUY: Why shouldn't people believe that your…

Truly shocking news. Health insurers have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers themselves should have paid, according to a report released yesterday by…

Via Balloon Juice. Yes, the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary cost estimates for Senate plans were higher than expected, and caused considerable consternation last week. But the fundamental fact is that…

There are new polling results out from the New York Times that show an overwhelming majority of Americans support a public, Medicare-like option for health care reform. In bad news for Republicans, only 18% trust Republicans to reform health care while 57% trust Democrats. According to this poll even a majority of Republicans want a public option. What are we waiting for?

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

The question was worded “Would you favor or oppose the government’s offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private insurance plans?”

All: 72% favor, 20% oppose, 7% undecided
Republicans: 50% favor, 39% oppose, 11% undecided
Democrats: 87% favor, 9% oppose, 4% undecided
Independents: 73% favor, 22% oppose, 4% undecided

This is a huge majority of people. I sure hope Democrats can find a spine to get real health care reform. I’m getting a bit tired of the Congress thwarting the will of the people. A public option for health care is not controversial! People are not buying the status quo defenders scare tactics about wait times and protecting the profits of those poor, put-upon health insurance executives.

Just a reminder to please contact your friendly local Congressional representatives and let them know you want real health care reform.

See the details here. Make sure to look at the entire thing -- there are great spreadsheets and other data here. But as you listen to the back and forth…

Friday, Geezer asked a very good question that I didn’t have time to get to in the Frank Luntz thread. His question: Why should we be for a non-single-payer “reform” plan?

Before I get to that and ask you guys to weigh in, I want to put up some resources to look at and to think about. These are mostly comparisons of health care systems from industrial countries (and none will take much time to review):

• International comparison of health care plans from NPR.  This is about a year old and very good.
• Another comparison, from Frontline, as part of their Sick Around the World program.
• From the same Frontline Program, a summary of the four basic models of health care coverage systems.
• Also from NPR — they did a major series about a year ago looking at heath care coverage systems from major industrial countries:  Germany, France,  Netherlands, UK, Switzerland, Taiwan, Japan.  Their Health Care page includes more stories from these countries re: care and not all of them (esp. UK) are stories pointing towards a better solution.
• Another chart comparing industrial nations’ health care systems.  This is a pdf.

I include all of this (and these are worthy descriptions and comparisons — no system is perfect and I remind everyone that anecdotes are not data) to broaden abit the scope of the conversation.

Part of the problem in listening to either advocates or critics of single-payer is figuring out what they are talking about.  Are we talking about recreating the entire system as single payer or just the portions that will cover the uninsured or underinsured?  Does that leave for profit insurance companies in place or does if make all of them move to not-for-profit status?  Critics of single payer frequently invoke the UK system as the single payer that advocates want, while spinning out their scary tales of the day.  Advocates almost never make clear the scope of their thinking — especially (as you can see from the resources above) single payer can take multiple forms.

The Public Option that was proposed by the House on Friday is essentially a Medicare for All program.  It would be paid for by premiums from its users, with the government subsidizing premiums for poorer people and families.  This part of the proposal is basically single payer, paid for by premiums.  It will offer insurance to those who don’t have it now and will provide a competitive choice for the rest of us.