Tag: Health Care
Public Option Health Care – It’s On!
Kudos to the House! The Democratic Party showed on Friday what it’s capable of when led by the majority of its members rather than its conservative wing. In stark contrast to Senate Democrats, who spent the week backpedaling on reform, unified House Democrats unveiled a draft health care overhaul bill jointly endorsed by three powerful […]
Frank Luntz Tells Them What to Say — Health Care Edition
Everyone who has paid attention to politics since Bill Clinton knows the name of Frank Luntz. He is a GOP pollster whose specialty is messaging. As in finding the words that either make it easier for people to emotionally engage on a position. Key to this effort is that truth or accuracy or anything near […]
The Bankrupt Rhetoric of Rationing
Health care rationing that is. David Leonhardt at the NYT has another Must Read article detailing all of the ways that health care is rationed in the US. Today, I want to try to explain why the case against rationing isn’t really a substantive argument. It’s a clever set of buzzwords that tries to hide […]
Health Insurance Companies Always Win
Which is the basic problem, since insurance is really legalized gambling. Whether it’s your house, health or car, you’re paying (betting) money in the hopes you never cash in on your investment. Insurance companies are betting on the same thing, especially since they get your money up front. And once they have your money they […]
Some Statistics on Health Care
I found these statistics in this great diary at Daily Kos. Mitch McConnell compared our health care system with Great Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Below is how we stack up against these 3 countries, all of which have some form of universal health care. First, let’s look at per capita health care spending in […]
U.S. Health Care Doesn’t Measure Up
Can we please drop all this We’re #1 nonsense when it comes Health Care. Seriously, we have nothing to brag about. Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This report—an update to two earlier editions—includes data from surveys […]
Give the People What They Want
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwSpepjnpWQ[/youtube] Another very interesting poll is from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. (Excerpts below the jump are from the full report in pdf at the link.)
President’s Town Hall Meeting on Health Care
President Obama went to Wisonsin this week to conduct a Town Hall discussing efforts to fix the health care system. This is abit over an hour long, but worth watching if you’ve only seen clips (the one where he gives the young woman a note for school seemed to be the news): [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvFqTVal_f0[/youtube] I hope […]
Call Carper’s Office
Getting good healthcare reform is going to be one helluva fight. The “public option” is one of the most difficult parts of the plan. A good public option will help reduce healthcare costs by bargaining with providers and the for-profit companies are already mobilizing the opposition. So they’re pulling out all the stops — pushing […]
One Medical Condition Away From Bankruptcy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday. More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, […]
Pop Quiz
The chart below shows the demographics of uninsured Americans. Can anyone tell me which age group has the best coverage, and why? Hint: This group also has the most health care needs. (h/t Yglesias) The next chart I want to see is the one that compares Americans to members of Congress.
The Cost Culture of Health Care Delivery
This is a Must Read article by Atul Gawande at the New Yorker is worth spending some time with today. It is really difficult to excerpt anything here, but it is just that good. He gets at many of the real policy and practice questions that need to be thought about as we talk about […]
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