Tag Archives: Health Care

Governor’s Debate: Health Care

The Health Care debate between Jack Markell and John Carney started abit late on Friday morning — a good thing, since I was running really late. The auditorium was pretty much full (but not as many folks as at the Education debate), and this crowd was abit more sedate.

The News Journal has written this event up, so I won’t go over all of that ground, but it was interesting to me that Markell was abit more aggressive in this round. He started right out noting that Carney had served on health-care related commissions and task forces for almost a decade, but coverage of Delawareans continues to deteriorate, and costs continue to spiral upward. Markell set up his theme — that the health care situation in DE needed to be dealt with quickly and decisively, and that the era of incremental changes on the way to a larger goal was no longer a functional approach. Carney, then, spent the rest of the debate trying to tell the audience that his plan was not incremental steps — but he couldn’t avoid the step-by-step narrative that he’d already set up. In my opinion, Markell ended up looking like the guy ready to take some political risks to get to long-term solutions, and Carney was extending the work of his commissions and committees. Carney had the advantage, I think, of having many of his colleagues from some of these commissions and committees in the room. Continue reading →

Care Managers (or Why We Need Single-Payer Insurance)

Editors Note: I’ve been so in the weeds that I just got around to reading this excellent Liberalgeek post.

Related Item: Principal (Health Insurance) Financial Group reported Monday that third-quarter operating earnings increased 23 percent to $312.9 million.  The Financial Group is the business unit that figures out how to invest the obscene profits that the Health Insurance unit rakes in.  

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I was visiting a friend this weekend in Baltimore. He has a doctorate in Psychology and he was telling me about a job that he had for a short time when he first got out of school. The title of the job was “Care Manager.” His job, as he explained it was really to be a mis-manager of care. For every claim that comes in, try to find a way to deny it.

It reminds me of the job that the Father in The Incredibles had, denying claims from little old ladies. But this Care Manager position sits in judgment of questions such as:

  • Is the person really suicidal and in need of emergency treatment?
  • Is the person really a danger to themselves and others?
  • Does the addict really need to be in an in-patient program or can they just live at home and go twice a week?
  • Oh, and is there any way that we can claim that this isn’t covered by the insurance?

This is not a job that is designed to ensure proper and appropriate care. It is designed to maximize profits. And if a few sick people off themselves, well they wanted to do that anyway, right?

This is exactly the job that the private healthcare system encourages and almost requires.

Bill Maher has been on a bit of a jag about the past few weeks with the great schtick that the Republicans have going. They yell and bitch and moan about how ineffective, wasteful and destructive government is and then they go and prove their own point. The morons over at FSP are always making this point as a reason to avoid single-payer health insurance. I have news for you guys, the system is broken.

Either we are a nation of competent people that are way smarter than the French, or we are too dumb to build a system that works better than the French system. Which is it?

I am in favor of the free market in things that require free markets. But when it comes to health, defense, social security and a few other markets, it is inappropriate.

Been caught lien, once, when I was 5…..

Like shooting fish in a barrel some days..

I HAVE STRONGLY SUPPORTED THE S-CHIP as a governor, and I have done so as president,” said President Bush at the beginning of a hastily called press conference on September 20.

He was lying.

as governor of Texas, Bush used the legislative calendar to stall two years before implementing the program, then fought to limit the number of children covered. The Texas Legislature meets every other year and had adjourned before Congress enacted and funded the program in 1997. Bush could have signed an executive order and begun enrolling qualified children. Instead, he appointed a committee to study the program, buying time until the next legislative session. When the legislature convened in 1999, Bush recommended implementing the S-CHIP, but with enrollment requirements so stringent that hundreds of thousands of qualified children would have been locked out of the program.