Health Care Round-Up
- Paul Krugman points out that the talk about the cost of health care reform leaves out the fact that the Bush tax cuts (which went overwhelmingly to the wealthiest Americans) cost more. For that matter, so did the Iraq war.
- At Daily Kos, DemfromCT runs through a mass of polling showing the popularity of a public health insurance option.
- Digby:
Other countries have systems that prioritize health care treatment on the basis of need — a triage system. We prioritize health care on the basis of who can pay. And in the most perverse form of rationing there is, we make the sickest people have the most difficult time getting access to health care. (The sickest, after all, can’t hold down a job, so the employer based system doesn’t really work for them, at least not in the long term.)
- Over at the HCAN blog, Jason Rosenbaum assesses the House health reform legislation and concludes “It’s excellent.”
It adds up to a bill that works. It preserves choice, so people can choose the plans and doctors that work for them. It controls costs, by establishing a strong public health insurance option to compete with private insurers and a capping personal expenses so they don’t break the bank. And it extends coverage by putting insurance in reach of everyone as well as asking employers to share in the responsibility of paying for care.
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is asking the state for permission to raise rates for 400,000 policy holders. Because more expensive health insurance is just what people dealing with Michigan’s economy need.
I love that the “fiscal conservatives” all coming crawling out when there’s finally an initiative that will help working families, like health care reform. Suddenly, the people who didn’t bat an eye at huge deficits caused by tax cuts for the rich are very, very concerned about some money on working families.
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I love that the “fiscal conservatives” all coming crawling out when there’s finally an initiative that will help working families, like health care reform. Suddenly, the people who didn’t bat an eye at huge deficits caused by tax cuts for the rich are very, very concerned about spending some money on working families.
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I was checking out “medpage”, a web page for health professionals, and there was a poll about the AMA’s response to the Obama proposal. You would have thought that Obama was Karl Marx by the way some of those comments went! It was stunning. I have a hard time believing that doctors would be that far against a public insurance choice to bring insurance companies in line! Sometimes I wonder if people are paid to plant those ideas around the internet.
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