Health care analysis

I'll update this post from time to time with the best analyses I can find on the health care plan recently passed. I opposed the bill, but from the left, believing that we need to cut out the insurance companies from health care with a single-payer system.

Press release from the Physicians for a National Health Program

Support single-payer, not the insurance industry bailout

Here is Kucinich's excellent summary on why the recently passed health care bill is fatally flawed and not a step in the right direction. You can find a summary at http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/11927 . Some other progressive members, like Grijalva from AZ, were considering voting against it but unfortunately did not at this time. If this were a bill that was even a small step in the right direction, I can see how people would want to support it. But, as it stands, it is a capitulation to the health care insurance industry. By including a weak public option, which only a fraction would be eligible, it is essentially a huge bailout of the insurance industry. It subsidizes with billions of taxpayer dollars the inherent waste and high cost of the current employer-based insurance system. It delivers billions of dollars to the insurance companies, strengthening their already gargantuan power. By eliminating the Kucinich Amendment, which would make possible the choice of single-payer at the state level, it codifies the power of the insurance industry in law. Kucinich argued on Democracy Now! that he could not vote in good conscience on a bill that essentially dooms forever the possibility of real health care reform, a single-payer system or some variation that eliminates the source of the problem - for-profit insurance. He also rightly points out that some of the provisions we can support - like a ban against pre-existing conditions and others - can be done in stand-alone bills and not tied to giant taxpayer-supported give-aways to the corporations.

Single-payer Now!

Ralph Nader on health care

"You do not cut deals with the system that needs to be replaced."
--- Ralph Nader

First reaction to the health care proposals

With the passage of the health care bill in the House, more details of the bill have been released. Although the bill appears like an improvement in the short-term, it needs to be analyzed in depth for short-term and long-term results. One thing we know for sure - single-payer health care is a far better option than the Obama 'government-run' health option for a number of reasons. First, single-payer includes everybody right away. In Obama's plan, after 1 trillion dollars get spent over 10 years, 17 million people are still left uninsured. Secondly, the choice to enter the government plan is only for those who do not have health insurance. I will be ineligible, since I already have an employer-based plan. How is that choice? Really, for those who receive health insurance and are unhappy with the current employer-based system, not much will change. (One of the arguments of Michael Moore's movie Sicko is that the current system is not only bad for the uninsured but for those who do have health insurance but get exploited by the insurance companies anyway.)

What's up with health care?

Now that Obama's originally bad health care proposals are threatening to get worse, caused by the health insurance industry's pressure upon Congress to water down the "public option" alternative, I've set out to collect articles on the topic as a resource for myself and my friends.
The presidential candidates' health plans - Milton Fisk (11/08)
The health care cave-in - Robert Reich (5/09)
The retreat from reform - Alan Maass and Helen Redmond (5/09)

Know of any other good articles? I'm currently looking for detailed information on Obama's "public option" insurance plan, a government-run plan available for people to choose as an alternative to private insurance. If this proposal doesn't end up getting watered down by the health insurance industry, I'm still concerned that health insurance would be tied to employment. With that system, I would not have an individual choice to choose the public option, since my employers pay for my health care and it would be up to them to choose. (In some cases, the union can decide.) Is this a a concern? Where is there information on this?