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George Bush's Gift to the SinglePayer Movement

Posted by Shum Preston on July 19, 2007 - 12:24pm

George Bush has spoken: no guaranteed healthcare, not for kids, not for nobody.  Thank you Mr. Bush for putting your unpopularity behind the private insurance sector--just as their "individual mandate" laws in Massachusetts are running into trouble.  Bush's veto provides the single-payer movement with the greatest strategic opening in memory.
 



It was on ideological grounds that George Bush vetoed the expansion of Medicaid to more kids: "My concern is that when you expand eligibility . . . you're really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government."

We have the least popular President in a generation putting his moral weight behind the private insurance companies—and opposing the idea of society guaranteeing healthcare to all kids, and adults.

In the words of Pink, thank you, Mr. President.  This is our opportunity to sharply frame the debate: throw patients to the insurance industry wolves or fight for guaranteed healthcare?  Trust in George Bush and Blue Cross…or the medical systems working in every other industrialized nation in the world?  The more nurses, patients, and other guaranteed healthcare advocates can point out the links between Bush and the private insurance industry, the better off our movement is.  It’s a tragic veto, but a strategic gift we should all exploit.

Speaking of wolves, count Ron Wyden in: “’We’re right at the cusp of an ideological truce on health care,’ declares a beaming Ron Wyden.”  His truce is a massive expansion of the role of private insurers through a legal mandate to become their customer.  In other words… to the ideology of George Bush and Mitt Romney

Ironically, the original individual mandate bill, RomneyCare in Massachusetts, is having trouble and legislators are rushing to tinker. The big problem? “Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray recently warned: ‘If we do not constrain health-care costs, the system we worked so hard to create and implement will collapse.’”  It is, of course, impossible to make the economics of healthcare work when you use 30% of care dollars to prop up an unnecessary private insurance sector middleman.  That’s why health care providers in the Bay State are leading the fight against the program, with a petition saying, “the state is offering plans with skimpy coverage and little real health security…”

 Elsewhere, Larry Summers shares a dark vision of how we’ll get to guaranteed healthcare: “Incrementalism is not enough, we need full and fundamental reform. But I suspect that Congress will do incremental reform for a while until it fails, and crisis forces radical change.”  Let's work to skip the even-worse crisis part, because that's a code word for patient suffering.

Finally, medical students are among the nation’s most committed healthcare reformers, and one drew up this great animation on single-payer.

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The revolt has begun in MA against the individual mandate law!

Submitted by Ann Eldridge Malone, RN (not verified) on August 1, 2007 - 9:29pm.

"Enforcing the Individual Mandate"

The below info is copied from the NPR affiliate in Boston WBUR's blog on MA HC Reform called "CommonHealth". Things are getting really disgusting with how this mandate thing is playing out.

Many people in MA, mostly nurses and patients but increasingly joined by others, are banding together to launch a revolt to reject the mandate, bring it down, and demand that it be replaced with streamlined single payer guaranteed healthcare.

Our comments follow the original "CommonHealth" post below.

To see the MA Dept of Revenue forms that are being created to "Enforce the Mandate" you need to go to the wbur blog site here
http://www.wbur.org/weblogs/commonhealth/?p=174#comments

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This post by a wbur reporter (likely martha bebinger, who runs the CommonHealth blog):

Enforcing the Individual Mandate
Posted by CommonHealth, Sunday, July 29th, 2007

Some of you have asked how the state will know who does and who does not have health insurance. Everyone who files taxes will be asked if they had coverage as of the end of the tax year. So if you expect to comply with the insurance requirement, you have until Dec. 31st (although you probably have to apply at least a couple of weeks before that to have a policy in place on 12/31) You will be asked to verify that you have insurance on this form (draft version) . It is called a “Schedule HC” and will be filed with your state tax return.

If you have private insurance (Blue Cross, Harvard Pilgrim, Tufts, etc.) your insurer will send you a form called a 1099-HC (Health Care) sometime early next year. Here’s a sample of that form. You will use information from the “1099-HC” to fill out the “Schedule HC.”

These are in draft versions of both forms. Instructions for filling out the “Schedule HC” are not out yet. The Department of Revenue is taking comments on the forms at this address… fordp@dor.state.ma.us.

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Comments

* Pat posted:
Comment posted July 30th, 2007 at 11:23 am

Or just become a Christian Scientist. But be warned that you will be fined if you subsequently pay for any health care out of your own pocket. So, the State will fine you if you change your religion or beliefs… another violation of the Constitution. And talk about a disincentive to keep people away from getting the care they need. Another black mark for an evil law.

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* Norma posted:
Comment posted July 30th, 2007 at 11:47 am

this is the United States of America and to extort money from citizens is a crime. look it up

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* Ron Norton posted:
Comment posted July 30th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

Resist the mandate. This tragic farce can only succeed if we go along like sheep, filling out their forms and buying these worthless policies. Know that by resisting you will have to pay your fine, but it still sends a message. Then let’s take back the government by voting every scoundrel who sold us out to the insurance companies out of office.

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* Pat posted:
Comment posted July 31st, 2007 at 2:34 pm

“Then let’s take back the government by voting every scoundrel who sold us out to the insurance companies out of office.”

Don’t just vote yourself. Tell everyone you meet what they have done to us and what exactly they are forcing people to pay for. And then tell them how this law got created in secret meetings without transparency in a process that would make Dick Cheney proud. Then tell people that it was all based on a lie, that the Feds didn’t require everyone to have insurance, they were just requiring that the money that was coming in for Medicaid should be spent to subsidize insurance for the poor.

Print out flyers about every representative in your reach and post them on utility poles to tell everyone that these jerks, Republicans and Democrats alike, are a pack of corrupt thieves and that Mitt Romney was a carpet bagger who passed a law that would only take effect after he already fled the State.

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* Ann E Malone, RN, MSN posted:
Comment posted July 31st, 2007 at 10:44 pm

I was so disheartened and disgusted to read the title of this entry on a earlier visit to the blog that I could not read the content until now. And now I am furious. Absolutely furious. I am sure that MANY other people are as well.

I opened the links to look at the “Draft DOR documents” and I am outraged beyond words that the so called “leaders” of our Commonwealth have put on this wasteful, intrusive and HARMFUL course of so-called “reform”.

I hardly know where to begin in blasting this infuriating farce of a “reform” law! What we needed is less bureaucracy — bureaucracy impedes cost effectiveness, it impedes people getting the care they need, it impedes the quality of care — and what this law forces down all our throats while taking out of our purses and wallets to pay for it is more and more and more bureaucracy!!!

As a nurse I take very seriously my legal and ethical professional duties to advocate for my patients and for the communities that I serve. as a member of our society I have similar civic and moral obligations.

For these reasons I am obligated to do everything in my power to stop this harmful mandate from rolling out (more apt to say “rolling over”) thousands of people in my community.

The state postcards that were sent out informing individuals of the mandate are already traumatizing many who are trying to live on modest incomes in this state.

Healthcare is an essential safeguard of life and dignity and as such it is an essential human service and a public good. Healthcare most certainly IS NOT A COMMODITY. But this fake reform law tries to treat it as such.

As a state and a nation we can do SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS; now is the time for the good people of Massachusetts to step up and carry this issue forward. — It is a human rights, a civil rights, and an economic rights issue of urgent concern. — Thank you.

Please visit these websites to learn more about state health reform work that is based on healthcare being for people, not for corporate profits.

http://www.DefendHealth.org
and
http://www.MassCare.org/about

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Socialism is a sickness which destroys ever society it infects

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on August 6, 2007 - 5:36pm.

One wonders if triple-chinned filmmaker Michael Moore, when his own arteries finally clog shut from trying to personally rid the world of donuts, will seriously consider a Cuban hospital for his bypass surgery? Pinkco is just another left wing propaganda stunt. If you made the wrong chooses in life(didn't choose to get a good education , choose to take drugs, commit crimes, had more children then you could afford, purchased more of a home then you could afford, refuses to work hard) then don't expect me to pay your way.

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To Anonymous who wrote: Socialism is a sickness which destroys..

Submitted by Sally Hampton (not verified) on August 16, 2007 - 1:29pm.

You have it backwards. Please explain why our healthcare system under corporate control is so expensive and such a dismal failure and how those countries with socialized medicine or national single-payer insurance have far healthier populations for billions less than what we pay? I suppose you would also like to do away with our socialized fire and police departments? Perhaps turn them over to companies like Enron? We actually have national single-payer insurance here - it's called Medicare - and it has done a better and more efficient job than our private insurance despite under funding and continual attacks by the private insurance lobby.

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