Tag: Health

A New Health Debate

Sharpening the emerging debate over how to reshape the country’s healthcare system, the major group representing insurers unveiled a proposal Wednesday for covering all Americans in a more centralized insurance market.

The plan offered by America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group representing companies that together insure more than 200 million people, comes a decade and half after the industry helped kill the last major healthcare reform campaign — pushed early in the Clinton administration.

The proposal for a form of universal insurance coverage reflects the intensifying interest among groups like insurers, businesses and healthcare providers in having an active role in shaping the reform effort.

AHIP would require all Americans to get coverage, a new mandate that Obama rejected during the presidential campaign.

In exchange for such a mandate, insurers would agree to longtime demands from consumer advocates that they no longer reject people with preexisting medical conditions.

The group is urging Congress to set up an advisory organization to identify ways to cut the increase in healthcare costs by 30% over the next five years.

Potentially most controversial, however, is the insurance industry’s call for a new “portable health plan” that would not be subject to the minimum coverage standards set by individual states.

Many states require insurers to cover myriad services such as cancer screenings and obstetric care. Some also guarantee patients the right to an independent medical review if an insurer denies coverage.

These guys are trying to head the health care debate off at the pass and I will bet the the Repubs will be all over this plan, sounds like a plan that Conservs can support, but does little to help people and their healthcare problems.  It will only help the Insurance companies retain their obscene profits with little benefit outlay.

Gulf War Syndrome Is Real

Ya think!  And it only took them 15+ years to come to this decision. To call it Pathetic is being kind.

A congressionally mandated scientific panel has concluded that Gulf War syndrome is real and still afflicts nearly a quarter of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 conflict, according to a report released Monday.

The report broke with most earlier studies by concluding that two chemical exposures were direct causes of the disorder: the drug pyridostigmine bromide, given to troops to protect against nerve gas, and pesticides that were widely used — and often overused — to protect against sand flies and other pests
The report bolstered the hopes of thousands of U.S. and allied veterans who have struggled to have their varied neurological symptoms, including memory loss, concentration problems, rashes and widespread pain, recognized by the government.

The new report is the product of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, which was chartered by Congress because many members thought that veterans were not receiving adequate care. On the 15-member committee appointed in 2002, scientists made up about two-thirds and the rest were veterans.

Several reports had already been issued by the prestigious Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, blaming stress and other unknown causes for the soldiers’ symptoms.

The new report cites dozens of research studies that have identified “objective biological measures” that distinguish veterans with the illness from healthy controls.

The major causes of the disorder appear to be self-inflicted. Pyridostigmine bromide was given to as many as half of the troops in the fear that the Iraqis would unleash chemical warfare against them.

According to the report, at least 64 pesticides containing 37 active ingredients were used during the war. They were sprayed not only around living and dining areas, but also on tents and uniforms, White said.

There was less evidence to support a link to the U.S. demolition of Iraqi munitions near Khamisiyah, which may have exposed about 100,000 troops to nerve gases stored at the facility, according to the panel.

The panel said it could not rule out a link between the illness and exposure to oil well fires and multiple vaccinations. But it could find no evidence linking it to depleted uranium shells, anthrax vaccine and infectious diseases.

In addition to increased rates of memory loss, fatigue and pain, Gulf War veterans have higher rates of brain cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, the panel also noted.

It took Congress 15+ years to have this study…..but it takes them about a day to give themselves a pay hike…..priorities are not important to these parasites.

Is The Government Doing Its Part?

Excerpts from an article written by staffers of politicalaffairs.net
The US government has failed to live up to the expectations of its citizens regarding the provision of basic needs, a new international poll released this week showed.

According to the results of the survey conducted by World PublicOpinion.org this summer, American respondents to the poll by high margins stated they believe the US government has a large role to play in the provision of basic food needs, education, and health care.

Almost three in four Americans said the US government has a responsibility to help ensure that people are able to meet their food needs. Almost half, however, indicated that the US government failed to meet these needs “at all” or “very well.”

Even more Americans agreed that the US government is responsible to providing access to education. According to the survey, more than 80 percent of Americans believed the government should play a role in providing education. Only six in 10 Americans felt the government adequately accomplished the task.

On the issue of health care, Americans expressed the most concern about the government’s responsibility and its job performance. Almost eight in 10 Americans said the government is responsible for providing this basic need, but only three in 10 gave it good marks for its role in this.

Overall, American opinions on these three areas of concern reflect, more or less, typical opinions on the role of government globally. The poll showed, however, wide variations among people from different countries on how well their governments lived up to that responsibility.

Overall, respondents expressing the highest levels of satisfaction with their government’s performance in meeting such needs are found in China, Great Britain, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories. The lowest levels are found in Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, and Nigeria.

American responses to the survey expressed the third largest amount of dissatisfaction with the government’s role in the provision of health care. While citizens of China, Palestine, and Indonesia expressed greater satisfaction on this issue than Americans by large margins, only Russians, Ukrainians, and Argentinians expressed more disapproval.

Several Points To Consider

A vote for McCain, acoording to McCain, would be a “vote to create wealth not redistribue it.”

Way cool only I have a slight problem with that.  I ask how many working class people moved into the catagory of wealthy in the past several years?  How many people were removed from poverty?  Who creates the wealth during a Repub admin?

I believe the answer to those questions are.  1–less than 1% became wealthy, 2–about 7% more people entered into poverty and 3–the wealthy created more wealth for themselves.  So where would a vote for McCain help everyone create wealth?  He is correct that wealth will be created, but only by the wealthy for the wealthy.

Another point–With Obama’s health care proposal one would have to wait in long lines to get, say, a heart transplant.  Sorry, to tell you thgis, but there is already a line for the transplant, any transplant.  Sad part is now, if you cannot come up with the cash, you are skipped in favor of someone with the cash.  It is BS.  If you step in crap, call it by its name–CRAP!

McCain’s plans sound like a dream come true–but not once has he told me how he will provide all this success if he is elected.

US Infant Mortality Rate

A report issued Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documents how the infant mortality rate in the United States is growing in relation to other countries. The study, “Recent Trends in Infant Mortality in the United States,” found that at least 28 other countries now have lower death rates for infants in the first year of life.

The US’s relative position has declined steadily. In 1960, it had the 12th lowest infant mortality rate, but by 1990 had dropped to 23rd place, and by 2004—the latest year of the CDC’s comparative world figures on living standards—the US ranked 29th. The most recent study, published in July and titled “The Measure of America,” estimated that the US is now in 34th place.

The CDC report found that there was no improvement in the incidence of US infant deaths between 2000 and 2005, a “plateau in the US infant mortality rate represent[ing] the first period of sustained lack of decline in the US infant mortality rate since the 1950s.” This “has generated concern among researchers and policy makers,” the report noted.

For the year 2000, the infant mortality rate was 6.89 per 1,000, a rate that remained stagnant for five years before declining slightly to 6.71 between 2005 and 2006.

Why Obama’s Health Plan Is The Better

Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain have been going head to head on the topic of health care for months upon months now.

One thing is beginning to grow very clear though, and it is that Obama has a more clear-cut, focused plan to fix health care over the long-run.

Under the McCain health plan, health benefits are going to be taxed.  He wants to get rid of tax breaks for employer-sponsored health care, and instead give tax credits to people.

Individuals are going to be receiving $2,500 tax credits, while families willl get $5,000.

Obama has attacked this time and time again, mainly due to the fact that health insurance is usually much higher than those tax credits in terms of cost.

The Obama plan focused more on employer-based health insurance.  He wants medium and large companies to either provide health care coverage, or to pay to help give health care coverage to the uninsured.

Studies have shown that over the long run, the Obama plan appears to be far superior.

We will just have to wait for Nov. 4th to see who believes who……with the economy in the crapper…health care may not be as important as it was 6 months ago to the voter.

Just The Facts On The 2 Health Plans

Everybody is talking about health care and what the candidates will do to help Americans get the care they need and desperately deserve.  Here are the plans of both candidates put as simply as possible.

MCCAIN

OVERALL. Begin taxing employer-sponsored health benefits as income, instead providing a tax credit of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to increase incentives for insurance coverage. Contain costs through payment changes to providers and tort reform.

INSURANCE POOLS. Work with states to create a federally supported Guaranteed Access Plan for people denied coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions. Financial assistance would go to those below a certain income leve

CHANGES TO PRIVATE INSURANCE. Promote competition by allowing insurance to be sold across state lines. Encourage multiyear insurance products.

COST CONTAINMENT. Adopt malpractice reforms that limit frivolous lawsuits and excessive damages. Promote less expensive alternatives such as walk-in clinics in retail outlets. Invest in prevention and care of chronic illnesses. Increase competition by permitting the sale of nationwide insurance not regulated by states.

COST OF THE REFORMS. $1.3 trillion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center; campaign says cost containment measures will pay for it.

OBAMA

OVERALL. Require that health insurance be provided to all children, and require all employers to offer health benefits or contribute to a new public program. Create the National Health Insurance Exchange, through which small businesses and individuals without access to other public or employer-based programs could enroll in the new public plan or in approved private plans.

INSURANCE POOLS. Require participating insurers to offer coverage on a guaranteed issue basis.

CHANGES TO PRIVATE INSURANCE. Prohibit insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Children up to age 25 could continue family coverage through their parents’ plan.
COST CONTAINMENT. Invest $50 billion toward adoption of electronic medical records. Promote competition by regulating the portion of premiums that must be paid out in benefits. Promote generic drugs and repeal the ban on direct price negotiation between Medicare and drug companies. Require hospitals and providers to publicly report measures of health care costs and quality.

COST OF THE REFORMS. $1.6 trillion over 10 years, according to the Tax Policy Center; campaign estimates $50 to $65 billion per year when phased in. Much of financing expected to come from system savings; additional revenue to come from discontinuing tax cuts for those with incomes over $250,000.

There you go Irene, take your pick on which will best suit your family.

Doctors Pick Obama’s Health Plan

While the looming economic recession may have displaced the country’s broken health care system and the Iraq war as the top concern for Americans in recent weeks, universal, affordable access to health care remains a vital issue for voters. Many groups from the labor movement and health care advocates even to the Obama campaign have linked the need for health care reform to economic recovery.

This past week more than 5,000 physicians endorsed Barack Obama’s plan for health care reform. In a press statement, Doctors for Obama-Biden 2008 described the Obama plan as “the first step in ensuring that all Americans have access to a quality, affordable and secure health care.”

With skyrocketing costs totaling at least $2 trillion annually, 45 million uninsured Americans and many millions more with inadequate health care coverage, health care is an immediate issue for most people. “Furthermore,” the statement read, “the on-going fiscal crisis gripping the nation makes the need for reforming the health care system even more compelling.”

Doctors are backing Obama because in addition to the decline in affordable access, the quality of health care is also suffering. Emergency rooms are overcrowded and funding for research and development for serious illnesses has dried up.
Both the Economic Policy Institute and a separate study published in Health Affairs have indicated that under McCain’s plan as many as 27 million Americans would lose their employment-based health insurance and be forced to deal alone with private insurers for expensive and often inadequate health care coverage.

Candidates And Health Care

This is a piece written by Perry Bacon Jrin The Trail In WaPo
Barack Obama and John McCain are both proposing more than $100 billion a year in spending for health care, but the candidates’ plans have vastly different goals, and vastly different outcomes. New studies from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and the policy journal Health Affairs suggest that Obama’s proposal would eventually cover more than 34 million of the roughly 47 million Americans currently without insurance, while McCain’s would cover at best 5 million uninsured.

Obama’s plan relies on a variety of measures to reduce the number of uninsured, such as increasing the number of people in programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, requiring all children to have insurance and offering subsidies for people who cannot currently afford insurance.

Obama’s plan was crafted with the intention of creating universal health insurance, although both studies suggest some people would remain uninsured. McCain, meanwhile, touts his plan as one that will rely more on the consumer market to reform health care.

Currently, the value of a person’s health care plan is not taxed, creating essentially a subsidy by the government for health care. McCain would tax health benefits while creating a $5,000 tax credit — $5,000 for families or $2,500 for individuals — to subscribe for insurance coverage. The studies assume that millions of Americans will use this credit to purchase health care and that some businesses will drop employees from their health insurance plans, resulting in some people losing insurance as well.

Both proposals would face an uphill climb to becoming law. Virtually all congressional Democrats are opposed to McCain’s health care vision, which they believe would destroy the employer-based health care system and replace it with one that benefits the young and healthy but not people who are older or sick. (Health insurance companies charge much higher prices for people who are older or have chronic illnesses.)

With the federal budget deficit increasing and a huge list of other projects already proposed, it’s not clear that a Democratic Congress would push through Obama’s health-care plan either. Some congressional Democrats are already touting more modest goals, such as making sure that all children have health insurance.

A very simple look at both candidates and their health care proposals and now you decide which is best.

Worker’s Will Be Paying More For their Healthcare

Most employers plan to lower their health care costs next year by tapping a familiar source of help: their workers.

Preliminary findings released this week from an employer survey by consulting firm Mercer Inc. show that 59 percent of U.S. employers will reduce their health costs in 2009 by increasing workers’ deductibles, co-pays and percentages of a medical bill that workers pay.

Even with shifting costs to workers, U.S. employers still project a 5.7 percent increase in health benefits cost next year, according to the Mercer survey of 1,317 employers. That increase is lower than those of the previous 10 years but still higher than the general rate of inflation. Small businesses will face 10 percent increases.

The annual rise in benefit costs stems, in part, from the continuing increase in prices of medical services and of prescription drugs. And more medical services are being used per person, Holmes said.

Many employers have more moderate benefit increases than previous years, in part because they’re focusing on health care as a mounting threat to profitability. “CEOs have put the cost of health care as one of their top business priorities,” Holmes said. Businesses are increasingly promoting wellness programs and installing high-deductible health plans, which lower their costs.