http://weiner.house.gov/news_display.asp...

Weiner just lived up to his name by withdrawing his amendment, which would have substituted single-payer for the House bill favored by Democratic leaders. That coward sickens me right now even more than Obama, Pelosi, Emanuel, Hoyer, and Reid put together.

Didn't want to let this one slip by:

In other healthcare news, the watchdog group Media Matters has revealed one of CNN’s regular on-air commentators is on the payroll of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry lobbying group opposed to the current healthcare reform efforts. Until yesterday, CNN had never acknowledged Alex Castellanos’s affiliation. Media Matters revealed that Castellanos’s consulting firm, National Media, recently placed over $1 million of TV advertising for America’s Health Insurance Plans. Castellanos’s company has also done work for the Federation of American Hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry group PhRMA, and the HCA Sunrise Hospital.

This from Susie's blog stuck in my mind:

Mo on 15 Oct 2009 at 6:54 am

I blame the collapse of health care reform in the 90s with the Brittney/Christina/N’Sync/etc. wave of music a few years later. Day jobs that artists generally take stopped paying for health insurance, and parents stopped supporting their twenty-somethings trying for a creative career. Probably is also a big chunk of the reason for the collapse of the indie film scene in the US.

I know we take now that lack of support for anything non-MBA for granted, and the era of grunge soon turned into another bubble. But the early 90s were different.

Reposting from Ms. Madrak:

http://susiemadrak.com/2009/10/14/17/30/...

I just got off a conference call with Arlen Specter where I asked him why the Democrats don’t talk about the wave of entrepreneurship that would be unleashed if people knew they could leave their jobs, start a business and still get affordable health coverage for themselves and their families.

He was surprised, said it hadn’t occurred to him and wants me to give him names of people who would start their own businesses if they knew they could get affordable insurance.

Go to her post, and talk about your dreams there. I know at least one couple who'd ditch their day jobs and start a restaurant, if it weren't for keeping their family's benefits.

So I guess I hit a nerve with my food fight post, or rather, several of them. I think it's worth breaking down some of the comments and sub-discussions into a longer series. One topic that seemed to bring out the very Correntian best in folks: how we define "obese."

Reader Jeff W points us to this helpful link from the CDC, in which they have determined that there have been "noticeable increases" in the number of overweight or obese people in this country. Reader Aeryl questions the methodology with this link. Other comments in that thread had other definitions and methods to measure the size and number of "healthy" bodies.

I'm a long way from my scientific research days, but I'll say that generally, I think obesity is both a "nature" and a "nurture" issue. On the Nature side: I fully recognize that the FSM has been kind to people in my family; we're generally tall and thin with only a modicum of exercise effort and don't tend to "overweight"-edness until quite late in life, if at all. I doubt I could find the link for it now, but I recall reading a fascinating report about a group of indigenous people from South America, recently relocated from their ancestral lands to a reservation. Apparently, in a single generation they went from thin and fit to outrageously overweight. The report's conclusion was that they had evolved to live on a fat-poor diet for thousands of years before being relocated and fed "government cheese" instead of their previous natural, "jungle food" diet, and as a result their bodies were incredibly efficient in terms of fat storage. "Too" efficient when fed a more modern diet, and thus their current obesity.

I'm tossing out those two examples and asking for your thoughts, because before we can make policy progress on the "nurture" argument, it's important to correctly frame the "nature" part.

How do you define "fat" and "obese?" How should government, for the purposes of health and food policy? How important is identifying obesity as a public health "problem?" Then there are questions about how Big Industry (Fashion, Food, the Exercise-Industrial Complex, etc) define "fat." Definitions generated by the discourse of the Patriarchy play a role as well.

And once again, consider this an open thread for recipes, especially those good for people who want to reduce or change their body's shape. Warning: I will delete comments that are inappropriately insensitive to people who don't conform to mainstream body shape standards. Consider this is a safe space for people of all body shapes to contribute.

A "public option" update from the Museum of Bad Art of the Possible.

Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men.
- George Bernard Shaw

Trolling through some recent history I found this from hipparchia from back in March. Jason Rosenbaum:

The argument that single-payer health care would be more efficient is a straw man. Both health care reform plans would increase efficiencies and save a great deal of money. But only one can get 60 votes in the Senate.

The HCAN strategy all along has been to calculate based on some unknown formula what is politically feasible at the moment (curiously, without seeming to take into account the effect that energetic activism can have on feasibility) and direct all its energy towards that goal. It's a reasonable and legitimate plan, I wish them success on it, and for reform advocates generally (including single payer) their success is all our success. I still don't like it, though.

First, it's asymmetrical. Do you think AHIP is so finely calibrating its strategy? Hell no. They're trying to burn the motherfucker clear to the ground. We need to be the equal and opposite reaction by repeatedly and loudly demanding our entire wish list. Second, it's not our job to think about, or even care, if the perfect is being the enemy of the good. That's for politicians to consider, not activists. Our job is to ceaseless agitate for the best policy. Our elected representatives can worry about the perfect, the good, the realistic and the rest of the sausage-making process.

This great quote at Shakesville made me go look for the answer to that question, which I'd been wondering about, and at Our Bodies, Ourselves, I found this:

Our Bodies Ourselves supports the single-payer model as the most effective approach for solving the United States' health and medical care crisis.

 Read more…

Via Dr. Grumpy. I have to quote the whole thing because it's so damn good:

Yesterday I was walking by Annie's office, and heard her losing it over the speaker phone. And, as always, she was totally awesome.

Annie: "I'm calling because you people denied an MRI on a stroke patient?"

Pinhead: "Before we discuss this, I have to inform you that this is a recorded line."

Annie: "Oh, good, hopefully someone will actually be listening to me then. Thus far it hasn't happened."

Pinhead: "Let me look up the tracking number... Okay. I have to inform you that we are unable to approve this study. Your doctor will need to make a peer-to-peer call."

Annie: "Oh, now THAT's a surprise."

 Read more…

Praise for the senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe. She's not playing the injecting competition on the backs of 5% game -- she calls it what it is: a safety net.

This amendment establishes a non-profit government corporation through which a "safety net" plan would be provided in any state in which affordable coverage was not available in the Exchange to at least 95% of state residents.

Said 5% would undoubtedly draw from one or more of: older; low-income; chronic care recipients, also known as a high-risk pool.

Yes, I give Senator Snowe credit for not trying to buff a turd, the hobby horse of progressives.

Versailles pool-boy Ezra Klein carries a little more water:

But that's really what's left. A relatively small increase in subsidies. A relatively small increase in funding. And some way to crack the question of the public option.

You know what I think?

Health Care Deceit

It is absurd to mandate that people purchase what they cannot afford and to fine them for failing to do so. A person who cannot pay a health insurance premium cannot pay the fine.

These proposals are like solving the homeless problem by requiring the homeless to purchase a house. ...

... What the U.S. needs is a single-payer not-for-profit health system that pays doctors and nurses sufficiently that they will undertake the arduous training and accept the stress and risks of dealing with illness and diseases.

None of this wimpy I stand with Dr Dean weak tea for me.

Don McCanne:

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of listening to those who say that PNHP needs to get on board and support the public option, which is really saying that we need to support an individual mandate to purchase unaffordable plans. Those of you who were duped into supporting this model that can’t possibly work need to abandon that ship and get on board with us and our colleagues who will accept nothing less than health care justice for all.

Health care justice for all? Isn't that some kind of commie pinko socialism?!

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

On Monday I sent the following email to Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Colorado:

The recent letter from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops [USCCB] opposing a House health care plan on the grounds that its prohibition of abortion funding was a "legal fiction" raised a question to me. I first learned of you because of your statement that voting for John Kerry in 2004 was cooperating in evil due to his position on abortion, so I know how seriously you take the issue. My question is, has the American church, the Conference or any other official Catholic body or agency taken a position on Catholics' purchasing insurance from companies that provide abortion services? All of the major ones - Aetna, Blue Cross, Cigna, United Healthcare and so on - provide abortion services in their policies. Doesn't anyone who pays premiums to these insurers help to fund abortion, and wouldn't that also amount to cooperating in evil?

It seems the Catholic Church has focused all of its energy and activism on government's role but left the private sector off scot-free. I am not aware of any visibility on this from the church, and that appears to be a glaring omission. Has it been addressed, and if so has it been addressed as forcefully? On the face of it, it seems to me that anything contributing to abortions, public or private, would be equally objectionable.

Thanks in advance for any time and attention you are able to provide.

 Read more…

One day, a woman went to the doctor and was given a diagnosis. She had a condition that could be easily cured with a dose of penicillin.

Instead, the doctor prescribed "frim-fram sauce." The patient asked if she could please have penicillin instead, and the doctor shot back: "Forget it, no frim-fram sauce for you!"

I pray the progressives wake up soon and come out of their collective slumber before we help the Democrats pass a health insurance bail out. The reforms championed two years ago, that rested largely on providing Americans with a Medicare-like plan, open to all takers, has morphed into Romney Care. While the centerpiece progressives envisioned on health care reform rested largely on federal intervention via program, the Democrats have cleary gone the less contentious route of a federal roll via regulation. The idea seems to be create a federal role, and hopefully tighten regulations later down the road, which is laughable.

(via)

Tomorrow Today, Sunday, Sept 6, the day before Labor Day, at 3pm EDT [Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner] and again at 7 pm EDT [Ohio Lt. Governor Lee Fisher], the two Democrats hoping to become Ohio's next Senator will be visiting FDL to discuss their support for the public option.

I encourage you to stop by and ask about their support for single payer.

from part 1:

BarbMD declares "This is what is sounds like when someone representing the Democratic wing of the Party speaks" in reference to AFL-CIO president Trumka laying down markers for what health reform must have, including the so-called public option (It is unclear if Trumka is referring to Hacker's 2007 Medicare Plus, or the sliver public option being debated in Congress). Trumka's line in the sand is the public option, but where do member unions stand?

I got a letter from the government, saying that they contacted my doctor and made him replace a daily prescription of mine with another drug of their choosing.

They were kind enough to allow me to finish my current bottle before experimenting with the cheaper (for them -- same cost to me) product. Wasn't that generous of them?

Oh, wait, that wasn't the government. That was my health insurer. No problem, then!

I sure hope we get a "uniquely American" solution that keeps these swell folks in charge of our nation's health care.

On the one hand, I have whispering in my ear a little birdie who confides that approximately 225 members of the House of Representatives think that universal single payer national health insurance is the way to go. 225. Last I checked, the House is supposed to have 435 members [of whom 256 are Democrats], and last I checked, 225 was slightly more than half of 435.

Isn't there some kind of rule somewhere that says if we have more than half the votes, we get to pass the legislation? Seems to me I remember hearing about this concept somewhere.

In the gold-standard (and refereed) New England Journal of Medicine, Robert A. Levine does the arithmetic, and then explains how we can change the game:

However, great savings could be achievable in two areas: administrative costs and unnecessary care. In the current health care system, administrative costs are generally estimated to account for 15 to 25% of total expenditures; if we settled on an estimate of 20%, that would amount to $500 billion annually. The complexity of the present system, with multiple sources of coverage, is the main cause of such high administrative costs.

Which is why making the system more complex, with HR3200s HEXes (Health Exchanges) is, well, doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Landrieu: Under "Very Few, If Any" Circumstances Would I Support A Public Option

"I'd like to cover everyone -- that would be the moral thing to do -- but it would be immoral to bankrupt the country while doing so," Landrieu said. The public option as currently conceived is expected to be a deficit reducer.

Now as we know, HR 676 would save the US Treasury $400 billion a year. That is $400 billion a year that Landrieu and others are willing to spend to prop up health insurance parasites.

Via Ed Cone the health care debate on the back of a napkin.