Sarkozy lays into US health care in NYC

Sarkozy lays into US health care in NYC
...

French websites immediately picked up on the message. "Carla Bruni et Nicolas Sarkozy amoureux a New York" read a headline on the online site of entertainment magazine Voici, which mentioned the "electric atmosphere" of the Big Apple and its effects on the French presidential couple.

Sarkozy is in hot water at home. His poll ratings are at record lows of around 30 per cent and there are widening cracks in his conservative party. In New York, though, he basked in the rapt attention of hundreds of Columbia students and even jettisoned a prepared speech.

"Speeches kill off creativity," he said. "I'm going to speak from the heart."

And he did.

"Welcome to the club of states who don't turn their back on the sick and the poor," Sarkozy said, referring to the US health care overhaul signed by President Barack Obama last week.

From the European perspective, he said, "when we look at the American debate on reforming health care, it's difficult to believe".

"The very fact that there should have been such a violent debate simply on the fact that the poorest of Americans should not be left out in the streets without a cent to look after them... is something astonishing to us."

Then to hearty applause, he added: "If you come to France and something happens to you, you won't be asked for your credit card before you're rushed to the hospital."

Despite the strident words, the mood was celebratory - and Bruni-Sarkozy held the spotlight, with more than 100 members of the media focusing on her every move. ...

Heather Galeotti: Kaiser Permanente Pulled Plug On Woman's Insurance While She Was In A Coma

Heather Galeotti: Kaiser Permanente Pulled Plug On Woman's Insurance While She Was In A Coma

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Galeotti's shaken family told the hospital that she was covered by her father's health care plan with Kaiser Permanente. The hospital confirmed her status with Kaiser and proceeded to treat her. Medical bills piled up to more than $4 million.

Then in July 2007, five months into Galeotti's treatment, Kaiser stunned the family with a letter. The Galeottis would have to find another way to pay the bills. Based on informationreceived from her father's employer, Kaiser said that the young woman's coverage had not been in effect when she was hit.

...

Ten months later, California insurance regulators ordered Kaiser to cover Galeotti's care, saying that Kaiser had no basis for denying payment "other than to achieve a significant financial windfall" at the expense of her family, the hospital and the state's Medicaid program.

Like many insurance disputes, the Galeotti case has its share of miscommunication, bureaucratic wrangling and missing documents. But it remains a stark example of a murky practice by some insurance companies and employers - cutting off coverage retroactively for some patients with expensive medical claims.

The new health care reform bill bans retroactive decisions by insurers in policies sold to individuals, except in cases of fraud. However, as it stands the ban would not apply to group policies, such as the one held by the Galeotti family, which cover some 150 million Americans

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Texas newborn denied health insurance over pre-existing condition | McClatchy

Texas newborn denied health insurance over pre-existing condition | McClatchy

At birth, Houston Tracy let out a single loud cry before his father cut the cord and handed him to a nurse.

Instantly, Doug Tracy knew something was wrong with his son.

"He wasn't turning pink fast enough," Tracy said. "When they listened to his chest, they realized he had an issue."

That turned out to be d-transposition of the great arteries, a defect in which the two major vessels that carry blood away from the heart are reversed. The condition causes babies to turn blue.

Surgery would correct it, but within days of Houston's birth March 15, Tracy learned that his application for health insurance to cover his son had been denied. The reason: a pre-existing condition.

"How can he have a pre-existing condition if the baby didn't exist until now?" Tracy asked.

New federal legislation that will prevent insurance companies from denying children coverage based on a pre-existing condition comes too late for the Tracys. The legislation, passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama this week, won't go into effect until September.

But Houston, who is hospitalized at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, needs coverage now.

...

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/26/91120/texas-newborn-denied-health-insurance.html#storylink=omni_popular#ixzz0jLKXa2Co

US Health Care Bill Passed |

US Health Care Bill Passed | Kicking a dying man - a tale of US 'care'

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I went to live in the US in 1999 for my American-born husband William to have treatment for a brain tumour. Over 10 years he had four brain operations, six weeks of radiation, numerous rounds of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and multiple prescription medications.

My husband might have been battling cancer, but the battle with the insurance companies proved just as sickening. Each time William had a brain operation we would receive a bill - usually in the vicinity of $50,000-$80,000 for the operation and three-day hospital stay - despite the fact we paid a hefty premium and the insurance company intended to pay costs.

I've heard often that unsuspecting and unwell patients who are insured have paid hefty medical bills because they are vulnerable, confused, tired of being harassed by hospital billing departments or simply didn't understand the insurance jargon that the bill was the responsibility of the insurance company, not the patient.

The day William's doctors gave him the ''go home and die speech'' in 2005 we went home and within an hour the hospital billing department called, followed by his insurance company, disputing a $2000 bill for a brain scan in 2003 they claimed was not pre-approved by his insurer. It was.

I yelled down the phone to them both something along the lines of: leave us alone, let my 41-year-old husband spend some time with his son and die with some dignity, not on-hold on the phone to an insurance company mid-medical bill dispute.

William died peacefully at home a few months later. The calls from the insurance company stopped because the debt collectors took over. It was tempting in my grieving state to write them a cheque and be done with the harassment. Instead, I kept my husband's advice firmly in mind: ''Don't pay them a cent.''

I wrote multiple letters and enlisted the help of William's doctors to prove no money was owed. The bills continued two years after he died.

The term ''socialised medicine'' was invented by the American Medical Association in 1947 to disparage president Harry Truman's proposal for a national healthcare system. It was a ploy to protect the interests of the US medical insurance industry, and the term was resurrected by Ronald Reagan to counter Jimmy Carter's campaign for national insurance. Yet ask any American what's so bad about "socialised medicine" and they are clueless. ...

Economic Scene - In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality - NYTimes.com

Economic Scene - In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality - NYTimes.com

By DAVID LEONHARDT | Published: March 23, 2010

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

...

The bill is the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. It aims to smooth out one of the roughest edges in American society — the inability of many people to afford medical care after they lose a job or get sick. And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich.

A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.

The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level — $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to joinMedicaid. (Many of the poor are already covered by Medicaid.) Insurance costs are also likely to drop for higher-income workers at small companies.

Finally, the bill will also reduce a different kind of inequality. In the broadest sense, insurance is meant to spread the costs of an individual’s misfortune — illness, death, fire, flood — across society. Since the late 1970s, though, the share of Americans with health insurance has shrunk. As a result, the gap between the economic well-being of the sick and the healthy has been growing, at virtually every level of the income distribution.

The health reform bill will reverse that trend. By 2019, 95 percent of people are projected to be covered, up from 85 percent today (and about 90 percent in the late 1970s). Even affluent families ineligible for subsidies will benefit if they lose their insurance, by being able to buy a plan that can no longer charge more for pre-existing conditions. In effect, healthy families will be picking up most of the bill — and their insurance will be somewhat more expensive than it otherwise would have been. ...

Waterloo | FrumForum

Waterloo | FrumForum

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. ...

Princeton University - A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

Princeton University - A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professorBart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

...

This creates a fascinating puzzle. The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose. The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered, but may relate to the fact that excess fructose is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles.

In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year.

"Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic," Avena said. ...

Rep. John B. Larson: The Top Ten Immediate Benefits You'll Get When Health Care Reform Passes

Rep. John B. Larson: The Top Ten Immediate Benefits You'll Get When Health Care Reform Passes

As soon as health care passes, the American people will see immediate benefits. The legislation will:

• Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;


• Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;


• Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;


• Lower seniors' prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole;


• Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;


• Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;


• Require plans to cover an enrollee's dependent children until age 26;


• Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;


• Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;


• Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.

OpEdNews - Article: The Specter of Bigotry in Health Care Debates

OpEdNews - Article: The Specter of Bigotry in Health Care Debates

or OpEdNews: Brasch - Writer

by Walter Brasch

The Republican leadership was quick to apologize, Saturday, for racist and anti-gay comments made by some citizens against Democrats who supported the health care bill.

Anti-reform demonstrators at the nation's capitol yelled racial slurs against three Black congressmen, including Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who had marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. One demonstrator spit at Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). Several protestors yelled anti-gay slurs at Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) "I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus," Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters at the Capitol.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) told CNN the attacks were "contemptible." Eric Cantor (R-Va.,) told ABC-TV that "nobody condones that at all." John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Republicans' House minority leader, called the incidents "reprehensible." But he then said that the incidents were isolated and that the real issue was that "millions of Americans want no part" of health insurance reform.

But the racism, bigotry, and homophobia although "contemptible" and "reprehensible" were not "isolated." They were heard from crowds who attended Sarah Palin rallies during the campaign of 2008, although John McCain specifically condemned them, and Palin only smiled. They were heard at most "tea party" rallies. They were heard at almost every anti-health care rally for more than a year.

It is true that most of those who opposed health care reform didn't resort to venomous hatred in public, but enough did to make it not isolated incidents of a political party that seems to have long since given up the notion of the "big tent" philosophy of inclusion, and to embarrass Republican leaders who had to issue apologies.

In contrast, voices of bigotry have not been heard at rallies of those who support health care reform. Perhaps, the health care bill needs one quick amendment--psychiatric care for all Americans, especially those who have sold out any principles they may have had by exposing their sputtering venomous hatred for anyone who doesn't look, act, or think like they do.

List of Countries with Universal Healthcare � True Cost – Analyzing our economy, government policy, and society through the lens of cost-benefit

List of Countries with Universal Healthcare � True Cost – Analyzing our economy, government policy, and society through the lens of cost-benefit

Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, with the United States being the lone exception [1]. The following list, compiled fromWHO sources where possible, shows the start date and type of system used to implement universal health care in each developed country [2]. Note that universal health care does not imply government-only health care, as many countries implementing a universal health care plan continue to have both public and private insurance and medical providers.

Country	Start Date of Universal Health Care	System Type
Click links for more source material on each country’s health care system.
Norway	1912	Single Payer
New Zealand	1938	Two Tier
Japan	1938	Single Payer
Germany	1941	Insurance Mandate
Belgium	1945	Insurance Mandate
United Kingdom	1948	Single Payer
Kuwait	1950	Single Payer
Sweden	1955	Single Payer
Bahrain	1957	Single Payer
Brunei	1958	Single Payer
Canada	1966	Single Payer
Netherlands	1966	Two-Tier
Austria	1967	Insurance Mandate
United Arab Emirates	1971	Single Payer
Finland	1972	Single Payer
Slovenia	1972	Single Payer
Denmark	1973	Two-Tier
Luxembourg	1973	Insurance Mandate
France	1974	Two-Tier
Australia	1975	Two Tier
Ireland	1977	Two-Tier
Italy	1978	Single Payer
Portugal	1979	Single Payer
Cyprus	1980	Single Payer
Greece	1983	Insurance Mandate
Spain	1986	Single Payer
South Korea	1988	Insurance Mandate
Iceland	1990	Single Payer
Hong Kong	1993	Two-Tier
Singapore	1993	Two-Tier
Switzerland	1994	Insurance Mandate
Israel	1995	Two-Tier
United States	2014	Insurance Mandate

Will the United States join this list in 2009?

[1] Roughly 15% of Americans lack insurance coverage, so the US clearly has not yet achieved universal health care. There is no universal definition of developed or industrialized nations. For this list, those countries with UN Human Development Index scores above 0.9 on a 0 to 1 scale are considered developed.

[2] The dates given are estimates, since universal health care arrived gradually in many countries. In Germany for instance, government insurance programs began in 1883, but did not reach universality until 1941. Typically the date provided is the date of passage or enactment for a national health care Act mandating insurance or establishing universal health insurance.

System Types:

Single Payer: The government provides insurance for all residents (or citizens) and pays all health care expenses except for copays and coinsurance. Providers may be public, private, or a combination of both.

Two-Tier: The government provides or mandates catrastrophic or minimum insurance coverage for all residents (or citizens), while allowing the purchase of additional voluntary insurance or fee-for service care when desired. In Singapore all residents receive a catastrophic policy from the government coupled with a health savings account that they use to pay for routine care. In other countries like Ireland and Israel, the government provides a core policy which the majority of the population supplement with private insurance.

Insurance Mandate: The government mandates that all citizens purchase insurance, whether from private, public, or non-profit insurers. In some cases the insurer list is quite restrictive, while in others a healthy private market for insurance is simply regulated and standardized by the government. In this kind of system insurers are barred from rejecting sick individuals, and individuals are required to purchase insurance, in order to prevent typical health care market failures from arising.

Cigna Gives $110.9 Million Compensation Package To Ex-CEO

Cigna Gives $110.9 Million Compensation Package To Ex-CEO

The insurance giant Cigna last year gave compensation packages worth more than $120 million to two executives who left the company,according to a filing with the SEC on Friday.

The vast majority of that total went to former chairman and CEO H. Edward Hanway who left his post with a retirement package worth $110.9 million -- which included $18.8 million in executive compensation for 2009, as well as a healthy pension plan, deferred compensation and stock options.

With more than $19 billion in revenues reported in 2008, Cigna remains one of the most profitable insurers in the country. Though, unlike some of its competitors, it does not appear to have raised premiums on customers in an effort to improve somewhat sagging recent profits. ...

Middle Class Losing Health Insurance Faster Than The Rich Or Poor

Middle Class Losing Health Insurance Faster Than The Rich Or Poor

It's the biggest "doughnut hole" of them all: Members of the middle class are losing their health insurance faster than any other income group, according to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The number of middle-income earners covered by employer health insurance fell by three million from 2000 to 2008, and government programs and the individual market aren't picking up the slack. The total number of uninsured middle-income earners rose from 10.5 million to 12.9 million, representing 16.2 percent of the income bracket -- a bigger increase than for any other income group.

"It really underscores how the problem of uninsurance is not something simply affecting lower-income Americans but is increasingly affecting the middle class," said Brian Quinn, the foundation's research and evaluation office. The most recent Census Bureau estimate puts the total uninsured population at 46.3 million.

Just 66 percent of people in families earning between $45,000 and $85,000 are insured through an employer plan -- 52.7 million people, down from 55.5 million eight years prior -- a drop of nearly seven percentage points.

...

According to the report, the cost for an employer to offer individual and family plans to workers increased 43 percent and 55.6 percent, respectively, during the eight-year period. The amount employees paid for the single and family programs increased 64.5 percent and 80.5 percent. Median household income has fallen 3.5 percent to $51,233.

Click HERE to download a PDF of the report, prepared for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation by researchers at the State Health Access Data Assistance Center, University of Minnesota--Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau (1999, 2000, 2007 and 2008) and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, conducted by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (1999-2001 and 2008).

OpEdNews - Article: NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

OpEdNews - Article: NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

For months I've been reporting in The Huffington Post that President Obama made a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital lobby that he would make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform legislation. (See here,here and here). I've been increasingly frustrated that except for an initial story last August in the New York Times, no major media outlet has picked up this important story and investigated further.

Hopefully, that's changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York TimesWashington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn's confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:

"That's a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he's talking about the hospital industry's specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry's got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you're interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product."

Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina had confirmed the existence of the deal to him.

This should be big news. Even while President Obama was saying that he thought a public option was a good idea and encouraging supporters to believe his healthcare plan would include one, he had promised for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in the final bill.

The media should be digging deeper into this story. Washington reporters should be asking Robert Gibbs if President Obama is still honoring this deal. They should be calling Jim Messina and hospital lobbyist Chip Kahn to confirm the specifics of the deal. They should be asking Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leaders Dick Durbin and Harry Reid the extent of their knowledge of this deal. They should be asking Pelosi if the reason she's refusing to include a public option in the House reconciliation bill to be sent to the Senate is that there are at least 51 Senate Democrats who would vote for it and she needs to insure that a final bill with a public option does not end up on President Obama's desk where he would then have to break his deal with the hospital lobbyists and sign it, or veto it to honor his deal. ...

State of the health care debate: Talk radio attacks an 11-year old | McClatchy

State of the health care debate: Talk radio attacks an 11-year old | McClatchy

By Les Blumenthal | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Conservative talk show hosts and columnists have ridiculed an 11-year-old Washington state boy's account of his mother's death as a "sob story" exploited by the White House and congressional Democrats like a "kiddie shield" to defend their health care legislation.

Marcelas Owens, whose mother got sick, lost her job, lost her health insurance and died, said Thursday he's taking the attacks from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin in stride.

"My mother always taught me they can have their own opinion but that doesn't mean they are right," Owens, who lives in Seattle, said in an interview.

Owens' grandmother, Gina, who watched her daughter die, isn't quite so generous.

"These are adults, and he is an 11-year-old boy who lost his mother," Gina Owens said. "They should be ashamed."

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., told Marcelas Owens' story to President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the White House health care summit last month. Murray also has spoken about it on the Senate floor. Last week, Owens was in the nation's capital to speak at a health care rally and to meet with Senate Democratic leadership.

Limbaugh, Beck and Malkin are skeptical about the story, saying there were other forms of medical help available after Owens' mother, Tifanny, lost her health insurance. They lambasted Democrats for using the story.

"Now this is unseemly, exploitative, an 11-year-old boy being forced to tell his story all over just to benefit the Democrat Party and Barack Obama," Limbaugh said on March 12, according to a transcript his show. "And, I would say this to Marcelas Owens: 'Well, your mom would still have died, because Obamacare doesn't kick in until 2014.'"

...
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/18/90669/state-of-the-health-care-debate.html#ixzz0iacdFGOI

About 1 in 4 in California lack health insurance, a UCLA study finds - latimes.com

About 1 in 4 in California lack health insurance, a UCLA study finds - latimes.com

Nearly 1 in 4 Californians under age 65 had no health insurance last year, according to a new report, as soaring unemployment propelled vast numbers of once-covered workers into the ranks of the uninsured.

The state's uninsured population jumped to 8.2 million in 2009, up from 6.4 million in 2007, marking the highest number over the last decade, investigators from UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research said.

People who were uninsured for part or all of 2009 accounted for 24.3% of California's population under age 65 -- a dramatic increase from 2007 driven largely by Californians who lost employer-sponsored health insurance, particularly over the last year.

Among those over age 18, nearly 1 in 3 had no insurance for all or part of 2009, the UCLA researchers found. The ranks of uninsured children also grew. The study was based on phone interviews from 2007, updated with current insurance enrollment data. ...

Coronary Angiograms May Be Overused, Study Says - WSJ.com

Coronary Angiograms May Be Overused, Study Says - WSJ.com By RON WINSLOW

A widely used test to detect blockages in the heart's arteries often turns up little or no evidence of disease, a new study found, suggesting that patients are frequently exposed unnecessarily to the risks and costs of the invasive examination.

The test is a called a coronary angiogram, in which cardiologists thread a catheter into the heart to take an X-ray movie to look for obstructions that might cause chest pain or increase the risk of a heart attack. More than a million U.S. patients undergo the diagnostic test each year at a cost of about $10,000 each, according to government data. In cases where significant obstruction is found, the test helps doctors determine whether a patient should undergo coronary bypass surgery or have a stent implanted to alleviate the problem.

The new study, published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, is based on data on nearly 400,000 angiograms performed between 2004 and 2008 that 633 hospitals in the U.S. submitted to a registry maintained by the American College of Cardiology. The patients weren't previously diagnosed with heart disease, but because of symptoms, family history or other reasons ended up getting the test. Such patients represent about 20% of all people who are referred for angiograms, researchers said.

The study found that 62% of the patients didn't have evidence of significant obstructions, while 38% had important blockages, researchers found. In all, 39% were determined not to have coronary-artery disease.

"The rate of obstructive disease isn't as high as we had hoped," said Manesh Patel, a cardiologist at Duke University's Duke Clinical Research Institute, who led the study. "Our process of diagnosing coronary artery disease needs improvement."

Dr. Patel and other cardiologists cautioned that the results don't apply to patients with established disease or, especially, with severe chest pain where there is concern for an imminent heart attack. For such patients, getting an urgent angiogram can be a crucial step in treatment.

...

The study also comes amid growing concern about the exploding use of radiation-based imaging in medicine, which has sparked worries that many patients are electing to get scans that provide little benefit while increasing their risk of cancer. ...

AmnestyInternational: In the U.S., Too Many Women Dying While Having Babies - Yahoo! News

AmnestyInternational: In the U.S., Too Many Women Dying While Having Babies - Yahoo! News

By JENNIFER BLOCK – Fri Mar 12, 2:35 am ET

Amnesty International may be best known to American audiences for bringing to light horror stories overseas such as the disappearance of political activists in Argentina or the abysmal conditions inside South African prisons under apartheid. But in a new report on pregnancy and childbirth care in the U.S., Amnesty details the maternal health carecrisis in this country as part of a systemic violation of women's rights.

The report, titled "Deadly Delivery," notes that the likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth in the U.S. is five times greater than in Greece, four times greater than in Germany, and three times greater than in Spain. Every day in the U.S., more than two women die ofpregnancy-related causes, with the maternal mortality ratio doubling from 6.6 deaths per 100,000 births in 1987 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006. (And as shocking as these figures are, Amnesty notes that the actual number of maternal deaths in the U.S. may be a lot higher since there are no federal requirements to report these outcomes and since data collection at the state and local levels needs to be improved.) "In the U.S., we spend more than any country on health care, yet American women are at greater risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes than in 40 other countries," says Nan Strauss, the report's co-author, who spent two years investigating the issue of maternal mortality worldwide. "We thought that was scandalous." (See the most common hospital mishaps.)

According to Amnesty, which gathered data from many sources including the CDC, approximately half of the pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable, the result of systemic failures including barriers to accessing care; inadequate, neglectful, or discriminatory care; and overuse of risky interventions like inducing labor and delivering via cesarean section. "Women are not dying from complex, mysterious causes that we don't know how to treat," says Strauss. "Women are dying because it's a fragmented system, and they are not getting the comprehensive services that they need."

The report notes that black women in the U.S. are nearly four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, although they are no more likely to suffer certain complications like hemorrhage.(See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2009.)

The Amnesty report comes on the heels of an investigation in California that found maternal deaths have tripled there in recent years as well as a maternal-mortality alert issued in January by the Joint Commission, a group that accredits hospitals and other medical organizations, which noted that common preventable errors included failure to control blood pressure in hypertensive women and failure to pay attention to vital signsfollowing c-sections. And just this week, a panel of medical experts at a conference held by the National Institutes of Health recommended that physicians' organizations revisit policies that prevent women from having vaginal births after having had a cesarean. Such policies, designed in part to protect against litigation, have contributed to the U.S. cesarean rate rising to nearly 32% in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available.

The Amnesty report spotlights numerous barriers women face in accessing care, even among those who are insured or qualify for Medicaid. Poverty is a major factor, but all women are put at risk by overuse of obstetrical intervention and barriers in access to more woman-centered, physiologic care provided by family-practice physicians and midwives.

Walmart fires Michigan man for using medical marijuana | wzzm13.com | Grand Rapids, MI

Walmart fires Michigan man for using medical marijuana | wzzm13.com | Grand Rapids, MI

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (WZZM) - Now that medical marijuana is legal in Michigan, can an employer fire a worker who tests positive for the drug?

WalMart says it can, so it did. "I was terminated because I failed a drug screening," says former WalMart employee Joseph Casias.

In 2008, Casias was the Associate Of The Year at the WalMart store in Battle Creek, despite suffering from sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor.

At his doctor's recommendation, Casias says he legally uses medical marijuana to ease his pain.

"It helps tremendously," he says. "I only use it to stop the pain. To make me feel more comfortable and active as a person."

During his five years at WalMart, Casias says he went to work every day, determined to be the best.

"I gave them everything," he says. "110 percent every day. Anything they asked me to do I did. More than they asked me to do. 12 to 14 hours a day."

But last November, Casias sprained his knee at work. Marijuana was detected in his system during the routine drug screening that follows all workplace injuries. Casias showed WalMart managers his state medical marijuana card, but he was fired anyway.

"I was told they do not accept or honor my medical marijuana card," says Casias. ,,,

Employers plan to shift more health-care costs to workers, survey reports - washingtonpost.com

Employers plan to shift more health-care costs to workers, survey reports - washingtonpost.com

By David S. Hilzenrath

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2010; 6:00 AM

Most big employers plan to shift a larger share of health-care costs to their workers next year, according to a survey to be released Thursday.

Many say they may charge more to cover spouses, tighten eligibility standards for their health plans and dispense financial rewards or penalties based on the results of certain lab tests. At some companies, employees who are overweight could be excluded from the most desirable plans.

Meanwhile, employees at many companies can expect significantly higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments, according to the annual survey by the National Business Group on Health, a coalition of big employers, and Towers Watson, a consulting firm that advises companies on employee benefits.

"This shows that the constant, unrelenting increases in health-care costs are going to cost employees and their families more and more," said Helen Darling, president of the business group. Faced with rapidly rising medical expenses, "employers are going to have to do something," she said.

People who work for large corporations have some of the most stable and comprehensive medical coverage in the nation. They are insulated from insurance industry practices at the heart of the Washington health-care debate, such as having their policies rescinded after getting sick or being denied coverage based on preexisting conditions. However, the new survey is a reminder that even people who are satisfied with their insurance plans cannot count on a continuation of the status quo.

With or without reform, coverage at big corporations is likely to become less affordable, and it could become more restrictive. ...

Health Reform: Why Aren't We Talking About Prices? - US News and World Report

Health Reform: Why Aren't We Talking About Prices? - US News and World Report

America's sky-high healthcare spending must be brought down to earth, not soar further. I'm convinced that this can be done. How? If our opaque and often secretive health-payment system were made transparent, the ground would be laid for consumers to find better premiums and prices for their families.

...

But the real problem is that our prices are vastly inflated over what they can and should be. In a report comparing U.S. health spending with that in other developed countries, the Congressional Research Service showed that for virtually every medical service or product, Americans pay more. The same coronary bypass operation, abdominal aneurysm repair, or hip surgery will cost twice as much in the United States as in Canada. Americans pay the highest prices in the world for pharmaceuticals, averaging $878 per person per year versus $461 in Europe. That is a big reason that America spends more than 16 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, compared with Europe's average of 9 percent. There is a lot of room for lowering prices.

[One big problem: The true prices charged are often a secret.]

America's prosperity and rising GDP have enabled us to ignore the cost of health benefitsmostly obscured in pay stubs.

...

COMMENTS

Medical prices are vastly out of line
I can't believe anyone would suggest that our medical cost are "not out of line". What planet do you live on!? The charges for drugs and even many medical services are criminally high and excessive (far beyond the cost of production). The pharmaceutical industry has a strangle hold on the way medical professionals are schooled and trained and the whole system is geared, not for healing and health, but greed. Like the legal profession, the medical profession deserves the utter disdain of the American public. Sure, I have 'friends' in both professions whom I know to have integrity; but it is they who inform me of their shame. Wake up America. You have been duped and sold out. Wake up!