Senator Ron Wyden’s Health Care plan has gotten a fair amount of press (google.) But, I’ve been leery. I heard he was inspired by the Massachusetts plan requiring everyone to buy Health Insurance like we do car insurance.

Well, I’m not a car. It’s possible that I’ll go the rest of my life without a car accident. But, I’ve got Diabetes, so I’m pretty sure I’ll have health problems. And I’m guessing the insurance companies know that about me. Why my health care needs should follow the same pattern as my automobile needs — I don’t know.

Still, am I close to sacrificing the “good enough” for the “perfect”? I’ve been worrying about that. So when I stumbled on Wyden’s own explanation (at The Huffington Post), I was pretty excited.

Here’s his summary (read more): Continue reading →

Discussion of the Health Care crisis is everywhere! I think if we keep pushing it we could see real change (It’s happened before — look at Social Security and Medicare, those were invented in the last 80 years or so)

From the New York Times (may require registration but, it is free to everyone):

Ms. Readling, a 50-year-old real estate agent, is one of nearly 47 million people in America with no health insurance.

Increasingly, the problem affects middle-class people like Ms. Readling, who said she made about $60,000 last year. As an independent contractor, like many real estate agents, Ms. Readling does not receive health benefits from an employer. She tried to buy a policy in the individual insurance market, but — having had cancer — could not obtain coverage, except at a price exceeding $27,000 a year, which was more than she could pay.

“I don’t know which was worse, being told that I had cancer or finding that I could not get insurance,” Ms. Readling (pronounced RED-ling) said in an interview in her office, near the tree-lined streets and stately old homes of this city in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.

This is quite a story, a nightmare — it sounds like she had healthcare through COBRA and just as that was running out she was diagnosed with cancer. My mom’s a 3-time cancer survivor. So I know from close-up the sort of commitment it takes to recover. I don’t think she would have survived if she was faced with the loss of her insurance coverage at the same time.

And without insurance she certainly wouldn’t have been able to go to the leading hospital for her sort of cancer.

Health Care Quick Links

Tales from FARManor: Universal Healthcare: Necessary but not Sufficient

Mundane Doesn’t Describe It: Healthcare Open Thread

DrSteveB at DailyKos: Universal Health for Insurance Companies (Health Care Thursday)

I’ve been mostly gone since mid-day Friday to a get-together of Kansas Democrats in Topeka. The big speaker was President Clinton. My mom’s best friends asked me to go with her when my mom decided she was just not feeling up to the trip. So with being-helpful-to-family as my excuse, I could justify the expense (of both money and energy.) And I’m glad I did!

I loved listening to him. It was a REAL pleasure to hear a President speak who likes to think & follow a thought to a logical point. The first half of his speech was built on the themes of An Inconvienent Truth, which I finally saw last weekend. The second half was about Health Care and the growing crisis.

It turns out President Clinton could answer at least one of my Seven Questions:

5. Is everyone in your family currently covered by comprehensive insurance?

It turns out, his childhood best friend wasn’t covered when he got cancer. And the President and other friends got together and saw to it that their friend got the treatment he needed in spite of the lack of insurance. And it seemed like the experience stuck.

He was pretty riled up about Insurance companies and the amount of money that goes to their profits.

My question is, does his wife feel the same way about these issues?

I’ve been remembering the USPS discussions of the early/mid 1980s. That was a time when everyone was terribly impressed with the successful efficiency of Federal Express and UPS. And there was talk that we could disband the USPS and let the Free Market handle all postal service.

Of course the problem with that idea was that Federal Express and UPS don’t deliver everywhere. While the USPS delivers a first class letter everywhere in the country for the same price, Federal Express & UPS wouldn’t. It wouldn’t make Free-Market-Sense to price a letter to Alaska at the same rate as a letter across New York City. Rural customers, those in Hawaii or Alaska — they’d be charged the full market cost of transporting their mail. If they could get it delivered at all.

And gradually talk of dismantling the USPS quietly faded away.

How does the Postal Service compare to Health Care?

(read more) Continue reading →

DrSteveB has a regular series called Health Care Thursday that he publishes at the DailyKos. Today’s post is, Mandated Health Insurance plans by Goldberg & Murphy. And it’s a nice summary of some of the state plans that have or are trying to require Universal Coverage:

While Hawaii’s “Prepaid Health Care Act” required employers to provide health insurance for employees working twenty hours per week or more, there is no such requirement to provide coverage for employees working less than twenty hours per week. On top of that increasing health care costs, insurance premiums, employer costs, prescription drug costs, long-term care costs, together with the growing number of uninsured individuals, and inadequate Medicaid reimbursements have led to uninsured over 10%… and unmangeable costs.

(snip)

[this is a bit that he quotes from the Boston Globe]

“If we’re going to mandate this, people need to see that they’re getting some value,” said panel member Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But, he added, the premium is “bad news.”

“I’m trying to think of something to get this number down,” he said.

The minimum plan would limit annual out-of-pocket expenses to $5,000 for an individual and $7,500 for a family and include prescription drug coverage, according to the proposal by a subcommittee of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector board, which is implementing the new law.

As proposed, deductibles would run no higher than $2,000 per individual and $4,000 per family.

Advocates for the uninsured were stunned at the price, considerably higher than the $200 estimated by Mitt Romney when he was governor and first proposed universal coverage. A spokesman for insurers said the requirements were too prescriptive and could undermine the goal of universal coverage.

“For a large proportion of the folks not eligible for subsidized care, the bare minimum plan is flat-out unaffordable, not only because of the premiums, but the deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses,” said John McDonough, executive director of Health Care for All, an advocacy group that supports the health law. “This is a significant disappointment. We think the Connector and particularly the insurers need to go back to the drawing board.”

Take a look at the whole thing. There’s a lot of great information. And, if his past diaries on this topic are anything to judge by this will get a couple hundred insightful comments by the end of the day.

If I spot more Health Care posts, I’ll post the links here.