Saturday, August 15, 2009

Pollitt: Healthcare We Can Believe In, AARP ads, The Daily Show Death Panel Debate

From: Shawn Casey O'Brien

From: "Powell, Ernie" <EPowell@aarp.org>
Date: August 13, 2009 10:53:28 AM PDT
Subject: AARP Health Care Ads start today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dydx15enhlg&eurl=http://aarp.convio.net/s
ite/PageNavigator/Myths_vs_Facts_campaign&feature=player_embedded

The above link shows AARP's new television ad being shown nationally. It
does a good job of refuting many of the myths out there. Please forward
it on to friends and colleagues.

***

From: <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>

Obama Death Panel Debate

Healther Skelter - Obama Death Panel Debate
Sam Bee fights for private death panels, John Oliver
believes in universal death panels, and Aasif Mandvi
wants whatever scares the public most.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-10-2009/healther-skelter---obama-death-panel-debate
August 10, 2009
5:00

***

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090831/pollitt

Healthcare We Can Believe In

Subject to Debate

By Katha Pollitt
The Nation.com: August 12, 2009,

This article is in the August 31, 2009 edition of The Nation.

I am not a wonk. Usually this is not a problem. But when it comes to
healthcare reform, it matters. You see, I long to dash forward, flaming
sword in hand, to champion President Obama's healthcare plan. Every day I
get e-mails from Health Care for America Now, Organizing for America,
MoveOn.org and similar groups urging me to write my Congressman, attend a
town-hall meeting, host a gathering. But how can I speak knowledgeably about
a plan that does not yet exist and in which the parameters keep shifting?

I'd like to tell people, Obama's plan is great--for example, it has a public
option that will insure those who can't afford private coverage, help rein
in the insurance companies by competing with them for members and drive down
drug prices through forceful negotiation. But maybe the final bill won't
allow the government to negotiate drug prices, because that's the price of
Big Pharma's support, which apparently the Obama administration negotiated
for in secrecy. Maybe it won't even have a public plan; it will have
insurance co-ops instead. And then, maybe, I should say those will be just
as good, as Rahm Emanuel's brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, the MD/PhD bioethicist,
says.

OK, but what are insurance co-ops? I poked around online for fifteen minutes
and discovered that they're untested, small, unregulated, that they exist in
twenty states and that Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota really likes
them--but I didn't discover what they actually are. I understand "public
option," and "public" has a good, strong ring to it--it says, Healthcare is
a right, part of the common good, something everyone should have, and if you
can't afford it in the marketplace, the government will provide it.
"Insurance co-op" speaks a whole other language, of commerce, complexity and
exclusivity.

Sarah Palin puts forward crazy lies about how "Obama's death panel" will
euthanize Trig Palin and the elderly; right-wing radio hosts like Rush
Limbaugh talk about socialism and compare Obama to Hitler. We respond with
wonkery: burdens lifted from small business, the unsustainability of rising
costs. But people who would believe Obama wants to kill Grandma are the last
people who'll respond to rational economic arguments. They are too
irrational and, let's face it, too ignorant. The retirees ranting about the
evils of government healthcare don't even get that the Medicare they rely on
is a government program.

Whatever happened to, um, health? Wasn't that a big part of the original
case for reform? The 46 million uninsured, the 20,000 people who die every
year for lack of medical care, the studies showing that people without
insurance get worse care than those with it, even after car crashes? Where
are all those people with infuriating stories of being denied essential care
by insurance company bureaucrats, and those who thought they were covered
when they weren't, and those who were hit with huge bills because of fine
print in their contracts? What about the people who can't quit their jobs
because they need the insurance? The people who struggle and sacrifice to
pay enormous premiums? The people who cut their pills in half to save money,
or who can't afford them at all? And what about doctors? My internist and
gynecologist no longer even take private insurance because of the endless
hassles and frustrations. Why don't we hear more about how fed up doctors
are with the status quo?

Listening to the radio earlier this summer, I heard a 59-year-old nurse
named Robin Batin testify in the most heart-rending way before the House
subcommittee on oversight and investigations, chaired by Representative Bart
Stupak. When she developed invasive breast cancer, her insurance company,
Blue Cross and Blue Shield, rescinded her coverage because of a pre-existing
condition--dermatitis--even though her dermatologist called to say it was
acne, not, as the company claimed, a precancerous condition. Stupak
confronted the heads of Assurant Health, UnitedHealth and WellPoint with the
fact that there are some 1,400 conditions that can be used to cancel a
policy, most of them so minor and obscure that the executives had never
heard of them. Between 2003 and 2007, the three companies saved $300 million
by rescinding at least 19,776 policies. By the time Batin finally got her
surgery, her tumor had doubled in size. The Congressmen were shocked--they
had no idea. Neither did I. The program? This American Life. I love Ira
Glass, but come on, people! "Rescission" should be a word on the tip of
everyone's tongue by now.

As of this writing, it is far from clear how much of the vocal opposition to
reform represents wider popular feeling and how much is a mobile mob of gun
nuts, birthers and teabaggers paid for and organized by lobbyists and
Republican outfits like Americans for Prosperity, Conservatives for
Patients' Rights and FreedomWorks. Several polls show a majority of
Americans still want reform. But polls don't mean much politically if
everyone stays quiet. Where's the superb organizing the Obama campaign was
famous for? Where's the pushback from the left--for the public plan, or even
for single-payer? It may be a non-starter in Congress, despite the upcoming
vote on Representative John Conyers's HR 676, but one thing you can say for
single-payer--it's easy to explain and to understand.

Oh army of Obama supporters who swarmed the country less than one year ago,
we need you back knocking on our doors and sleeping on our sofas. We need
you to stand on street corners handing out fliers that explain what
healthcare reform is really all about and how people can make sure it
doesn't get swallowed whole by the drug and insurance companies. Surely
you're not too young and strong and healthy and vegan to care about boring
parent stuff like health insurance? The diss on you was always that you were
infatuated with Obama's charisma and with vague notions of "change"--not
with the long slog of political engagement. That isn't true, though, is it?

a.. If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.

About Katha Pollitt
Katha Pollitt's writing has appeared in many publications, including The New
Yorker, The London Review of Books, the Washington Post and the New York
Times. Her new book of poems, The Mind-Body Problem, has just been published
by Random House. Her previous books include Learning to Drive: and Other
Life Stories (Random House), a collection of personal essays. more...

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