In its present form, health care will bankrupt us. Even the most conservative of experts warn of impending disaster without comprehensive reform. Premiums, deductibles, co-pays are rising dramatically faster than wages are. We cannot balance the budget and reduce the federal deficit without comprehensive health care reform. Half of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills and 75% of these people HAD health insurance. (28) Even the healthiest among us are only 1 serious accident or illness away from financial ruin. The elderly have to choose daily between meals and medicine. Parents must choose between clothing their children and taking them to a doctor.
Wyden amendment gaining support By Tony Romm, The Hill - 09/22/2009
An amendment to the Senate Finance Committee's healthcare bill that would permit employees to shop around for health insurance policies is slowly gaining momentum on the Hill.
The idea, pitched by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) last week, would open the proposed "insurance exchange" -- where consumers can compare and purchase insurance plans -- to Americans who already receive coverage from their employers.
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What has made Wyden's proposal especially appealing today, however, is the Congressional Budget Office's recent cost estimate. By their math, his amendment would reduce the bill's impact on the deficit by about $1 billion over the next 10 years.
Health Reform's Missing Ingredient By Ron Wyden, Senator D-OR, NYTimes Op-Ed
September 17, 2009
The various bills making their way through Congress would, as the president explained, provide some consumer choice by establishing large marketplaces where people could easily compare insurance plans and pick the one that best suits their needs.
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The problem with these bills, however, is that they would not make the exchanges available to all Americans. Only very small companies and those individuals who can't get insurance outside of the exchange - 25 million people - would be allowed to shop there. This would leave more than 200 million Americans with no more options, private or public, than they have today.
Poll Finds Most Doctors Support Public Option by Joseph Shapiro, NPR -- September 14, 2009
When polled, "nearly 3/4 of physicians supported some form of a public option, either alone or in combination with private insurance options,"
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Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, conducted a random survey, by mail and by phone, of 2,130 doctors. They surveyed them from June right up to early September.
Most doctors - 63 percent - say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance.
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another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they'd like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent.
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, interviews Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, regarding a Robust Public Option:
AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Grijalva, I also want to ask you about Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus and his close ties to the healthcare industry. [...]
REP. RAUL GRIJALVA: I think the product that has come out from his committee and himself, I really believe that it has no legitimacy in this debate. It's an insider product. It's there to protect the industry. It is not there to try to look for that middle ground. He is key in holding up deliberations, has been key in trying to work on a consensus, but everything you see in his legislation had to be approved by the industry before it became part of the plan. So I don't think it's legitimate.
[...] I consider Senator Baucus's proposal to be essentially an insider trader move to protect an industry and really doesn't have validity at all, both political validity or content validity.
SurveyUSA conducted a Poll in Mid-August -- prior to Obama's well-received Speech in September -- and they found that across the spectrum of Demographics Groups, a majority of Americans thought it was Extremely Important to have a Choice of a Public Option!
Here is the Question which was asked, in a Survey of 1200 Americans, from all around the Country:
In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance -- extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?
All Groups
Margin of Sampling Error: ± 2.9%
Survey by SurveyUSA
Geography: USA 50 States
Data Collected: 08/19/2009
Release Date: 08/20/2009
Sponsor: MoveOn.org PAC
Doctor Linda Peeno, a renown expert in the field of "Managed Care", explains to Congress the dirty little secrets behind the Business of Health Care Denial:
THE REAL DEATH PANELS: Insurance Companies That Deny Care
In the spring of 1987, as a Physician, I denied a man a necessary operation, that would have saved his life. And thus caused his death. And I'm haunted by the thousands of pieces of paper, on which I have written that deadly word: Denied.
Well, The System's Broken [...] Certainly I don't accept, in the richest county on Earth, that we should have 47 Million people without Health Insurance, and Millions of more people being bankrupted because of a Medical Bill.
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As President of the United States, what I've proposed to do, is to make sure that we got a plan that covers ALL Americans.
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The key to making this happen, is to overcome the resistance we're going to see from Drug Companies, Insurance Companies, HMO's. Over the last 10 years alone, Drug and Insurance Companies spent over $1 Billion, in preventing Health Care Reform from happening. That's going to require then, a mobilization of energy among the American People, to insist on a Congress and a White House, that are actually going to deliver this time.
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