Many of you must have heard by now that the Senate finance committee passed its version of health care reform legislation. The bill would expand coverage without increasing the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, in part by taxing the most expensive health insurance plans, the so-called “Cadillac plans.”

The problem is that many of those plans, despite requiring fairly high premiums from both employees and of employers are really not that great at all. The Senate finance committee’s thinking is not along the lines of quality coverage, but rather along the actual cost of the plan.

There is a big difference between the $40,000-a-year plan offered to Goldman Sachs CEOs, with no co-payments, no deductibles, few limits on how much you can spend, and no need for prior authorization, before you get treated and other, run-of-the-mill “Cadillac plans” offered to average government, or corporate employees.

Many not so fancy plans, which also qualify as “Cadillacs” under the finance committee’s definition are so defined because the term refers to total cost – and not a particular set of benefits – and many factors, like for example the state you live in, the size of your company, and the makeup of that company’s work force, which can affect costs.

Premiums tend to be significantly higher in some states. The employer/employee contribution also varies by state. In addition, the smaller the business, the fewer employees who participate, the less leverage the organization has to negotiate lower premiums. And if the workers have an average age of, say, 55, their premiums are going to be a lot higher than if the average is 24.

As it stands, there should be considerably more emphasis on improving the coverage of existing health insurance plans, rather than just emphasizing the total cost. There is no doubt that the cost of health care in the United States has gone through the roof a long time ago and that issue needs to be urgently addressed, rather than only worrying whether the reform is going to increase our already skyrocketing deficit. Just think about the trillions of dollars doled out to banks and other financial conglomerates. That seemed to be quite painless to those who are now worrying about increasing our deficit. Couldn’t we have used that money to improve our health insurance system and our crumbling infrastructure, rather than bailing out the fat cats, who have actually caused the financial disaster?

If we are to truly reform the U.S. health care insurance system, along with the health care itself, the main points of the so-called reform should be: how to reduce the exorbitant costs of both the care and the insurance, to improve the quality of often substandard care (unless you are willing and able to pay for the very best care available) and to broaden, rather than reduce the coverage that the health plans offer.

Providing health care insurance to the uninsured is a noble quest, to be sure, but to further penalize others, who are ‘covered”, but who do pay their premiums, their ever-rising co-pays and who’s “Cadillac” plans do not offer coverage for such common procedures such as dental care in general, specifically root canals, crowns and necessary oral surgery is the wrong way to go about it.

We have strongly supported the reform of U.S. health care system as a whole for some time now, but taxing the people, already penalized by the inadequacies of some of our health insurance plans, including some of the “Cadillac” ones, seems more like an idea of still another bean counter, rather than a true reformer.

Let’s get this done now and lets get it done right!

Technorati Tags: banks, cadillac, financial institutions, Health care, health insurance, plans, reform, taxing

Democrats united Saturday night to push the health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama.

The Republican’s position does indeed appear to be a continuation of the campaign to defeat the president’s initiatives, rather than proposing anything constructive and helpful to the American people. The desire to “show him” seems stronger than the desire to actually achieve something that’s needed and at least in the long run – beneficial. That’s nothing new, of course. Just listen to the de-facto leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the other conservative blabbermouths. There is no doubt that the interest of the country as a whole has been put on the back burner, in favor of hurting, or even destroying anything that Barack Obama is doing.

The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who do not have it, control insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care.

Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Republicans of trying to prevent a historic debate that the nation needed.

“Imagine if, instead of debating whether to abolish slavery, instead of debating whether giving women and minorities the right to vote, those who disagreed had muted discussion and killed any vote,” he said.

The Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell said the vote was anything but procedural – describing it as a referendum on the bill itself, which he said would raise taxes, cut Medicare and create a “massive and unsustainable debt.”

The fate of the Saturday night showdown had been sealed hours earlier, when two final Democratic holdouts, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, announced they would join in clearing the way for a full debate.

We will be watching the upcoming debate, although we do not intend to waste our time in hearing the usual, vicious opinions of the conservative pundits.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying the president was gratified by the vote, which he says “brings us one step closer to ending insurance company abuses, reining in spiraling health care costs, providing stability and security to those with health insurance, and extending quality health coverage to those who lack it.”

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide subsidies to those who cannot afford it. Large companies could incur penalties if they do not provide coverage to their workforce. The insurance industry would come under significant new regulation under the bill, which would first ease and then ban the practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

Congressional budget analysts put the legislation’s cost at $979 billion over a decade and said it would reduce deficits over the same period while extending coverage to 94 percent of the eligible population.

In relation to the health-care reform debate and to the Republican (and Joe Lieberman’s) opposition to it, it might be worthwhile to quote a letter by George Washington to his nephew supporting adoption of the Constitution, to which there was considerable opposition as well..

General Washington castigated critics of the Constitution and stated that they seek to “rouse the apprehensions of the ignorant & unthinking . . . [with] objections . . . better calculated to alarm the fears, than to convince the judgement of their readers.”

These comments seem equally applicable to those Republican senators opposed to health-care reform.

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And since the new mammography recommendations seem to have brought outrage from both sides of the aisle, we would like to present another incisive cartoon on the subject from Washington Post’s Tom Toles.

Technorati Tags: bill, Clears, democrats, Health care, Hurdle, insurance industry, reform, republicans, senate

Even Newt Gingrich admits that in his days in Congress, on the average about 50 percent of the Democrats voted along with the Republicans.

Considering the one-sided Democratic vote in the House of Representatives on the health-care reform bill and its chances of passage by the Senate, here’s Washington Post’s Tom Toles’ latest take on the issue of bipartisanship.

Technorati Tags: Bipartisanship, cartoon, Health care, reform, republicans, Spirit, Tom Toles

As the health-care reform efforts gather steam, with even some Republicans, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger urging passage of the reform bill and saying that he supports President Obama in this regard, other reforms, besides the improvement of the health insurance system appear to be badly needed as well.

Even though the United States now spends $2.4 trillion a year on medical care – which is much more per capita than comparable countries – we rank near the bottom in rankings on premature deaths caused by illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy, stroke, influenza, ulcers and pneumonia, according to research by Commonwealth Fund.

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad has commented on these not really surprising findings, saying:

“All of these countries have much lower costs than we do, and they have higher quality outcomes than ours.”

These sad statistics are probably not due solely to the inadequacy of the U.S. health care industry, which has actually proven to be quite good, at least in certain, top facilities. This is not to say that it is good, or even adequate in most places, particularly in view of its exorbitant cost.

Other causes include of course our basic diet; all of those adulterated foods, which much too often are the only ones available to the average citizen. The food additives, the healthy, natural ingredients removed either in order to increase profit, ease of processing and transportation, or simply to cater to our now perverted tastes.

Considering the fact that the average container of so-called full-strength soft drink contains the equivalent of about 17 teaspoons of sugar – which isn’t even sugar, but the ever-present High Fructose Corn Syrup, should give all of us pause. And if it isn’t sugar, it is Aspertame, NutraSweet, or some other low-calorie sweetener, which could be even worse.

Just think how the epidemics of obesity, diabetes and other diseases would most likely fade, if we stopped stuffing ourselves with such totally unhealthy substances.

Meanwhile, it appears that we are at risk even from formerly healthy, natural foods as well. As it turns out, cultivation, processing, storage and transportation introduce all kinds of dangerous food-borne diseases. Most risky appear to be: leafy greens, eggs, tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes, sprouts and berries. Apparently bacteria, from E.coli O157:H7 in spinach to scombrotoxin in tuna, are contaminating more and more of these essential foods. People who have eaten them suffered a range of illnesses, from mild stomach cramps all the way to death.

In addition, potatoes have emerged as threat to health, because many processors and restaurants have been putting them through the same machines, which were already contaminated by raw meat and poultry.

The FDA has been under fire for years for failing to adequately ensure food safety. A wave of recent food borne illnesses has placed increasing public pressure on Congress to do something about it.

As it stands, it appears that we should grow all of our own food, and avoid almost everything coming down the pike from the food producing and serving industry – and that of course includes those awful soft drinks – and providing that we do have health insurance, be very careful which medical establishments we actually trust our lives to.

Another option for some might be to move to another country, where the food supply hasn’t been so totally messed by greed and stupidity. Italy comes to mind as one of the possibilities. The Italians do take their food seriously and are minimally if at all interested in imported foodstuffs, considering their own as the best. This attitude extends to particular regions. As an example:  Sardinians eat “Sardo” food and drink Sardo wine and beer, with hardly anything coming over even from the Italian mainland.

We know that this is impractical for most people, but why should almost everyone be forced to play Russian roulette with their health in arguably the richest country in the world?

This brings up another issue. Much has been said about the dangers of smoking. The funny thing is that in most other developed countries, where smoking is more prevalent than in the U.S. people are generally healthier. Could it be the chemicals added by manufacturers to the cigarettes, rather than the tobacco itself?

Technorati Tags: cancer, contamination, diabetes, E.coli, food industry, medical industry, obesity, processed foods, reform, soft drinks, tobacco, US Health Insurance

This is not quite  a “Wordless Sunday” post, but a continuation of comments on the raging health-care reform struggle.

Tom Toles of the Washington Post has once again took the bull (or is it the elephant?) by the horns in his latest cartoon.

Enjoy and draw your own conclusions.

Technorati Tags: cartoon, Health care, rebublicans, reform, Tom Tole