Houston: The Health System has now Reached the Point of Total Failure, Over and Out

This was in response to this article, which was more or less a news story about how key non-right Democrats who had spoken in favor of a single payer health care system were folding their tents and giving up on true reform so that they could obediently fall in line behind their party leaders, like good little boys and girls.

The abomination that the Democrats are ramming through, in a just world, will lead to their just end as a political party within 30 years, to be replaced (in my preference) by the New Democratic Party, which will genuinely be for the common people, and will get a single payer system up and running very quickly, with the speed of enactment reflecting the need to rescue the country from health care system failure AND economic devastation.

You can not possibly get your money's worth by buying American health insurance and then paying deductibles, co pays, and prescription costs if and when you get actual health care. This is already overwhelmingly true and will be even more and more "extremely true" in each and every year ahead for the foreseeable future. The Democrat's bill will provide very few cost controls, so the hell that is the American health care system will only deepen in the years ahead.

If to the present you have arranged, through your own conscious efforts, your health, your health care participation, and your finances in opposition to the grossly overpriced health insurance, and when this bill passes you now succumb to the dictates of the traitorous, disgusting, and useless to say the least Democrats, you will very likely be economically defeated by the fat cats in that party and in the massive health insurance companies. You will most likely lose out economically. You will be fleeced. You will be played like a violin.

True, you might possibly get some health care if you become a slave to the insurance fat cats and write them very large checks often and on time, but you will be financially and economically devastated, or at least heavily damaged. Your health insurance company may or may not stand with you should you really need real assistance; that depends on specific circumstances.

If you are by nature a more gentle, compliant soul and you feel you have to bow down to the politicians and the health insurance moguls, then you will write those checks and not worry about the financial wreckage you are causing yourself, which of course could easily lead to your bankruptcy and could possibly lead to your homelessness. which would devastate your health regardless of any insurance you have.

But I respect you if you will not fight being a slave to the multimillionaire health insurance executives and their death dealing, incompetent employees in their claims denial departments. The fight against greed and tyranny is always optional; it's always for those of strong beliefs.

In fact, there is no real right thing to do once this pathetic excuse for legislation passes. The American system has now failed to the point where every course of action that a common citizen can take with respect to health care will actually do more harm than good overall, if a complete and total accounting of every factor is done. In other words, the system has reached the point of Total Failure, the point where almost everyone is losing almost all of the time.

Until real rescue comes to us, I wish everyone all the best as they confront the deepening devastation of what was once a promising country.

The Democrats Throw Their Supporters Overboard into the Churning Sea

On the eve of the House approving their dead on arrival health care reform, there was an article on Common Dreams by Tom Gallagher. Specifically, Gallagher demanded the restoration of the Kucinich amendment, which was stripped out by Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emmanuel. This amendment had been approved in a committee (shows you how much that's worth, Dennis and everyone else, laugh out loud) and would have cleared the way for states to phase out the failed US health system and phase in a cost-effective, community-based, single payer system in particular states.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENTARY
Not only was the Kucinich amendment never restored, but a nasty anti-abortion amendment WAS inserted, so that when all was said and done when the House bill was passed by a tiny margin on Saturday, November 7, basically all of Obama's voters had been thrown overboard into the churning sea.

Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, indeed.

You are definitely not a bona fide progressive if you vote in favor of this bill. Instead, you have been played like Grandma's violin; you are nothing more than a sad song, laugh out loud.

Further, arguably, anyone who simply remains in the Democratic Party going forward, even if they vote no on this one, can not be considered a true progressive.

In Canada, VIRTUALLY NO ONE would vote for this American garbage to replace the current Canadian system: no one in the NDP, no Liberal, no Bloc Quebecois, and very few Conservatives.

Deaths Caused by a Thousand Cuts, and the Coming Advent of the Zombie Customers

Trust me, this guy, Sandy LeonVest, was very on point in this great and thorough article about the demise of health care reform in general and especially the public option in particular, both of which died a death caused by a thousand cuts during 2009. This is to my way of thinking a must read article.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENT
All I had to add to the article was a relatively minor complaint about a quote made by Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates:

"According to Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, the current House proposal works pretty well for families making $20,000 or $30,000 a year. "A family making $27,000 a year will pay about $1,000 (annually) toward their health insurance," he told Jim Lehrer on PBS' News Hour."

Um, what about the co pays and the deductibles? The House bill does NOT work for families in that $20,000 to $30,000 income bracket, except for those who don't get any actual health care. It doesn't work positively for any income brackets except for those under 133% and for, you guessed it, those with high incomes, say 8 or 10 times the poverty threshold and up. High income people are always, to one extent or another, immune from suffering from the effects of public policy failure.

The huge health insurance corporations are counting on a large number of people to be too tapped out after paying the health insurance premiums and from paying all the other taxes and basic costs of living to actually dare to get health care and to face paying the deductibles and co pays under the policies they were forced to buy by the American right wing government.

These captive customers will be like "zombie customers". They will pay their premiums but won't access health care except under full scale emergencies. So we are talking about a lot of new cash cows for the mega health insurance companies, which will, at the least, roughly offset the costs to the health insurance companies of having to actually pay for care for the really sick who somehow get insurance for the first time.

Obama the Lion Hearted? I Wish

Another must read David Michael Green article.

UNITY-PROGRESS
This goes on the main and a backup hard drive, because there probably isn't ever going to be a better summary of "Obama the Weasel Hearted".

Seriously, when is Obama going to do something, anything, that is not in accordance with the dominanat right-wing paradigm of our day? Will he ever, ever personally bring about anything that the Canadian CONSERVATIVES would never agree to? Just one thing? Anything?

I'm waiting.

Does Medicaid Over Prescribe Drugs & Deny Better Treatments on Purpose?

There was a side discussion about Medicaid's possible overuse of drugs that came up under this excellent article by Normon Solomon.

Dem-dat-dare November 5th, 2009 2:34 pm
Solomon (finally) writes:
"We're hearing that large numbers of lower-income Americans will be provided with Medicaid coverage in the next decade. Translation: If funding holds up, they'll get to hang onto a bottom rung of the healthcare ladder. Many will not be able to get the medical help they need, from primary care providers or specialists."

One of the fouler unexamined pigs in this poke IS Medicaid -- no second opinions, non-profit pill-mill "community clinics", Estate Benefits Recovery Act provisions for those 55-65. Medicaid is a rolling Death Panel, treating serious sicknesses with ... ta-DAH ... psycho-meds and pain pills, the more expensive and unavailing, the better.

Medicaid is the semi-final solution for the poor and near-poor. Once IN the Medicaid system, recipients are barred even from seeking out real medical care for cash.

No bill that involves mandating people into Medicaid is "reform". Why neither the politicians nor the press will delve into the horrors of the Medicaid system is an interesting question -- guess it's the meal ticket for too many defrocked docs and non-profit hustlers . . . and of course it DOES dispense oodles of pharmaceuticals.

In a separate post, Dem-dat-Dare was even more critical of Medicaid:

Dem-dat-dare November 5th, 2009 3:59 pm
I believe there's a misconception, among politicians and liberals, that Medicaid is sort of like Single Payer for poor people -- NOTHING could be further from the truth.

Because next-to-no regular doctors, let alone specialists, will treat Medicaid patients -- too many restrictions on treatment, too little compensation -- those subject to Medicaid are treated mostly in "community clinics" whose reason for being is exactly to churn the accounts of Medicaid recipients, a captive population of funding units.

For those between 55 and 65, Medicaid costs can be collected from the Medicaid recipient's survivors, when s/he dies prematurely from its truly-crappy "care". During a Medicaid recipients lifetime, s/he can neither find out what charges are being saved up for his/her survivors, nor -- should the Medicaid recipient win the lottery or whatever -- pay off during his/her lifetime.

Medicaid is an abominable sub-medical fraud which is extremely lucrative for medical non-profits (including clinics and hospitals) and pharmaceutical companies. If politicians (and those who fund them) are unaware of the problems with Medicaid, they're asleep at the wheel. If they DO know what Medicaid is, they're complicit in what amounts to uh bureaucratic mass murder.

The POINT is that poor people are dying unnecessarily of heart disease, cancer, and other serious conditions while being dosed with drugs to keep them quiet.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENTS
Medicaid may be garbage sometimes, for some folks, but smart Americans need to learn that over medication, like lack of income and jobs, is often part of living in the failed American system of today. Learn to say no to drugs including prescribed drugs except in "confirmed circustances" Specifically, you should be very wary of drugs except when you have verified that they are clearly needed to save your life or if they offer a near certain cure of your disease.

If on the other hand you suspect the drugs are being substituted for better treatments that are being denied to you by Medicaid, take few or none of those drugs and instead demand the better treatment being denied to you. Find out on the internet what the best treatments are for whatever you have, and demand one of those treatments; offer to wait for them a reasonable period of time if you have to.

Medicaid may prescribe medications that ultimately do more harm than good, but it can't force you to take them.

What Remains is a Rube Goldberg Contraption that will Launch this Country into a new Phase of Healthcare Apartheid

This extremely important article by Norman Solomon was what the commentary below was responding to. I can not recommend this article enough.

I will rarely borrow from a Common Dreams article which I am indexing and responding to for the headline of the posting here, but I could not resist in this case. The header for this post is straight from the Normon Solomon article. I was going to get around to using the "Rube Goldberg phraseology, but the excellent Norman Solomon beat me to it. And I plead guilty to in my focus on economics to not as of yet emphazizing the health apartheid aspect of the failed US system. So hats off and thanks to Mr. Solomon for everything.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENTARY
I was along for the dog and pony show ride during the spring and summer, when the preliminary discussions and bills all suggested that the final result might not be a 100% dead on arrival failure and a complete embarrassment to the US. I got into the habit of commenting here at my favorite political site, and finally got motivated to start a political blog.

Little did even the cynics among us suspect back then that the final result, described quite well in this article, would be as abysmal and counterproductive as it is going to be. I guess even the cynics need to apologize for not being cynical enough, because I honestly thought that there would be a little something something in the final result, a few crumbs of real improvement in the overall system if you will, but now it appears the final result will be overwhelmingly bad except, ironically, for the dirt poor, and except for those who will benefit from a few new regulations on health insurance companies that should have been in effect decades ago, namely:

--Pre-existing conditions will be no bar to granting insurance
--Some kind of limit on co-pay amounts payable in a year
--Restrictions on rescissions.

It's unknown whether even these decades late regulations will be enforced enough or not; I wouldn't bet anything important that they will be enforced solidly.

Before the year is out, I'm making an Excel and putting it on Google Documents that will enable anyone to quickly see how badly they are being fleeced by the failed US health care system. It will at a glance give you a very rough estimate of what you would pay in various European and Asian countries based on what your income is, and so will be a guide of the maximum amount you should be willing to pay out of your income.

Remember that as a result of helping to pay for obscene health insurance executive and “star specialist physician” salaries, you eventually end up homeless, or you don't eat right, or you can't heat your house, your health could very well end up being worse than if you don't even try to comply with the "mandate" to buy grossly overpriced insurance. For a substantial number of people, it will be much smarter to pay the “no insurance tax,” which will be roughly 25% or less of what the insurance that you may not be able to afford would cost.

You only go to jail if you refuse to pay the tax surcharge on those who refuse to pay for the grossly overpriced health insurance. If you are dirt poor, you will be completely off the hook for both the insurance and the no insurance tax. More than ever, it will pay to be dirt poor in the US. Smart low income workers will make sure they reduce their incomes from a little above 133% of poverty to just below it. And you can bet that the criminals who hide income will be working overtime whenever this goes into effect.

If your income is less than about 133% of the Federal poverty guideline, you will enjoy a waiver on having to buy the grossly overpriced private health insurance, and you will supposedly have access to Medicaid, which for all it's faults, is clearly better than nothing, and is clearly better than ending up homeless due to trying to pay for grossly overpriced and unaffordable private, for-profit US health insurance.

If your income is between about 133% and 400% of poverty, you will be given subsidies, but the subsidies are set so that the premiums alone will match and even exceed the total amount paid on actual health care per capita in the reputable European and Asian countries. If you actually seek care, your grand total of all premiums, deductibles, and co pays will very quickly reach 15% and 20% of your income, and could of course go far higher than that. The percentage of your income you in total spend on health care will vastly exceed the per capita or actual percentage of your income you would pay in Europe or Asia.

From about 400% to 800% of poverty, it will be a similar though generally less extreme story than it is for those with incomes under 400% of poverty. You will get no subsidy, so every nickel of premiums, deductibles, and co pays will go against your income. Unless you simply do not use health services, the total amount you pay as a percentage of income will generally be much higher than it would be in the reputable European and Asian countries.

Only if your income is above about 800% of poverty (8 times the poverty threshold or more) will the new law not be a major new and burdensome tax. And only in those lofty ranges will the percentage paid for health care be similar to what is paid in the reputable European and Asian countries.

From an economics perspective the most notable thing about this failed effort to reform a failed system is that this may literally be the most regressive tax in the history of the world. No wonder that Obama and his cronies are so sensitive when they are challenged that they are going against their no new taxes pledge. To say they are violating their promise is a ridiculous understatement, but they want you live in a fantasy world where this is not a tax.

Obama has played the role of insurance industry spokesman, nothing more and nothing less. He has proven to be not up to his job and deserves to be defeated at the earliest opportunity.

The obvious threat of a massively regressive tax added on to an already massive health system failure is that it will deepen the already serious failure of the labor market system.