Doctors’ Group Hails Reintroduction of Medicare-for-All Bill in Congress

[Better Believe It]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 15, 2011
10:40 AM

Doctors’ Group Hails Reintroduction of Medicare-for-All Bill
Single-payer health program would cover all 51 million uninsured, upgrade everyone’s benefits and save $400 billion annually on bureaucracy, physicians say

WASHINGTON - February 15 - A nationwide physicians’ group today hailed the reintroduction of a popular federal bill that would quickly upgrade the Medicare program and expand it to cover the entire population.

The “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., would replace today’s private health insurers – and the Obama law's individual mandate, which is being challenged as unconstitutional – with a single, streamlined public agency that would pay all medical claims, much like Medicare works for seniors today. (See bill summary here.)

“There’s no doubt that expanding Medicare to all is both constitutional and the most cost-effective way to cover everyone,” said Dr. Garrett Adams, president of Physicians for a National Health Program. “A national single-payer program would save over $400 billion a year on bureaucracy and paperwork alone. Plus, it would use proven, effective cost-control techniques like negotiating drug prices and hospital budgets.”

“An improved Medicare-for-all program would provide comprehensive coverage to all of the 51 million people who are currently uninsured and enhance the coverage that everyone else has, by eliminating co-pays and deductibles,” Adams said. “It would go far beyond the new health law, which would still leave 23 million people uninsured in 2019.”

“In these difficult economic times, with lack of health coverage leading to thousands of deaths and personal bankruptcies each year, and states struggling to pay the high costs of Medicaid and health coverage for state workers and retirees, everyone’s taking another look at single payer,” he said. “Legislation that could lead to a single-payer plan was just introduced last week in Vermont, led by a push from the governor and a report by Harvard economist William Hsiao that single payer would cover everyone and save the state $490 million in 2015 and at about four times that much by 2024.”

“Surveys have repeatedly shown that about two-thirds of the public supports a Medicare-for-all approach,” Adams said. “And a recent survey of physicians shows that a solid majority now favor government legislation to create national health insurance.”

“As the founder of a free medical clinic in rural Tennessee, I can assure you that the need for fundamental health care reform has never been greater,” he said. “It’s time to stop putting the interests of private insurance companies over patient needs and adopt a single-payer national health program in the U.S.”

###
Physicians for a National Health Program is a single issue organization advocating a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health program. PNHP has more than 15,000 members and chapters across the United States.


http://www.pnhp.org/news/2011/february/doctors%E2%80%99-group-hails-reintroduction-of-medicare-for-all-bill

[Mimosa]

1. Physicians for a National Health Program is for US!

This is what SHOULD have been legislated in 2010.

The “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., would replace today’s private health insurers – and the Obama law's individual mandate, which is being challenged as unconstitutional – with a single, streamlined public agency that would pay all medical claims, much like Medicare works for seniors today. (See bill summary here.)

“There’s no doubt that expanding Medicare to all is both constitutional and the most cost-effective way to cover everyone,” said Dr. Garrett Adams, president of Physicians for a National Health Program. “A national single-payer program would save over $400 billion a year on bureaucracy and paperwork alone. Plus, it would use proven, effective cost-control techniques like negotiating drug prices and hospital budgets.”

“An improved Medicare-for-all program would provide comprehensive coverage to all of the 51 million people who are currently uninsured and enhance the coverage that everyone else has, by eliminating co-pays and deductibles,” Adams said. “It would go far beyond the new health law, which would still leave 23 million people uninsured in 2019.”

[Raksha]

2. I admire their courage in reintroducing it,

but do you think H.R. 676 has a snowball's chance in hell with our present bought and paid for Republican-controlled Congress and our appeaser DINO president? There would have to be a furious Tahrir-sized mob in the Washington Mall calling for their heads on pikes before it had a chance of getting anywhere.

[Better Believe It]

3. If a mass movement along the lines you suggest is organized in the next few years HR 676 could pass.

[msongs]

4. nice to see a self proclaimed group of democrats advancing a democratic cause eh?

[Better Believe It]

5. A Better Approach to Health Care by Margaret Flowers, MD

A Better Approach to Health Care
As the current health law comes under attack and our national deficit continues to grow, single-payer plans are gaining more and more interest.
by Margaret Flowers, MD
February 8, 2011

Last month, fulfilling a campaign promise, Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to repeal “Obamacare.” The vote was primarily a symbolic gesture. House leadership knows repeal will not survive a vote in the Senate or a Presidential veto. But the Republican leadership is likely to attempt steps that would lead to a de facto repeal of the health law.

One of the main strategies for weakening the law will be to prevent funding to key elements and programs—particularly of those having to do with enforcing regulations on the insurance industry.
We can also expect Republican members of Congress to promote “triggers,” which change the law if certain goals are not met. These changes will drive employers to stop offering health insurance to employees and instead offer fixed contributions that employees can use to purchase health insurance on the open market. As premiums rise, more people will be forced to purchase skimpier policies, leaving them unprotected in times of need.

Republicans also advocate for the opening of the health insurance market across state lines in the belief that this will create competition that reduces the cost of health insurance. In truth, in order to make a profit, health insurers compete to insure the healthiest patients and to avoid paying for care. The result will be a race to the bottom.

Health insurance regulations—which control, for example, what services insurers must cover, or how many physicians they must allow patients to choose between—were put into place to protect patients. Regulations vary by state, meaning that, just as corporations move their headquarters to states with lower taxes, health insurers will base themselves in states with fewer regulations. Premiums may become cheaper, but at the cost of higher out-of-pocket costs and lower quality benefits that leave patients unable to receive needed care or forced into bankruptcy by an unexpected illness or accident.

Such changes shift more and more of the cost of care onto individual patients—particularly those who have the greatest needs. This is exactly the wrong approach if our goal is the creation of a system that improves the health of our population and controls our soaring health care expenditures.

The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not have a coherent health system and that allows investor-owned corporations to finance and provide health services. As a result, we have the highest health care costs in the world but relatively poor outcomes—not to mention a growing number of people who can’t afford the care they need.

We have the cruelest form of health care rationing in this nation: rationing based on the ability to pay. Except for those in the very highest income brackets, we are all at risk of personal bankruptcy due to a health crisis. In fact, the U.S. is unique in that most personal bankruptcies are due to medical illness or medical costs—and more than three-fourths of those who experienced medical bankruptcy were insured.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. As the weakening of the federal health care law begins, a nationwide effort for more substantial reform—a national single-payer system, also known as improved Medicare for All—is taking place. Health professionals and advocates around the nation are actively engaged in educating, organizing, and agitating to promote Medicare for All. There are tremendous opportunities at the state and national level to pass a single payer system.

As the current health law falls apart and our national deficit continues to grow, single-payer plans are gaining more and more interest. More than 20 state legislatures have either passed single payer health bills or are in the process of creating such bills. California has passed a single payer bill twice, only to have it vetoed. Advocates are working to pass the law once again this year. Vermont is in the process of putting together legislation setting up a system similar to single-payer; legislators expect to pass their bill this year. At the federal level, single-payer bills will be introduced in both the House and Senate.

Our current health spending is enough to pay for high quality comprehensive care for everyone if we switch to a single risk pool that is transparent and publicly accountable.

--------------------------------------------

Dr. Margaret Flowers wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Dr. Flowers is a congressional fellow with Physicians for a National Health Program and a pediatrician based in Baltimore.

YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. MD, M. F. (2011, February 07). A Better Approach to Health Care. Retrieved February 15, 2011, from YES! Magazine Web site: http://cms.yesmagazine.org/people-power/a-better-approach-to-health-care. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

[Lugnut]

6. K&R! n/t

[flying rabbit]

7. K&R nt

[siligut]

8. It all makes perfect sense

There’s no doubt that expanding Medicare to all is both constitutional and the most cost-effective way to cover everyone,” said Dr. Garrett Adams, president of Physicians for a National Health Program. “A national single-payer program would save over $400 billion a year on bureaucracy and paperwork alone. Plus, it would use proven, effective cost-control techniques like negotiating drug prices and hospital budgets.”

Why, Dr. Adams, I do believe you have something here, and it is part of the reason there is so much resistance to a National Health Program. There is way too much money to be made off of sick people.

[midnight]

24. Americans should be allowed to negotiate for drug prices? It's hard to imagine

that this effective cost control is not already in practice...

[Mnemosyne]

9. K&R for more visibility. n/t

[FourScore]

10. K&R

[Dappleganger]

11. The most responsible choice for health care.

[Uncle Joe]

12. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Better Believe It.

[Waiting For Everyman]

13. K&R!

(edit: only 4 characters in a subject line and I still typo-ed it, I can't believe it.)

[MasonJar]

14. Thank you, doctors, and thank you Representative Conyers. The simplest

and best answer: cover everyone and save money. Of course, since the majority of the lawmakers are owned by the insurance and pharmaceutical firms this will never fly.

[truth2power]

15. Thank you for posting this, BBI. Here's an interesting legal take on this, ..

in the comments section of that article. Not being a lawyer, I don't know if this would work, but it seems like it would be worth a try:

A legal approach
Posted by John at Feb 15, 2011 12:09 PM
It recently occurred to me that Medicare for _some_ amounts to age discrimination, a thus at least conceptually a violation of various laws.

I don't recall having heard anyone approaching the cause of Medicare for all on legal grounds, by putting forward a legal case that would assert that Medicare must be universal lest it discriminate.

Don't ask don't tell was recently overturned using this very approach; equal protection of the laws is a fundamental principle in the U.S. Insurance is nothing if not protection. And crafting federal law so as to have no identifiable purpose but to protect the financial interests of private institutions, by allowing them to cherry-pick clients and thus deny equal protection to those less healthy or less able to pay, is nothing if not the basis for a potentially sucessful legal challenge to such laws. Everyone in the country who is not currently covered, should have legal standing in such a challenge, it would seem to me.

[tucsonlib]

16. For Anyone Unfamiliar With The Full Text Of H.R. 676 -

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/t2GPO/http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr676ih/pdf/BILLS-111hr676ih.pdf


This bill, should it ever pass, would be hailed by future generations as one the most seminal, eloquent and humane pieces of legislation ever to emerge from the Halls of Congress.

Read it. The whole thing. It's short. It's inspirational. It's guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes.

[somone]

17. Recommended

[bigwillq]

18. Kick (nt)

[2banon]

19. K&R n/t

:headbang:

[midnight]

20. I'm so sad that I did not get to kick this within the 24 hour period.....

This is such an important topic, and I'm glad to see it back in the news...The “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., would replace today’s private health insurers – and the Obama law's individual mandate, which is being challenged as unconstitutional – with a single, streamlined public agency that would pay all medical claims, much like Medicare works for seniors today. (See bill summary here.)

[leftstreet]

21. same here

Missed it completely

Kick

[suffragette]

22. Too late to recommend

but here's a very hearty kick.

[DesertFlower]

23. i wonder if it will happen in my lifetime. K&R

[HuckleB]

25. +1 Thank you, PNHP!!!!

[xchrom]

26. Recommend

[saras]

27. All you can do is try to be sensible

No matter how low the odds are of the bill passing, they're a hell of a lot higher than they'd be if the law was never introduced in the first place.

The one thing Dems desperately need and don't have enough of is good, sensible ideas offered as alternatives to the corporate criminals. "Take all our money except bus fare home" isn't a good alternative to "take all our money", and no one gets excited about it.

This bill has the potential of exciting people who may end up passing a different bill in two or three years. It is, at least, an attempt to turn around and start climbing out of the hole, instead of just saying "we're still going down. slow down a little."

[snappyturtle]

28. Kick!

:kick:

[w8liftinglady]

29. Ron Anderson MD ,CEO of Parkland Hospital belongs

Parkland Hospital... where I had my brain surgery... who essentially saved my life... and who cares for just about every poor sick person in a 10-county area surrounding Dallas.