"President Barack Obama is Monday to outline plans to cut US healthcare costs by two trillion dollars over the next 10 years, part of a bid to slash spending while making treatment more affordable.This is the HMO agitprop in counteroffensive mode, and if I read it right, Ob's playing the dutiful corporate liberal shill-in-chief role.Obama is expected to detail what he will describe as an "unprecedented commitment" by six major healthcare lobby groups to limit spending increases over the next decade, senior administration officials said on Sunday.
The White House hopes the voluntary plan -- drawn up by groups representing insurance firms, hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical makers and a labor union -- could eventually save US families as much as 2,500 dollars a year."
List of sponsors:
"America's Health Insurance Plans, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the Service Employees International Union and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America."Note that SEIU, the multi-sectoral Stern plantation, is a big health sector "organizer" -- the UFT of health. Andy, among other roles, wants to be the Albert Shanker of health, 'twould seem.
For connoisseurs of intellectual comedy, here are the Schumer provisos:
The Times adds:
- The public plan must be self-sustaining. It should pay claims with money raised from premiums and co-payments. It should not receive tax revenue or appropriations from the government.
- The public plan should pay doctors and hospitals more than what Medicare pays. Medicare rates, set by law and regulation, are often lower than what private insurers pay.
- The government should not compel doctors and hospitals to participate in a public plan just because they participate in Medicare.
- To prevent the government from serving as both “player and umpire,” the officials who manage a public plan should be different from those who regulate the insurance market.
"In addition, Mr. Schumer said, the public plan should be required to establish a reserve fund, just as private insurers must maintain reserves for the payment of anticipated claims, [and] the public plan should be required to provide the same minimum benefits as private insurers."
Addendum, from MJS:
Doug Henwood passed along a press release he got from SEIU about this come-to-Jesus movement by some obviously frightened sinners:
SEIU Announces Unprecedented Coalition to Save $2 Trillion in Healthcare Costs, Pass Obama Healthcare PlanQuite apart from the grotesquely misplaced triumphalist rhetoric, it's interesting to note that the diction and topoi-koinoi invoked here all appear to be taken from the playbook of the reactionary Dr Luntz, mentioned here before.‘Game-Changing’ Moment Marks Success of Union’s Long-Term Investment and Leadership in Healthcare Reform Efforts
WASHINGTON, DC— "Today, four years of unrelenting efforts by SEIU members to create a new American healthcare system that lowers cost, improves quality and is affordable for every American took a giant step forward.... From the start, SEIU has worked with the belief that this is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem – it’s an American problem....” said SEIU President Andy Stern.
Service Employees International Union, AdvaMed, American Hospital Association, PhRMA, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the American Medical Association have met with President Obama and committed to the President’s vision of meaningful healthcare reform that guarantees every American access to affordable, high quality healthcare. In a moment being charactetrized as a “game changer” by the Administration, the organizations pledged to take aggressive steps to cut healthcare costs that could save the country $2 trillion over ten years and save each American family roughly $2,500 a year.
“If we are going to get our economy back on track, we must tackle the growing healthcare crisis. Everyone – physicians, hospitals, healthcare workers, payers, suppliers, manufacturers – shares responsibility in making sure healthcare reform happens this year,” said SEIU Healthcare Chairman Dennis Rivera. “We all understand that guaranteeing meaningful reform is too important to be left to politics. It’s a moral imperative, an economic imperative, and essential to the well being of every family in our country.”
From the Divided We Fail, Better Health Care Together and Partnership for Quality Care coalitions, which include disparate groups like NFIB, Business Roundtable, Wal-Mart and AT&T, to the progressive coalition Health Care for America Now, SEIU has worked to bring key healthcare stakeholders to the table to ensure reform could happen. As the nation’s largest union of healthcare workers – doctors, nurses, pharmacists, technicians and others – our workers understand that reducing costs is critical to promoting health and preventing illness.
“It’s a sign of how committed industry leaders are to reforming our healthcare system that these groups were able to come together and offer proactive proposals on cutting healthcare costs. Cutting healthcare costs means improving the quality of care patients receive, putting money back into families’ pockets and keeping businesses open on Main Street. We may not always agree, and haven’t in the past, but we know that this is the moment and now is the time to fundamentally change the way we take care of American families and workers,” added Rivera.
“SEIU is firmly committed to bringing about real change to our healthcare system that includes a public health insurance option that provides people with a choice of a public health insurance plan, gives them greater control over their healthcare and creates much needed competition,” said Andy Stern. “As providers and consumers, SEIU has played a leading role in the efforts to reform our national healthcare system for years because we know our members, their families and their communities cannot wait any longer for change that works.”
- ### - MEDIA NOTE:
Background on SEIU’s efforts to reform the national healthcare system, which include:
... can be found at www.seiu.org.
- Challenging Fortune 500 companies to contact us about the nation’s failing healthcare system to discuss possible solutions; convening coalitions of business, provider, academic and labor representatives to create a climate and impetus to make healthcare reform a top priority;
- Co-hosting the first presidential forum focused on healthcare reform; and
- demanding that every candidate running for president produce a comprehensive healthcare plan in order to be eligible for our endorsement;
SEIU would no doubt respond that this is a case of stealing the enemy's clothes. But if the point of this clothes-theft is to act like the enemy, then why should the rest of us prefer the robbers over the robbed?
Comments (19)
The SEIU press release makes me wonder whether the idea of universal public education is such a good one. There are just too many people who think they are skilled with words now. I'd prefer a politics of outright physical combat, with shouts of victory, screams of pain, and disgusting whimpers of cringing submission.
Posted by hce | May 12, 2009 12:19 PM
Posted on May 12, 2009 12:19
Right you are, hce.
working families
game-changing
incentivize
best practices...
learning outcomes
candidate messaging
Posted by gluelicker | May 12, 2009 1:15 PM
Posted on May 12, 2009 13:15
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/us/politics/12health.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
"President Obama engineered a political coup on Monday by bringing leaders of the health care industry to the White House to build momentum for his ambitious health care agenda. "
really ???
"If history is a guide, their commitments may not produce the promised savings. Their proposals are vague — promising, for example, to reduce both “overuse and underuse of health care.” None of the proposals are enforceable, and none of the savings are guaranteed. Without such a guarantee, budget rules would normally prevent Congress from using the savings to pay for new initiatives to cover the uninsured. At this point, cost control is little more than a shared aspiration."
indeed
as to ob and the corporate med lobby
"Their interests overlap but do not coincide."
"For Mr. Obama, the White House meeting was an opportunity to showcase his consensus-building approach, in contrast with the confrontational style of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who at this point in her husband’s first term attacked “price gouging, cost shifting and unconscionable profiteering” by the industry in a speech to union members."
wow
"Mr. Obama is not cracking the whip on the health care industry so much as wooing it, "
"For the health care and insurance executives, the savings initiative helps them secure a seat at the table where many decisions about their future will be made in the next year."
"seat at the table "!!!!!!
nonsense
its their fucking table
lobby mouth:
"Health care reform is moving very fast. We want to make sure it comes out in a way that’s workable and sustainable."
here's a beaut :
"Dennis Rivera, coordinator of the health care campaign of the Service Employees International Union, led efforts to bring the industry groups together, with help from Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform."
devilish detail:
"The consensus-building approach has already yielded some results. Insurance executives have offered to end certain underwriting practices, like refusing to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions or charging women higher rates than men, and they have invited Congress to impose stringent, uniform federal regulation on their industry."
hmmm what's up
impose regs on us comp controls etc
no need for a pub op ???
ie
"insurance companies are opposed to a new government-sponsored health plan, which Mr. Obama supports but insurers fear could drive them out of business."
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, welcomed the industry’s cost-cutting commitment as “a good-faith gesture.” But he said, “It does not mitigate the need for a public plan option in our health care reform bill.”
shooooms is their secret not so secret cut out on the hill
baucus caucus wizard
"In addition, insurers and health care providers are lobbying strenuously against cuts in their Medicare payments that would produce savings of the type they profess to want."
ie ob wants to cut out their obscene corporate welfae in medi advantage
"Insurers are fighting Mr. Obama’s proposal to cut payments to their private Medicare Advantage plans by a total of $176 billion over 10 years."
and the doc wellby boyz ...
" are pleading with Congress not to cut costs at their expense, in particular by allowing a 21 percent cut in their Medicare fees scheduled to occur in January."
big pharma ??
" Pharmaceutical companies and makers of medical devices worry that new products may have to pass a cost-benefit test before being approved for coverage under Medicare."
"....new social insurance programs would be unsustainable — if health spending continued to increase at the currently projected rate of 6.2 percent a year for a decade."
"The industry says it can shave 1.5 percent off the annual rate of growth through voluntary efforts. But similar efforts to control health costs have been rolled out in the past, without much of a long-term effect."
Henry J. Aaron, a health economist at the Brookings Institution, said that when he heard the industry’s promises on Monday, “I had a Rip van Winkle moment, as if I had fallen asleep in 1977 and woke up again this morning.”
Mr. Aaron served in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, whose proposal for hospital cost controls prompted the industry to undertake a short-lived “voluntary effort.”
After President Bill Clinton proposed an overhaul of the health care system in 1993 and 1994, the growth of health spending slowed, only to surge a few years later.
Drew E. Altman, the president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, offered a historical perspective spanning nearly four decades.
“Neither managed care, nor wage and price controls, nor regulation, nor voluntary action nor market competition has had a lasting impact on our nation’s health care costs,” Mr. Altman said. “Reformers should not overpromise.”
bluff calling ??
" some lawmakers want to establish an enforcement mechanism, which would take effect if the industry’s voluntary steps did not slow health spending by a specified amount."
"Such cost-control devices have proved spectacularly ineffective in limiting the growth of Medicare spending on doctors’ services."
lady times
really gauntleted this story eh ???
Posted by op | May 12, 2009 4:54 PM
Posted on May 12, 2009 16:54
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/opinion/11krugman.html
krugman
on Saturday, excited administration officials called me to say that this time the medical-industrial complex (their term, not mine) is offering to be helpful.
Six major industry players — including America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a descendant of the lobbying group that spawned Harry and Louise — have sent a letter to President Obama sketching out a plan to control health care costs. What’s more, the letter implicitly endorses much of what administration officials have been saying about health economics.
Are there reasons to be suspicious about this gift? You bet ....Is this gift a Trojan horse? After all, several of the organizations that sent that letter have in the past been major villains when it comes to health care policy.....Remember that what the rest of us call health care costs, they call income .... AHIP will surely try to use the good will created by its stance on cost control to kill an important part of health reform: giving Americans the choice of buying into a public insurance plan as an alternative to private insurers. The administration should not give in on this point."
i edited out the cock eyed krugman boy scout cheers including the very same the medicorps are playing for a seat at the table line
found else where in the braying ladies"coverage"
jeez come on
krug what belt way sky hook
are u hangin' the peoples counter offensive from ???
seat at the table my ass
its a trojan horse pk like you say
cut the silly
keep yer fingers crossed shit
fuck the table is a trojan horse ..no
the district of columbia is a trojan horse
no ....etc etc etc
--- on the other hand --
like the earth itself
it's
turtles all the way down
supporting the peoples will
Posted by op | May 12, 2009 5:13 PM
Posted on May 12, 2009 17:13
This tired ass phrase "seat at the table" calls to mind nothing so much as that response to the table analogy that came from Malcolm X:
"I'm not going to call myself a diner. Sitting at a table with an empty plate in front of me doesn't make me a diner."
And while we're on this business of tables and foodstuffs:
"You can put kittens in the oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits."
These people have been talking to themselves for so long that they actually believe their shit. As Michael Dawson said a short while back, the whole thing is beginning to remind me of the halcyon days of 1994. Damn I hate re fucking runs.
Posted by Michael Hureaux | May 12, 2009 8:05 PM
Posted on May 12, 2009 20:05
We need a new party. This Democrat and Republican thing is beyond a joke, a rerun of a rerun of a... Hopeless and nonsensical.
The Green Party is dead, and its concepts are fairly ridiculous - ecology for snobs who can afford folk-music reveries and transcendental mysticism. The Libertarians are pure don't-tread-on-my Beamer gun-nuts, and the socialists and communists are last century's emulsified fodder.
I propose an alternative: The Crisis Management Party. With the planet and humanity under dire threat from all sides, it's time for a dedicated team of informed reformniks without portfolio to step out of the morass and get this human social world back on its multiple tracks.
Posted by mjosef | May 12, 2009 9:45 PM
Posted on May 12, 2009 21:45
"The Crisis Management Party. With the planet and humanity under dire threat from all sides, it's time for a dedicated team of informed reformniks without portfolio to step out of the morass and get this human social world back on its multiple tracks"
crisocracy??
but mighy joe don't that require an awareness
of common interests ??
are there common interests at least that are agreed to by a solid sustainable majority that can defeat the counter force of a well organized minority??
and who sets the solution /trade off priority on common interests ??
lets group everyone according to n crises
a b c d e .... ->
so what's one groupings crisis n is another groupings just dandy set up
and another groupings gib me some a dat or only less of dat and another groupings there's worse things then that and another groupings
tomorrowing
and another groupings i got better things to do
and another groupings .....
a crisis party on one level or other
would need to be a coalition of crises groupings banded together to solve their grouping of groupings into a time and weight sequenced package of priority crises ....
come the first convention
we're back to where we are now
the gabbling multitude with a ungovernable collection of special objectives
often seriously in conflict with each other
given society as is
and an electoral system more or less as is
so forget about it coming thru what we got for a social system here and now
unless you're talking
a compact elite
in rough mutual agreement
on one paramount shared set of objectives
who are able some how
to gain controling power ....operating behind the curtain obviously cause hey this is a democracy where the will of the majority...
oh hey we got that already don't we
the invisible empire
of the off duty
corporate privateers
pri-prof uber alles
Posted by op | May 13, 2009 6:58 AM
Posted on May 13, 2009 06:58
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/15583/
sam webbs blue hair raiders on
corporate health strikes back
Posted by op | May 13, 2009 8:16 AM
Posted on May 13, 2009 08:16
"don't-tread-on-my Beamer gun-nuts"
beamer ???
must be a corporate cut out op
if so
with a very "little" gun
real liber-tree types
like my cousin
j'onn j'onzz libertarian man hunter
tracks down for the finance company
are
more likely runnin from the repo man
who's after their '08 sable sassy
f-150
Posted by op | May 13, 2009 8:30 AM
Posted on May 13, 2009 08:30
Crisocracy? It's always a mistake to jump from perceived present grievance (collusion of two parties, faux tables bringing stakeholders together, Treausry heist by banksters, etc.) to a whole new system and how it should be run. You always lose that argument, because every system has potential flaws. Leave the details to the people who are around when the new system arrives.
Sure, big pharma and HMOs (with their new lackey, SEIU) own the table, but they are visible and vulnerable everywhere. I especially like identifying their lobbyists at the state level, following them around like papparazi, breaking up their martini lunches, photographing them with their mistresses, following them on their morning jog, panting and sweating. The public is waking up; these guys are ripe for caricature. Never again! Down with the baronial class! Tax all golf courses and Mercedes! Get out of my way, fat boy -- I have a power lunch at the pub!!
Posted by hce | May 13, 2009 10:19 AM
Posted on May 13, 2009 10:19
"The public is waking up"
hey i think you're correct there earing aide
but we gotta stop the elite profiteers traffic flow
b4 the lib-pols turn to real prog policy options
bang their earnings streams
there's
the watts response and the flint response
both righteous
but
one leads up the other down
Posted by op | May 13, 2009 12:42 PM
Posted on May 13, 2009 12:42
Dear comrade paine :
Last week when I was one of the Baucus Eight - so-named because eight of us were arrested before Sen. Baucus - I hoped others would join us. Yesterday, they did and the single payer movement grew stronger.
Before the hearing I joined nearly 50 people in a spirited protest outside the U.S. Senate letting all who entered know we wanted a single payer national healthcare plan.
And, inside there were a series of protests.
As the hearing began a group of about 30 nurses dressed in their red hospital uniforms, stood up and turned their backs on Chairman Baucus. They had pinned to their backs:
"Nurses Say: Stop AHIP. Pass Single Payer." (AHIP is America's Health Insurance Plans - the health insurance industry lobby.)
The nurses left the room to applause.
Then doctors, nurses and advocates stood up and one by one and spoke directly to Senator Baucus.
DeAnn McEwen, a registered nurse from California said: "Today is Florence Nightingale's birthday. Florence Nightingale said if there were none to hope for any better, there would never be any better. This country needs a single payer health care system."
Then, another RN from California stood up: "People at the table have failed Americans for 30 years. We want single payer at the table. We want guaranteed health care so we can give the care we need, when we need to give it."
She was followed by Dr. Judy Dasovich of Springfield, Missouri, who said "We request that single payer advocates be allowed at the table. Health care should be for patients not for profits."
Dr. Steven Fenichel of Ocean City, NJ followed adding: "It's a sense of outrage that brings me to your Senate chambers today. These people were entrusted by the American people to serve the American people's interests. And they are just serving the interests of the insurance companies and drug companies - the people be damned."
Jerry Call, a member of Physicians for a National Health Program from South Thomaston, Maine was the final advocate from the audience, speaking for the majority of Americans shut out from the discussion, and saying: "Sixty percent of Americans and sixty percent of physicians want single payer. Why aren't sixty percent of the people up front not single payer representatives?"
All five were arrested and taken away for booking. They were charged with Disruption of Congress, the same offense I will go to court for on May 26th.
Now, 13 have been arrested - the Baucus 8 have morphed into the Baucus 13 - demanding a seat at the table; merely urging that the most popular health reform among the people as well as among doctors, nurses and economists be part of the conversation.
Outside as each new Baucus criminal was walked before the crowd, now approximately 75 people -- they were all cheered. These are the democracy heroes. These are the types of people that change the equation from money and profits to people and human rights.
Tomorrow, there will be a march to the Senate, a rally and an afternoon of nearly 1,000 people lobbying for real health care reform - an end to corporate insurance profiting from illness and not allowing doctors to practice medicine and nurses to care for patients.
We have lit a fire, now we must fan the flame into a populist movement that breaks the corporate stranglehold on Washington, DC. The people need to be organized, persistent and insistent. We need to grow the single payer movement so it cannot be ignored.
Two things to do today:
1) Contact your representatives in Congress. You can send an email by clicking here
http://mail.live.com/default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0
. The letter urges your representative to support a single payer national health care system. This is the only cost-effective way to provide health care for all Americans. It allows people to choose their own doctor and their own treatment method. It relieves employers of the burden of health care and allows business to compete internationally with other countries that already have a single payer system. ......
Sincerely,
Kevin Zeese
Executive Director
Posted by op | May 13, 2009 2:18 PM
Posted on May 13, 2009 14:18
hce, where is the public waking up? I can't find a hint of that among the multitudes of Obama fans. "Give him time" is their mantra, and they seem willing to define that as 8 years, despite the daily betrayals, such as today's torture-photo reversal...
On health insurance, it's quite clear we're gonna be getting "managed care" part 2/the Massachusetts mandate. What signs make you think people aren't going to take this fraud as a victory?
I realize there are some SP activists rising. But we remain quite up against it, from what I can see.
Posted by Michael Dawson | May 13, 2009 2:18 PM
Posted on May 13, 2009 14:18
proper link
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1312/t/9277/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27262
Posted by op | May 13, 2009 2:20 PM
Posted on May 13, 2009 14:20
md
i think on the job at the lower layers of corporate america
the patience
may snap first ...if not tomorrow
the merit class rads
both raw and cooked
are light duty troops to begin with
fit at maximum velocity
for a second tier role
in lunch counter actions
and colorful demo's
health rights by analogy to voting rights ??
maybe so
but i suspect an older remedy may be in order
gut punch the profit belly ...
maybe in this struggle
it'll be
job site baby job site
Posted by op | May 13, 2009 2:26 PM
Posted on May 13, 2009 14:26
SP activists ??
sp as in
single purpose ???
"What signs make you think people aren't going to take this fraud as a victory?"
many maybe most will
but not the sp ers
they'll fight on and i predict with a growing gathering of recruits and supporters
the profiteers are up against it here
one payer systems are socially so superior
that my dearest md
today's patent fraud may morph
into its opposite
like frankenstein's monster
pub op might turn on its makers
i figure the shrewdest of the tower trolls
in the hmo-pharma phalanx
figure no beach heads is best
precisely
because even a bad pub op
could re-deploy itself over time
into a savage menace to their rent filled sumps and sinecures
after all
the health sector holds back
the rest of the exploitation system
by raising their collective
labor powers carrying cost
labor power ???
ooops did i jargonate there ??
err the carrying costs of their ...human resources
Posted by op | May 13, 2009 2:37 PM
Posted on May 13, 2009 14:37
"What signs make you think people aren't going to take this fraud as a victory?" (MD)
Because I dont hang around with Democrats, knowingly, I don't have the pulse of the great beast. It's capable of anything, waiting eight years for a trickle of change, as you say.
My view is, we can't be troubled with that. We go forward anyway we can, making noise, staging sit-ins (like Kevin Zeese), throwing beer cups on the playing field. Then, when the comrades come up with a plan, we come down from the hills, meet them at the Interstate, and march on to wherever.
Hey, I've got my hands full just convincing my wife that chem trails aren't being laid down by extra-terrestials.
Posted by hce | May 13, 2009 3:28 PM
Posted on May 13, 2009 15:28
Hey, OP, I appreciate the consideration, the playing it out of this idea.
I'm no dermokrat: the will o'the people myth, if the people are manipulated by hidden or overt vested corporate interests, results in manipulated upper-class domination of the their fearful, harried subordinates. And we get PR champs and sociopathic hucksters dominating the political arenas. But if we state upfront that we should be urgent and conflicted at the same time, trying to balance power realism with the formualtion of necessary decisions, we will provide a name for that we will end up doing anyway. Which is all that we can do, and will do, in any language, so why not commit to the bottom line, and identify how bad off we are in all major institutional respects. The only actions we will ever take as a society will be as crisis management in a crisocracy, but look at who are presumed to be our managers, and look at what happens. We need a Mission:Impossible team for every one of our major social crises, and we get Geithner. And General Christ B. Football Coach. And Harvard junior Prof Tweedle.
Gracias for the good humor.
Posted by mjosef | May 13, 2009 4:39 PM
Posted on May 13, 2009 16:39
I'm getting addicted to this site. The lads at the pub are noticing I'm arriving there later and later. I never would have thought I could hang out with a lot of wordsmiths, in the silent ether of the internet, and not even miss the smell of beer and the clack of billiard balls in the background.
But the folks here are ok, even that snaky-eyed fire-breather, Van something or other. So keep it up, the drinks are on me! Tomorrow I'm bringing a supply of corn-nuts!
Posted by hce | May 13, 2009 8:04 PM
Posted on May 13, 2009 20:04