Obama's health plan takes shape

This is very, very disappointing. I had expected better from President Obama and the Democrats, and while I know they're up against an almost impossible-to-defeat insurance juggernaut, I hate to see them knuckle under without even putting up a fight.

I'm afraid that mandating that people carry health insurance will only make things WORSE, not better. Where's the incentive to make insurance affordable? Where's the encouragement to make plans more uniform and cut down on some of the paperwork? And where, oh where, is the rule that says insurance companies can no longer "cherry-pick" and deny people coverage for pre-existing conditions?

BILL MOYERS: There aren't any details. But he seems to be advocating a public option that would compete with the private insurance-driven sector, as a way of lowering the cost. What do you think about it? Is that- am I reading his plan correctly?

DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, most of the cost savings he's talking about are really illusory, I think. And my research group has done most of the research work on administrative costs in health care. And the administrative costs he's talking about saving are a tiny fraction of the potential savings under single-payer. 'Cause hospitals have to keep their bureaucracy, if you're dealing with hundreds of different plans. And doctors have to keep the bureaucracy in our office. You don't actually get the streamlining that you get from having one payer that has one set of rules and can pay lump sum budgets to hospitals. But more than that, we're worried that the public plan actually becomes a dumping ground for the unprofitable patients. As it's happening in Medicare.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean? How would that happen?

DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, the private insurers have all kinds of tricks to avoid sick patients, who are the expensive patients. So, you put your signup office on the second floor of a walkup building. And people who can't navigate stairs are the expensive people.

DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: Get rid of the heart failure patients.

DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Or you have your signup dinners in a rural area at night, where only relatively healthy people are able to drive and stay up that late. So, there's a whole science to how you sign up selectively healthier patients. And the insurance industry spends millions and millions of dollars on that. And would continue to as they've done under Medicare. Selectively recruiting healthier patients, who are the profitable ones, leaving the losses to the public plan.

And there's really, despite regulations in Medicare that says you can't do that, that's continued to happen. And it means that every time a patient signs up with a private plan under Medicare, we pay 15 percent more than we would pay if that same patient were in the Medicare program.

DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: Over the last 30 plus years there have been maybe two and a half, three times more doctors and nurses. Pretty much in proportion with the growth in population. There are 30 times, 3-0 times more health administrators. These people are not doctors. They're not nurses. They're not pharmacists. They're not providing care. Many of them are being paid to deny care. So, they are fighting with the doctors, with the hospitals to see how few bills can be paid. That's how the insurance industry thrives by denying care, paying as little out as it can, getting the healthiest patients, and yet getting reimbursed as though these patients were sicker than they really are.

So, it's a system that is guaranteed to waste a lot of money. And what we've said is that the amount of money that's just being wasted in one year is enough to pay for more than enough of the premiums for those that are uninsured and the people that are underinsured. So, it's not a matter of bringing more money. I mean, the industry is now saying, "We could save $2 trillion over the next ten years. Let us. Trust us. We will lower our costs and everything." The amount that can be saved over the next ten years by just eliminating the health insurance industry is $4 trillion, in one fell swoop.

How we can all do our part:

http://www.larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=10567

Here's some more "nutjobs" speaking about the "plan":

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/9...d_nurses_union

It's become one of the most commonly cited statistics by opponents of the health overhaul being put together by Democrats in Congress: Creating a new government-run public health insurance plan would result in 119 million people losing their private insurance.

Here was Senate Finance Committee ranking Republican Charles Grassley on MSNBC just Tuesday: "My objection to the public option is based upon the Lewin think tank ... study that says 119 million people will opt out of private health insurance."

"According to a recent study, a new public plan would cause almost 120 million Americans to lose their private coverage," echoed Sen. Orrin Hatch.

But is it really true? Yes and no.

"The number of 119 million is absolutely correct," says John Sheils, senior vice president of the Lewin Group, a number-crunching consulting group owned by Ingenix, which is a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group.

But that number hardly represents the entirety of the report Sheils and colleague Randy Haught put out in April. The point of the study was to show that the number of people who would eventually join a government-sponsored public insurance plan would vary — dramatically — depending on how that plan is designed.

If the public plan is open to everyone and pays health care providers rates similar to those paid by the government-run Medicare program, which are lower than most private insurers pay, "you'd have a lower premium level and thus [more] people go into it," says Sheils.

But if the public plan is limited to fewer people (perhaps only those in small businesses and individuals), or if the plan pays higher rates to doctors and hospitals, fewer people would join, both because fewer would be allowed and because the plan would be less financially attractive. According to the study, the number of people dropping private coverage could be as low as 10.4 million.