PDA for single-payer healthcare

The Progressive Democrats of America have a great story up on their website about last Sunday's rally for single-payer universal healthcare.

“We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this war, so don’t ever tell me we don’t have the money!” Michael Moore told a cheering crowd on the steps of the Capitol building in Denver. His speech was the climax of a Health Care for All Colorado rally which began with Colorado PDA speakers Evi Klett and Steve Wangh and included Michael Huttner of Progress Now, Nathan Wilkes of Health Care for All Colorado and Donna Smith, who appears in Moore’s new film, SiCKO.

That story also quotes Colorado Democratic Party Vice Chair Dan Slater’s newsletter, where he told readers his position on single-payer universal healthcare:

I'm sold.

I'm sold in large part because I was lucky enough to snag tickets to the local premiere of SiCKO, Moore's new documentary about the health care system in America, last night. The movie makes sense, and it leaves you outraged at what has happened to America. I really, really, really encourage each of you to take time to see it. It smashes the right-wing talking points about universal health care into shards, and it does so with a wonderful sense of humor. One talking point we always hear is how expensive universal health care would be. A British member of Parliament really nailed it on the head in the movie:

"If we can find money to kill people, then surely we can find money to heal people."

17-29-year-olds favor single-payer

The New York Times today reported that poll results show that 62 percent of young people between the ages of 17 and 29 prefer a single-payer system over what we now have. The question was explicit:

Which do you think would be better for the country: 1. Having one health insurance program covering all Americans that would be administered by the government and paid for by taxpayers, OR 2. Keeping the current system where many people get their insurance from private employers and some have no insurance.

Shame on the general public: only 47 percent answered single-payer. However, the conversation is just now starting.

You can read more about it at the New York Times and, once that's blocked, here, at the Scientific Activist. The Scientific Activist links to the pdf that gives the full results of the poll.

I'd give this one caveat. Young people have a dog in this fight. It's their future, and their children's future just as much as it is mine and all the retirees who founded Health Care for All Colorado. Young adults can be incredibly courageous, idealistic and smart. I can't think of a single social movement that succeeded without their leadership. That said, they can also be, ummm — scattered. Easily distracted. This has nothing to do with TV or video, it was ever thus.

College-age and other young adults must see that this is the anti-slavery battle of our time; the civil rights battle that will make America better. "SiCKO" will help.

Yes, Iraq is the Vietnam of our time, and Bushie is the Nixon of our era — but healthcare is the social justice issue that needs passion and persevereance to right.

The Lasik surgery myth

The guy in the audience stood to declare that Lasik surgery shows that if the free market were just allowed to work, it would work in healthcare just like it does everywhere else. Lasik's costs just keep going down.

This is a cherished myth on the right. Because a one-time, walk-in surgery's costs have dropped, they'd like to believe that little Thomas Wilkes' $4,000-a-day factor for hemophilia would also drop. Eventually.

Suppose it did — suppose it dropped 20 percent a year, like Lasik surgery has. By 2009, perhaps Thomas' daily costs for that medication would just be $3,000 a day. Perhaps the Wilkes could afford that. Of course, that medication is just one part of their costs — all together Thomas' treatment costs about $1 million a year.

The fact is that the cost of catastrophic illness and injury under free market conditions would be beyond reach for most of us. We'd just have to hope we didn't get sick or hurt and know that we'd die if we got cancer or were hit by a bus — leaving our children orphaned.

We can't afford to be on our own when it comes to healthcare. We have to pool the risk, and be smart about funding preventive care.

I attended the Northern Colorado Business Journal's Health Care Summit today, mostly to hear "The Great Single-Payer Debate" between Dr. Cory Carroll, a single-payer universal healthcare advocate, and Republican State Senator Shawn Mitchell.

That debate was originally to have been between a Blue Ribbon Commissioner and Dr. Carroll. Weren't the commissioners supposed to keep an open mind about possible solutions?

There were also "healthcare heroes" awards, one of which went to Dr. Glenn Pearson, who was given the award for his work supporting Physicians for a National Health Plan. It is so refreshing that a business journal would recognize Dr. Pearson's work like that. I hope they're not penalized by insurance companies pulling advertising. It was a brave move.

Dr. Carroll, a Health Care for All Colorado supporter, gave a great presentation on why business should support single-payer universal healthcare.

He made the point that as long as there's the 1986 EMTALA law — that's the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act — which requires hospitals to care for people in dire need of treatment, that the "free market" really can't work in healthcare. Hospitals would have to be able to turn away victims of car accidents, if they could not pay. Now while that may fit in with the Independence Institute's libertarian values, it's certainly not "What would Jesus do?"

"For a true free market system to succeed, those who cannot pay do not get care," Dr. Carroll said.

This is something those against single-payer universal healthcare play both ways. On the one hand, they complain that government intervention has distorted the market, and that's why it doesn't work. On the other hand, they say that we don't need single-payer, we just need to strengthen the safety net. But not government, I guess. Although anyone from the hospital associations or from charitable organizations will tell you that there's no way that charities can afford to replace the government safety net. Single-payer universal healthcare could, however.

Dr. Carroll included a David Letterman-style top ten reasons why business should support single-payer universal health care. I missed #2, but here are the rest of his reasons:

10. The single-payer system will reduce liability insurance and workers compensation costs for businesses.
9. Single-payer will eliminate the costs and headaches of running a health benefits program — no more annual negotiations with insurance companies.
8. Single-payer will eliminate complaints from employees about the company's health plan.
7. Single-payer will reduce incentives to hire part-time workers.
6. Single-payer will curb medical bankruptcies and free up money for spending on consumer items.
5. Single-payer will reduce the overall costs of covering employees.
4. Single-payer will eliminate retiree benefit costs.
3. Single-payer will reduce absenteeism because the workforce will be healthier.
2. Dunno.
1. Single-payer will allow health care costs to be controlled and predictable, eliminating a major source of business uncertainty and a barrier to planning.

Dr. Carroll also gave the audience a brief history lesson on universal healthcare, with dates that other countries adopted universal health care — the 1800s for Germany — and failed attempts in the U.S.: 1935 for FDR; 1948 for Truman; and 1994 for Clinton.

Sen. Mitchell was smart and funny. He offered the standard criticisms of single-payer universal healthcare — that the U.S. does best for breast cancer and that you might have to wait for a hip replacement in Canada — and managed to make it sound as though the U.S. system was always best and other countries' systems wracked with problems. His foundation seemed to be that yes, primary care was good in those countries, and you were probably happy with your care as long as you didn't need a specialist, but once you needed a specialist you'd be best off flying to the U.S. for care. Which isn't true at all.

All the same, he was personable and funny — and seemed open to learning more about single-payer. He seemed to think that those other countries were moving towards the U.S.'s system, which has no bearing in reality. The Canadian Supreme Court saying that auxiliary health insurance should be legal does not in any way equate to those countries moving more towards our system. People in the rest of the industrialized world mostly assume that Americans have universal healthcare too. Doesn't everyone? Those people who do know — and more will soon, because "SiCKO" will be a hit internationally — feel sorry for us.

Conservatives everywhere are in favor of cost-effective universal healthcare, which means single-payer universal healthcare or a slight modification of it. The U.S. right is the exception that proves the rule on this. What's more, the best of them, if they only had the facts in hand, would surely join their Tory brethren.

Denver rallies for Michael Moore & single-payer healthcare

About 2,000 Coloradans came from as far as Pueblo to rally at the state capitol yesterday to show our Colorado politicians that we support Michael Moore's call for single-payer universal healthcare.

With Moore's latest film "Sicko," this movement now has a truly charismatic figure to draw attention to the outrageous injustice that passes for a healthcare system in the United States. For anyone scoffing that a self-depreciating and overweight guy from Flint, Mich., could be charismatic, go hear him speak. He's really very good. And even better, he's a brilliant documentary filmmaker.

How anyone could walk away from this film unmoved is beyond me. And while healthcare is its theme, Sicko approaches it in a systemic way — in particular how the slightly taxes that the French, British, Canadians pay is not resented in those countries because they see a tangible benefit to their lives from those taxes — healthcare, for starters.

He added it up for the audience after Sicko's special preview. In France, for instance, there's universal education through the university level — how much do American families spend on increasingly unaffordable higher education? He asked the audience what they were paying monthly in student loans and although one person answered $800, $200 a month was average. Add that to an average of $500 a month for healthcare, a similar amount for childcare and other services that famililes there get for free or for highly subsidized rates, and in fact we're the highest taxed people in the world. Except we call our taxes premiums and tuition, and thus can be persuaded that we're better off.

The crowd brought amazing signs. Most of the rallies I go to are for candidates, where the signs are all the same. No two signs were the same yesterday.

Donna Smith calls for action

Michael Huttner of ProgressNow, Evi Klett of the Progressive Democrats of America, and I spoke to the crowd first, and then Nathan Wilkes spoke, warning the crowd that those of them who thought they had good healthcare coverage probably were mistaken. He had thought the same before getting the news that his son Thomas had been diagnosed with hemophilia. Health insurance companies have been trying to get rid of the Wilkes family ever since. Thomas, evidently is nothing more than collateral damage when it comes to maximizing shareholder profit. Nathan introduced Elinor Christiansen, MD, the president of Health Care for All Colorado.

Elinor spoke eloquently without notes: She's been fighting this battle a long time.

Next to the microphone was Donna Smith, one of Health Care for All Colorado's newest members. She emailed me her remarks, and I'll simply share them rather than try to condense:

Remarks by Donna Smith, Aurora, Colo.

DENVER -- My name is Donna Smith. Today I stand here as a member of a very exclusive club. I am one of only a few Americans featured in Michael Moore’s new movie, SiCKO. And I am part of an even more exclusive group of just eight Americans who traveled to Cuba with Michael to receive medical care.

Trust me, as much as I’ve grown to respect and enjoy Michael Moore and his crew, this club that isn’t one for which you want to qualify. Each of us in the film has lost much at the hands of the American private health care system. Some lost everything they owned after a lifetime of hard work – like we did; and some lost their lives.

The stories you will see on the screen during SiCKO represent tens of thousands of other American tragedies. As we stand here today, 50 Americans will die today without the necessary care they needed simply because they couldn’t afford it.

But you and I together are in another not-so-exclusive club with more than 250 million fellow Americans, we are the health insurance card-carrying club – we are Coloradoans, we are Americans – we are brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, neighbors and friends at great risk due to the lack of universal health care.

Having health insurance no longer means having peace of mind. If you get sick and you are insured you may find yourself underinsured or worse – unable to get necessary care. You may have premiums rising so high that you can no longer afford both housing and health insurance. You may have deductibles and co-pays that effectively and efficiently squeeze you away from seeking care. You may have collectors pursuing medical debt hound you to the point of garnishment and humiliation – as we did. You may have an employer that no longer wants you covered by the group health insurance plan with rising premiums and huge deductibles. And you may not know these things until in the grip of a health care crisis with no options and no ability to dig out.

But our club is a powerful club too, my friends. We have what we need to change this broken health care system. We have voices to speak up, we have pens and computers with which to write and we have the ballot box in which we will send the clearest statement of our membership creed:

No Coloradoan, no American, should ever want again for basic health care. No American family should face financial ruin because someone gets sick. And certainly not one more American should die because he or she was denied treatment. Universal, single-payer health care is within our reach and it our duty and responsibility to push for it.

Though many of our elected officials will scatter like bugs when they are forced to take a stand on this issue or heaven forbid stand in unity with Michael Moore, it is up to you and me to hold them steady to the cause. They must fear our voices and the loss of our votes more than they fear the loss of health care lobby money for their campaigns or the threats of negative ads against them if they do not tow the private health care line.

It is no longer enough for our leaders to protect life only while it is in the womb. To be cared for when we are sick is a basic human need and a basic human right.

Forty years ago, in April of 1967, speaking at the Riverside Church in New York, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said,” Of all the forms of injustice, inequality in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

Reach deep into your minds and hearts Colorado. Are we willing to be shocking and inhumane any longer?

Half measures will not do. Universal, free health care must become reality.

On the day I left Denver to meet up with the Michael Moore production crew in Miami, the front page of the Rocky Mountain News had a story about Anna Nicole Smith’s body and where it might end up. Page one, my friends. On page 14, there was a much smaller story about Nathan Wilkes and his family right here in Colorado. Though fully insured, they are living the same healthcare nightmare faced by so many of us today.

Earlier this week on a movie screen in the middle of Manhattan, my dignity and my voice began to return. No longer shamed by my inability to stay financially afloat in a sea of health care debt, I will not rest until every American has access to free, universal health care.

My husband Larry and I rode from Manhattan through Philadelphia and into Washington, D.C., on a bus dubbed the SiCKO bus with nurses from throughout the country led by the brave and dedicated nurses from the California Nurses Association. We had nurses with us from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, my home state of Illinois and of course from California. Everywhere we stopped, we were met with cheers and support for the nurses and their message: Universal health care now for all Americans.

And now I’d like to introduce to you the man who restored my dignity in SiCKO and who fights for justice in health care throughout this land. He is an Academy Award winning and Cannes Film Festival winning filmmaker, and an American patriot in the truest sense. He is also here to inspire us to keep up the fight right here in Colorado.

She then introduced her "SiCKO commander-in-chief," Michael Moore.

Sicko, Healthcare rally coverage

Sara Crocker of the Denver Post did a good job covering the story. She led with Moore telling the audience that we'll see single-payer universal care within our lifetimes (wait — we're hoping for 2008!) and she listed Moore's charge to politicians: "to take a four-part pledge: to support free, universal care; to eliminate private insurers; to regulate phamaceutical companies; and to refuse money from the health care industry. 'In fact, let's get the money out of politics all together,' he said."

Raj Chohan of CBS4Denver also did a good job, ending with this:

Critics of the movie say it fails to critically explore the potential downsides of a single payer system including delays in care because of what they call the rationing of service.

"I'd be willing to wait a couple of weeks," said Moore. "Statistics Canada, which is the governmental statistics office in Ottawa will tell you the following: there is a 4 week wait in Canada to see specialist. There's a 3 week wait for diagnostic testing. And there's a 4 week wait for elective surgery."

Moore's movie appears to make a compelling case for a single payer socialized system. And it underscores a real problem with health care in the United States.

Now there's some radical reporting: there is a real problem with healthcare in the U.S.

Fox got it wrong. Their reporter — or maybe his editor — repeated an earlier, erroneous story that Moore was here to support a nurses group. Fran Ricker, the new director of the Colorado Nurses Association, called me Sunday morning to apologize for having been out of town and out of the loop on the rally. She was wonderful, and did everything she could Sunday morning to get nurses to the rally.

In fact, Moore was in Colorado to promote "Sicko" and to do that while promoting single-payer universal healthcare. The Colorado Nurses Association does support single-payer universal healthcare, and we at Health Care for All Colorado are lucky to be working with them. They have clout — witness the fact that the Denver Post edited out the names of all the other sponsoring organizations for the rally.

How It Really Happened

Michael Huttner, executive director of ProgressNow in Denver, and Monica Griego, legislative liaison of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, were really the two who made this rally come off the way it did. I've never organized a rally, and was in full meltdown Friday afternoon — after Rehya Young, associate producer of the film, had called Thursday afternoon and suggested one.

Sure, I said. It was naive, but we could not say no. We had to try to make it happen. I emailed about a dozen organizations, asking them to help spread the word, but not ProgressNow. I won't make that mistake again. Huttner called to say that Monica had told him about the rally. He offered to email out tens of thousands of blasts about it; to send out the press release to his media list; and oh, we didn't have a good location? He'd make a call. It wasn't long before he'd arranged for a permit for the West Steps of the Capitol. I'd been told too bad — you need to apply 30 days in advance for a permit.

In addition to passing on the word to Michael Huttner, Monica Griego arranged for audio — pretty key when you're talking to 2,000 people. She was the first one there, with clipboards and volunteers to spread the word about healthcare.

So it was really the Colorado Nurses Association but also the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, Health Care for All Colorado, ProgressNow, and the other co-sponsoring organizations: the Colorado Progressive Coalition, the Physicians for a National Health Plan, the Progressive Democrats, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, and Boulder's Wellness Institute.

Not all these organizations are for single-payer universal healthcare. I hope that "Sicko" will change that. It's time to come on in. The water's great.

Michael Moore's coming to Denver

New Mexico looks at reform

A committee in New Mexico is looking at three plans that were analyzed by Mathematica, a Lewin competitor in the independent number crunching business. The three plans are:

• The Health Security Act, which would reduce the role of private insurance and was the least expensive of the three;
• The New Mexico Health Choices Plan, which would create a voucher system, and would be the most expensive;
• The Health Coverage Plan for New Mexicans, which would leverage public insurance while retaining private insurance.

What does that mean? Would "leverage" public insurance? It sounds like a junk bond scam.

The writer warned readers off the single-payer choice: "Because of a federal law concerning self-insured employers, it could face monumental legal challenges," says the reporter about the (almost) single-payer choice. "Also, Gov. Bill Richardson has said he wouldn’t support a single-payer system."

We all might tell Gov. Richardson that if he's going to take the most sensible, cost-effective solution off the table before it's even really given a chance, he should certainly be off the table when it comes to choosing a Democratic presidential candidate.

And this option isn't even actually single-payer. Mathematica reports: “However, the Health Security Plan probably would not ever be the only payer in New Mexico, and whether there is much provider administrative to be captured is uncertain.”

The "Choices" plan has Medicaid as 64 percent of its enrollment. Wow. Both it and the almost-single-payer plan "would essentially strip away employer-sponsored coverage. They also would get rid of individual private coverage, except for supplemental policies, the report says."

Sicko for insurance lobbyists

It's all Sicko all the time here.

This is the funny one — just a sentence on Think Progress about Moore inviting about 900 health insurance lobbyists to a "Sicko" screening. A dozen showed.

Too many comments to read, but they're entertaining — and insightful:

Anybody else remember then second Democratic debate on MSNBC? Dennis Kucinich answered a question about his plan for health care. He said his plan is single payer, eliminate the insurance companies and not-for-profit. The audience erupted in cheers. Perhaps the loudest cheering of the night.

Anticipating all this Chris Matthews started to interrupt Kucinich even before he finished his answer. I know Matthews makes a career out of interrupting people but it was clear he didn’t want Kucinch stealing Hillary’s and Barack’s thunder.

God forbid anyone say on television “not-for-profit healthcare”. I think that phrase has been added to George Carlin’s list of seven words you can’t say on t.v.

Comment by Larry