Death Panel Isle

[Jeff]

Figured we may as well start having some of the extended health care debate on its own isle, out of the way...
More than 50 percent of Americans believe a public insurance option will increase health care costs, according to a new survey on assertions the White House has called myths.

The national survey, conducted from Aug. 14 – 18, involved a random sample of 600 Americans aged 18 and older living in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C. Respondents indicated whether or not they believed 19 claims about health care reform, each of which is considered a myth by the White House.

The results could speak to the current partisan debate on a proposed health care overhaul. While overall the majority of Americans said they believe many of the assertions, more Republicans and Independents than Democrats stood by the claims.

"It's perhaps not surprising that more Republicans believe these things than Democrats," said study scientist Dr. Aaron Carroll, director of Indiana University's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research. "What is surprising is just how many Republicans – and Independents – believe them. If the White House hopes to convince the majority of Americans that they are misinformed about health care reform, there is much work to be done."

Among the results on items the White House considers myths:

67 percent of respondents believe that wait times for health care services, such as surgery, will increase (91 percent of Republicans, 37 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of Independents).
About five out of 10 believe the federal government will become directly involved in making personal health care decisions (80 percent of Republicans, 25 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of Independents).
Roughly six out of 10 Americans believe taxpayers will be required to pay for abortions (78 percent of Republicans, 30 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Independents)
46 percent believe reforms will result in health care coverage for all illegal immigrants (66 percent of Republicans, 29 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of Independents).
54 percent believe the public option will increase premiums for Americans with private health insurance (78 percent of Republicans, 28 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Independents).
Five out of 10 think cuts will be made to Medicare in order to cover more Americans (66 percent of Republicans, 37 percent of Democrats, 44 percent of Independents).
There were exceptions.

Fewer participants believe "myths" regarding the impact of proposed changes on current health insurance coverage. For instance, less than 30 percent think private insurance coverage will be eliminated. And just 36 percent think a public insurance option will put private insurance companies out of business.

In addition, only three out of 10 respondents believe the government will require the elderly to make decisions about how and when they will die.

[Doctor Rock]

Have you guys seen this?  I put it up a few weeks ago, I think. 

With almost 20 years inside the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter saw for-profit insurers hijack our health care system and put profits before patients. Now, he speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of health care reform.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html

[Doctor Rock]

Hey Jeff, where did you get that quote?  Could you provide a link to it?  I would like to share it with others. 

[Jeff]

http://www.livescience.com/environment/090824-healthcare-myths.html

PS... how do we like the new topic name(s)? (Both Wonky Wankers and Death Panel Isle, that is.)

[matthew]

Isn't it quite likely that Obama's capitulation to big pharma and corporate medicine will cost the taxpayers more? The two-tier cop-out is looking like it is going to gut Medicare, maintain the subsidization of Medicare Advantage, and fully discredit "socialized medicine" though never actually engaging in it. Obama's incoherent* support of various plans allowing for the creation of a costly, shambolic ghetto for only the most costly patients (while others go elsewhere) seems like a cynical ploy to sandbag the already sagging levees of his supposed "progressive" administration. It will be temporary (if it even passes).

* Obama has no plan...none at all...a fact that has evaded inclusion in all of this discussion of "death panels" and "birthers". There is no Obamacare or Obamaplan... just some legislation being scripted by the representatives in Congress who represent big medicine.

Ralph Nader had a good piece the other day where he eviscerated the massive fraud and called on Obama's  supposedly reluctant supporters to call for Obama to emulate FDR's "make me do it" strategy, and to DEMAND single payer system...instead of allowing for the Barack Obama equivalent of strutting on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit.

[Jeff]

On Wednesday Rep. Michele Bachmann was part of a star-studded “teletownhall” meeting to discuss health-care reform. The event, billed “Keeping Faith with the Unborn,” was sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group. The organization’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, claimed that there were some 350,000 listeners on the line.

Bachmann was joined by North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, most famous for calling Matthew Shepard’s murder a “hoax,” and former Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, who made national headlines by refusing to concede after losing her re-election contest November. But even with such veteran political pugilists sharing the phone line, Bachmann managed to distinguish herself during the 90-minute phone call.

The 6th district Republican quoted the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, attacked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for receiving political contributions from a medical doctor who was murdered in May, and called on everyone to get down on their knees and pray that health care reform fails. Bachmann didn’t always make sense, but she undoubtedly scared the living daylights out of anyone on the line.

Bachmann repeated the myth, adopted early by Sarah Palin, that the health-care plans being debated in Congress would set up “death panels” to determine which old folks are entitled to health care. “Thank God that Sarah Palin said that,” she told the callers. “These are true.”

In response to a caller from Minnesota who wanted to know if there was a plan afoot in Washington to require all medical doctors to perform abortions, Bachmann didn’t exactly shoot the suggestion down.

“Unless we explicitly restrict these items, I think we can fully expect that these radical pro-abortion individuals could very likely make those decisions,” she told the caller. “All of us who have labored tirelessly in the pro-life cause for years and years and years, we know what these people are capable of. That’s why they have to be tied down by restrictions explicitly in law.”

She also suggested that it might be some kind of religious destiny that hardy souls such as herself are in Congress at this time.

“We all need to consider that in God’s timing that he may have allowed us, as members of Congress, to be in the position that we’re in just for this specific issue right now,” she said. “Everything that all of us have worked together and labored for over the years, all of it could be undermined with this one bill. President Obama realizes that. The radicals that are on the pro-abortion left, they realize that. They could win it all. And the unborn, and the vulnerable, the disabled and those at the end of life could lose it it all.”

But it was Bachmann’s fervent call to utilize prayer and fasting to beat back health-care reform efforts that was the true highlight of the call.

“That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting,” she told the listeners. “Remember: faith without works is dead. So we’re asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act.”

Fasting will defeat the health care plan?

I think we can all support wingnuts starving themselves... for as long as it takes.

[Doctor Rock]

http://www.livescience.com/environment/090824-healthcare-myths.html

PS... how do we like the new topic name(s)? (Both Wonky Wankers and Death Panel Isle, that is.)

I like them fine. 

[Jeff]

Trillion Dollar Health Reform, $3 Trillion in Tax Cuts, by Howard Gleckman, Tax Policy Center: It is interesting, and perhaps worth noting, that while political opposition seems to be hardening against the $1 trillion, ten-year cost of the early versions of health reform, barely a peep of concern has been raised about the $3 trillion price tag for President Obama’s plan to extend most of the Bush-era tax cuts.
The message seems pretty clear: The President, congressional Democrats, and nearly all Republicans are fine with busting the budget to cut taxes for nearly everyone, notwithstanding a cumulative deficit over the next decade of $9 trillion. They are, by contrast, unwilling to spend one-third as much to provide medical insurance for those who cannot afford it. I’ve always felt that health reform is as much an ethical choice as an economic one. We appear to be making ours.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/assorted-links-2/

[Jeff]

We're sick; the system's even sicker
By CARL HIAASEN

It's easy to get distracted by the vaudevillian aspects of the health-care debate.

My favorites are the few beet-faced droolers who show up at town-hall meetings to rail against government involvement, while simultaneously warning President Obama to ``keep your hands off my Medicare'' -- the biggest, costliest, most socialistic government program in U.S. history.

It's also a program that happens to work, although not nearly as efficiently as it could.

Nobody with an I.Q. higher than emergency-room temperature could ever believe that ``death panels'' would be appointed to nudge the elderly toward euthanasia. Yet for idle entertainment, it's hard to beat Sarah Palin's ignorant nattering on the subject.

Informed opponents of Obama's healthcare initiative have expressed dismay at the lowly level of discourse. John Goodman, president of the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, told The New York Times:

``I think the critics have approached this in the wrong way; saying there's to be a death panel is not the right way. The right way to approach it is to put the burden of proof on the administration -- tell us how you're going to do [reform] without denying care to people who are really in need.''

Once the volume is turned down at the town halls, you can hear plenty of smart, hard questions about the direction of healthcare reform, and the implications for families, businesses and medical providers.

Anyone who's been in a hospital knows the cost of care is so insanely high that, without some form of coverage, many people would find themselves pauperized by a health crisis.

A close member of my family recently had an accident in which she suffered multiple bone fractures and a partially collapsed lung -- painful, but not life-threatening.

She was taken to the nearest hospital, where she was monitored for a few hours in the intensive-care unit before being sent to a private room. The next day, she was transferred to a hospital closer to home.

In all, she spent barely 24 hours as a patient in the first hospital. Yet the cost for that overnight stay -- not including doctor fees -- was $11,392.56.

The bill, which wasn't itemized, didn't arrive for two months. It had first been sent to our insurance company, which covered most of it. The remaining balance was, relatively speaking, small change.

I called the insurance company and said that, while we greatly appreciated the bill being paid, it was difficultto comprehend how those particular 24 hours of medicalcare could cost more than 11 grand.

The woman taking my call patiently checked over the bill on her computer. She said the hospital room itself was ``only'' $750. The bulk of the charge was for two CAT scans, totaling more than $6,000.

I couldn't resist mentioning that my family member had suffered a broken fibula which, despite all the tests, had somehow escaped detection at the hospital.

``They didn't even X-ray her leg,'' I pointed out.

Hoping to make me feel better, the woman at the insurance company said, ``Well, we didn't pay out the full $11,392.'' The hospital bill had been adjusted downward, she said, to slightly less than $10,000.

Such formidable sums are no shock to those with experience on either end of the health-care delivery system. Our family is fortunate because the company I work for offers a pretty good insurance package at a reasonable cost.

Nobody knows for sure how many Americans don't have medical coverage, but the most frequent estimates range from 43 million to 47 million. Some carry no insurance by choice, but the majority simply cannot afford it.

We've already spent more on Iraq than the Democrats' current healthcare plans are projected to cost over the next decade. Yet some of the same bright bulbs in Congress who were excited to bankroll that foolish invasion are now huffing indignantly about the price tag for insuring our own citizens.

Reform can't work without including the uninsured, not just because it's humane but because it will ultimately save taxpayers a fortune. The public cost of treating uninsured patients, who often don't see a doctor until there's an emergency,is boggling.

If a single day in the hospital can cost 11 grand (or more), the tab for staying a week or a month could crush an average family. Whether a patient is uninsured or underinsured, if he or she can't write the check, the rest of us will.

That's one reason hospital expenses are so astronomical -- we're subsidizing a sick, bloated system. It would be far cheaper to make sure everybody had a decent health plan.

In medicine, there's really no such thing as an unpaid bill. Somebody always gets stuck.

[Doctor Rock]

Hey how about that "trigger option", eh?  

Anything to save insurance company ass.  What a load of horseshit. 

[Doctor Rock]

How health care spending is largely decoupled from outcomes

Here’s a healthcare multimedia/interactive story that I helped put together. It all started when Peter Aldhous and Jim Giles found a bunch of healthcare data from the OECD and Dartmouth. We’ve been drooling over Gapminder lately, so we decided to have a go.

Peter and Jim analyzed the data and wrangled them into the charts. I shot and edited the whole thing and helped make the interactive part behave.

[bebopbalogna]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ONKxGko-JNI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/ONKxGko-JNI</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Qf_3okCBfUc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Qf_3okCBfUc</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/n2fSTTLWS1A" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/n2fSTTLWS1A</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/sGsH3EZjKic" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/sGsH3EZjKic</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/gM_K6yI5avE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/gM_K6yI5avE</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/jeSQAipNi3U" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/jeSQAipNi3U</a>

[Doctor Rock]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/dBi8A_HutII" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/dBi8A_HutII</a>

[Jeff]

14 Things You Should Know About the Obama Heckler, Joe Wilson

outh Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson was pretty much a nobody until his outburst Wednesday during President Barack Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress and the American people on the subject of health care. Here are some things worth knowing about Mr. Wilson, including his most recent video appeal, at the end of this list, where he continues to characterize the Democrats' health-care plans as "government-run," saying he will not "be muzzled."

1. Like his ideological counterpart known as Mr. The Plumber, his real name is not Joe. It's Addison. His middle name is Graves. That makes him Addison Graves Wilson.

2. Wilson is a member of the organization, Sons of Confederate Veterans, reports Dave Niewert of Crooks and Liars, which "as the Southern Poverty Law Center has detailed assiduously, has been taken over in the past decade by radical neo-Confederates who favor secession and defend slavery as a benign institution." (Not that Wilson's affiliation has anything to do with his unprecedented heckling, during a presidential address before a joint session of Congress, of our first African-American president.)

3. Wilson served as an aide to the late segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond, who is credited with conducting the longest filibuster in Senate history -- against the 1957 civil rights bill.

4. When Thurmond's bi-racial daughter, fathered out of wedlock with an African-American teenage girl, came forward in 2003 -- after Thurmond's death -- Wilson castigated Thurmond's daughter, saying he did not believe her story. Essie Mae Washington-Williams was conceived of a union Thurmond had with his family's 16-year-old maid. Thurmond was 22 at the time. "It's a smear on the image that [Thurmond] has as a person of high integrity who has been so loyal to the people of South Carolina," Wilson said, according to TPM. Wilson later apologized to Washington-Williams.

5. A large percentage of Wilson's campaign contributions come from the health sector, according to OpenSecrets.org. Over the course of his eight-year congressional career, Wilson has collected $414,000 from the health sector, topped only by contribution from what OpenSecrets calls the "finance, insurance & real estate" sector, from which he has gleaned $455,000.

6. According to his congressional Web site (which has crashed thanks to a rush of traffic after the president's speech), "Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) announced today that his office will be open on Saturday, September 12, 2009 to host constituents traveling to Washington for this weekend’s 9/12 March on Washington." The September 12 march is sponsored by the astroturfing group FreedomWorks, and widely publicized by the 912 Project launched by FOX New personality Glenn Beck, who, in an apparent fit of what the psychologist call "projection," called Obama a "racist."

7. Wilson is an adamant opponent of health care reform. As reported by The Hill, his last Tweet before his heckling performance at Obama's speech read, "Happy Labor Day! Wonderful parade at Chapin, many people called out to oppose Obamacare which I assured them would be relayed tomorrow to DC." (Wilson is currently the top trending topic on Twitter, and has nearly doubled his number of followers since his outburst.)

8. A military veteran whose health-care coverage is set for life, even after he retires from Congress, Wilson has "voted 11 times against health care for veterans in eight years, even as he voted 'aye' for the Iraq War..., " according to Adam Weinstein, an uninsured Iraq-war veteran, writing at Newsweek's The Gaggle. "He voted to cut veterans' benefits─not his own─to make room for President George W. Bush's tax cuts," Weinstein says. "He repeatedly voted for budgets that slashed funding to the Veterans Administration and TRICARE. And perhaps most bizarrely, he refused -- repeatedly -- to approve Democratic-led initiatives that would have extended TRICARE coverage to all reservists and National Guard members, even though a disproportionate number of them have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and many lost access to their civilian work benefits when they did so."

9. In 2002, the Washington Post reports, Wilson attacked Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., on national television, calling him "viscerally un-American" and accusing him of "hatred of America" because the Democrat suggested that the United States had once provided Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein with the wherewithal to acquire nuclear and biological weapons technoligies. Hussein was an ally of the United States during the war he waged on Iran. (The Post has the video.)

10. Wilson served in the Reagan administration as deputy counsel in the energy department.

11. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., hearts Joe Wilson; calls Obama "combative." "The president’s combative tone did not justify a member of Congress shouting out 'you lie,'" Graham told the South Carolina newspaper, The State. ''Our nation’s president deserves to be treated with respect. It was an inappropriate remark, and I am glad an apology has been made.'' He then attributed Wilson's behavior to the president's remarks.

"I was incredibly disappointed in the tone of his speech," Graham said. "At times I found his tone to be overly combative and believe he behaved in a manner beneath the dignity of the office. I fear his speech tonight has made it more difficult -- not less -- to find common ground."

12. Wilson's heckling is raising funds for both him and his opponent in his upcoming congressional race. The Washington Post reports:

    One clear beneficiary of Wilson's intemperance was his Democrat opponent, Rob Miller, who garnered 46 percent of the vote in a 2008 matchup with the congressman. By midday, Miller had received more than 10,000 new contributions, totaling more than $350,000, according to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which hailed the "groundswell of support." Miller, a former Marine, still faces a fierce fight in a firmly Republican stronghold.


ThinkProgress reveals attempts by Republicans to use the incident to raise funds for Wilson:

    Republican activist Patrick Ruffini encouraged his Twitter followers to contribute to Wilson. Calling the South Carolina congressman a "great American hero," RedState.com’s Erick Erickson posted this fundraising solicitation on his site:


        Joe Wilson has been identified as the Republican who yelled out that Barack Obama was a liar.

        He gets a drink on me!

        CONTRIBUTE TO JOE WILSON HERE. Joe Wilson’s opponent raised $11,000.00 in an hour after Joe Wilson stood up to Barack Obama. We must help Joe Wilson.



13. Joe Wilson's BFFs in Congress, according to McClatchy Newspapers: Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., and Delegate Madeliene Z. Bordallo, D-Guam.

14. Joe Wilson continues to lie. In a YouTube video released Thursday, Wilson, who apologized to the president Wednesday night via White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel,seems hardly contrite. He now says that "liberals who want to give health care to illegals are using my opposition as a distraction..." "They want to silence anyone who's against" the Democrats' health-care plan. Wilson continues to refer to the health-care plan as "government run," and attributes his outburst to having spent a month in town-hall meetings with emotional constituents who oppose a "government takeover" of health care.

[Doctor Rock]

45,000 American deaths associated with lack of insurance