People Want Full Medicare for All

Time for Single Payer
by RALPH NADER


Freshman Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who somehow got through Princeton and Harvard Law School, is the best news the defaulting Democratic Party has had in years.

As the Texas bull in the Senate china shop, he has been making a majority of his Republican colleagues cringe with his bare-knuckle antics and language. His 21 hour talkathon on the Senate floor demanding the defunding of Obamacare made his Republican colleagues gasp. His Nazi appeasement analogies, and threats to shut down were especially embarrassing.

After listening to his lengthy rant on the Senate Floor on Tuesday and Wednesday, one comes away with two distinct impressions. Ted Cruz cannot resist inserting himself here, there and everywhere. And nothing is too trivial for Senator Talkathon. He likes White Castle hamburgers, he loves pancakes; he talked about what he liked to read as a little boy, where he’s traveled, what clothes he wears and other trivia.

You’d think he would have used his time to talk specifically about the suffering that uninsured people and their children are going through, especially in the Lone Star State. Or about what could replace Obamacare other than his repeated “free market” solution, which is to say the “pay or die” profiteering, tax-subsidized corporate system.

It was puzzling why he never mentioned that during his two days of talking, over two hundred Americans died, on average, because they couldn’t afford health insurance to get diagnoses and timely treatment. (A peer reviewed study by Harvard Medical School researchers estimated about 45,000 die annually for lack of affordable health insurance every year.)

The other reaction to Senator Cruz was that many of his more specific objections to Obamacare – its mind-numbing complexity, opposition by formerly supportive labor unions, and employers reacting by reducing worker hours below 30 hours a week to escape some of the law’s requirements – are well-taken and completely correctible by single-payer health insurance, as provided in Canada. Single-payer, or full Medicare for all, with free choice of physician and hospital has been the majority choice of Americans for decades. Even a majority of doctors and nurses favor it.

Single-payer’s advantage is that everybody is in, nobody is out. It is far more efficient, allows for better outcomes, saves lives, prevents injuries and illnesses, relieves people of severe anxieties and wasted time spent figuring out often fraud-ridden, inscrutable computerized bills and allows for the collection of pattern-detecting data to spot harmful trends.

For example, in Canada, full Medicare covers everyone at half the per capita cost that Americans pay even though 50 million Americans are still not covered. The U.S. per capita figure is almost $9,000 a year and over 17% of our total GDP. In Canada, administrative costs are much lower.

Symbolically, the single-payer legislation that passed in Canada over four decades ago was 13 pages long, compared to over two thousand pages for Obamacare.

Critics of Canada’s system charge it with delays for patients. For some elective procedures, provinces that were under-investing have experienced some delays until Ottawa raised its contributions. Canada spends just over 10% of its GDP on healthcare, by comparison.

But in the U.S. not being able to pay for treatment is the biggest problem. And in the U.S., who hasn’t heard of delays in various areas of the country due to lack of primary care physicians or other specialties? I have many friends and relatives in Canada who have not complained of delays for routine, essential or emergency treatments.

For those who prefer to believe hard-bitten businesspeople, Matt Miller, writing yesterday in The Washington Post, interviewed big business executives – David Beatty who ran the giant Weston Foods and Roger Martin long-time consultant to large U.S. companies in Canada. They were highly approving of the Canadian system and are baffled at the way the U.S. has twisted itself in such a wasteful, harmful and discriminatory system.

Mr. Beatty wondered why U.S. companies “‘want to be in the business of providing health care anyway’ (‘that’s a government function,’ he says simply).”

Mr. Martin, an avowed capitalist, who has experienced healthcare in the U.S. and Canada, according to Mr. Miller, called Canadian Medicare “incredibly hassle-free,” by comparison. (In Canada, single-payer means government insurance and private delivery of healthcare under cost controls). Now Dean of the business school at the University of Toronto, Mr. Martin told reporter Miller: “I literally have a hard time thinking of what would be better than a single-payer system.”

So why the U.S. is the only Western country without some version of a single-payer system?

Most concessionary Democrats, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have said in the past that they prefer single-payer, but that the corporate forces against it cannot be overcome. (They use phrases like “single-payer is not practical.”)

But with the Cruz crew in Congress going berserk against Obamacare, now is the time to press again for the far superior single-payer model. Or at least get single-payer into the public discussion. Unfortunately, even some of the major citizen groups organized for single-payer, behind H.R. 676, are keeping quiet, not wanting to undercut Obama and the Congressional Democrats.

Go to Single Payer Action and connect with the movement that does not play debilitating politics and seeks your engagement.

Beware the 'Grand Bargain': Post-Election Deficit Deal Threatens Medicare and Social Security

Tuesday, October 9, 2012 by FireDogLake
The solution is Improved Medicare for All
by Kay Tillow

 

After the November election, there will be a major effort in Congress to pass a budget deal that will make cuts in Social Security, raise the Medicare and Social Security eligibility age, and perhaps more–unless we act to stop it with a solution that is close at hand.

There is agreement from the Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel to liberal economists Dean Baker and Paul Krugman that the pressure will be on to reach a Simpson/Bowles type of compromise.  Such a bipartisan plan would damage our most cherished programs and excuse the dastardly deed by asserting that the cuts are small and necessary because of the deficit. 

Those who relentlessly scream at us and finance ads to persuade us that the deficit threatens our grandchildren are obscuring the truth.  The fact is that the transfer of wealth from public funds and the rest of us to the super rich is the real crisis.  But those who have gorged themselves on this massive transfer of wealth also seek to undermine the Medicare and Social Security which are our grandchildren’s heritage from generations of struggles for a better life.

The projected cuts are not minor but very harmful.  Even a small decrease in the Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment would deliver an ever increasing downward push on benefits while corporations continue to threaten secure pensions by turning them into lump sums that will fade with the stock market.

Raising the Medicare age to 67 would be disastrous.  There will be no affordable health insurance for those in their 60’s.  The Affordable Care Act allows private insurance companies to charge premiums three times higher based on age.  Under popular pressure, there were regulations placed into the health care reform bill to stop insurance companies from charging higher premiums based on pre-existing conditions.  But the companies were allowed to charge three times the premium based on age.  

Because of this allowed age discrimination, the Kaiser Foundation estimates that an individual of age 60 in 2014 with an annual income of $50,000 will pay a health insurance premium of  over $10,000, or over 20% of income.  That does not include out-of-pocket costs which can add up to an additional $6,000 annually.  That brings the total to 32% of income—a bankrupting figure. 

There is a solution that the single payer movement must place on the nation’s table.   Even Bill Clinton said that we could save $1 trillion a year if we adopted the health care system of any of the other developed countries in the world.  No more stewing over the deficit!

An Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, HR 676, would save Medicare, end the uncontrolled, gargantuan rise in all health care costs, ease the deficit pressure, and actually bring universal health care to the nation. 

This single payer legislation, HR 676, introduced by Congressman John Conyers and co-sponsored by 76 representatives, would divert $400 billion annually from profits and waste generated by the private health insurance industry into care for all.  Care would be expanded and costs bought under control through bulk purchasing, global budgeting, and the elimination of administrative expenses forced upon our system in the pursuit of profit.

Doctors would be freed from insurance industry interference with care.  Patients would be freed to choose their physicians.  Dental, eyeglasses, hearing aids, prescription drugs, long term care, doctors, hospitals, home health, mental health—all medically necessary care would be included. 

Our health care costs would stop driving us over the cliff and level off just as Canada’s did when that country fully implemented their single payer health care.

Co-pays and deductibles would be banned ending today’s growing problem that health insurance policies are so miserly that even the insured forego care because they can’t afford it.

Our country spends about twice per capita what other industrialized nations spend on health care, yet our health care system lags far behind at number 37 in the world. 

So why are we even debating cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid when the solution is at hand that would bring us both better care and cost controls?  HR 676, an improved Medicare for All, is sitting in the Congress, awaiting the rising of a movement that will insist upon its passage.

A Tale of Two Healthcare Plans

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 by Reuters

by David Cay Johnston

 

 

No issue affecting taxes so clearly divides the two parties in the U.S. election as healthcare. The two parties, in their platforms, describe very different approaches to healthcare economics. Both use political plastic surgery to cover up ugly truths.

The stakes are huge. Americans spend $2.64 per person for healthcare for each purchasing power equivalent dollar spent by the 33 other countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD data shows the U.S. spends $8,233 per capita compared with an average of $3,118 in the other 33 countries.

A growing share of federal tax dollars, in direct spending and in tax breaks, is going to U.S. healthcare as the population ages, even though about one in six Americans lacks health insurance.

America‘s healthcare system, more accurately described as a non-system sick care system, totaled 17.6 percent of the economy in 2010, compared to an average of 9.2 percent in the other 33 countries, as the OECD data shows.

In the United States, total public and private cost of healthcare is significantly greater than the total of corporate and individual income taxes, as well as payroll taxes. For each dollar paid in all three of those taxes in 2010, healthcare came to $1.29.

If we just lowered our costs to those of France, which has universal care in what is widely regarded as one of the best systems if not the best, it would save almost as much money as Americans paid in individual income taxes in 2010. The French spend 6 percentage points less of their economy on healthcare. In the United States, the individual income tax in 2010 came to 6.3 percent of the U. S. economy, the lowest since Truman was president.

Take a look at your pay stub to get an idea of the kind of money being spent on a system that fosters bankruptcy, bedevils small business and ranks 31st among the 34 OECD countries in preventing premature death.

REPUBLICAN PLAN
The Republicans say the federal government is “structurally and financially broken” and that “three programs - Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – account for over 40 percent of total spending,” which is “harming job creation and growth, (while) projections of future spending growth are nothing short of catastrophic, both economically and socially.”

The Republicans promise to “empower millions of seniors to control their personal healthcare decisions,” a vow immediately followed by a promise to cut federal spending.

The clearest explanation of what that would mean comes from Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee. Before he started obfuscating, Ryan laid out his plans in detail. He boasted that by changing Medicare from a plan that provides treatment for every older American into one that gives seniors a fixed sum to buy their own health insurance, taxpayers would save through 2084 the present equivalent of $4.9 trillion.

What Ryan did not mention is that his plan would also mean $8 of increased private spending by seniors and the disabled for each tax dollar saved.

We know how Ryan’s plan would raise total costs because David Rosnick and Dean Baker, economists at the Center for Economic Policy and Research which promotes government policies that it says would benefit workers and the poor, used the same formula that Ryan (or his staff) applied to the same Congressional Budget Office data, but on private medical care spending. Ryan’s spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Beyond the fact that it makes no sense to spend $8 to save $1, older people do not have the money. A tenth of Americans age 75 and older live below the official poverty line. Another 24 percent have only saved a tad more.

Every indicator shows that Americans have not enough for their old age and that a shrinking number have pensions while the Republicans now in charge of the party want to cut Social Security benefits, if not kill the program.

So why would any Americans under age 55, whose healthcare benefits Ryan wants to cut when they reach 65, think they can afford to spend $8 to save $1? Recently Ryan has softened his plan to let those who wish stay in traditional Medicare. Since anyone not rich who can count would stick with Medicare, Ryan’s promised taxpayer savings would never materialize.

Alan Grayson, the combative one-term Democratic representative from Florida, got it right when he said on the House floor in 2009: “The Republican plan – don’t get sick and if you do get sick die quickly.”

DEMOCRATS FAVOR UNIVERSAL CARE

 The Democratic platform calls for universal healthcare. “We will end the outrage of unaffordable, unavailable healthcare,” they say, though after six decades that party promise remains unfulfilled.

President Barack Obama‘s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will enable those with pre-existing conditions and twenty-somethings without work to get health insurance. But the plan does nothing to address the larger economic problem. American healthcare costs too much and needs replacement, not a nip and tuck.

Portugal, with half the income per person as America, provides universal healthcare. Cuba, the CIA tells us, ranks 40th in infant mortality, while the United States is nine steps lower at 49th, an astonishing fact given U.S. spending compared to the poverty induced by Castro’s collectivist economic policies.

Doing worse than Portugal and Cuba is, in my view, not just costly but immoral.

Just as Republicans are trying to limit the franchise, so are they trying to limit who gets healthcare. The Democrats are better only because they recognize that universal care can be cheaper while removing an annoying and costly distraction from business.

Death and taxes will always be with us. What we need is to spend less on taxes while doing the best we can to stave off death.

Healthcare Jujitsu: A Path to Medicare for All

Tuesday, March 27, 2012 by RobertReich.org
by Robert Reich


Not surprisingly, today’s debut Supreme Court argument over the so-called “individual mandate” requiring everyone to buy health insurance revolved around epistemological niceties such as the meaning of a “tax,” and the question of whether the issue is ripe for review.

Behind this judicial foreplay is the brute political fact that if the Court decides the individual mandate is an unconstitutional extension of federal authority, the entire law starts unraveling.

But with a bit of political jujitsu, the President could turn any such defeat into a victory for a single-payer healthcare system – Medicare for all.
Here’s how.

The dilemma at the heart of the new law is that it continues to depend on private health insurers, who have to make a profit or at least pay all their costs including marketing and advertising.

Yet the only way private insurers can afford to cover everyone with pre-existing health problems, as the new law requires, is to have every American buy health insurance – including young and healthier people who are unlikely to rack up large healthcare costs.

This dilemma is the product of political compromise. You’ll remember the Administration couldn’t get the votes for a single-payer system such as Medicare for all. It hardly tried. Not a single Republican would even agree to a bill giving Americans the option of buying into it.

But don’t expect the Supreme Court to address this dilemma. It lies buried under an avalanche of constitutional argument.

Those who are defending the law in Court say the federal government has authority to compel Americans to buy health insurance under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which gives Washington the power to regulate interstate commerce. They argue our sprawling health insurance system surely extends beyond an individual state.

Those who are opposing the law say a requirement that individuals contract with private insurance companies isn’t regulation of interstate commerce. It’s coercion of individuals.

Unhappily for Obama and the Democrats, most Americans don’t seem to like the individual mandate very much anyway. Many on the political right believe it a threat to individual liberty. Many on the left object to being required to buy something from a private company.

The President and the Democrats could have avoided this dilemma in the first place if they’d insisted on Medicare for all, or at least a public option.

After all, Social Security and Medicare require every working American to “buy” them. The purchase happens automatically in the form of a deduction from everyone’s paychecks. But because Social Security and Medicare are government programs financed by payroll taxes they don’t feel like mandatory purchases.

Americans don’t mind mandates in the form of payroll taxes for Social Security or Medicare. In fact, both programs are so popular even conservative Republicans were heard to shout “don’t take away my Medicare!” at rallies opposed to the new health care law.

Requiring citizens to buy something from a private company is different because private companies aren’t directly accountable to the public. They’re accountable to their owners and their purpose is to maximize profits. What if they monopolize the market and charge humongous premiums? (Some already seem to be doing this.)

Even if private health insurers are organized as not-for-profits, there’s still a problem of public accountability. What’s to prevent top executives from being paid small fortunes? (In more than a few cases this is already happening.)

Moreover, compared to private insurance, Medicare is a great deal. Its administrative costs are only around 3 percent, while the administrative costs of private insurers eat up 30 to 40 percent of premiums. Medicare’s costs are even below the 5 percent to 10 percent administrative costs borne by large companies that self-insure, and under the 11 percent costs of private plans under Medicare Advantage, the current private-insurance option under Medicare.

So why not Medicare for all?

Because Republicans have mastered the art of political jujitsu. Their strategy has been to demonize government and seek to privatize everything that might otherwise be a public program financed by tax dollars (see Paul Ryan’s plan for turning Medicare into vouchers). Then they go to court and argue that any mandatory purchase is unconstitutional because it exceeds the government’s authority.

Obama and the Democrats should do the reverse. If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate in the new health law, private insurers will swarm Capitol Hill demanding that the law be amended to remove the requirement that they cover people with pre-existing conditions.

When this happens, Obama and the Democrats should say they’re willing to remove that requirement – but only if Medicare is available to all, financed by payroll taxes.

If they did this the public will be behind them — as will the Supreme Court.

The 99% Declaration

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." Thomas Jefferson

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Benito Mussolini 

WHEREAS THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION PROVIDES THAT:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT:


WE, THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in order to form a more perfect Union, by, for and of the PEOPLE, shall elect and convene a NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY beginning on July 4, 2012 in the City Of Philadelphia.

I. Election of Delegates:


The People, consisting of all United States citizens who have reached the age of 18, regardless of party affiliation and voter registration status, shall elect Two Delegates, one male and one female, by direct vote, from each of the existing 435 Congressional Districts to represent the People at the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY in Philadelphia. Said Assembly shall convene on July 4, 2012 in the city of Philadelphia. The office of Delegate shall be open to all United States citizens who have reached the age of 18. Election Committees, elected by local General Assemblies or Working Groups from all over the United States, shall coordinate with the Working Group on the 99% Declaration to organize, coordinate and fund this national election by direct democratic voting. The Election Committees, Working Groups and local General Assemblies shall operate as the original Committees of Correspondence once did.


II. Meeting of the National General Assembly and Approval of a Petition for a Redress of Grievances:


In addition to ensuring a free and fair election of the Delegates to the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, the Working Group on the 99% Declaration shall be responsible for raising sufficient funds to secure a venue wherein the the 870 Delegates may convene, deliberate, consider, vote and ratify a PETITION OF GRIEVANCES to be presented to all 535 members of Congress, the 9 members of the Supreme Court, the President of the United States and each of the political candidates seeking to be elected to federal public office in November 2012.  Subject to the voting procedure for the final vote of ratification of the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES as set forth in section III, the Delegates of the National General Assembly shall vote upon and implement their own rules, procedures, agenda, code of conduct, elections or appointments of committee members to efficiently and expeditiously accomplish the People's mandate to present a PETITION OF GRIEVANCES before the 2012 elections.


III. Content of the Petition for a Redress of Grievances:


The PETITION OF GRIEVANCES shall be non-partisan and specifically address the critical issues now confronting the People of the United States of America. The Delegates shall deliberate and vote upon proposals for the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES and if necessary adjourn for further consultation with the People of the United States of America as our founding fathers conferred during the first two Continental Congresses.  The final vote ratifying the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES shall be by simple majority vote. A duly elected chairperson of the National General Assembly shall determine the outcome of the vote on ratification in the event of a tie.


IV. Suggested Content of the Petition for a Redress of Grievances:


In order to facilitate the timely election of the 870 Delegates to the National General Assembly by July 4, 2012 and petition the government for a redress of grievances before the 2012 elections, the Working Group on the 99% Declaration, founded and duly announced to the New York City General Assembly on October 15, 2011, shall draft a suggested list of grievances to be respectfully submitted to the Delegates of the National General Assembly no later than June 30, 2012. The final version of the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES ratified by the National General Assembly, MAY or MAY NOT include the following issues suggested by the Working Group on the 99% Declaration:

1. Implementing an immediate ban on all private contributions of money and gifts, to all politicians in federal office, from individuals, corporations, "political action committees," "super political action committees," lobbyists, unions and all other private sources of money or thing of value to be replaced by the fair, equal and total public financing of all federal political campaigns. We categorically REJECT the concepts that corporations are persons or that money is equal to free speech because if that were so, then only the wealthiest people and corporations would have a voice. The complete elimination of private contributions must be enacted by law or Constitutional amendment because it has become clear that politicians in the United States cannot regulate themselves and have become the exclusive representatives of corporations, unions and the very wealthy who indirectly and directly spend vast sums of money on political campaigns to influence the candidates’ decisions when they attain office and ensure their reelection year after year. Our elected representatives spend far too much of their time fundraising for the next election rather than doing the People's business. The current system's propagation of legalized bribery and perpetual conflicts of interests has reduced our once great republican democracy to a greed driven corporatocracy run by boardroom oligarchs who represent .05% of the population but own 38% of the wealth.


2. The immediate abrogation, even if it requires a Constitutional Amendment, of the outrageous and anti-democratic holding in the "Citizens United" case proclaimed by the United States Supreme Court. This heinous decision equates the payment of money by corporations, wealthy individuals and unions to politicians with the exercise of protected free speech. We, the People, demand that this institutional bribery and corruption never again be deemed protected free speech.


3. Prohibiting all federal public employees, officers, officials or their immediate family members from ever being employed by any corporation, individual or business that they specifically regulated while in office; nor may any public employee, officer, official or their immediate family members own or hold any stock or shares in any corporation they regulated while in office until a full 5 years after their term is completed; a complete lifetime ban on the acceptance of all gifts, services, money or thing of value, directly or indirectly, by any elected or appointed federal official or their immediate family members, from any person, corporation, union or other entity that the public official was charged to specifically regulate while in office. In sum, elected politicians and public employees in regulatory roles may only collect their salary, generous healthcare benefits and pension. Any person, including corporate employees, found guilty and convicted of violating these rules in a court of law by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, shall be sentenced to a term of mandatory imprisonment of no less than one year and not more than ten years.


4.  Term Limits. Members of the United States House of Representatives shall be limited to serving no more than four two-year terms in their lifetime. Members of the United States Senate shall be limited to serving no more than two six-year terms in their lifetime.  The two-term limit for President shall remain unchanged. Serving as a member of Congress or as the President of the United States is one of the highest honors and privileges our culture can bestow. These positions of prominence in our society should be sought to serve one's country and not provide a lifetime career designed to increase personal wealth and accumulate power for the sake of vanity.


5.  A complete reformation of the United States Tax Code to require ALL citizens to pay a fair share of a progressive, graduated income tax by eliminating loopholes, unfair tax breaks, exemptions and deductions, subsidies (e.g. oil, gas and farm) and ending all other methods of evading taxes. The current system of taxation favors the wealthiest Americans, many of whom pay fewer taxes to the United States Treasury than citizens who earn much less and pay a much higher percentage of income in taxes to the United States Treasury. We, like Warren Buffet, find this income tax disparity to be fundamentally unjust.


6. Medicare for all American citizens or adoption of a single-payer healthcare system. The Medicaid program, fraught with corruption and fraud, will be eliminated except for the purpose of providing emergency room care to indigent non-citizens who will not be covered by the single-payer healthcare system.


7. New comprehensive regulations to give the Environmental Protection Agency expanded powers to shut down corporations, businesses or any entities that intentionally or recklessly damage the environment, and to criminally prosecute individuals who intentionally or recklessly damage the environment. We also demand the immediate adoption of the most recent international protocols, including the "Washington Declaration" to cap carbon emissions and implement new and existing programs to transition away from fossil fuels to reusable or carbon neutral sources of energy.


8. Adoption of an immediate plan to reduce the national debt to a sustainable percentage of GDP by 2020. Reduction of the national debt to be achieved by BOTH fair taxation and cuts in spending to corporations engaged in perpetual war for profit, the "healthcare" industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the communications industry, the oil and gas industry, and all other sectors that use the federal budget as their income stream. We agree that spending cuts are necessary but those cuts must be made to facilitate what is best for the People of the United States of America, not multinational and domestic corporations who currently have a stranglehold on all politicians in Washington, D.C. in both parties.


9. Passage of a comprehensive job and job-training act like the American Jobs Act to employ our citizens in jobs that are available with specialized training and by putting People to work now by repairing America's crumbling infrastructure. We also recommend the establishment of an online international job exchange to match employers with skilled workers or employers willing to train workers in 21st century skills. In conjunction with a new jobs act, reinstitution of the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps or a similar emergency governmental agency tasked with creating new public works projects to provide jobs to the 46 million People living in poverty, the 9.1% unemployed and 10% underemployed.


10. Implementation of a student loan debt relief forgiveness program. Our young students are more than $830 billion in debt from education loans alone with few employment prospects due to financial collapse directly caused by the unbridled and unregulated greed of Wall Street. Interest on these debts should be reduced and  deferred for periods of unemployment and the principal on these loans reduced or forgiven by using a Wall Street corporate tax surcharge as reparations for their conduct leading to the economic collapse of 2007-2008 and current worldwide recession. The tax code must also be amended so that employers will receive a student loan repayment tax deduction for paying off the loans of their employees.


11. Immediate passage of the Dream Act and comprehensive immigration and border security reform including offering visas, lawful permanent resident status and citizenship to the world’s brightest People to stay and work in our industries and schools after they obtain their education and training in the United States.


12. Recalling all military personnel at all non-essential bases and refocusing national defense goals to address threats posed by the geopolitics of the 21st century, including terrorism and limiting the large scale deployment of military forces to instances where Congressional approval has been granted to counter the Military Industrial Complex's goal of perpetual war for profit. The annual estimated savings of one trillion dollars per year saved by updating our military posture will be applied to the social programs outlined herein to improve the quality of life  for human beings rather than assisting corporations to make ever-increasing profits distributed to the top 1% of wealth owners.


13. Mandating new educational goals to train the American public to perform jobs in a 21st century economy, particularly in the areas of technology and green energy, taking into consideration the redundancy caused by technology and the inexpensive cost of labor in China, India and other countries. Eliminating tenure and paying our teachers a competitive salary commensurate with the salaries of employees in the private sector with similar skills because without highly-skilled teachers, there will never be a highly-skilled workforce.


14. Subject to the elimination of corporate tax loopholes and exploited exemptions and deductions stated above, offering tax incentives to businesses to remain in the United States and hire our citizens rather than outsource jobs. An "outsourcing tax" should be introduced to discourage businesses from sending jobs overseas. Providing tax breaks to companies that invest in reconstructing the manufacturing capacity of the United States so that we again make everyday products in the United States rather than importing them from countries like China and India.


15. Implementing immediate legislation and WTO intervention if need be, to encourage China and our other trading partners to end currency manipulation and reduce the trade deficit.


16.  Immediate reenactment of the Glass-Steagall Act and increased regulation of Wall Street and the financial industry by the SEC, FINRA and the other financial regulators. The immediate commencement of  Justice Department criminal investigations into the Securities and Banking industry practices that led to the collapse of markets, $700 billion bail-out, and financial firm failures in 2007-2008. Introduction of a small financial transaction fee to collect a tax on each and every stock trade and all other forms of financial transactions. Uniform regulations limiting what banks may charge consumers for ATM fees, the use of debit cards and other miscellaneous "fees." Ending the $4 billion a year "hedge fund loophole" which permits certain individuals engaged in financial transactions to evade graduated income tax rates by treating their income as capital gains which are taxed at a much lower tax rate (approximately 15%).


17. Adoption of a plan similar to President Clinton’s proposal to end the mortgage crisis. The privately owned Federal Reserve Bank shall not continue to lower interest rates for loans to banks that are refusing to loan to small businesses and consumers, but instead shall buy all underwater or foreclosed mortgages. It will refinance these debts at an interest rate of 1% or less, because that is the interest rate it charges the banks that hoard the cash rather than loan it to the People and small businesses. These debts will be managed by the newly established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (and foreclosure task force described below). The immediate formation of a non-partisan commission, overseen by Congress, to audit and investigate the economic risks and possibility of eliminating the privately-owned Federal Reserve Bank and transferring its functions to the United States Treasury Department.


18. An immediate one-year freeze on all foreclosures and their review by an independent foreclosure task force appointed and overseen by Congress and the Executive Branch (in conjunction with the  Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ) to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether foreclosure proceedings should continue based on the circumstances of each homeowner and the propriety of the financial institution's conduct when originating the loan.


19. Subject to the above ban on all private money and gifts in politics, to enact additional campaign finance reform requiring new FCC regulations granting free air time to all candidates; total public campaign financing to all candidates who obtain sufficient petition signatures and/or votes to get on the ballot and participate in the primaries and/or electoral process; shortening the campaign season to three months; and allowing voting on weekends and holidays; issuance of free voter registration cards to all citizens who are eligible to vote so that they cannot be turned away at a polling station because they do not have a driver's license or other form of identification; and expanding the option of mail-in ballots to all elections, especially for elderly and disabled voters.


20. An immediate withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and a substantial increase in the amount of funding for veteran job training and placement. New programs dedicated to the treatment of injuries sustained by veterans. Our veterans are committing suicide at an unprecedented rate and we must help now.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that IF the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES approved by the 870 Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY in consultation with the PEOPLE, is not acted upon within a reasonable time and to the satisfaction of the Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, said Delegates shall organize a new NON-PARTISAN INDEPENDENT POLITICAL PARTY to run candidates for every available Congressional seat in the mid-term election of 2014 and again in 2016 until all vestiges of the existing corrupt corporatocracy have been removed by the power of the ballot box.


★THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT★

Can We Have Health Reform Without an Individual Mandate?

Saturday, August 13, 2011 by The Nation
Yes, It's Called 'Medicare for All'
by John Nichols

 

The essential vote on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel that ruled that the individual-coverage mandate in President Obama’s healthcare reform is unconstitutional did not come from a reactionary Republican appointed by Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.

Rather, it came from respected jurist whose two appointments to the federal bench—first as a judge for the Northern District of Georgia in 1994 and then to the 11th Circuit in 1997—were made by then-President Bill Clinton. No, Judge Frank Mays Hull is not a raging lefty, but nor is she a right-wing judicial activist. A former law clerk for Judge Elbert Parr Tuttle, who as the chief justice of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1960 to 1967 led the court in issuing a series of epic decisions on behalf of civil rights, Judge Hull has a reputation as a moderate defender of the rule of law who has earned reasonable marks for her pragmatic and decidely mainstream interpretations of the Constitution.

So why did Hull join with another member of the appeals court panel (Chief Judge Joel Dubina, an appointee of George H.W. Bush) to form the 2-1 majority that rejected the individual mandate while affirming the rest of the law? Perhaps it was because one can favor sweeping healthcare reforms—including an expansion of Medicare—while still believing that it is wrong to require Americans to buy insurance from for-profit insurance companies.

Hull telegraphed her thinking with repeated questions during June oral arguments in Atlanta regarding the case. Noting that “the panel spent a significant amount of time discussing whether the mandate is ‘severable’ from the rest of the law,” Politico pointed out that: “Hull in particular asked the federal government three times where the line should be.”

Ultimately, Hull and Dubina came to the conclusion that the individual mandate could, and should, be removed from an otherwise constitutional plan.

Why? Because, as the judges wrote in their majority decision: “This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives.”

Those of us who favor fundamental healthcare reform have always been uncomfortable with the individual mandate. So was candidate Barack Obama, who distinguished himself from Hillary Clinton (a mandate backer) by saying in a February 2008, interview: “Both of us want to provide health care to all Americans. There’s a slight difference, and her plan is a good one. But, she mandates that everybody buy health care. She’d have the government force every individual to buy insurance and I don’t have such a mandate because I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want health insurance, it’s that they can’t afford it. So, I focus more on lowering costs. This is a modest difference. But, it’s one that she’s tried to elevate, arguing that because I don’t force people to buy health care that I’m not insuring everybody. Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t.”

Candidate Obama was right.

The individual mandate was always a bad idea. Instead of recognizing that healthcare is a right, the members of Congress and the Obama administration who cobbled together the healthcare reform plan created a mandate that maintains the abuses and the expenses of for-profit insurance companies—and actually rewards those insurance companies with a guarantee of federal money.

Those who think that the for-profit (or even not-for-profit) insurance industry has to control any healthcare reform initiative have every right to be upset with the 11th Circuit’s ruling—which almost certainly will send the case of the Obama healthcare plan to the US Supreme Court.
But those of us who have no desire to perpetuate the insurance industry can and should recognize that the proper—and entirely constitutional—reform is an expansion of Medicare to cover all Americans.

There is no question that Medicare is a sound and popular program. (Just ask House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, who took an epic political beating when he proposed a scheme to replace the successful single-payer system with a voucher scheme designed to enrich insurance firms.)

While Medicare is exceptionally popular, polling shows that the individual mandate is not—according to recent surveys, roughly 60 percent of Americans oppose it.
It also passes constitutional muster.

As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich notes: [No] federal judge has struck down Social Security or Medicare as being an unconstitutional requirement that Americans buy something. Social Security and Medicare aren’t broccoli or asparagus. They’re as American as hot dogs and apple pie.”

“So if the individual mandate to buy private health insurance gets struck down by the Supreme Court or killed off by Congress, “ says Reich, “I’d recommend President Obama immediately propose what he should have proposed in the beginning — universal health care based on Medicare for all, financed by payroll taxes.”

The insurance companies would, of course, scream.

But let them complain.

Americans don’t need mandates. They need healthcare.

And they have every right to ask, as activists with Physicians for a National Health Program have,  that Medicare be expanded to cover all Americans —affordably, efficiently, capably and constitutionally.

Medicare for All: Fair, Frugal, and Inclusive

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Johnathon Ross

 

For 30 years I’ve been teaching young doctors how to practice primary care medicine at a center-city clinic in Toledo. Every day we witness heart-wrenching scenes right out of a Charles Dickens novel -- scenes that illustrate the cruelty, arbitrariness and absurdity of our health care “system.”

Imagine for a moment a 64-year-old, low-income and uninsured man whose condition requires hospitalization and specialty care. Due to the likely cost of his treatment, he and his family could soon be facing bankruptcy. As if the physical suffering were not enough, he’s now grappling with a terrible financial crisis.

Right next to him is another patient with the same condition and of similarly modest means. However, because he’s 65 and enrolled in Medicare, he’s able to get dignified and relatively hassle-free care, without the worry of a financial shipwreck. He can go to the doctor and hospital of his choice, get treated and not face overwhelming medical bills.

Two patients, two very different stories -- all because one person just happened to have been born a year earlier than the other.

Medicare, whose 46th anniversary will be observed July 30, has been a lifesaver for millions of elderly and severely disabled Americans. It’s been a major pillar of financial security for our nation’s families. And yet there are those in Congress today who would weaken or even dismantle it in the name of “fiscal responsibility."

The Medicare program has many virtues. It has created incentives for hospitals and doctors to improve the quality of care. It has produced better cost control than the private sector, despite giving patients freedom to see any doctor and go to any hospital.

The cost of administering the program is in the 1.3 percent to 3 percent range, much less than the 12-14 percent range typical of big employer-based private plans, and the 25-30 percent overhead associated with individual plans.

Given these strengths, Medicare should have been the model for health reform. Instead, in passing the Affordable Care Act, Congress added a third floor to house with a crumbling foundation. That crumbling foundation is our inefficient, wasteful private-insurance-based system of financing health care.

Private insurers make money by screening out the sick, denying claims and raising premiums. They cause us to waste enormous amounts of money on excess paperwork and bureaucracy — their own paperwork and the paperwork they inflict on hospitals, patients and doctors like me. An estimated 31 cents of every health care dollar goes toward administration in U.S. health care, at least half of it unnecessary.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Our nation needs to enact a single-payer national health insurance program, an improved Medicare for all.

Instead of the being saddled with the mean-spirited, wasteful and exclusionary insurance arrangements we have now, an improved Medicare for all program would be fair, frugal and inclusive.

By replacing the private insurers with a single, streamlined, publicly financed system that handled all bills, we’d recapture about $400 billion annually that’s currently spent on unnecessary paperwork -- enough to provide comprehensive coverage to all the uninsured and to improve coverage for the rest of us.

Such a system could negotiate pharmaceutical prices like the Veterans Administration does, lowering drug costs by about 40 percent. The same principle would apply to other supplies and services, helping us rein in costs.

The burden of rising health care costs on businesses would be sharply reduced, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of U.S. products overseas. Lowering out-of-pocket health cost would leave more money for discretionary spending that stimulates the economy.

Alarmingly, the budget deficit is prompting some in Washington to talk about cutting Medicare or delaying eligibility to age 67. That would be exactly the wrong direction in which to go. Medicare is the victim of rising health costs, not its cause.

It’s not too late to do the right thing. We should celebrate Medicare’s birthday by improving it and expanding it to all. The new system will save lives, save money and will place our nation on a path to become one of the best health systems in the world -- something of which we can all be proud.

Improve Medicare and Expand It to All

Wednesday, July 6, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
by Jim Recht

In honor of its 46th birthday this month, here is a brief history of Medicare: of the bitter controversy surrounding its creation, its subsequent achievements, and its current position at the center of congressional budget debates. I believe that once they understand the deep differences between this institution and our country’s more recent attempts at healthcare reform, most reasonable individuals will conclude that a national insurance system like Medicare offers a solution to the healthcare crisis, and that it should be fully funded and extended to cover all Americans from birth.

During the contentious debate that preceded its adoption in 1965, Medicare was attacked by powerful special interests -- among them, the insurance industry and the American Medical Association -- who decried it as "socialized medicine" and warned that it would destroy our healthcare system and even threaten our basic freedoms. It seems difficult today to imagine how such fear-mongering could have been taken seriously. Over the past half-century, by affording hundreds of millions of Americans access to high-quality health care, Medicare has played a major role in increasing life expectancy and overall quality of life in this country. Funded via a progressive tax mechanism that asks incrementally more of our wealthiest neighbors, and boasting better service and far lower administrative costs than the "leanest" private insurance, Medicare has become along with Social Security one of the most popular government programs in history.

In his speech announcing the new plan, then-President Johnson reminded the country that "there is a tradition we share today. It calls upon us never to be indifferent toward despair. It directs us never to ignore or to spurn those who suffer untended...[it] is as old as the day it was first commanded: 'Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, to thy needy, in thy land.'"

The current administration's health reform legislation, and our own Massachusetts Health Reform that preceded and inspired it, are part of a very different story. That one begins in 2006 when, largely in response to Bush Administration pressure, then-Governor Mitt Romney signed into law legislation that dismantled our extensive healthcare safety net, partially replacing it with an “ownership culture" that has required hundreds of thousands of low- and middle-income residents to purchase insurance policies sold by private corporations through a state-run exchange.

5 years on now, despite our mainstream media's oddly strained attempts to suggest otherwise, we face overwhelming evidence that the Massachusetts Reform has failed. According to the comprehensive report released this month by Mass Care (masscare.org), Massachusetts reform has certainly forced many more Massachusetts residents to purchase health insurance policies – a boon to insurance companies, whose revenues have increased dramatically. But the difference between having insurance and having adequate access to quality healthcare has grown more oppressive than ever. For most individuals and families except for the very poorest and the wealthiest, out-of-pocket payments and insurance premiums have continued to skyrocket. Wait times for primary care appointments have increased, while ever fewer primary care doctors accept new patients -- they simply cannot cope with the administrative costs and frustrations of a system dominated by private insurance companies, each with its own system of authorizations, denials and appeals. Finally, with state spending continuing to increase at alarming rates, it is now beyond question that the reform is financially unsustainable.

And now that the entire country has adopted legislation largely patterned on the Massachusetts reform, we brace ourselves for similar or worse developments on a national scale: increasingly unaffordable or unavailable medical services, runaway profits for insurance companies, and continued spikes in overall costs. Adding insult to injury, some politicians have proposed balancing these tremendous public losses by cutting Medicare benefits. Fortunately, Americans strongly oppose such measures; recognizing this, one prominent Tea Party leader has dismissed them as a "public policy nightmare.”

Rather than weakening Medicare, we ought to build on its strengths and correct its flaws:

• By replacing the current physician fee schedule with a system of negotiated payments, we can eliminate the critical shortages of skilled primary care providers and encourage the type of integrated practice exemplified by the Mayo Clinic and others;
• By instituting global budgets, we can avoid wasteful duplication of high-cost technology and fully fund the clinical services that we, as patients, want and need;
• By legislating price negotiating authority and bulk purchasing power for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, we can immediately begin saving taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

This improved-and-expanded Medicare would simultaneously eliminate "mandates" and corporate profiteering. In consequence, the billions we already spend each year would be more than enough to provide excellent healthcare automatically to everyone who needs it. A sustainable system that actually reduces our anxiety over the healthcare of ourselves and our children: now who wouldn't appreciate a birthday gift like that?

Paul Ryan Still Doesn’t Get It

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 by RobertReich.org

by Robert Reich

 

Republican House Budget chief Paul Ryan still doesn’t get it. He blames Tuesday’s upset victory of Democrat Kathy Hochul over Republican Jane Corwin to represent New York’s 26^th congressional district on Democratic scare tactics.

Hochul had focused like a laser on the Republican plan to turn Medicare into vouchers that would funnel the money to private health insurers. Republicans didn’t exactly take it lying down. The National Republican Congressional Committee poured over $400,000 into the race, and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads provided Corwin an additional $700,000 of support. But the money didn’t work. Even in this traditionally Republican district – represented in the past by such GOP notables as Jack Kemp and William Miller, both of whom would become vice presidential candidates – Hochul’s message hit home.

Ryan calls it “demagoguery,” accusing Hochul and her fellow Democrats of trying to “scare seniors into thinking that their current benefits are being affected.”

Scare tactics? Seniors have every right to be scared. His plan would eviscerate Medicare by privatizing it with vouchers that would fall further and further behind the rising cost of health insurance. And Ryan and the Republicans offer no means of slowing rising health-care costs. To the contrary, they want to repeal every cost-containment measure enacted in last year’s health-reform legislation. The inevitable result: More and more seniors would be priced out of the market for health care.

The Ryan plan has put  Republicans in a corner. Some, like Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown and, briefly, presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, are rejecting the plan altogether. Most, though, are holding on and holding their breath. After all, House Republicans approved it — and voters don’t especially like flip-floppers.

Senate Democrats will bring the Ryan plan for a vote Thursday in order to force Senate Republicans on the record. Watch closely.

Some GOP stalwarts say the Party must clarify its message – a sure sign of panic. Former Republican congressman Rick Lazio says the GOP “must do [a] better job explaining entitlements.”

It’s just possible the public knows exactly what entitlements are – and is getting a clear message about what Republicans are up to.

All this should give the White House and Democratic budget negotiators more confidence – and more bargaining leverage – to put tax cuts on the rich squarely on the table.

And, while they’re at it, turn Medicare into a “Medicare-for-all” system that forces doctors and hospitals to shift from costly tests, drugs, and procedures having little effect, to healthy outcomes.

Best Way to Save Medicare, Offer it to Everyone

Friday, May 20, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by John Conyers

 

Medicare is arguably one of the nation’s most successful and cherished public insurance programs. The program covers approximately 47 million elderly and disabled Americans, and helps pay for hospital, physician visits, and prescription drugs. It is truly hard to argue with success.

The traditional Medicare program, coupled with a supplemental private insurance policy, covers most of our seniors’ medical bills, with far less co-pays and out-of- pocket costs than private insurance.

Therefore, proposals to privatize Medicare — like Rep. Paul Ryan’s — have been met with such fierce opposition, because it was revealed in the national media that privatization meant much higher out-of-pocket costs for seniors. National polls have shown strong general support for maintaining Medicare or even increasing funding for it.

However, Medicare costs are projected to increase from $519 billion per year in 2010 to $929 billion in 2020.
The simplistic argument we often hear from conservatives is that Medicare is a costly federal government program because all federal government programs are inefficient and therefore costly. According to their line of reasoning, privatization is the only way to save money.

The truth is that there are several other ways to strengthen Medicare, but there has been a false debate in the nation regarding the rising costs of Medicare.

This may be partly due to not understanding a fundamentally key concept regarding current healthcare policy — there are no effective cost-containment mechanisms in place to control the private market costs of prescription drug costs, corporate hospitals and medical technology which are the main drivers of Medicare costs.

Research by respected nationally renowned economist Dean Baker shows that the federal government and Medicare beneficiaries would save $600 billion dollars between 2006 and 2013 if Medicare were allowed to directly negotiate prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers.
One study by Families USA found that the Veterans Administration was able to negotiate substantially lower prices for the top 20 drugs used by seniors, compared to private Medicare part D plans.

It would only make sense for there to be bipartisan support for Medicare to be able to use the full faith and credit of the federal government and be able to negotiate down the rising costs of prescription drugs.

According to Forbes magazine, hospital charges represent about one third of total healthcare spending — $718 billion altogether. Twenty four hospitals in this country with over 200 beds make an operating margin of 25 percent or more — a profit margin that compares favorably to drug giants like Pfizer, and easily beats the operating profit margin that General Electric reported in 2009.

We can no longer continue to have America’s hospitals make these kinds of large profit margins, when the health of our senior citizens and the fiscal health of our nation are at stake. It will take much needed political courage to address the root causes of rising Medicare costs — a Wall Street-dominated healthcare system.

America must transition to a non-profit improved Medicare-For-All program, if we are to have any chance of realistically containing over-all healthcare costs. That’ s why I have reintroduced H.R. 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act, that would provide for a single-payer healthcare system, providing all Americans with healthcare coverage.

Countries in Europe, Japan, and Taiwan have been able to effectively contain their healthcare costs for decades through their very successful universal healthcare systems — without waiting lines, rationed care, and out of control taxes.

America can learn invaluable lessons from other nations on how to control healthcare costs, and the time has come to be open minded about their success and honest about our need to change course from our corporate-dominated and inefficient healthcare system.