Support BMG PAC!

Make a secure credit card contribution using Google Checkout:

Or send a check to BMG PAC, PO Box 877, Medford, MA 02155.

Make a New Account

Forget your username or password?

FREE COPY OF BOB'S BOOK Barack Obama for Beginners to every 50th Facebook Friend!

BMG on Facebook

About

About us
Rules of the road - please read!
Formatting and multimedia tips
Email us
RSS feed

BMG TRAFFIC REPORT
Blue Mass. Swag

Event Calendar

February 2010
(view month)

S M T W R F S

* 01 02 03 04 05 06

07 08 09 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 * * * * * *

<< (add event) >>

Active Users

Currently 22 user(s) logged on.

Blog Roll

Massachusetts Left
.08 Acres
Below Boston
Berkshires Blog
Blue News Tribune
Chimes at Midnight
Eisenthal Report
Granby 01033
Health Care for All
Left in Lowell
MA lefty blogs
Marry in Mass.
Mass Engagement
Massachusetts Liberal
Michael Forbes-Wilcox
My Dedham
Progressive Mass.
Quriltai on the Shore
Ryan's Take
Someday I Will
ShrewsBuried
Talking Stoneham
The Fray
Universal hub

Differently-Winged
John Daley
Mass. Pro-Life
No Looking Backwards
Peter Porcupine
Pundit Review
Red Mass Group
Scaling the Hill 2010

Mass. Media
David S. Bernstein
Cambridge politics
CommonWealth Unbound
Globe bloggers
Herald bloggers
Hub Blog
Jon Keller
MassBeacon
Media Nation (Dan Kennedy)
Open Media Boston
Adam Reilly
Toll Talk (Mary Connaughton)
Weekly Dig Blog

Legal
ACS Blog
Balkinization
Election law
How Appealing
SCOTUSblog
Volokh Conspiracy

General
Accountable Strategies
Billionaires for Bush
Blue Works Better
Crooks and Liars
Daily Howler
Daily Kos
Democracy Arsenal
Eschaton (Atrios)
Glenn Greenwald
Grist (environment blog)
Hullabaloo (Digby)
LiberalOasis
MyDD
Oliver Willis
Pandagon
Political Animal
Political Critic
Political Wire
Poor Man
Progressive Blog Digest
Real Climate
Senate Guru
Swing State Project
Tapped
Talking Points Memo
Think Progress
Truth and Progress
Turn Maine Blue
Wonkette

Health Care Call to Action

by: Mr Lynne

Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 09:52:37 AM EST

(ABSOLUTELY single-payer should be costed out. It's a system, and probably only slightly less chance of getting passed as Wyden-care. - promoted by Charley on the MTA)

The Congressional Budget Office is the agency that congress uses for modeling the costs of legislation (along with a slew of other functions). Right now, the health care reform wagon is rolling along, but the CBO isn't modeling the particular proposed legislation providing a single payer system (John Conyers' H.R.676). There have been a lot of calls for transparency in government lately. One way to hide from transparency is to limit which programs get cost modeled, possibly ensuring that nobody ever has to get embarrassed by the clear illustration of opportunities rejected. If people want to vote against single payer, then fine... but make them do it in the daylight of an informed public, armed with the knowledge of the budget projection they are voting against. I'm inclined to favor a single payer system, and I'm willing to hear why it's not viable, but not without all the evidence on the table.

Mr Lynne :: Health Care Call to Action

Ezra explains why this is a reasonable request:

There's no reason the CBO shouldn't be asked to run the numbers on H.R. 676 (the leading single-payer bill). Single payer is, after all, the most common set-up for the health systems of industrialized nations. It's not some wild fantasy that doesn't deserve to be modeled. And sure, on some level, you can probably predict the outcome: Impressive cost savings leavened by concerns that innovation -- both in medical technology and in health coverage -- would retard and consumers would ache for choice. Having examined the evidence, Baucus and others would be within rights to prioritize choice or flexibility or another value that militates against single payer. But not before.

I don't know what the procedure is to get the CBO to start a legislative cost projection, but I suspect that calling or emailing your Representatives would get to ball moving, as well as contacting CBO directly.

Capuano, Michael E., Massachusetts, 8th
Delahunt, William, Massachusetts, 10th
Frank, Barney, Massachusetts, 4th
Lynch, Stephen F., Massachusetts, 9th
McGovern, James, Massachusetts, 3rd
Markey, Ed, Massachusetts, 7th
Neal, Richard E., Massachusetts, 2nd
Olver, John, Massachusetts, 1st
Tierney, John, Massachusetts, 6th
Tsongas, Niki, Massachusetts, 5th

Hodes, Paul W., New Hampshire, 2nd
Shea-Porter, Carol, New Hampshire, 1st

Kennedy, Patrick, Rhode Island, 1st
Langevin, Jim, Rhode Island, 2nd

Courtney, Joe, Connecticut, 2nd
DeLauro, Rosa L., Connecticut, 3rd
Larson, John B., Connecticut, 1st
Murphy, Christopher S., Connecticut, 5th
Himes, Jim, Connecticut, 4th

Tags: Congress, CBO, Health Care, (All Tags)

Print Friendly View

Send As Email

Health Care Call to Action | 9 comments

Single payer makes sense (0.00 / 0)

I'm in complete agreement on single payer.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association has been doing important advocacy on this for some time. One of their active rank-and-file members, Sandy Eaton, testified at a congressional hearing this week in DC about the shortcomings of the Massachusetts Chapter 58 model.

Your suggestion about the CBO running the numbers is a good one, and something we should all be pushing for.

--Leo

Leo Maley

by: leo @ Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 10:17:48 AM CST

by: you @ soon

To post this comment click here:

Otherwise click cancel.

Thanks,... (6.00 / 1)

I'm still not 100% sold on single payer because I'd like to see the impact on transition. I think it's probably the most cost efficient, but if a case can be made that the 'startup' costs to transition to it are prohibitive (compared to other options that may be less desirable as an end product but are easier and less painful to get to), I'd be open to hearing about it. Also someone needs to model what the impact will be to the overall economy when the efficiencies of single payer necessarily reduce the insurance workforce overall. This is a large sector of the economy we're talking about.

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult." - Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)

by: Mr Lynne @ Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 10:34:01 AM CST

[ Parent ]

by: you @ soon

To post this comment click here:

Otherwise click cancel.

The transition (0.00 / 0)

No question. Transitioning to single-payer wouldn't be simple.

Others know far more about this than I, but we certainly could transition to single-payer over time--say, over 10 years--by incrementally expanding Medicare to eventually cover everyone.

--Leo

Leo Maley

by: leo @ Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 10:40:08 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Why not talk to doctors who are now refusing to see any additional medicare or medicaid patients (4.00 / 1)

What are you going to do---suspend or revoke the licenses to practice medicine for any MD not seeing ten patients an hour?

by: MCRD @ Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 13:54:33 PM CST

[ Parent ]

by: you @ soon

To post this comment click here:

Otherwise click cancel.

Pace has nothing to do with it. (0.00 / 0)

I do, however, believe that "universal" works both ways. Not only will every patient have access to health care, but every provider would be required to accept patients in the public system.

by: Christopher @ Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 14:31:23 PM CST

[ Parent ]

First off: You expect the medal of honor winners in Congress to do what---display courage? (4.00 / 1)

Please-----. Anything that could even remotely jeapordize
reelection is immediately jettisonned or done covertly in the middle of the night, in darkness, in whispers.

Secondly--as I have asked repeatedly---and no one will answer the question: Who will provide the services?
How will the cost for 13 million illegal aliens be factored in? Where will you build the additional hospitals and clinics---who will staff them? You better put the horse before the cart. And last but not least---what is the exit strategy when and if the entire medical system collapses. I put my money on collapse---you better have an alternative plan or a plane ticket that will get you out of the country fast.

by: MCRD @ Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 13:51:44 PM CST

by: you @ soon

To post this comment click here:

Otherwise click cancel.

It works elsewhere (0.00 / 0)

I'm not convinnced lack of facilities is a problem; it's a matter of coverage and affordability.

by: Christopher @ Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 14:29:26 PM CST

[ Parent ]

by: you @ soon

To post this comment click here:

Otherwise click cancel.

The Public Option is too much of a threat to the Private Insurers (0.00 / 0)

A recent analysis by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit group that sponsors health care research, is giving supporters of a public plan some ammunition.
The study estimated costs and coverage under a hypothetical health reform plan similar to what Obama proposed in the campaign. It found that a public plan like Medicare could reduce projected health care costs by about $2 trillion over an 11-year period. Premiums in the public plan would be at least 20 percent lower, partly because of reduced administrative costs. Within a decade or so, some 105 million people would be in the public plan, compared with about 107 million with private insurance.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200...

by: JoeS @ Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 15:39:47 PM CST

by: you @ soon

To post this comment click here:

Otherwise click cancel.

Musings on the health care reform debate (0.00 / 0)

President Obama is right to say that health care costs can and must be reduced. This is appplicable to the Commonwealth. As the Veterans Health Administration hospital system has shown since its late 1990's overhaul, better medical care can be delivered at a lower cost most importantly through coordination of treatment; electronic record-keeping, which has allowed the gathering of information on results of treatments and prevented drug and other errors during hospitalizations; a commitment to first of all serving the patient; by removing perverse incentives that produce unnecessary tests and by promoting quality of care and individual patient followup and preventative care rather than quantity of procedures; by buying of prescription drugs in bulk; and by investing in primary care physicians and nurses rather than in specialists.
As Dr. Jack Wennberg and his associates at Dartmouth have shown, in many studies, there is much inappropriate over-treatment of patients, without better pateient outcomes and often with greater perils for patients. There is, in many geographic areas, as Shannon Brownlee has shown in Overtreated and Atul Gawande demonstrates in "The Cost Conundrum," in the latest issue of the New Yorker, a pattern and culture of delivering the care that is in the best interests, under the current payment system, of doctors and medical facilities, rather than the interests of patients.
President Obama and Peter Orszag are well aware of the cost conundrums. Granted, it will take time for the implementation of uniform electronic record-keeping, a shift to emphasis on efficacy of treatment, and systems of patient-centered coordination of care. President Obama is, here, as in other areas, is thinking strategically, while almost everyone else is planning tactics.
The country--and Massachusetts-- can not afford the continuation of our dysfunctional, fragmented, quantity-driven health care system. What Massachusetts and the US need are to build a new coordinated health care system with collaborative doctors focusing on prevention and quality of care, while discouraging, as Gawande puts it, "overtreatment, undertreatment, and sheer profiteering."

by: Kenneth @ Thu May 28, 2009 at 16:39:27 PM CDT

by: you @ soon

To post this comment click here:

Otherwise click cancel.

Health Care Call to Action | 9 comments