ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ~ WE WANT HEALTHCARE REFORM AND PUBLIC OPTION!

AND WE WILL ... Now pull yourself away from C-Span long enough to call the White House this week - LOL!

Bro. Clark - I just know you will be the very first caller to the White House. You have such a powerful insight and exact resolution that I sure hope one day I will be reading about your race for office here on BIA.

I'm only half joking. WE need to call the White House and TELL President Obama just this. You need to be ahead of the class on Advocacy 101...Smile.

Gee, I can't wait until Monday. I can't wait to call the White House ...

How the American Healthcare System Got That Way

by Tim Costello, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith

As Americans respond to President-elect Obama call for town hall meetings on reform the American health care system, an understanding of how that system came to be the way it is can be crucial for figuring out how to fix it.

The American health care system is unique because for most of us it is tied to our jobs rather than to our government. For many Americans the system seems natural, but few know that it originated, not as a well thought out plan to provide for Americans' health, but as a way to circumvent a quirk in wartime wage regulations that had nothing to do with health.

As far back as the 1920s, a few big employers had offered health insurance plans to some of their workers. But only a few: By 1935, only about two million people were covered by private health insurance, and on the eve of World War II there were only 48 job-based health plans in the entire country.

The rise of unions in the 1930s and 1940s led to the first great expansion of health care for Americans. But ironically, it did not produce a national plan providing health care to all like those in virtually all other developed countries. Instead, the special conditions of World War II produced the system of job-based health benefits we know today.

In 1942 the U.S. set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering "fringe benefits" -- notably health insurance. The fringe benefits received a huge tax subsidy; they were treated as tax deductible expenses for corporations but not as taxable income for workers.

The result was revolutionary. Companies and unions quickly negotiated new health insurance plans. Some were run by Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and private insurance companies. Others were "Taft-Hartley funds" run jointly by management and unions. By 1950, half of all companies with less than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another. By 1965, nearly three-quarters of the population were covered by some kind of private health insurance.

This private, job-based insurance covered millions of workers who had never had health care insurance before. But this victory also set patterns that are responsible for many of the problems the health care system faces today.

Because this private system was tied to employment, it did not provide health insurance for all. Millions of people outside the workforce were without coverage. Those most likely to be covered were salaried or unionized white men in northern industrial states. Two-thirds of those with incomes under $2,000 a year were not covered; so were nearly half of nonwhites and those over 65.

Employer-based plans tied workers to their jobs - something that benefited employers, but not workers or the economy as a whole. The quality of the coverage was spotty - some plans were excellent, others completely inadequate. Doctors accepted this revolution because it didn't challenge their power; but as a result the system provided no public control over medical costs.

This revolution had a subtle political effect as well. By giving much of the workforce health benefits, it reduced the incentive for them to pursue a system of universal care. And it gave unions a stake in the private, employer-based health care system. As one opponent of publicly financed health care put it, "the greatest bulwark" against "the socialization of medicine" was "furthering the progress already made by voluntary health insurance plans."

Since then, many layers have been laid on top of employer-based health care. Medicare and Medicaid provided government-funded health insurance for the elderly and impoverished. The "managed care revolution" led to the takeover of 90 percent of employer-based health care by HMOs, most of them driven by profit rather than health concerns. But most people continue to get their health care through their employer.

Many of the problems of American health care grow out of this history. The system is so complex that even experts - let alone ordinary people trying to find care for themselves and their loved ones -- are unable to fully understand it. The system spends one-third of its cost on paperwork, waste, and profit over and above the cost of actually providing health care. Yet nearly one-third of Americans are without health insurance over the course of a year. In all other developed countries, more than 85% of citizens have health coverage under public programs. The American health care system is full of inequalities: People who work for one company may have high quality insurance while those who work for a similar company have none.

All of these problems are due at least in part to an employer-based system whose original intent was not to provide quality health care to all, but to circumvent wartime wage regulations. As we begin to debate how to reform health care, we should keep in mind that the American health care system was not created to express American values or to meet Americans' health care needs. And knowing that, we should not be afraid to change the system if we can come up with a better one.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/1...


This piece is excerpted from DOCTOR WALL STREET: HOW THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM GOT SO SICK, from a popular pamphlet on the history of the American healthcare system available for free download at http://laborstrategies.blogs.com/DoctorWal...

Oh, how Ijust love y'all...

Sistah Siebra thanks for learning us and you took me all the way back to 1995 when I first started paying attention to healthcare in America and its delivery system.

I won't echo here because I am just Praising God for coming through! Both you and Bro. Clark (of course) are correct here and there. There are mountains of data I have read over the pass years and the delay during the Bush Administration gave the baton firmly to the health insurance industry. I believe that is why much of the focus has been on their end of the health catastrophe with the delivery of healthcare being second.

IMMHO, this is because the two are too closely connected. When you have greed (profits) being the primary focus of the insurance, you are going to have poor delivery because patients have to deliver profits and not quality health to the employers. Stay with me on this, if you have a plentiful source of workers, you simply replace a worker, y'all feel me?

If you can easily replace workers, you can easily pick and choose who you want to insure. You can get the maximum mileage out of a loyal worker until he gets sick. Then you drop him, pick up somebody younger and groom them...yadda, yadda, yadda.

This is going to hurt, but people have become mere "dollars" as in monopoly. There are only two wealthiest places on the board and you can only put up but so many hotels on those two spots. Who cares about the green houses....?

Now, most of my focus has been on the vulnerable population and I am always willing to learn. I thirst for knowledge like an addict...teehee. My friends tease that my head will explode one day...bring it on!:)- When you can narrow your focus on the way vulnerable people such as those with special needs be it brain disorders or developmental delays such as mental retardation, they aren't seen as employable,,,yadda, yadda, yadda. So healthcare is very minimum if it exists at all. It certainly is not affordable when these people receive fixed incomes, etc. The insurance industry is not going to 'waste' paid services on this group of people so the quality of delivery is very poor because who is willing/caring about treating patients for free continusously. The rural brothers and sisters are so very harshoy hit by this health industry and especially since they are typically remote and little education, internet capability, etc. If you get sugar diabetes, you lose a limb and then you can't afford quality health of the wound and you eventually die...a needlessly short lifespan is my point.

Also, IMMHO, and I'm being brief...so many, soo, so many scientific research dollars is tied to healthcare as well. Folks are not going to let those dollars slip through their grips easily. Healthcare Reform demands "health resolutions" and not just treating symptoms forever and billing because of it.

In 1935 when healthcare first began to rise in America, we had good and strong quality healthcare. The emphasis was on keeping people alive, working, taking care of their families. That was a good thrust of the Wagner Act that was a major trump for unions. If you follow the parallel timeline, as unions weakened, so did healthcare delivery. Especially for the middle class worker. During this same timeline, health insurance companies increased with profits right on through the baby boom. Maybe part of the greed pandemic was the fear of another stock market crash and being suddenly "poor." As in poor people horde canned goods and rich people horde money - millions of it...idunno...

Ok, so in the 21st century fastforward, we have a situation where 50 percent of all patients do NOT receive the right type of healthcare (quality). Getting doctors in a room to agree on what works and what does not work for a certain illness is almost impossible because they are driven by drug companies and insurance companies...the insurance company will pay for a certain treatment under the cloak of this particular treatment works, this one is "experimental," this one is subject to predisposition (20 years ago when your grandfather lived near high wires and now it is linked to your string of cancer....gee whiz) and that equals pre-existing condition and we don't cover those anymore....and it goes on and on and on.

There was NO end in sight. In a nutshell, there is real health reform happening that will affect all areas not really thought of which affect price and quality of healthcare delivery. If the government sat by, it would be broke and passing the hat around to bury somebody would not work anymore either...we would have to dig up our back yards...

Ok, that was burning on my chest. Healthcare Reform is a reality that will be successful. It won't happen overnight and there will be a lot of folks unhappy about it because it will alter their lucrative lifestyle. But millions more will be grateful at last. Most people did not even know healthcare was a critical issue until President Obama came along. These are typically the people that scream, there is nothing wrong, why are you messing with it? These are the people who never noticed how health insurance premiums was slowly, but surely swallowing their paychecks and their visits to the doctor was limited to 15 mins.tops whether he hit it on the nose about what was really ailing you or not. Doctors don'tgohomeanymoreand research your caselike they used to. It is not worth their time.

OK -- just one last comment about the specific issues when contacting your Congressperson, etc. on any issue and especially a hot topic like healthcare. You really, really make a stronger impact when you tell your personal story. Congresspersons sit and hear all the scientific testimonies all day on Capital Hill. Our job is to give those warm and fuzzy testimonies that personable touch for the sake of impact on appealing to that level of humanity. If you are confident you can do both successfully, go for it! But don't risk losing the interest of your representative who has listened to scientists/lobbyists/status quo all day and then they have to read it again. It will more than likely make your rep agree scientifically, but it will also keep them from knowing just how is all this affecting my constituents who work every day and they are not scientist/lobbyist, etc. Even the insurance industry "hired" every-day folks to go into those townhall meetings because personal stories sensationalize, change minds, change laws. That is why most laws are introduced and passed as "Amber's Law" which becomes Amber Alert or Ryan's Law....these were real life people who got their story told and swayed the vote. Y'all feel me? (Hmm, maybe it's time for Aggy's Law in which case no business could open on Sundays again...teehee):)-.

Ok, if you are treading new ground as an advocate...go on and tell your Congressperson how the death of your loved one impacted your family because his/her health insurance was dropped in the middle of chemo...

Ok, I do love you all and there were times this work got weary and your comments encouraged me another day. I love this site because it is so full of good info and friends .....thank you guys and MOM for keeping me up to date with what those creatures are doing on C-SPAN......LOL

Passing the Peace,

Amen, Bro. Clark. Amen!

I must leave the site and go spend some time with C-spanCsmile)

C-span is a blessing...so far it seems that the right-wing has so helped this health care reform bill become more and more pleasing to my ears each time they hold u this bill...I do hope they continue to dig this endless pit they are in already...

Please keep the info coming my sister in spirit...YES WE CAN...

Lov, something I do about once or twice a week now along with contacting those who represent the part of Northern Ca. where I live.(smile)

And, my sister please keep these coming...WE NEED THIS...

Hello all it isnow 9:30 my pt. time and I am listening to the second senator to speak on the floor, Mccain saying the same things that they have saying all along...ths first to speak was on the dame blab blab, now Mccain is talking about the repubicals' fight against this health care reform bill has just begun!!!Oh, he did accuse C-span of bing against his party because there has never been a cloture vote on TV...

Actually what I am trying to get more clear is isn't it the cloture voting that does not have to have all 60 votes to pass????