grayslady, in MA, the lowest-income folks not on welfare pay nothing, and there’s a sliding scale as you go up in income. Through this, the new law has already covered 120,000 people, essentially expanding Medicare. That is a really big deal — these folks used to rely on “free care”, usually provided by the ER, and now they have actual health insurance. Viva single-payer! Would that it would be expanded to everyone else.

So I hear a lot of clamoring for single-payer here. What are y’all going to do about it? Complain? Or make a movement? The other side has tanks and guns, and you’ve got pitchforks and torches. What’s the plan?

“The plan” is HR 676 in Congress, to expand and improve Medicare to cover everyone with comprehensive benefits. And state-level plans exist in many states also. Here in Massachusetts our version of a single payer financed univ. coverage for Mass. is the “Mass. Health Care Trust” bill which has been re-filed every session for the last 10 years.

Find out more on both at
http://www.MedicareForAll.net
and
http://www.MassCare.org/legislation

btw the Massachusetts Mandate Mess faux reform plan is not working as well as the above comment might lead one to believe. In fact, there is no way this plan can actually work because it does NEXT TO NOTHING TO CONTROL COSTS.

It was created largely by the health insurance industry in the state and the industry’s “influence” over our politicians (read “control of our political process”).

I think Charley meant to say the plan expands Medicaid (not Medicare) but it doesn’t simply do that, or else it would have just expanded Medicaid eligibility coverage and it did not!

What it did do is created an entirely new layer of healthcare bureaucracy called the “Connector”, funded with $25Mil in taxpayer funds in just the first year, to force people to purchase PRIVATE INSURANCE PRODUCTS.

It also forces taxpayers to funnel more money in those same industry coffers. The “new people covered”, including the ones that are fully taxpayer subsidized, are covered under private insurance products.

There are no gov’t standards for how the industry spends those funds.

The Exec Director of the non-profit group Community Partners in Amherst MA explains why the prospects for this law working well don’t look so good:

From Michael Dechiara at Community Partners:

“the easy part has been achieved. As of April 3, 2007, 62,979 people were enrolled in Commonwealth Care. Sounds reasonable BUT of these…

52,528 (83% of total enrolled)- are in Plan Type 1 meaning they pay nothing. More importantly, 44,948 of these people were auto-enrolled from the Uncompensated Pool meaning enrollment only required flipping a computer switch.

The remaining 10,451 (17% of total enrolled)did pay premiums but most of these, 8,260 people, had the lower, mostly subsidized premiums of $18-$57/mo.

Most importantly, of the entire 62,979, ONLY 2,191 people enrolled on their own initiative paying the higher premiums of between $70 – $134/mo. This is 3% of the total enrolled. Sorta low in my opinion.

of the remaining 82,000 eligible for Commonwealth Care, most will be harder to enroll. They will need to pay higher premiums or are not immediately inclined to enroll. And getting the word out and convincing people about Commonwealth Choice – folks with UNsubsidized health coverage – they might be even harder to convince.

Readers, don’t take my word for it, the legal filings in the MA Attorney General’s office will share it all with you (as they did with me last year when I went down there). One such example, the group “Health Care For All MA” took $200,000 from the insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield and onother $50k or so from the HMO Harvard Pilgram (that has recently merged with UnitedHealth HMO), and that was back in 2004.

Makes you wonder what “Health Care For All’s MA” booty was last year, and this year?!!! (those sums are small but add up to HCFA’s annual budget being over $2Million in 2004, and the state’s single payer group was able to raise, how much?? Not nearly that much. I wonder why…

So please don’t simplify the realities of what’s going on in Massachusetts, including how hard the health care justice activists –including single payer advocates– are working to speak truth to power and how that work is all too often ignored, sometimes willfully, even by “the progressive community”.

And yes, temperment can get a bit prickly when dishonesty is tacitly accepted and when it results in the current healthcare mess that kills people and bankrupts many more.

A.Citizen — if you’re right, you need to get organized and make elected officials afraid of you and your friends (legally, please). I can tell you that in Massachusetts, the difference between the single-payer folks and the incrementalists is personal, temperamental, and organizational. The incrementalists knew how to organize and make coalitions; the single-payer folks didn’t and don’t.

Single-payer is a perfectly sensible way to go … although not the only way to do universal care. Netherlands has multi-payer. So does Germany, and others. They cover everyone — not without difficulty, but it’s universal.

Charley on the MTA @ 41

Oh dear. Here I am being un-American again. I support socialized medicine.

It raises important questions about our economic system. What is it about the medical system which fails in the normal free trade economic model? Second, what adjustments or regulations would be needed to fix the problem or what model would be needed, apart from a Socialized health care system, for health care to be delivered in a frugal timely way?

O/T, but really sweet.

I find it delicious that the notorious Gitmo “Hamdan” case and one other were today tossed by a military judge, on the grounds that they had only been designated as “enemy combatants” — not “unlawful enemy combatants” — “unlawful” being the linchpin distinction germane to the unconstitutional POS “Military Commissions Act” we all so loudly protested last year to no avail.

UNLAWFUL, Commander Guy.

Hmmm. If they weren’t ‘unlawful’, does that mean they were ‘lawful’? And, if they were lawful, does that mean WE had to be doing something unlawful?

I hope they toss out the Padilla case too.

The courts should really toss Bush out, but that’s a little too much to expect — especially considering how many Far Right judges there are.

Oklahoma kiddo @ 105

I strongly believe that our President is in need of medical treatment. This is one sick boy.

He’s not MY president. I refuse to go there.

Until the unspeakable faux Texan vacates the WH rest assured the real President Gore and soon to be Nobel Prize winner is in the wings. Accept no substitute/s.

Just putting everyone on Medicare is way too simplistic. Medicare does not cover everything and esp. hospital inpatient stays. Last time I looked a hospital confinement would cost you over $874 deductible out of pocket.

doctor’s charges were $100 deduct, 20% co-insurance last time I looked so fairly decent.

You would have to pay for Medicare AND a supplemental policy to pay anything that Medicare doesn’t pay. Supplemental policies also don’t cover anything that is not also covered by Medicare.

France’s system has co-pay, actually, usually 20%. For that you can buy co-pay private insurance. Medicare is closer to the French system than it is to the Canadian system (the UK system is about the worst of all universal systems, though still better than the US). In the Canadian system there is no co-pay. I go to the Dr. give my card and pay nothing. There’s no drug coverage (except in the hospital, in which case you’re covered) and no dental.

Those holes aside most Canadians never pay a cent when they go to the hospital or Dr. – they just get the care they need.

However, I agree that Medicare by itself probably isn’t enough. Still, it is by far and away the simplest thing to just extend it to everyone, then add inpatient to it. That’s so much simpler than any of these other plans that there’s no comparison. I mean, I’ve read many of these plans, and I’m a wonk, and they strike /me/ as complicated.

Complicated isn’t necessary.

doctor’s charges were $100 deduct, 20% co-insurance last time I looked so fairly decent.

You would have to pay for Medicare AND a supplemental policy to pay anything that Medicare doesn’t pay. Supplemental policies also don’t cover anything that is not also covered by Medicare.

There is no vision care or dental coverage on Medicare either.

We just plain need universal health care that covers every living American. To get it at a decent price you are first going to have to have federally funded (taxpayer paid) elections so politicians aren’t beholden to corporations & their lobbyist. Otherwise it will just be made up of another gift to the insurance & drug companies.

Health coverage must also be unlinked from employment so that everyone can have it. That means employers (particularly small employers) should be willing to join with individuals in this fight against corporate interference in our health care.

Why aren’t we looking to France as the model for health care coverage. It is my understanding they are the best in the world, not Canada or the UK.

A: Iraq is the biggest tax increase in American history.