( – promoted by buhdydharma )
As promised, I’m posting Thom Hartmann’s excellent suggestions for REAL Health Care Reform. I’m posting this now to save time. I’ve got to go away for a bit, but I’ll be back to edit with more information.
The Hartmann letter, like many good things, is beyond the flip….. It begins with the letter I added to e-mail to my lists….
This is my intro letter:
Hello Friends,
I’m forwarding the latest Newsletter from Thom Hartmann. It starts with a wonderful letter he has written on Health Care Reform.
I’m sure most of you have heard that the Obama Administration is caving to the demands of the Insurance Industry and is about to abandon the Public Option. So, not only do we not get Single Payer under the Obama plan; but now, in losing the Public Option, we lose all chance of a viable, competitive system which would put pressure on insurance companies to keep prices within reason.
In sending this to you, I’m suggesting that we take the ideas Thom expresses and start advocating for this in our calls and letters to Congress and all. I intend to cut and paste it in full and send it to my ‘representatives’ in government.
I don’t like to scare folks. The Right uses fear, exploits fear as propaganda, to get it’s way. The fear of which I speak here, however, is not propaganda to induce fear. It is the very real fear that the gutted, watered down form of HCR toward which we are heading, would be worse than what we have now. I fear we could end up with a ‘?reform?’ which is as onerous as Medicare, Part D (for Disaster) has been.
Help to stop the BigPharma / Big Insurance greed feed at the trough of the middle class, the poor, the sick, and the elderly!
Thanks for hearing my rant,
Sydney
And below is Thom Hartmann’s EXCELLENT PRPOSAL.
Dear President Obama: A Modest Medicare Proposal
Dear President Obama,
I understand you’re thinking of dumping your “public option” because of all the demagoguery by Sarah Palin and Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich and their crowd on right-wing radio and Fox. Fine. Good idea, in fact.
Instead, let’s make it simple. Please let us buy into Medicare.
It would be so easy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with this so-called “public option” that’s a whole new program from the ground up. Medicare already exists. It works. Some people will like it, others won’t – just like the Post Office versus FedEx analogy you’re so comfortable with.
Just pass a simple bill – it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people – that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it.
So it’s revenue neutral!
To make it available to people of low income, raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (like me – under 65) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people. Revenue neutral again.
Most of us will do damn near anything to get out from under the thumbs of the multi-millionaire CEOs who are running our current insurance programs. Sign me up!
This lets you blow up all the rumors about death panels and grandma and everything else: everybody knows what Medicare is. Those who scorn it can go with Blue Cross. Those who like it can buy into it. Simplicity itself.
Of course, we’d like a few fixes, like letting Medicare negotiate drug prices and filling some of the holes Republicans and AARP and the big insurance lobbyists have drilled into Medicare so people have to buy “supplemental” insurance, but that can wait for the second round. Let’s get this done first.
Simple stuff. Medicare for anybody who wants it. Private health insurance for those who don’t. Easy message. Even Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley can understand it. Sarah Palin can buy into it, or ignore it. No death panels, no granny plugs, nothing. Just a few sentences.
Replace the “you must be disabled or 65” with “here’s what it’ll cost if you want to buy in, and here’s the sliding scale of subsidies we’ll give you if you’re poor, paid for by everybody else who’s buying in.” (You could roll back the Reagan tax cuts and make it all free, but that’s another rant.)
We elected you because we expected you to have the courage of your convictions. Here’s how. Not the “single payer Medicare for all” that many of us would prefer, but a simple, “Medicare for anybody who wants to buy in.”
Respectfully,
Thom Hartmann
Okay, guys, take it from here………
34 comments
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Tips there—for—
it’s so close to the end of your nose you can’t see it, isn’t it?
Hartmann may be a genius, too. 😉
Author
…to my e-mail from a physician friend…
We’ve only had prescription drug coverage in Medicare for a couple of years, and what we got was the Bush/Cheney version of prescription drug coverage.
Part D is disaster. Because Part D is a disaster, medicare will continue to be a disaster until the whole Part D part of the program is redesigned from the ground up.
You don’t want to learn about donuts. Trust me.
F..king easy, f..king simple – n’est que c’est pas? This is how I felt this afternoon after listening to the Thom Hartmann radio show and, as Edger says, and were my first thoughts — right there in front of your f..king nose!
I couldn’t agree with Thom Hartmann more — why do we need to keep orbiting around the issue when the answer is that simple? Why? I’ll tell you WHY! Because about three-quarters of the “powers” in our government don’t want us to have any options whatsoever. Actually, they would rather see us die!
Do I blame Obama for this? Well, I think it’s time for some REALISM! As you well know, every single Republican in our government is against any form of healthcare reform. And, sadly, that includes a number of Democrats! So, do you really think Obama can pull this off by himself? No, I don’t think his own personal life has been threatened, but it may be that that of his beloved daughters may have been. But moving “forward,” I do think Obama could simply nix any plan that does NOT include a “public option,” which in and of itself is still not the best. A form of “single-payer” is what we ALL need — and it’s up to us if we achieve it. GET ON THE PHONE, WRITE LETTERS. DO WHATEVER YOU CAN DO!
Everyone should be angry as hell by now. What? It’s O.K. to give $700 billion to Wall Street and the bankers for their own profiteering? While Americans, struggling and in a lot of despair, cannot even get a decent HEALTHCARE PLAN, but we can continue paying our taxes and STFU!
Moreover, I want to call something to your attention. Did you know that Obama solicited the healthcare “stories” of Americans? Yes, he did. The site received over 10,000 responses. (Please toggle around.) here a few sample stories. O.K., what’s the point of this? Do you really think Obama is so Machiavellian that he would solicit the stories of Americans with the ulterior motives of “exploiting” them? Somehow, I draw a line there. I’ve been to his rallies — I’ve seen him, heard him — somehow, I just don’t think of him as “evil.” Maybe, I’m wrong, but he’s been in office six months now and, yes, like you, I’m very, very unhappy. But is it truly Obama we’re unhappy with? Afterall, isn’t he the one who has presented progressive ideas right down the line only to see them “shot down” by the Repugs and those Dems? I’m not trying to excuse him and, just, maybe, he will get some cajones somewhere — but I also have to think that he has two daughters that mean a great deal to him.
I am so VERKLEMPTE!
I noticed a lot of heat here on the details of Medicare coverage. All single-payer systems have encountered issues with how to ration health-care. And health-care does have to be rationed and there is absolutely no way to avoid that–if you don’t understand that you are dreaming.
The point is how do you create a system that can work most of the time for most health-care problems at minimum cost? Then, people are free to buy supplemental insurance to increase coverage. So you have some socialism and some social darwinism to make the capitalist class happy.
BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!