The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Healthcare return on investment, big gain, tiny cost:

"CMS projects total US expenditures to rise from $2.6T to $4.6T or 5.8% annually compared to 5.7% without PPACA a whopping difference of $35 Billion.

THIS IS NOT A TYPO – .1% =$35 billion over a decade or $3.5B per year.

So lets look at the .1% from the perspective of an investment in America and what the ROI of that is:

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Canadian Health Care, Even With Queues, Bests U.S. (Update1)

Sept. 18, 2009 (Bloomberg) -- Opponents of overhauling U.S. health care argue that Canada shows what happens when government gets involved in medicine, saying the country is plagued by inferior treatment, rationing and months-long queues.

The allegations are wrong by almost every measure, according to research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other independent studies published during the past five years. While delays do occur for non-emergency procedures, data indicate that Canada’s system of universal health coverage provides care as good as in the U.S., at a cost 47 percent less for each person.

“There is an image of Canadians flooding across the border to get care,” said Donald Berwick, a Harvard University health- policy specialist and pediatrician who heads the Boston-based nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “That’s just not the case. The public in Canada is far more satisfied with the system than they are in the U.S. and health care is at least as good, with much more contained costs.”

The rest...

Bloomberg
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Trying to Catch His Breath With a Hole-Ridden Safety Net

Scientific American

Excerpt:

"I’m sitting here on a bed that constantly readjusts itself. It’s terribly annoying and when I lay down on it there is a low rumbling of the motor that pushes air to my legs and sucks it from butt. The noise makes that grey matter between the ears in my head shake. Probably a malfunctioning bed, but it’s nothing to complain about given what is sitting next to me, 2 meters over, in the next adjustable bed.

I’m at Carteret General Hospital on North Carolina’s scenic Crystal Coast, where I live. My beautiful, precious 6 year old son was admitted this past Tuesday for Pneumonia. It started 6 days before on a Wednesday. He asked his kindergarten teacher if he could lay down. Odd behavior for such an outgoing kid, one of the class favorites who even at 6 already seems quite the ladies man with 2 Lilies, a Tanzania, and an Ellie running up to him each day when I drop him off for school. Along with 2 Charleses, these friends are just the ones we hear about! When I picked up him from school he was clearly exhausted and went to bed early without his dinner.

On Thursday we kept him home as he was obviously feverish and had flu like symptoms. He was getting worse, but then he tricked me on Sunday. He was looking a little better and was more responsive. We played for while, building bugs and monsters from blocks and putty, and chatting about how we should be getting the second season DVDs of Star Wars: The Clone Wars in the mail the next day. But that night was horrible and he started vomiting every time we tried to give him medicine or liquids. He wasn’t eating and his fever was getting pretty high, up to 104. I drugged him the best I could with kid’s OTC meds and on Monday my wife and I attended to his needs however we could.

We should have taken him to the Urgent Care right then and there. But we didn’t."
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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March 13th, 2012
How We All Got Stuck Paying the Medical Bills of the Woman Who Sued to Kill Obamacare
By Wendell Potter

If I were trying to persuade the Supreme Court later this month that Obamacare should not be declared unconstitutional, I would tell the story of the woman who was the original named plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by the National Federation of Independent Business, one of the fiercest critics of the health care reform law.

The NFIB thought it had found the perfect person when one of its members, Mary Brown, a 56-year-old owner of an automobile repair shop in Panama City, Florida, volunteered to lend her name to the lawsuit.

Brown was outspoken in her belief that Congress had gone beyond what the U.S. Constitution allows when it included in the reform law a requirement that, beginning in 2014, most Americans will have to obtain health insurance or pay a fine to the IRS. She said she was uninsured and was that way by choice.

"She firmly believes that no one should have the right to tell her she has to use her own money to pay for health insurance," Karen Harned, executive director of the NFIB legal center, said when the NFIB filed its lawsuit in 2010.

She turned out not to be such a perfect choice after all.

Last year Brown shuttered her business and filed for personal bankruptcy. Among her debts: nearly $4,500 in medical bills. More than $2,000 of that was owed to the Bay Medical Center in Panama City. The rest was to doctors in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.

The NFIB had to scramble to find another small business owner to replace Brown's name at the top of the lawsuit. It settled on Kaj Ahlburg, a retired New York investment banker who now lives in Port Angeles, Washington.

Here's why I would make sure that Brown's unfortunate turn of events was brought to the high court's attention: It is people who have decided not to buy coverage -- but who nevertheless get sick or injured and seek medical care when they do, even if they don't have the money to pay for it -- that make health insurance so expensive for the rest of us. And it is why the cost of coverage has become completely unaffordable for millions of other Americans who, unlike Mary Brown, really want it and know they need it.

While Brown says it was not just the unpaid medical bills that forced her and her husband into bankruptcy, the fact is that more than 60 percent of people who file for personal bankruptcy in this country do so at least in part because of medical debt. That doesn't happen in any other developed country in the world.

I called the Bay Medical Center to find out if any of their other patients had been unable to pay for the care they received there, even some of their insured patients.

It turns out that that one hospital gets stuck with $30 million in uncompensated care every year. Spokeswoman Christa Hild told me it had become such an unsustainable situation that Bay Medical Center has decided that it can no longer make it as a stand-alone hospital...

It is not truly accurate, of course, that that $30 million a year in uncompensated care at Bay Medical Center is, indeed, uncompensated. Somebody has to pay for it. And guess who that is? It is all of us. Even Mary Brown. She and the rest of us cover that uncompensated care either through higher taxes to support the Medicare and Medicaid programs or through higher health insurance premiums. The care that presumably is "absorbed" by the hospitals is, in reality, being absorbed not by those facilities but by us. This is what the term "cost shifting" is all about."
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Worst case scenario for republicans, Obama's healthcare reform is working...

March 15, 2012 07:00 AM
Massachusetts, Oregon Successes Bolster Obama Health Care Reform

"The Affordable Care Act is working. 2.5 million more young adults ages 19 to 26 now have health insurance. The shrinking of the Medicare "donut hole" allowed 3.6 million seniors to save $2.1 billion on their prescription drugs last year. And the ban on insurers refusing to cover pre-existing conditions is saving lives (even among those who opposed so-called "Obamacare"). And even though most of its provisions don't go into effect until 2014, the data from Oregon and Massachusetts strongly suggest the 30 million people who will gain coverage will be much healthier and more financially secure.

In Massachusetts, the 2006 health care reform Governor Mitt Romney signed into law lowered the uninsured rate from 10 percent to a national low of two percent. Even with its individual mandate, "Romneycare" is extremely popular, enjoying a 3 to 1 margin of support from Bay State residents. Now, a new study by Charles J. Courtemanche and Daniela Zapata published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBR) shows that universal coverage in Massachusetts is indeed making people there healthier."

http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/ma-o ... are-reform
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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116 billion reasons to be for the individual mandate
Washington Post
By Ruth Marcus, March 20

"The most compelling sentences in the Obama administration’s brief defending the constitutionality of the health-care law come early on. “As a class,” the brief advises on Page 7, “the uninsured consumed $116 billion of health-care services in 2008.”

On the next page, the brief drives the point home: “In 2008, people without insurance did not pay for 63 percent of their health-care costs.”

Those figures amount to a powerful refutation of the argument that the individual mandate — the requirement that individuals obtain insurance or pay a penalty — exceeds the government’s authority to regulate interstate commerce. To me, $116 billion seems like a whole lot of commerce...

this is a provision that the overwhelming majority — those with insurance — should support, for the simple reason that these people currently end up footing the bill for much of that $116 billion.

As the government’s brief notes, “Congress found that this cost-shifting increases the average premium for insured families by more than $1,000 per year.”

In other words, those worried about having to pay ever-higher premiums should be clamoring for the individual mandate, not agitating for repeal."

Washington Post
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Health Care is Worst Where Republicans Poll Best

"This week, GOP White House frontrunner Mitt Romney marked the two year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act by declaring the reform law the "national nightmare" he "always predicted." But leaving aside for the moment that Romney repeatedly touted his virtually identical Massachusetts law as a model for the nation, there's a much bigger problem with his call for a "free market, federalist approach" in which "each state should be allowed to pursue its own solution." As Ezra Klein exhaustively documented five years ago, it's almost impossible for even the wealthiest of those state "laboratories of democracy" to achieve universal health care on their own. Worse still, Romney's mythical nightmare future is the horrifying present in the states his party currently represents. As the data show, health care is worst precisely where Republicans poll best.

That point was reinforced last week with the latest Gallup poll on the uninsured in America. With almost 28 percent of respondents uninsured, Texas far and away led the nation as well as the "uninsured belt" that stretches across the solidly red south. Led by Mitt Romney's Massachusetts, 9 of the top 10 performing states voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

But tallying up the ranks of the uninsured understates the magnitude of the unfolding health care horror story in Red State America. Two years ago, the Commonwealth Fund released its 2009 state health care scorecard, which measured performance in providing health care access, prevention and treatment, avoidable hospital use, equity across income levels, and healthy lives for residents. Again, while nine of the top 10 performing states voted for Barack Obama in 2008, four of the bottom five (including Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana) and 14 of the last 20, backed John McCain. (That at least is an improvement from the 2007 data, in which all 10 cellar dwellers had voted for George W. Bush three years earlier.)"

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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For those who hope the supreme court strikes down ObamaCare and might be fooled into thinking America's healthcare delivery system is anything but utterly broken:

Hope the Supremes Strike Down ObamaCare? Get Ready for PanemCare

Excerpt...

"Here's an offer. Travel with me later this month to Sullivan County, Tennessee, where I grew up, to witness an event that I'm betting you and other denizens of Washington's northwest quadrant can hardly imagine.

For three days beginning April 13, Remote Area Medical (RAM), an organization that flies American doctors to remote, third-world villages, will be hosting a massive outdoor clinic in the infield of the famous Bristol Motor Speedway. Ironically (or not), Bristol is an Appalachian Mountain town, part of what the Hunger Games calls District 12. The heroine hails from District 12, just like me.

Justice Scalia will have to be an early riser to get the full effect of a scene as surreal as anything Hollywood could dream up. Here's the advice RAM offers on its website about the Bristol event:

Be sure to arrive early. The clinic opens at 6:00 a.m., and patients are seen on a first-come, first-served basis. Lines can be long and start early in the morning. Numbers will be given out around 3:30 a.m. each day prior to the clinic opening. For the best chance of being seen, plan to arrive by 3:30 a.m. on the day you wish to receive treatment. Be prepared for cool weather and bring snacks. Once registered, be prepared for long waits before being seen by a doctor.

If you travel to Bristol with me, Judge, I'm almost certain you will be a changed man. You will begin to grasp just how dysfunctional and inequitable the U.S. health care system is and why the law you seem determined to declare unconstitutional was deemed necessary. Just knowing that most of RAM's clinics are now held in the United States rather than third world countries should tell you something.

The highway I traveled to a RAM clinic in Wise, Virginia, in 2007 from my parents' home not far from Bristol turned out to be my Road to Damascus. I was so struck by what I saw -- thousands standing in hours-long lines to get care in animal stalls at the Wise County Fairgrounds -- that I quit my job a few months later and began telling the truth. The truth about how health insurance companies really operate and how bad things really are out there for millions of Americans.

Until that day, I had been able to think, talk and write about the U.S. health care system and the uninsured in the abstract, as if real-life human beings were not involved. But when I witnessed what many citizens must go through to receive basic medical care, I could no longer see them as merely numbers on a spreadsheet."

***

Whole article here:

LINK
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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"If Health Insurance Mandates Are Unconstitutional, Why Did the Founding Fathers Back Them?"

"In making the legal case against Obamacare’s individual mandate, challengers have argued that the framers of our Constitution would certainly have found such a measure to be unconstitutional. Nevermind that nothing in the text or history of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause indicates that Congress cannot mandate commercial purchases. The framers, challengers have claimed, thought a constitutional ban on purchase mandates was too “obvious” to mention. Their core basis for this claim is that purchase mandates are unprecedented, which they say would not be the case if it was understood this power existed.

But there’s a major problem with this line of argument: It just isn’t true. The founding fathers, it turns out, passed several mandates of their own. In 1790, the very first Congress—which incidentally included 20 framers—passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington. That’s right, the father of our country had no difficulty imposing a health insurance mandate.

That’s not all. In 1792, a Congress with 17 framers passed another statute that required all able-bodied men to buy firearms. Yes, we used to have not only a right to bear arms, but a federal duty to buy them. Four framers voted against this bill, but the others did not, and it was also signed by Washington. Some tried to repeal this gun purchase mandate on the grounds it was too onerous, but only one framer voted to repeal it.

Six years later, in 1798, Congress addressed the problem that the employer mandate to buy medical insurance for seamen covered drugs and physician services but not hospital stays. And you know what this Congress, with five framers serving in it, did? It enacted a federal law requiring the seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. That’s right, Congress enacted an individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance. And this act was signed by another founder, President John Adams.

Not only did most framers support these federal mandates to buy firearms and health insurance, but there is no evidence that any of the few framers who voted against these mandates ever objected on constitutional grounds. Presumably one would have done so if there was some unstated original understanding that such federal mandates were unconstitutional. Moreover, no one thought these past purchase mandates were problematic enough to challenge legally."

The New Republic

This one is even better:

The Irrelevance of the Broccoli Argument against the Insurance Mandate
Einer Elhauge, J.D.
N Engl J Med 2012; 366:e1January 5, 2012

Excerpt:

"The parties who have brought legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act's (ACA's) individual mandate to obtain health insurance claim that the Constitution's Commerce Clause authorizes the regulation of only commercial activity, not inactivity, and thus gives Congress no power to force individuals to buy a product. They argue that if the Supreme Court were to hold otherwise, then Congress could force us all to buy anything, from General Motors cars to broccoli. This claim is a red herring, however, because Congress could force precisely the same purchases even if the Supreme Court were to accept their arguments.
Accepting the challengers' line between activity and inactivity would do nothing to curb Congress's feared power to force purchases, because Congress could easily sidestep that line by rephrasing the law to provide that if we have ever engaged in commercial activity, then we must buy insurance, broccoli, or anything else — just as Congress can and does mandate nondiscrimination by private firms, for instance, simply because those firms engage in commerce. Such a law would regulate activity, but because everyone buys things, it would have the same effect as a simple mandate. One might try to make this line more meaningful by adding a requirement that the obligation be germane to the commercial activity, but such requirements have proven fuzzy in the past — and, in this case, could easily be satisfied in a way that still creates a mandate by providing that anyone who has ever received health care from a paid provider must buy health insurance.
Nor are the challengers correct that Congress can regulate only commercial activity. The Supreme Court has held since 1942 that Congress has Commerce Clause power to limit our ability to grow wheat that we consume ourselves and do not sell, reasoning that it suffices that this noncommercial activity encourages a commercial inactivity that in turn affects commerce — because those who grow their own wheat are not buying wheat from others, which reduces commerce in wheat.1 If Congress can regulate a noncommercial activity that causes commercial inactivity that in turn affects commerce in this relatively minor way, then surely it can directly regulate a commercial inactivity that affects commerce in as major a way as the mandate would.
Some argue that the wheat case is outdated. However, the Supreme Court explicitly reaffirmed it in 2005, in a case holding that Congress had Commerce Clause power to ban the medicinal use of home-grown marijuana.2 The decision in that case held that Congress lacked Commerce Clause power only when the regulation was not “economic” in nature. The health insurance mandate is clearly economic — indeed, much more clearly so than the sustained marijuana ban.
Others argue that the Constitution's framers could not possibly have envisioned a congressional power to force purchases. However, in 1790, the first Congress, which was packed with framers, required all ship owners to provide medical insurance for seamen; in 1798, Congress also required seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. In 1792, Congress enacted a law mandating that all able-bodied citizens obtain a firearm. This history negates any claim that forcing the purchase of insurance or other products is unprecedented or contrary to any possible intention of the framers.
Indeed, we already live under a mandate to buy health insurance, because we have to pay contributions to the Medicare trust fund. Some argue that Medicare contributions are a tax, not a forced purchase. But an obligation to pay money has the same effect whether we call it a tax or not. Indeed, the new mandate actually provides that one has to either buy health insurance or pay a tax. The penalty is similar in nature to, but usually much smaller in monetary value than, the higher taxes we have to pay if we don't get a home mortgage and therefore cannot deduct any mortgage interest from our taxes.
The objectors respond that the new insurance mandate was not called a “tax.” But why should mere phrasing trump substance? Both Medicare and the new mandate entail obligations to pay money for health insurance. That is what matters, not the labels chosen to describe this reality. Because the objectors' tax–nontax distinction turns only on phrasing, like their activity–inactivity distinction, it similarly fails to prevent the feared power to force purchases. Even without Commerce Clause authority, Congress could achieve precisely the same result with its taxing power by requiring us to pay a “tax” whose revenue will go to buy health insurance — or broccoli — for ourselves."

The rest here NEJM

See Politifact's analysis of the above article: here.
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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5% of patients account for half of health care spending

"WASHINGTON — Just 1% of Americans accounted for 22% of health care costs in 2009, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

That's about $90,000 a person, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality says.
U.S. residents spent $1.26trillion on care in 2009. Five percent accounted for 50% of health care costs, about $36,000 each, the report said.
The report's findings can be used to predict which consumers are most likely to drive up health care costs and determine the best ways to save money, said Steven Cohen, the report's lead author.
While it showed how a tiny segment of the population can drive health care spending, the report included good news. In 1996, the top 1% of the population accounted for 28% of health care spending."

USA Today
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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In the Spring 2011 issue of my own Journal of Economic Perspectives, David M. Cutler and Dan P. Ly write of "The (Paper)Work of Medicine: Understanding International Medical Costs." They emphasize the very large administrative costs in the U.S. healthcare system. They write (citations omitted):

"For every office-based physician in the United States, there are 2.2 administrative workers. That exceeds the number of nurses, clinical assistants, and technical staff put together. One large physician group in the United States estimates that it spends 12 percent of revenue collected just collecting revenue. Canada, by contrast, has only half as many administrative workers per office based physician. The situation is no better in hospitals. In the United States, there are 1.5 administrative personnel per hospital bed, compared to 1.1 in Canada. Duke University Hospital, for example, has 900 hospital beds and 1,300 billing clerks. On top of this are the administrative workers in health insurance. Health insurance administration is 12 percent of premiums in the United States and less than half that in Canada. International comparisons of medical care occupations are difficult, but they suggest that the United States has more administrative personnel than other
countries do. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study indicate that the United States has 25 percent more healthcare administrators than the United Kingdom, 165 percent more than the Netherlands, and 215 percent more than Germany." LINK

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Report: Health care law to save billions

"WASHINGTON — The government plans to announce today that the 2010 health care law will save Medicare beneficiaries $208 billion through 2020, and save Medicare itself $200 billion through 2016, based on a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services actuary report." USA Today
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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It is continuously claimed that we can't afford "Obamacare" because it costs too much money. A nice unpack that claim (underline mine):

CBO: Health reform to cut deficit by $50 billion more than we thought
Posted by Ezra Klein 03/15/2012

Excerpt:

"Ransom quotes CBO saying “those provisions will increase deficits by $1,083 billion,” but he either didn’t notice or didn’t choose to include the CBO’s warning that this analysis does “not encompass all of the budgetary impacts of the ACA because that legislation has many other provisions, including some that will cause significant reductions in Medicare spending and others that will generate added tax revenues.”

As it says right in the title, this is just a look at “the insurance coverage provisions” of the Affordable Care Act. That is to say, it’s a look at the spending side of the bill. So it doesn’t include the Medicare cuts, or many of the tax increases, that pay for the legislation. It’s like reading only the “outlays” side of the budget and ignoring the “revenues” part. Of course that would make the deficit look huge.

But those other parts of the bill aren’t a secret. They’re mentioned right there in the analysis. Quoting again: “CBO and JCT have previously estimated that the ACA will, on net, reduce budget deficits over the 2012–2021 period; that estimate of the overall budgetary impact of the ACA has not been updated.”

It’s easy to do at least some of the update ourselves. This analysis shows the net cost of the coverage provisions will be about $50 billion less than previously estimated. That implies the law will cut more, not less, from the deficit than previous estimates suggested. In other words, this estimate says the bill is more, not less, fiscally responsible than was previously reported.

One other thing that’s confused some people is that this estimate is looking at a different timeframe than the original estimates. The CBO’s first pass at the bill looked at 2010-2019. But years have passed, and so now they’re looking at 2012-2021. That means they have two fewer years of implementation, when the bill costs almost nothing, and two more years of operation, when it costs substantially more.

But it also means that the included cuts and taxes, which grow with time, are larger. That’s why, when House Republicans wanted to repeal health reform in 2011, the estimated increase in the deficit was $230 billion, rather than the $130 billion that would have been expected from the 2010-2019 analysis. As you extend the analysis, the bill both costs more and saves more, and the savings grow more quickly than the costs." Washington Post
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Health Care Costs Have Slowed Down To Historic Lows

Business Insider

In a rare bit of good news for the Obama administration and budget policymakers, health care costs increased last year at their slowest pace since the advent of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid 1960s.

The new analysis, released early Thursday by officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that administers the two programs, showed health care spending grew last year at a “historic” low 3.9 percent rate, which is slightly below 2009’s record-setting low of 4.0 percent. Health care spending as a share of the economy remained stuck at 17.6 percent, a welcome change from most years when it increases its share of total economic activity.

...health care spending grew last year at a “historic” low 3.9 percent rate, which is slightly below 2009’s record-setting low of 4.0 percent. Health care spending as a share of the economy remained stuck at 17.6 percent, a welcome change from most years when it increases its share of total economic activity.

Looking ahead through 2020, CMS says health care spending will grow by 5.8 percent a year on average, which is about 1.1 percent faster than the rest of the economy. But only 0.1 percentage points of that growth will be due to the health care reform law. A year ago, CMS was projecting reform would raise health care spending an additional 0.2 percent a year.

Since nothing of substance has changed in the reform legislation, its lower projected cost is largely a byproduct of the overall reduction in health care spending, which health care economists said is being driven by a number of factors, including changes in consumers’ practices and more aggressive government oversight. “It’s too early to say that the Affordable Care Act will have a small effect on costs overall despite the coverage gains, but this is an optimistic sign,” said Alan Garber, an economist and physician at Stanford University."

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Dumbest Teabagger sign yet?

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

Post by Dardedar »

The favorability of the Affordable Care Act is going up... from 37% to 43% in the last year. And it still remains the case that a majority either:

a) approve of it or
c) don't approve of it specifically because it didn't go far enough

Favor: 43%

Oppose, too liberal: 34%

Oppose, not liberal enough 13%

--ibid
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Dardedar
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Media does indeed matter. In case you were wondering why people are so serially misinformed on this healthcare issue:

***
REPORT: Media Overwhelmingly Focus On Rulings Against Health Care Reform Constitutionality

"A majority of federal rulings on the substance of President Obama's health care reform law have found it to be constitutional, including the law's mandate that individuals purchase health insurance. But a Media Matters review of the five largest newspapers and the flagship CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs finds that the media overwhelmingly focused on rulings that struck down the law in whole or in part -- 84 percent of segments on the broadcast and cable programs reviewed and 59 percent of newspaper articles that reported on such rulings -- while largely ignoring rulings that found it constitutional or dismissed the case."

"More Courts Have Upheld The Law Than Overturned It. According to a compilation of court cases related to the Affordable Care Act by Kaiser Health News, four courts -- the Northern District of Florida, the Eastern District of Virginia, the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals -- have struck down the law in whole or in part. In contrast, five courts -- the Western District of Virginia, the Eastern District of Michigan, the District of Columbia, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals -- have upheld the individual mandate as constitutional. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals later vacated the judgments of the Virginia district courts and remanded those cases for dismissal on jurisdictional grounds. In several other cases, courts dismissed the complaint without ruling on the constitutionality of the law. [Kaiser Health News, 11/14/11]"

"Media Overwhelmingly Focused On Rulings Against Constitutionality

84 Percent Of Broadcast And Cable Segments Reported On Rulings Striking Down The Law. Out of a total of 31 segments on ABC's World News, CBS' Evening News, NBC's Nightly News, CNN's The Situation Room, and Fox News' Special Report that reported on court rulings related to the health care law, 26 (or 84 percent) dealt with rulings that found the individual mandate unconstitutional. In contrast, only three (or 10 percent) segments reported on rulings that upheld the law. Two segments (or six percent) reported on court rulings that dismissed their cases without ruling on substance."

"Broadcast And Cable Spent 97 Percent Of Time Devoted To Health Care Ruling Coverage On Decisions Striking Down The Law."

"Nearly 6 In 10 Print Articles In Leading Papers Reported Rulings Striking Down Law. Out of a total of 59 articles on court rulings in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, 35 (or 59 percent) reported on decisions that found the individual mandate unconstitutional. In contrast, only 17 (or 29 percent) articles reported on rulings that found the provision to be constitutional. Eight articles (or 13 percent) reported on court rulings that dismissed their cases." Media Matters

And also, regarding media bias in general:

"A new study from FAIR (Extra!, 4/12) of the Sunday morning network chat shows found a distinct conservative, white and male tilt in the guest lists. In an eight-month study (6/11-2/12) of the four shows--ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday--FAIR found:

* In one-on-one interviews, 70 percent of partisan-affiliated guests were Republican. Those guests were overwhelmingly white (92 percent) and male (86 percent).

* Roundtable debate segments weren't much more diverse: 62 percent of partisan guests were Republican. More broadly, guests classified as either Republican or conservative far outnumbered Democrats or progressives, 282 to 164.
...Sunday TV gives viewers an overwhelmingly white, male and conservative perspective on the world." FAIR
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

Post by Dardedar »

Image

"I heard a peal of delight and turned around — that’s the picture at the top of this post. Hilary Matfess, a young policy analyst, was jumping up and down, yelling out details.

“The mandate is constitutional! It was upheld! Roberts went for the swing vote! Yes! Oh my God! The individual mandate survives as a tax!”

Did you work on passing the bill? I asked.

“No!” said Matfess. “I just have lupus!”

-- David Weigel at Slate, LINK

In case anyone has forgotten the example of Nikki White
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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