The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Will Obamacare Kill Jobs? A New Study Says No

One of the key arguments made by opponents to the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is that it will kill jobs. The reasoning is that forcing employers to provide insurance for their employees will raise their costs, and that they’ll cover those costs by cutting wages and other compensation, and ultimately by shedding jobs. But is that true?

The nonpartisan Urban Institute decided to find out. It did so by looking at what has happened in Massachusetts, whose health reform law, passed in 2006, is broadly similar. It found no evidence whatever that health care reform, and mandated coverage, killed jobs:
There is no evidence of a more pronounced decline in overall employment in Massachusetts than in the rest of the nation over the 2006-2010 period, nor is there evidence of a more pronounced decline among the small firms, industries, and workers, where such declines would be predicted if health reform had dampened economic growth in the state. Although there are differences in the details between the Massachusetts health reform and the ACA, there are broad similarities that indicate that the impacts could be roughly similar under the ACA. The evidence from Massachusetts would suggest that national health reform does not imply job loss and stymied economic growth.
The Urban Institute first studied whether the Massachusetts law and the federal one were alike enough to draw conclusions from the state’s experience. It determined they were. It then looked at trends between 2001 and 2010 in both health insurance coverage and employment, in Massachusetts and in four similar states and in the nation as a whole. It also looked at employment in small businesses as well as large ones, and found no great differences at any level. And it found that “there is no evidence that younger and lower-skilled workers have been more likely to lose employment under health reform in Massachusetts relative to trends in the rest of the nation,” nor has there been any disproportionate shift to part-time work. All major employment trends looked pretty much the same in Massachusetts as elsewhere.

Nonetheless, as Talking Points Memo notes in a report on the study, Mitt Romney, the father of the Massachusetts law, issued a statement just last week saying “We can’t afford job-killing policies in Obamacare.”

Read the Urban Institute’s full study here.

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Kaiser Healthcare Reform Quiz

http://healthreform.kff.org/quizzes/hea ... ?source=QL

"The health reform law promises to deliver big changes in the U.S. health care system. But, as with other sweeping pieces of legislation, it can be hard to get the real facts about what it does. And it is all too easy for misinformation about the law to spread.Take our short, 10-question quiz to test your knowledge of the law, and then find out how you compare to the rest of the country, as represented by the findings of the Kaiser Family Foundation's monthly Health Tracking Poll."
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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A very good summary:

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Just had that old talking point anecdote about a Canadian politician that came to the US for a surgical heart procedure in the US. This counter example rather knocks that down:

***
"Medical Tourism in Canada is fast becoming popular to foreign patients particularly to the Americans. Health experts around the world have cited that the quality of healthcare in Canada is equal or even better than what the United States can offer. But what attracts foreigners even more is the fact that they can save 30 to 60 percent on the costs of medical treatments in Canada than in the US.

The cost of in-hospital treatment in the US is definitely higher, usually double the price than in Canada. There are also more medical staff like nurses in Canada. Medicines are also more affordable in Canada than in the US.

Here are some facts and figures presented in the Find Private Clinics:

Average in-hospital treatment costs are nearly twice as much in the U.S. ($20,673 U.S. vs. $10,373)

There are 9.9 qualified nurses per 1000 population in Canada as compared to 7.9 nurses per 1000 population in US (so you get a highly personalized care!)

Overall satisfaction with the surgical experience is similar in both countries (85.3% U.S. and 83.5% Canada).

The number of acute care hospital beds in Canada is 3.0 per 1000 population as compared to 2.8 in US

Canadians have lower rates of in-hospital mortality (1.4% Canada vs. 2.2% U.S.).

Administrative costs consume more of the total cost of treatment in the U.S. (38.2% of total costs in the U.S. vs. 31.7% in Canada).

In-hospital cost of coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) in the U.S. is 82.5 % higher in the U.S. than in Canada.

The mortality rate for end-stage renal disease is 47% higher in the U.S. than in Canada. Adjusted monthly costs of treatment are $503 higher in the U.S.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of U.S. patients have reprocessed dialyzers used on them, compared with 0.0% of Canadian patients.

Compared with the American counterparts, low-income Canadians have a significant survival.

Advantage for 13 of the 15 kinds of cancer studied.

One-year mortality rates following myocardial infarction are virtually identical for both countries (34.3% U.S. vs. 34.4% Canada).

Canada has a higher rate of annual bone marrow transplants (0.89 per 100,000 population vs. 0.81per 100,000 in the U.S.)

Canada has lower mortality rates for patients 65 and older three years after both low-mortality (18.52% U.S. vs. 15.31% Canada) and moderate-mortality (19.19% U.S. vs. 16.63% Canada) procedures.

Survival rate for four disease condition is higher in Canada than in America:

Colorectal cancer: 113 Canada vs. 108 U.S.

Childhood leukemia: 118 vs.110

Kidney transplants 113 vs. 100

Liver transplants 123 vs. 102

Above all, American citizen do not need visa if the length of stay is less than 180 days.

The prescription drugs and medicines are far less expensive in Canada."

LINK
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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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How I Lost My Fear of Universal Health Care

"When I moved to Canada in 2008, I was a die-hard conservative Republican. So when I found out that we were going to be covered by Canada's Universal Health Care, I was somewhat disgusted. This meant we couldn't choose our own health coverage, or even opt out if we wanted too. It also meant that abortion was covered by our taxes, something I had always believed was horrible. I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom.

When I got pregnant shortly after moving, I was apprehensive. Would I even be able to have a home birth like I had experienced with my first 2 babies? Universal Health Care meant less choice right? So I would be forced to do whatever the medical system dictated regardless of my feelings, because of the government mandate. I even talked some of having my baby across the border in the US, where I could pay out of pocket for whatever birth I wanted. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that midwives were not only covered by the Universal health care, they were encouraged! Even for hospital births. In Canada, midwives and doctors were both respected, and often worked together.

I went to my first midwife appointment and sat in the waiting room looking at the wall of informational pamphlets. I never went to the doctor growing up, we didn't have health insurance, and my parents preferred a conservative naturopathic doctor anyways. And the doctor I had used for my first 2 births was also a conservative Christian. So I had never seen information on birth control and STDs. One of the pamphlets read "Pregnant Unexpectedly?" so I picked it up, wondering what it would say. The pamphlet talked about adoption, parenthood, or abortion. It went through the basics of what each option would entail and ended by saying that these choices were up to you. I was horrified that they included abortion on the list of options, and the fact that the pamphlet was so balanced instead of "pro-life."

During my appointment that day, the midwife asked her initial round of questions including whether or not I had desired to become pregnant in the first place. Looking back I am not surprised she asked that, I was depressed at the time, (even though I did not list that on my medical chart) and very vocal about my views on birth control (it wasn't OK, ever.) No wonder she felt like she should ask if I was happy to be having this baby. But I was angry about the whole thing. In my mind, freedom was being violated, my rights were being decided for me by the evils of Universal Health Care.

Fast forward a little past the Canadian births of my third and fourth babies. I had better prenatal care than I had ever had in the States. I came in regularly for appointments to check on my health and my babies' health throughout my pregnancy, and I never had to worry about how much a test cost or how much the blood draw fee was. With my pregnancies in the States, I had limited my checkups to only a handful to keep costs down. When I went in to get the shot I needed because of my negative blood type, it was covered. In fact I got the recommended 2 doses instead of the more risky 1 dose because I didn't have to worry about the expense. I had a wide array of options and flexibility when it came to my birth, and care providers that were more concerned with my health and the health of my baby than how much money they might make based on my birth, or what might impact their reputation best. When health care is universal, Drs are free to recommend and provide the best care for every patient instead of basing their care on what each patient can afford.

I found out that religious rights were still respected. The Catholic hospital in the area did not provide abortions, and they were not required too. I had an amazing medically safe birth, and excellent post-natal care with midwives who had to be trained, certified and approved by the medical system.

I started to feel differently about Universal government mandated and regulated Health care. I realized how many times my family had avoided hospital care because of our lack of coverage. When I mentioned to Canadians that I had been in a car accident as a teen and hadn't gone into the hospital, they were shocked! Here, you always went to the hospital, just in case. And the back issue I had since the accident would have been helped by prescribed chiropractic care which would have been at no cost to me. When I asked for prayers for my little brother who had been burned in a camping accident, they were all puzzled why the story did not include immediately rushing him to the hospital. When they asked me to clarify and I explained that many people in the States are not insured and they try to put off medical care unless absolutely needed, they literally could not comprehend such a thing."

Image

The rest here... LINK
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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The high cost of medical procedures in the U.S.

Compared to other countries, the price tag for medical care is dramatically higher in the U.S.

Roll over a circle to see average cost in U.S. dollars:

Washington Post

Full graphic at link above. Here is a sample:

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Most US Doctors want a single payer health insurance system:

Doctors Want Single-Payer, Medicare for All

Thursday, March 24, 2011

"Sure, you always get a few bad apples like that cabal that followed Mark Kirk around during the summer of '08. They are in medicine for the money and want to end your ability to sue a medical provider if injured.

The AMA was also against health care reform of any kind until Obama nudged it to support his plan. However, that information standing alone is misleading because the AMA doesn't really represent your family physician. The AMA is more about insurance diagnostic coding than medicine. The group makes millions from its copyright on the medical codes used for Medicare and private insurance reimbursement. The group even issues an anual National Insurers Report Card that grades accuracy and timeliness in medical coding. Further, fewer than 29% of doctors were members of the AMA according to its own 2008 annual report.

When asked, more and more real docs, the kind that work with patients and not patient codes, want a national health care plan--known as single-payer or Medicare E, Medicare for all. A recent survey shows that more than half favor such a plan. The survey of more than 2000 doctors came up with 59% favoring single-payer. That is up from 49% from 2002. Docs know that things have gotten worse and individually complained about higher deductibles and co-payments and insurance company restrictions on patient care.

That survey seems to agree with what Vermont is seeing in its quest for a single-payer system. If Vermont ultimately passes the pending legislation to create its system, many primary care physicians have pledged to move there. This includes doctors from California, Oregon, and Washington state, Hawaii , so it's clear they're not seeking to move to Vermont for the weather. Medical students are also more interested in starting their careers in Vermont."

http://ellenofthetenth.blogspot.com/201 ... e-for.html
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Opinion on Healthcare systems:

Let's ask Canadians what they think:

"By an overwhelming margin, Canadians prefer the Canadian health care system to the American one. Overall, 82% said they preferred the Canadian system, fully ten times the number who said the American system is superior (8%)." -- http://tinyurl.com/nqvsr6

"The vast majority of Canadians, 91 per cent, felt that Canada's health care system was better than the United States..." --CTV News, http://tinyurl.com/6ra3mwq

"Canadians strongly support the health system's public rather than for-profit private basis, and a 2009 poll... 86.2% of Canadians surveyed supported or strongly supported "public solutions to make our public health care stronger." http://www.healthzone.ca/health/article/679824

Let's ask the Americans:

"...extensive ABCNEWS/Washington Post poll, Americans by a 2-1 margin, 62-32 percent, prefer a universal health insurance program over the current employer-based system." -- http://tinyurl.com/72wnl

"...just 29 percent of Americans think the overall U.S. health care system is better than Canada's; more, 37 percent, think it's worse than Canada's." --ibid

"Harris Interactive polling..., found 45 percent of Americans thought the U.S. medical system generally was the best. The remaining 54 percent either didn't know or thought other countries' systems were better..." --Bloomberg, "Americans Say Health Care Lags Canada, France in Harvard Poll" http://tinyurl.com/7av9wlg

Nice.
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Why addressing US medical costs is not optional:

Image

"American healthcare costs are too high.
Presently: $2.8 trillion = 17.8% of GDP
By 2020, healthcare costs are projected to be at 20% of GDP."
LINK
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Damn socialists beating us like this! If only they had free markets like us!

"U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study"
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON | Wed Jun 23, 2010

Reuters

"(Reuters) - Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.

...The current report uses data from nationally representative patient and physician surveys in seven countries in 2007, 2008, and 2009. It is available here

In 2007, health spending was $7,290 per person in the United States, more than double that of any other country in the survey.

Australians spent $3,357, Canadians $3,895, Germans $3,588, the Netherlands $3,837 and Britons spent $2,992 per capita on health in 2007. New Zealand spent the least at $2,454.

This is a big rise from the Fund's last similar survey, in 2007, which found Americans spent $6,697 per capita on healthcare in 2005, or 16 percent of gross domestic product.

"We rank last on safety and do poorly on several dimensions of quality," Schoen told reporters. "We do particularly poorly on going without care because of cost. And we also do surprisingly poorly on access to primary care and after-hours care."

NETHERLANDS RANKED FIRST OVERALL

The report looks at five measures of healthcare -- quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and the ability to lead long, healthy, productive lives.

Britain, whose nationalized healthcare system was widely derided by opponents of U.S. healthcare reform, ranks first in quality while the Netherlands ranked first overall on all scores, the Commonwealth team found.

U.S. patients with chronic conditions were the most likely to say they gotten the wrong drug or had to wait to learn of abnormal test results.

"The findings demonstrate the need to quickly implement provisions in the new health reform law," the report reads.

Critics of reports that show Europeans or Australians are healthier than Americans point to the U.S. lifestyle as a bigger factor than healthcare. Americans have higher rates of obesity than other developed countries, for instance.

"On the other hand, the other countries have higher rates of smoking," Davis countered. And Germany, for instance, has a much older population more prone to chronic disease.

Every other system covers all its citizens, the report noted and said the U.S. system, which leaves 46 million Americans or 15 percent of the population without health insurance, is the most unfair.

"The lower the performance score for equity, the lower the performance on other measures. This suggests that, when a country fails to meet the needs of the most vulnerable, it also fails to meet the needs of the average citizen," the report reads."
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Medicaid Expansion Rejected By Governors Who Say Earning $11,000 Is Too Much

"In South Carolina, a yearly income of $16,900 is too much for Medicaid for a family of three. In Florida, $11,000 a year is too much. In Mississippi, $8,200 a year is too much. In Louisiana and Texas, earning more than just $5,000 a year makes you ineligible for Medicaid.

Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough. She makes about $15,000 a year, supporting her daughter and unemployed husband. She thought she'd be able to get health insurance after the Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama's health care law. Then she heard that her own governor won't agree to the federal plan to extend Medicaid coverage to people like her in two years. So she expects to remain uninsured, struggling to pay for her blood pressure medicine. "You fall through the cracks and there's nothing you can do about it," said the 52-year-old home health aide. "It makes me feel like garbage, like the American dream, my dream in my homeland is not being accomplished."

HUff Po
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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If you think corporations will choose your health over their interests, you're dead wrong.

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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Obamacare saves money:

"The CBO is quite clear about Obamacare's budgetary implications. It reduces the deficit. Here's what the CBO said exactly:

"[T]he effects of the two laws on direct spending and revenues related to health care will reduce federal deficits by $210 billion over the 2012-2021 period." LINK

In other words, the law is more than paid for. Yes, it spends $1.042 trillion covering people, but it pays for this coverage by finding savings in Medicare and levying a surtax on investment income for high-earners."

The Atlantic
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Scorpion sting leaves Ahwatukee woman with a big bill

LINK

Woman in Arizona gets stung by a scorpion, goes to hospital, then...

***
"Her symptoms subsided after she received two doses of the drug Anascorp through an IV, and she was discharged from the hospital in about three hours.

Weeks later, she received a bill for $83,046 from Chandler Regional Medical Center. The hospital, owned by Dignity Health, charged her $39,652 per dose of Anascorp.

The Arizona Republic reported last year about the pricey markup Arizona hospitals were charging for the antivenom made in Mexico. Pharmacies in Mexico charge about $100 per dose.

After the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug last year, Tennessee-based Rare Disease Therapeutics sold the drug to a distributor for $3,500 per dose. The distributor charged hospitals about $3,780 per dose.

The Republic polled several hospitals in November, finding that hospital charges for the serum ranged from $7,900 to $12,467 per vial. At the time, Chandler Regional declined to tell The Republic how much it charged for Anascorp.

Edmonds' insurer, Humana, has paid Chandler Regional $57,509 for the bill. The hospital has asked Edmonds for the balance of $25,537.

Chandler Regional issued a statement indicating that Edmonds' charges represented the out-of-network costs for her treatment. Chandler Regional is not part of Humana's network, so she was charged the hospital's full billing rate.

"We believe no one should delay seeking needed medical care because they lack insurance or have high medical costs," the hospital's statement said."

LINK
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Image

"So you oppose the ACA because you don't want to pay for another person's health care. Well what the hell do you think health insurance is in the first place?"
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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"The analysis by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based health care research foundation, found that under Romney’s health care plan, the uninsured population would soar to 72 million by 2022 — 12 million higher than if nothing had been done at all.
By contrast, if President Barack Obama’s health care law is fully implemented — including complete state participation in the now voluntary Medicaid expansion — the number of uninsured people would drop from 47.9 million in 2011 to about 27.1 million people in 2022, the report estimated."

Politico
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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New Health Rankings: Of 17 Nations, U.S. Is Dead Last

"...The report was prepared by a panel of doctors, epidemiologists, demographers, and other researchers charged by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine to better understand Americans' comparative health. They examined when and why people die in the U.S. and 16 other countries, including Australia, Japan, Canada, and nations in Western Europe. The data they pulled -- from such bodies as the World Health Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- already existed, but no one had yet examined it this comprehensively.

The results surprised even the researchers. To their alarm, they said, they found a "strikingly consistent and pervasive" pattern of poorer health at all stages of life, from infancy to childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle and old age. Compared to people in other developed nations, Americans die far more often from injuries and homicides. We suffer more deaths from alcohol and other drugs, and endure some of the worst rates of heart disease, lung disease, obesity, and diabetes.

These disproportionate deaths especially affect young people. For three decades, Americans, particularly men, have had either the lowest or near the lowest likelihood of surviving to age 50. The most powerful reasons found for that were homicide, car accidents, other kinds of accidents, non-communicable diseases, and perinatal problems like low birth weight and premature birth, which contribute to high infant mortality.

Among the most striking of the report's findings are that, among the countries studied, the U.S. has:

The highest rate of death by violence, by a stunning margin
The highest rate of death by car accident, also dramatically so
The highest chance that a child will die before age 5
The second-highest rate of death by coronary heart disease
The second-highest rate of death by lung disease
The highest teen pregnancy rate
The highest rate of women dying due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth

...Not that one factor is likely to be able to explain everything. The panelists identified a host of factors: More than other countries, our health care system is fragmented, unaffordable for many people, and short on primary care. Of the countries studied, we have the highest rate of children living in poverty.

The Atlantic

***
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Re: The Healing of America --Meeting Presentation

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Conservative Think Tank Ranks Countries With Government-Run Health Care As The Freest In World

LINK

"Former Senator Jim DeMint, the new president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, has decried Obamacare as “a cancer” that is “is fundamentally inconsistent with liberty.” During the Senate Obamacare fight, DeMint famously declared “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
But a new report from DeMint’s own organization suggests that, far from being incompatible with freedom, countries with health care systems with as much or significantly more government control over healthcare are the freest countries in the world.

The report in question is Heritage’s Economic Freedom Index, released annually since 1997. The report defines the concept of “economic freedom” in misleading right-wing terms, but even by those standards, it appears that universal health care systems far more expansive than Obamacare aren’t “fundamentally inconsistent with liberty.” In fact, the ten “freest” economies in 2013 by Heritage’s lights range from mandating individuals save a certain amount of money for health care to almost the entire health care system, including hospitals, being owned and operated by the government:"

...the rest at the link.
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