Laura, thanks for this story.

The Bushies exacerbated Medicare’s funding crisis with two programs: Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage – that channel tax subsidies to Big Pharma and Big Insurance.

Medicare Part D created a whole new class of health “insurance” which is very lucrative for that industry, in addition to ensuring the consumers (and tax payers) would pay top dollar to Big Pharma.

Medicare Advantage subsidizes Big Insurance to do what they already doing: offering Medicare HMO’s.

Both Part D and MA play a large role in accelerating Medicare’s insolvency.

But hey…so long as it’s OK for the Bushies’ real constituency – the megacoprs – why bother about the little people who rely on Medicare?

recall that under PART D, Medicare is NOT allowed to negotiate with pharma on drug pricing.
that was a huge part of the giveaway.
Under Medicare Advantage, insurance companies get 13% more per capita to insure people than is paid under standard Medicare.
Ridiculously high, even considering that insurers provide some added benefits.
Dont believe that this is not worth it–ck the insurance company profits on this line of business. HUGE.
and if they are not, they just dont sign up anyone next year.
its they win, we lose.

Estimates for 2008 are that employer health care costs are up 10%.

No need for estimates, in the last two years alone my monthly health insurance has gone from 79 dollars a month to 147 dollars per month, with another hike coming now that the new fiscal year has started.

Sure wish the members of Congress, the Justices, and the Administration had to purchase insurance as individuals, only then would we’d see reform. Until then, I’m not holding my breath. I might turn blue, pass out, bonk my head, and have to go to the ER.

And yet, Jim Hightower, said, just the other day, that, what was it, 66% of those polled (by whom I’ve no idea) support the notion of a single-payer system.

Interestingly enough, since the days of Harry Truman, close to 70%of American adults, when polled, have consistently said the same thing.

I guess they haven’t sufficient ‘effective demand’.

In California, labor is working very hard to assist in the passage of single-payer in SB 840.

I’m tired to death of re-reciting my travails with health care and health insurance on the blogs, since Congress doesn’t seem to be reading — or give a damn — about either.

Suffice it to say that after a decade of being battered all around the health insurance bush, the only insurance for which I qualify raised my individual premium from $700 a month to $1,000 a month — and so I was forced to drop it.

I’ve got at least 5 years until Medicare, so it’s comforting to know the Republicans have screwed that up, too.

I see an acupuncturist who also has a degree in Chinese medicine, and pay him out of pocket — and that will have to suffice for my health care in toto. I can only hope whatever health issue comes up in the next 5 years is one which can be treated by either of those two systems.

I also have dental insurance — which will only pay for the inexpensive treatment my dentist assures me is the one least viable to replace my infected molar.

Well, if people would only take care of themselves properly, they would never get old and sick.
I could tell you stories…

The rightwingnuts will tell you that there’s plenty of good health care —- just go to your local emergency room. THEY make me sick! People are paying through the nose for health care and providing low cost or free care to our poorest citicens, anyway…..why, why, why can’t we get some response from congresspunks who have very fine health care for themselves and theirs?!

I’m with you, judybrowni, about using alternative health contructs like Chinese medicine – naturopaths, homeopathy, etc., especially as I’m about to fall off the rolls of insured myself, not that the obscene deduction rate I’m at is really being ‘insured’ at all.

Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Allopathic centrism…. I’d love to believe we could create a system outside of it that wasn’t just drug/surgery maintenance but surely They’d figure out a way to making screaming profits from that, too. Some kind of cooperative health care system, I’m thinking, that more and more could access and either circumvent the later disease from years of lack of attention and coordinate those efforts with a groundswell to clean up the toxic factors that make so many of sick in the first place.

There will always be emergency medicine but it should be for catastrophic things and traumas, I’d think, not to save us from years of lacking healthcare.

because they have no idea what it’s like NOT to have it.

Ina’s upstairs, and there’s Santa Claus

I’m not quite sure who I am angrier at, the “opposition” Rep. or the “friendly” Dem. The former openly wish to destroy the system by underfunding it and by siphoning the funds already there into the pockets of private insurers. But the latter are willing participants in the process and, looking at Obama’s plan which, in the guise of cost control via more competition, includes inviting more of these insurers into the field with promises of subsidies, indicate, for all their rhetoric, they don’t really give any more of a damn about providing universal healthcare than do the Rep.

I don’t expect anything better from the Rep., they’re pretty up front about it and It’s pretty clear that if you want universal healthcare, they’ve gotta go. But the Dem. told us they gave a damn, when it is more and more clear they don’t. So who is one more likely to be angry at, the “enemy” who shoots you in the stomach or the “friend” who stabs you in the back?

The other thing that is enormously frustrating to me is the degree to which the “progressive” media, that same media which kept pointing out that not only the people but the medical profession as well appear(s) to be in favor of a single payer system, that spent so much of its print decrying the failures of our private insurance based system and pointing out that single payer is the best and cheapest, has become rather reticent on the subject now that the whole point of the election seems to be to beat the Rep. I heard a commentator on Stephanopoulos’ ABC Sun. show make a comment to the effect that the left wingers (referring to the fans of The Nation and the Huff. Post) would follow Obama no matter what he did. (They were speaking of another of his right wing “turns”, but does it matter, there are so many). The guy is, sadly, undoubtedly correct. I alternate between paroxysms of laughter and nausea as I watch, read, listen to “progressives” stammer, trip over their words, etc. as they twist themselves into pretzels trying to convince us that Obama is a good choice. As it becomes more and more evident that he will not do anything more than rearrange the deck chairs, we will hear more and more of “well at least he’s better than McCain” or “remember the new guy will pick new Supreme Court Justices” and we will once again be told, in essence, that electing a Dem., any Dem., is worth sacrificing just about anything for, including health care. It is such “logic” that has gotten us into the fix we’re in. And not until we, and our “progressive” media, stop settling for such pitiful excuses for “leaders” will we ever have a chance to really fix things.

We can’t wait any longer “hoping” for “change”, too many people are getting sick or dying from lack of care and/or going bankrupt trying to get it. I have drawn my line in the sand – if no single payer health plan from you, no vote from me, period. If all of us out here, including, perhaps especially, the folk with the sad stories, would do the same, they couldn’t ignore us with impunity which is what they are doing now and will continue to do until we, in the immortal words of Nancy Reagan, “Just Say No!”. Why can’t our “fearless” progressive media tell us so or at least have the decency to debate this openly?