Breaking: Obama to address joint session of Congress September 9th on health care

If he's not crystal clear about the need for a strong public option, and if he doesn't address, condemn, refute, and/or ridicule the far right fringe astroturf propaganda groups terrorizing the American people with images of Hitler and Stalin, and if he doesn't demand that Congress pass something now, and if he doesn't chastise the Republicans (and Blue Dog Dems) in Congress who simply refuse to vote for any reasonable reform bill, then this speech will not accomplish anything.

Scenes from the Front Lines

Yesterday I attended Rep. Wu's (OR-1, my U.S. House member) town hall on health care at Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland. That is, I attended the raucous battle of wills that took place outside (the forum was full long before I got there). I figured there would be some sparks, but I had no idea what I was in for.

Clearly, because this is Portland, the sensible pro-reform crew far outnumbered the teabaggers and their far-right allies. Still, there were plenty of fireworks.

I'll let the pictures and the video speak for themselves, with a bit of commentary.

First, a few pictures:









And now, the video that really captures the spirit of the thing. It's broken down into four segments. The first is a discussion between a free-market "why should I pay for anything that isn't mine" woman and a couple of single-payer advocates. The second segment shows the crowd bursting into spontaneous chants of "Health Care Now!" or on the other side "No Big Brother!" and "Socialism Now!" The third segment shows a guy with a megaphone saying that health care will lead this country to bankruptcy. In the fourth and final section, I stumble into a nest of real lunatics. I can't really tell what the woman is saying, but it sounds like something about a death pill. You'll also get a glimpse of a "9/12 Project" sign and another sign that says "Obama out of my doctor's office."

Unfortunately, I did not catch one explosive exchange on video. A right winger began screaming at another guy, "Don't call me a nut! Engage me in debate!!" Difficult not to call the guy a nut when he's literally screaming in another guy's face. Also difficult to engage someone in debate who's screaming in your face.

Without more ado:

Rachel Maddow calls out the astroturfers on health care

Rachel Maddow exposes the corporate interests behind the fake grassroots campaign to disrupt health care town hall meetings, and explains how Americans are being duped into fighting against their own interests through a professional fear campaign.

Keith Olbermann names names

In a powerful Special Comment, Keith Olbermann calls out Republicans and Democrats obstructing health care reform as the insurance industry whores that they are.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

...between you and your doctor?

One of the primary arguments made by right wingers opposed to public health care is that they don't want the government getting between you and your doctor. The idea is that if you allow the government to run health care, suddenly health care will become this big bureaucratic nightmare, and it'll take forever to get, say, something as simple as a prescription for antibiotics for a sinus infection, let alone to get approved for a major surgery.

God forbid, right?

Here's the thing. We have that level of bureaucratic nightmare already. The for profit health industry, made up of HMOs, insurance companies, for-profit hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and the army of lobbyists they send to Capitol Hill, already stand between you and your doctor. We're always hearing horror stories of an insurance company that refuses to approve a major and necessary surgery. We're always hearing about people with employer-provided health plans that still leave them with huge out of pocket costs. We're always hearing about people being bankrupted by hospital bills because they either don't have health insurance or their policies are so full of holes that they really aren't covered for anything. Not to mention the thousands of Americans who literally can't get health insurance because they had the nerve to get a “pre-existing” chronic condition, like cancer.

But what about the other end of that “don't want the government getting between you and your doctor” argument? The side that says that simple things, like, say, getting antibiotics for a sinus infection, would become a nightmare?

Three weeks ago, I went to see my doctor because I had a head cold of some sort. That went pretty smoothly. I have an HMO. I called the central office, they called my doctor, and somehow the layers of administrative staff figured everything out and I got my appointment. Fine. My doctor said that I probably had a virus and he didn't want to prescribe me antibiotics at that point, but – and this is the critical bit – if I were to develop symptoms of a bacterial sinus infection, I should call him and he would call me in a prescription for antibiotics.

Cut to three days ago. My partner and I had been kind of passing the bugs back and forth between each other, and they had finally decided to settle directly in my sinus cavity, causing one side of my head to throb like the dickens.

I called my doctor. Ok, no, I didn't call my doctor, because I can't. I called the phone number on the back of my insurance card, and spoke to a medical receptionist...somewhere. Since it was after hours, the only person I could really speak to was a medical advice nurse, which would mean spending 18 minutes on hold. Or I could get a call back the next day. I asked them to call me back.

In what was to be the last pleasant surprise of the whole ordeal, I did get a call back from a nurse the same night. I don't know who this nurse was, or what connection she had to my doctor, but she did call me back, ask me about my symptoms, and promise to pass a message to my doctor's office to get me some antibiotics. But it certainly wouldn't be until the next day, and since my doctor was going to be out of the office the next day, it might not be then either.

The next day, I got no call from anyone at the HMO. I decided that if I wasn't going to get any antibiotics, I should at least get some pseudoephedrine from the pharmacy down the street from my work. It was at that point that I realized that I live in the only state in the union where pseudoephedrine requires a prescription from a doctor.

So I called back the HMO, spoke to another medical receptionist, who passed me to another nurse, who promised to send a message to my doctor's office. We're now 48 hours since I tried to use my insurance to get something as simple as antibiotics, and now – pseudoephedrine. And I have neither.

This morning, after suffering through another night of having a sinus infection, and breathing in steam, and shooting salt water up my nose, and taking ibuprofen, I decided that I'd had bloody well enough. I called the HMO back, spoke to several people, all of whom promised to send an urgent message to my doctor, and promised to call me back. Finally, somehow, I got through to my doctor's office, and I basically complained at the woman until she told me that there was a prescription for pseudoephedrine waiting for me at the pharmacy down the street.

Oh, here's another layer of bureaucracy. Because I have an HMO, I can only get my prescriptions filled (if I want my insurance to pay for them) at one of several facilities controlled by my health plan. If they send the prescription to a different pharmacy, it's not covered.

So anyway, I had them send the pseudoephedrine to the pharmacy down the street (because how much could a bottle of Sudafed cost), and the antibiotic to one of the HMO's facilities that's convenient for my partner to swing by on his lunch break (because I didn't know how much that would cost, and I wanted it covered if it was going to be expensive).

Three days. Three days to get a prescription for antibiotics and pseudoephedrine, after already having seen my doctor and having him tell me to do exactly what I did – call him if I develop symptoms of a sinus infection so he can call me in some antibiotics.

So riddle me this, right wing loons who trumpet the “freedom” of market-based health care. What freedom do I have right now with regard to my health care that will be removed if I go to a government-run system?

The illusion of “market-driven” health care rests upon the fallacy that the consumer has a real choice in where they get their health insurance. The reality is that, for most Americans, if they have health insurance, it's the health insurance that their jobs offer them, take it or leave it. They can't really shop around, because the open market is prohibitively expensive, which is why the employer system exists in the first place. Because consumers have no real choice in the matter, there's no real incentive to provide good service, beyond that necessary for the insurance companies to turn a tidy profit. And the bureaucratic nightmare of multiple payers and payees in the system means that nobody is properly served, really.

We have a system right now where people are not getting necessary procedures, tests, and where health care is rationed based on arcane insurance rules that create loopholes in coverage and bankrupt people and destroy lives. We have a system right now where something as simple as getting a prescription for antibiotics and pseudoephedrine takes three days and countless phone calls and headaches.

So how is this better?

Yeah, CNN, it's YOUR FAULT.

After a week of headlines about the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, many emergency rooms and hospitals are crammed with people, many of whom don't need to be there.

The visits by the "worried well" have triggered concerns of overburdening the nation's hospitals and emergency departments, several health care professionals told CNN.

Well, CNN, I wonder how people started getting freaked out about this thing? Could it be that you and your buddies in the stupid media, um, oh, I don't know, WAY OVERHYPED this thing?

Obama touts single-payer health care

A Murdoch Street Journal article quotes Obama as saying that if he were to build a healthcare system "from scratch," he'd go with a single-payer system. His campaign health care plan calls for a much less sweeping overhaul, with more affordable private insurance and Medicare expansions, noting that dismantling the whole private insurance infrastructure in one go would lead to chaos and job losses.

But still, the idea that Obama might be open to single-payer is excellent news. Single-payer health care is the only fair, sane, equitable, and comprehensive solution to America's health care crisis. It is also by no means the same thing as "socialized medicine." Single payer health care merely refers to a payment system in which the government provides health insurance to all citizens and pays everyone's medical bills. Socialized medicine is a more comprehensive and radical system in which the entire health infrastructure of the country is owned by the government (hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, doctor's offices, etc), and doctors and nurses become employees of the State. Nobody in mainstream American politics is calling for such a system.

Possible breakthrough in the fight against HIV

A Houston lab has found what it calls an "Achilles Heel" that can be exploited to destroy the HIV virus. The virus resists destruction by mutating constantly, thus staying ahead of any medication sent in to kill it. However, the virus needs to keep one part of itself stable. Doctors can now send in "abzymes" to exploit that part of the virus, and "permanently disarm" the HIV virus. Lab and animal tests look good; the next step is human trials.

This could be a big deal. Here's hoping, eh?

America's "health care" fails another test

WASHINGTON - The United States fails on most measures of health care quality, with Americans waiting longer to see doctors and more likely to die of preventable or treatable illnesses than people in other industrialized countries, a report released on Thursday said.

Americans squander money on wasteful administrative costs, illnesses caused by medical error and inefficient use of time, the report from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund concluded.

This group has a better idea. But what do they know? They're only doctors.

Dutch health care system rated best; US worst

A new report shows that the Dutch are most satisfied with their health care system, while Americans are the least satisfied.

From the article:

The U.S. model, widely criticized on its combination of private insurance and publicly-funded programs, spends more on health care than any other nation worldwide but ranks low on overall quality of care, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

A World Health Organization study in 2000 rated France as having the best overall health care system in the world, while the United States languished in 37th place.

Both France and the Netherlands have a universal health care system. In fact, the United States, which, again, ranked 37th in the WHO study, is the only industrialized country in the world without a system of universal health care.

Think about how insane that is. We spend more on health care than any other nation in the world, but we can't provide universal coverage to our citizens.

This new report reinforces the notion that universal health care is a pretty damned good way to keep a population happy and healthy, and our complicated, convoluted system of for-profit health insurance is just a bureaucratic nightmare.