Dr Steffie Woolhander of Harvard: Mandate "a total victory for the health insurance industry"

[brentspeak]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/01/lobbyists-millions-obama-healthcare-reform

Insurance companies have done even better as the new legislation will prove a business bonanza. It is not only likely to kill off the threat of public health insurance, which threatened to siphon off customers by offering lower premiums and better coverage, but will force millions more people to take out private medical policies or face prosecution.

"It's a total victory for the health insurance industry," said Dr Steffie Woolhander, a GP, professor of medicine at Harvard University and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Programme (PNHP).

"What the bill has done is use the coercive power of the state to force people to hand their money over to a private entity which is the private insurance industry. That is not what people were promised."

PNHP blames a political process it says is corrupted by millions of dollars poured into the election campaigns of members of Congress and influencing the discourse about health reform by funding advertising campaigns, supposedly independent studies and patients rights organisations that press the industry's interests.

[Cali_Democrat]

1. Some senators are using "healthcare reform" to enrich the insurance companies even more

People like Max Baucus are trying to do this via a mandate.

Only in America.

The pigs will feed at the trough!!

[ProSense]

2. Until a bill is actually signed, this is total nonsense. n/t

[flyarm]

4. oh I didn't know we were supposed to wait till we got totally screwed to speak up..thanks for the

enlightenment!!

[ProSense]

5. Well a mandate together with a public option are not a win for the insurance industry, and

four of the five plans include a public option. So either way, the OP point is nonsense.

[flyarm]

9. Is The White House Drafting Secret Bill Without a Public Option?

bullshit..pure and unadulterated bullshit! I just want to know who you work for !! because it seems to me you would sell out your own mother!



Is The White House Drafting Secret Bill Without a Public Option?
By: Jane Hamsher Thursday October 1, 2009 9:38 am

read in it's entirety...
http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/10/01/is-the-white-house-drafting-secret-bill-without-a-public-option/


snip:

Well, consider who reads Roll Call. Aside from Kagro and Kos, I don't know too many bloggers who do. It's a subscription-based publication that lobbyists and Capitol Hill insiders pay to read. Witness the editorial on unfair "lobbyist intimidation" on June 17, when Baucus's staff told lobbyists that if they met with Republicans, it would be "viewed as a hostile act," and they would lose their seat at the negotiating table. It was Tom DeLay's K-Street project in reverse, written for an audience who thinks defending lobbyists' rights is critically important.

The Finance Committee bill transcribes the details of the deals that the White House and Baucus negotiated with all the health care industry stakeholders. So if the Baucus bill gets stalled, all those stakeholders like PhRMA, AHIP, the hospitals, the AMA, the device manufacturers, etc., etc., start to get nervous. They've plunked a bunch of good money down on advertising in exchange for their deals (just ask Tom Carper), and the last thing the White House wants is for them to start stepping out with the GOP.

Remember what happened the last time Billy Tauzin thought the White House was going back on the PhRMA deal? He yanked their chain in the pages of the New York Times and showed he was totally willing to air their dirty laundry if they tried to back out. The White House was forced to send Jim Messina into the shredder to verify it.

Shortly thereafter, John Boehner wrote a letter to Tauzin that read like something from a jilted boyfriend. Tauzin (and other stakeholders, and their money) will have many, many suitors should these deals start looking endangered. Ergo, leaking a story to a publication behind a firewall read by lobbyists assures them that if Baucus can't deliver a bill that memorializes the deals, the White House is willing to step in and do it for him.

While they may or may not be writing their own bill, they need to reassure health care industry stake holders that those deals will be honored in the final bill, even if Baucus can't get them through his committee. Because the last thing the White House needs right now is stakeholders leaking embarrassing documents because they're getting hinky at the thought that their deals might go south.

[ProSense]

10. Stop believing stupid conspiracies

Facts

[flyarm]

12. I know I know you say it over and over..everybody is stupid but you

you are the end all and be all of Health Care reform..we all got the message..we see it loud and clear daily!!

Only you knows the facts..everyone else is making them up..or conspiratorial..or nuts or whatever you decide at any given moment ...

and we should all stfu..in "YOUR OPINION"

THANKS.. BUT I WILL CONTINUE TO READ ALL I CAN AND I WILL FIGHT TILL THE END UNTIL WE GET REAL HEALTH CARE REFORM..NOT FUCKING INSURANCE COMPANY WELFARE..DONE IN BACK ROOM DEALS at the White House ( that still is the people's house) WHILE AMERICANS DIE FOR LACK OF HEALTH CARE.. got that??????????

get it..because i am sick of the conspirators that want to shut down debate by calling everyone else conspiratorial!

[freddie mertz]

17. Indeed. Who you gonna believe?

Reliably professional reporters and committed progressive health-care advocates who sign their names to their reporting, or anonymous propaganda-spewing "unrec"-bots who serve the DLC and corporate insurance company interests?

[bvar22]

37. Mandates coupled to a weak Public Option....

...will INDEED be a bonanza for the For Profits.

Even the most liberal Public Option" now on the table (HR 3200) will enroll LESS than 10 Million people after ten years. (CBO + Obama)

So, lets do the math:
50 Million currently uninsured.
Subtract 10 million in the Public Option.

Equals:
40 Million NEW mandated customers for the For Profits.


Obama was correct when he called the Public Option a "tiny sliver".
Make no mistakes, our fight for a "Public Option" is a fight for the crumbs.
.
.
.
.
but you already know this.

[flyarm]

3. Isn't the "mandate" why Hillary was vilified by Obama supporters? eom

[IndianaGreen]

38. Obama came out against mandates during the primary, and Hillary was villified for being for them

Gore Vidal regrets that he supported Obama over Hillary. Many people are doing self-criticism on their primary choices.

[Thrill]

6. There won't be a mandate without a public option. Durbin today

“What we found in polling is a lot people in conservative areas support the individual mandate (requiring everybody to carry health insurance) so long as they believe they have access to a not-for-profit health insurance plan,’’ Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat said.

“I can understand it. They don’t want to be told you have to have health insurance and then be the victim of gouging and over pricing by private health insurance companies’’ that could result if only one choice was available.

[TheKentuckian]

7. The mandates appear to be on a path to being hobbled

Schumer's amendment took away the criminal element and it was tabled for further modification to allow them to put the IRS on a leash too. We'll see how this shakes out but the mandate is being moved to "mandates". From the tone I wouldn't see collection going much further than hitting the tax return.

I'm still against the practice of making individuals legally responsible for an employer based system and cost controls are huge worry, especially with Rockefeller's amendment today just be withdrawn because the corporatists of course refuse to hold insurance companies accountable for what they do with our money but this is being brought back to at least disgusting rather than putrid. We'll see.

[Davis_X_Machina]

8. It's hard to recocile the title of this thread...

....with the thread a few lines down:

Revealed: millions spent by lobby firms fighting Obama health reforms.

Why spend millions fighting something that's going to make you very very rich?

[ipaint]

13. To make sure our representatives don't get any funny ideas

to start listening to their constituents instead of the corporations. They are buying a weak built to die public option. None of the bills have a medicare for all who want it public option. Money well spent.

[brentspeak]

11. DLC/health industry trolls un-rec'ing the thread

They stand to profit for the sake of their corporate masters.

A K-Street/DLC tool, caught on camera:

[IndianaGreen]

14. The unrec bots are the corporate wing of the Democratic Party

They only care about how fat their investment portfolios are, without caring one iota about the common man or woman.

[flyarm]

15. you bet they are..and a good possibility on someone's payroll! eom

[dionysus]

20. if you think anyone (esp dems) pays people to post on DU, you're delusionally paranoid, i'm sorry.

if it makes you feel better to believe that the majority of people here who disagree with you are nefarious paid agents, well, have at it.

[freddie mertz]

22. Actually, its scarier to think that they are NOT paid

Since that would have to mean they actually believe in the stuff they keep posting.

Maybe they work for the healthcare companies that will profit from this windfall.

[dionysus]

23. name one post here advocating the health insurance companies.

:shrug:

i haven't seen anyone here support the concept of a mandate that isn't tandem with a real public option.

[freddie mertz]

24. Not gonna do it.

I think it is clear enough from the boards who is supporting the current sell-out and who is not.

[dionysus]

25. you won't because you can't. you accuse people of being ins. co. shills, but you can't even

provide one example?

[freddie mertz]

26. I'm not going to get personal.

I know you'd like to goad me, but I'm not gonna go there.

[slipslidingaway]

16. knr - It's Time for a Real Debate on National Health Insurance

May 1993...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Norman_Solomon/Violence_TV_TTMLG.html

"...Managed competition was the subject of a lengthy MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour discussion on May 5 <1993>. The panel was made up of three government officials-a congressman, a governor and a state health commissioner-who said the Clinton approach would lower costs, and a fourth panelist, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, who argued it would increase costs and bureaucracy. (Woolhandler founded Physicians for a National Health Program, representing thousands of doctors who support a single-payer system.)

Near the end of the discussion, anchor Robert MacNeil offered Woolhandler the last word "since you're in the minority"-to which she responded: "Robert, I'm not in a minority. Polls are showing two-thirds of the American people support government-funded national health insurance."

MacNeil then rephrased his question: "If this is the program that has a political consensus and the other one that you advocate is considered impossible politically at the moment, why are you then against the one that is viable?"

Because it won't "provide Americans with the care they need," the doctor replied.


That is an issue journalists should be exploring."


Posted here with other links...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6499259&mesg_id=6499259

[freddie mertz]

18. Recommended. Mandates without a STRONG Public Option or price controls

.. Will end the Democratic party for a generation.

How did we get to this point?

[Armstead]

21. That's the cosmic question -- How did we getv to this point?

[dionysus]

19. yes brent, the imaginary mandate that hasn't passed.

[freddie mertz]

27. Obama has applauded the work of the Finance committee.

It's reported here today.

What do you make of that?

[dionysus]

28. i don't. you'd rather have him rip his own senators in the press. where's your example again?

you don't have one. who are the paid insurance company\DLC bogeyman? link up, because you haven't got a thing. just delusional conspiracy theories. again, get me one post here advocating for the insurance companies.

[freddie mertz]

29. Here it is...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_CARE_OVERHAUL?SITE=CONGRA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Now you can say it doesn't matter again.

[dionysus]

30. i asked you where are the posts on DU advocating for the insurance companies. you have nothing.

where's the paid operatives? do you seriously think the people who support obama on this board are paid fucking insurance company agents? DLC staffers?!? do you really?


as for your arcticle, the house and senate bills get merged and modified before a final vote. 4 out of 5 bills from the senate and the house bill have a public option but you already know that.

[freddie mertz]

31. You're soaking in them.

It's the unreccers of course.

The ones who unrec every thread critical of the current pro-insurance company trends in the (Dem-controlled) legislative process.

I don't have their names, but I have an idea who some of them might be.

But you knew that.

[dionysus]

32. LOL... i get it, the invisble DLC insurance agents don't actually post, they just unrec you!!11!!1

:rofl:

the lengths you go to to ignore the fact most posters on here like the administration, and will unrec whiny OPs.

imaginary bogeyman... fantastic...
watch out, that black sedan outside your window is full of paid DLC staffers and insurance agents. they are watching you post...

[freddie mertz]

33. Not imaginary.

You are so silly.

[dionysus]

34. then point out ONE pro insurance company post. you can't, cause this shit is all in your mind.

[freddie mertz]

35. I don't take orders from you, dark lord of inebriation

I am a devotee of Apollo, god of light and reason.

I have nothing to do with your maenads and satyrs.

[harun]

36. NO MANDATES WITHOUT AN OPEN PUBLIC OPTION!