Single Payer in the Senate

I love the look on the faces of congresspeople when they are forced to sit there and listen to protesters denounce them.

Why Obama's Health Care Plan is Deadly

In a great interview, Physicians for a National Health Plan's Steffie Woolhandler explains why Obama's health care plan could be worse than no change at all. The gist of her argument is that trying to expand public programs while maintaining the private industry is incoherent and a fiscal black hole:

There’s no reason to think that would work. I think the private health insurance industry is not going to allow the government to run a program that really competes with them. That’s not just my opinion. If we look historically, when state governments have tried to run public programs side-by-side with private programs, the private health insurance industry has intervened to make sure that the public program is very low quality, with very limited coverage, because the private insurance industry doesn’t want the competition.

Woolhander argues that the US, which spends twice as much per capita on health care as other industrialized countries, doesn't need to spend a dime more, but instead to spend the money wisely.

One consequence of Obama-type plans that she doesn't mention is their ideological impact. Given that these state run programs in competition with private ones tend to become totally fiscally unsustainable, they serve as fodder for right wing arguments that government run programs are simply too expensive and inefficient.

US Has Most Deaths from Preventable Disease in the Industrialized World

At Medical News.

Welcome to the Dark Ages

The World Health Organization today reported a cholera case which appeared in Baghdad. It might have been bad enough that Iraq is seeing the re-emergence of a disease that is fatal only 1% of the time if treated and nearly nonexistent in developed countries (Wikipedia never lies). But it gets worse: the reason this is even making headlines is that it means that a disease which had been endemic to northern Iraq has spread south.

Why is this acceptable to us? Why does the mainstream media not balk at the fact that cholera should not exist in the modern world, let alone outside of "third world" countries? What's more, the NYT.com article noted above interviews several who criticize the al-Maliki government for inaction on this point. Where is the criticism of the occupation which is ravaging Iraq so badly that it faces impending epidemic from treatable diseases? The U.S. occupation is the cause of this cholera scare, not the al-Maliki administration.

Democratic Presidential Hopeful: "Americans are fatter, dumber"

So, I've never heard of this guy before, but ex-Alaska Senator Mike Gravel during a Slate sponsored debate moderated by Bill Maher had those choice words for John and Jane Q voter. I'm sure if all Americans had access to the educational health care benefits granted to the offspring of a US senator, things would be different (in fact for every 'limousine insurance' receiving US senator there are approximately 500,000 people without ANY health insurance). Or the fact that the US legislature is probably the only institution in the country that gets to vote to increase its salary while millions of Americans have to live with the woefully inadequate minimum wage. In fact, Congress increased its own salary nearly 10 times between the previous increase in the minimum wage and the most recent.

Especially enraging to me is that this wanker's own party, the one from which he is seeking nomination for the presidency, has gone hand in hand with every measure coveted by the Bush administration, be it No Child Left Behind or continuing to fund and cheer lead the war that is depriving students and families much needed health and educational opportunities (not to mention killing them). He has the gall to suggest that much of the blame rests on 'lazy' teachers who don't work the entire year like 'every else' and that what we need are 'super teachers' who are willing to put in the extra effort. Now, I agree that teachers have a pivotal role in education, but it is hardly their fault that the Democrats and Republicans have gutted public schools from after school programs and subsidized lunches to slashing student aid at the university level while denying pensions all the live long day.

I'm sorry Mister Gravel, but I think you might want to do some reading yourself. As far as obesity, maybe if we had subsidized healthy food for people who can't afford them? I don't see the Democrats chomping at the bit to expand food stamps, WIC, or any other such programs. Oh wait, his party SUPPORTED Bush's 2005 budget that threw some 300,000 people off of food stamps. Perhaps if McDonald's and other fast food locations weren't the cheapest food and easiest solution for families that work too many hours to make meals, like the ex-Senators cleaning staff probably do, I'm sure that some changes could be made.

Interestingly enough, I find myself agreeing with Gravel's closing statement: You can't trust your politicians. They won't make change on their own.

Ruling Class Senility

Is this really the best they can do? This article, by Theordore Dalrymple, is the cover story this month of conservative mouthpiece National Review. Cleverly titled "the doctor won't see you now," it is an attempted assault on single payer health care plans, which have been gaining momentum ever since Michael Moore's Sicko hit theaters. It's a rather important piece, as National Review is probably the closest thing the right has to a magazine format mouthpiece. As they made the article the cover story, it's fairly safe to assume that they consider this a pretty major statement on the issue.

Which is why I'm puzzled as to how goddamn weak of an argument they put forward. Dalrymple's piece is little more than an anecdotal musing about how British health care isn't all Michael Moore says it is. I was expecting heavy fire directed at the Canadian system, glowing portraits of the high tech miracles workable in US hospitals, dire warnings about the Hell we will undoubtedly plunge into should we hand our precious rights over to faceless government bureaucrats. Instead, we get sentences like:

It is clear that the American system leaves a lot to be desired — as do most systems. It is expensive and not particularly effective when viewed from the point of view of public health

And:

This is not to say that no good work is done in the NHS, or that everyone is badly treated. I myself have received nothing but excellent treatment under it.

These are, of course, offset with anecdotes about mothers who had to wait for operations, old men who waited seven years for operations, and similar argumentative detritus. A brief attack on the French system consists solely of the fact that the French consume more tranquilizers and antidepressants than any other country.

Is this really serious? Can a vicious, heartless, American ruling class magazine really be prepping its readers to do battle with the hordes of big government liberals by sending them this garbage? I must say, being a left winger is hardly as fun when the right wingers are as dumb as this. Factual refutation would be overkill here, but since I'm a heartless SOB I'm going to go ahead with it.

By any of the key indicators, British and American health systems provide comparable care. Life expectancy for UK males is 77, for Americans it's 75. For UK women, 81. Americans, 80. The US has an infant mortality rate of 7 deaths per 1,000 live births. The Brits have 5. Maternal mortality per 100,000 live births in America is 14. In the UK it's 11. This remarkable parity is achieved through a remarkable inequality in spending. In 2004, the US spent $6,104 per capita on health care. The Brits spent $2,546. For less than half the cost, they have achieved a system who's public health results are staggeringly similar to (actually slightly better than) America's.

These big surveys only give us the means, however. When we look at the extremes on the graph, the picture becomes a good deal more disturbing. Infant mortality for Black families in America is 13.6 per 1,000 live births - nearly double the national average. The Black babies that survive their first year can expect to live 6 years shorter than their white playmates. So what we have in America is a system that provides decent enough care on the surface, but is in fact leaving massive groups of people out.

Furthermore, many of the ills Dalrymple attributes to the British NHS are in no way fundamental to single-payer systems. For example, he points to dilapidated facilities and rationing as evidence of the impracticality of the British system. On the point of rationing, two responses are merited. First, we have rationing in America. Deamonte Driver's care was rationed because he didn't have enough to pay for a tooth operation. As a result, he died. The myth that Brits wait in lines while Americans happily skip to the front is precisely that. Second, improper medical facilities and rationing both come down to problems of money. Just last year, Blair cut 21,000 jobs from the NHS. Actions like these unquestionably result in a massive workload increase on the workers who remain. Given that we already spend twice as much as the NHS here in America, if we merely kept spending at the same level but administered the care through a single payer system, it's reasonable to assume we'd see a massive increase in quality of care.

I'm still not sure why the folks at NR decided to lead this week with such a feeble attempt at polemic. The fact that they did so can only bode well for the left however. I can't wait to see what softballs they're going to pitch us about the coming recession.