Comments on: Terry McAuliffe Will Do Fundraiser For First VA Dem to Take the Pledge

By: brendanx

brendanx — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:42:44 +0000

I called Moran’s office two days ago and the aide, Maria, told me unambiguously that Moran would not vote for a bill that does not contain the public option — and I made my question very clear and repeated it. I don’t know if she knew what she was talking about, but there you have it.

By: letsgetitdone

letsgetitdone — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:57:13 +0000

Blub, They won’t do it. Their business model is just to extract more and more from clients. Government, through Medicare for All, is much better suited to changing the fee for procedures system and implementing a more rational compensation model, and it’s also much more suited to freezing prices and preventing further inflation. Of course, we need to develop a stronger political movement to get this done, and we need to treat the insurance companies like the villains they are. But I think it can be done if we have the will to do it.

By: letsgetitdone

letsgetitdone — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:45:52 +0000

Blub, I agree with this. But I think we need to do health insurance reform first, since it could save a bunch of money quickly, and give us more time for the more important underlying reform. There’s also a moral question here, and that is the past behavior of the insurance companies and the compensation for that behavior they owe the American people. There’s even the question of whether they deserve to exist anymore considering that their behavior leads to 20,000 needless deaths each year and 1 million needless bankruptcies. The colorful phrase “murder by spreadsheet” is often used to describe their behavior, and itself raises these moral questions.

The issue of better functioning and higher quality really has to do with the provider organizations and helping them to literally seek out, face, solve problems with their functioning, and integrate the solutions into their organizations in a systematic way. Organizations that can do that have been called high-velocity organizations, FAST organizations, and open enterprises. The form of management that creates such organizations has been called “knowledge management,” and also “Problem Solving Pattern Management.” You can find out more about PSP management here, and more about high-velocity organizations, including high-velocity health care organizations here.

Legislation can help address the problem of facilitating the development of high-velocity health care organizations in both the private and public sectors. Such legislation wouldn’t involve massive government expenditures, but would be more along lines of setting up a national center for encouraging developing high-velocity health care organizations. The center could be cited within HHS, and it would have research, evaluation, information dissemination and coordination, and training functions. It would also provide grants to university medical centers to develop local PSP Management centers to spread the discipline of PSP to health care organizations.

By: cbl2

cbl2 — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:55:34 +0000

second that Phoenix Woman, Blue Texan and Teddy Partridge !!!

and wow Jane Hamsher – this is stunning and goodness knows where it may lead – did you see what Madame Speaker said today ? and looks like you even got Move On to exhale – ya got the ‘mo now – you’ve more than earned it.

By: fatster

fatster — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:33:45 +0000

Not sure if that link will work. Here’s another attempt.

By: fatster

fatster — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:31:14 +0000

While we’re waiting to see if McAwfully’s latest is for real, here’s an interesting article:

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/2.....h-how-the-“public-option”-was-sold/

By: joanneleon

joanneleon — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:58:01 +0000

New town hall event:

Rob Andrews NJ-01
Date: Monday, August 24, 2009
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Location: Rowan University - Wilson Hall, Glassboro, New Jersey 08028

By: Phoenix Woman

Phoenix Woman — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:57:55 +0000

RE: the VA –

That’s actually the best care in the US, thanks to Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, check this out: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7220

By: Blub

Blub — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:25:15 +0000

continuing, letsgetitdone, if we all know that pie has to shrink and drastically, and stay that way, it is politically and economically more palletable for the private sector to do the violence. Let the private insurers figure out the messy details of how best to make $5,000,000 a year surgeons take 97% pay cuts. If we or Medicare did it, they’d say we were organizing death panels. So let Aetna do it, and then, through the hybrid system’s new pricing mechanism, let the public sector reap the benefits.

By: Blub

Blub — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:18:50 +0000

good thoughts. I guess I’m not saying that private is automatically better at cost containment. In fact I think I said the opposite. But cost control is not the same improving efficiency – removing the structural problems that make us pay 17% of GDP for about 8% of GDP in actual services. This is the core of the problem. And Medicare, as an insurer, hasn’t really helped the country even begin to address it, even if it has admirably kept it’s own overhead down.

If you simply killed off all the insurers and assuming the rest of the system still functioned in it’s current form, you’d wipe out maybe 20% of that 17% – or now 13.5% of GDP, growing at a phenomenal rate of 9% a year. In four more years, you’d be right where you started. Somehow, someone has to fix the underlying structural crisis of American healthcare. Basically, the total revenue pie has to shrink by up to one half AND stay there. I think a hybrid system is the best way to address this problem, and there is simply no choice about solving it. It’s that or the whole untenable system eventually implodes. This rot is foundational and goes far beyond the corruption of the insurers. Eventually, the house will fall irrespective of whether or not you have today’s private system or Medicare-for-all.