Dear Mr. Boyd:

Thank you for contacting me about President Obama’s new initiative to monitor American citizens’ speech about his health care policies. I appreciate having the benefit of your comments on this matter.

As you know, on August 5, 2009, I sent a letter to President Barack Obama expressing my concerns about a new program that requested American citizens to forward to the White House emails and “casual conversations” of their fellow citizens who oppose the President’s health care policies. As I stated in my letter to the President, I believe that this program is inconsistent with America’s tradition of free speech and public discourse. I urged the President to cease the program, to purge personally identifiable information gathered by the program from White House records, and to detail how the White House intended to use the information gathered.

Though I am still awaiting a response to my letter from the President, I was pleased to see that on August 17, 2009, the White House shut down the program. While I am glad the site has been shut down, Americans still deserve to know what the White House intends to do with information that was collected during the 13 days the program was in effect. On August 19, 2009, I sent another letter to the President, reiterating my belief that the White House should fully disclose how they are using this information, and seeking the President’s commitment that no similar programs will be instituted in the future.

Health care affects every American and I believe we need to take the time to listen to the patients, providers, families, and small businesses that will be significantly impacted by reform. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights.

I appreciate the opportunity to represent Texans in the United States Senate, and you may be certain that I will continue working with my colleagues to protect our First Amendment rights. Thank you for taking the time to contact me.

Sincerely,

JOHN CORNYN
United States Senator

I must have missed that part of the original White House video where we were requested to report the “casual conversations” with our fellow citizens. Did you catch that part?

Also, it wasn’t the opposition to the President’s health care plan that was the issue. Since the President doesn’t have a Health Care Plan to oppose that would be a non-issue if it wasn’t just dishonest. The request was for people to forward the lies and disinformation being passed on as fact. Now if lies and disinformation is what passes for opposition in the mind of Senator Cornyn, Texas, we have a problem. If someone wants to offer real thoughtful opposition to Health Insurance Reform in America, I’ll listen…I’ll argue…I’ll have a conversation…But when I hear lies used to spread fear just to scare people into believing the lie…Get real Sir.

Four paragraphs in we get to your first reference to the issue at hand…Health Care. But to turn that around to pushing fear of government monitoring after the last administration’s abuses of the right to privacy…Abuses you approved of…That is just to much of a stretch of credulity. Senator, you need to take your feigned outrage and put it to good use stopping the intimidation of free speech by the gun wielding thugs and screaming, shouting “citizens” at the town hall meetings around the country.

The view from the right is evidently beyond my comprehension…

Related posts:

1. Health Care and Senator Cornyn
2. Health Care Now – Paul Krugman
3. Health Care Reform

As health care reform moves forward, Congress must impose tighter regulation of companies that clearly are not doing enough to regulate themselves. Creating a public plan could also help restrain the worst practices, by providing competition and an alternative.

A House oversight subcommittee took a close look at a particularly shameful practice known as “rescission,” in which insurance companies cancel coverage for some sick policyholders rather than pay an expensive claim. The companies contend that rescissions are rare. But Congressional investigators found that three big insurers canceled about 20,000 individual policies over a five-year period — allowing them to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims.

via Editorial – Insurance Company Schemes – NYTimes.com.

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1. Health Care Reform
2. A Reply From The Senator…And My Thoughts

Most Americans do want different health care: They want 2009 medicine at 1960 prices. Americans spent much less on health care in 1960 5 percent of gross domestic product as opposed to 18 percent now. They also spent much less — nothing, in fact — on computers, cellphones, and cable and satellite television.[1]

I have seen Mr. Will use a lot of tricks in the past to make his points…But this one doesn’t wash.

Health care in 1960 was between you and your doctor. Just what conservatives say they want to preserve. Everyone had a doctor patient relationship…It was usually something you grew up with. And the uninsured office visit cost about $15…And almost all of America was uninsured.

The Hudson Institute’s Betsy McCaughey, writing in the American Spectator, says that in 1960 the average American household spent 53 percent of its disposable income on food, housing, energy and health care. Today the portion of income consumed by those four has barely changed — 55 percent. But the health-care component has increased while the other three combined have decreased. This is partly because as societies become richer, they spend more on health care — and symphonies, universities, museums, etc.[1]

From a link posted by Paul Krugman on June 28 we have this tidbit…

In many ways, it is remarkable that “Uncertainty and the welfare economics of medical care” has stood the test of time. In 1963, medicine still consisted largely of a single physician treating a single patient with relatively rudimentary remedies and medications. Since that time, medicine has been revolutionized by technological advances in the understanding and treatment of illnesses, and rising incomes have stimulated high and increasing levels of spending.

In the United States of America in the early 1960s, government involvement with medical care was limited; insurance covered less than half of all medical expenditures, compared with about 85% today. Since then, health care has been transformed by, among other things, Medicare and Medicaid, malpractice, and managed care. The non-market institutions that Arrow had observed, such as trust that physicians would not be motivated by profit and beliefs that the medical profession could regulate itself, have eroded.[2]

What I don’t see here is any comparison to the rest of the world, Mr. Will. I think it could be argued, quite successfully, that America isn’t alone among the industrialized nations that has seen it’s “wealth” rise.

A study of international health care spending levels published in the health policy journal Health Affairs in the year 2000, found that while the U.S. spends more on health care than other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the use of health care services in the U.S. is below the OECD median by most measures. The authors of the study conclude that the prices paid for health care services are much higher in the U.S. In 1996, 5% of the population accounted for more than half of all costs.[3]

So it seems that even in the way he phrases the questions Mr. Will is spinning the story to fit his preconceived world view. As you can see below, when compared to other countries America is still being overcharged and under served…

The United States is clearly an outlier in its high level of per capita spending on health care, but other countries have also experienced a high rate of growth in such spending. Although growth rates vary by country and by period, most industrialized countries—even those with a financing system quite different from that in the United States—have experienced a substantial long-term rise in real spending on health care. In fact, growth rates in per capita spending in some countries have exceeded those in the United States during some periods.[4]

Mr. Will closes with this statement…

The public, its attention riveted by the fiscal train wreck of trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future, may be coming to the conclusion that we should leave bad enough alone.[1]

And yet polls still show a vast majority of Americans are beginning to understand what Mr. Will seems to miss…American style health care quit working for most Americans quite some time ago…

[1] via George F. Will – A Regrettable ‘Fix’ on Health Care – washingtonpost.com.

[2] via Bulletin of the World Health Organization – Kenneth Arrow and the birth of health economics.

[3] via Health care in the United States – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

[4] via Technological Change and the Growth of Health Care Spending.

Related posts:

1. Health Care Reform
2. Health Care Now – Paul Krugman
3. Health Care and Senator Cornyn

Nowhere else in the world is so much money spent with such poor results.

On that point there is rare unanimity among Washington decision makers: The U.S. health system needs a major overhaul.

For more than a decade, researchers have documented the inequities, shortcomings, waste and even dangers in the hodgepodge of uncoordinated medical services that consume nearly one-fifth of the nation’s economy. Exorbitant medical bills thrust too many families into bankruptcy, hinder the global competitiveness of U.S. companies and threaten the government’s long-term solvency.

The problems with the American health care system can be summed up in two words…”For Profit”. Prior to the middle of the last century only a few doctors really got into health care with the thought of getting rich.

Hospitals were for the most part non-profit. Doctor’s office visit costs were within reach of almost every family. The labs and diagnostics areas of the hospitals were part of the hospital and staffed by hospital staff and billed on the hospital bill.

What has done in the American Health Care System is the “For Profit” mentality and the out sourcing of every area of a hospitals services. When what was once one entity covering the overhead of  all services became a multitude with each being forced to pay individually for all normal office expenses from letterheads to billing staff, with each expected to show a profit, the world changed…And not for the better.

Add to this mix a Health Insurance Industry that is extremely effective at minimizing cost while maximizing profit, clearing the most costly individuals from the pool, effectively blocking people from receiving the care they need while maximizing the annoyance factor of dealing with the insurers customer service department and you have America’s existing system.

When you throw in American pride and a media system that is becoming more and more dependent on the pharmaceutical companies advertising dollars…And you end up with a dysfunctional system that ranks near the bottom in effectiveness when compared to other systems around the world, at the top in actual costs…And is “the best health care system in the world”. Just ask any American on the street, they’ll tell you nobdy else can beat American Heath Care…Even when it’s a lie. A lie they have been told all of their life…

via Decision Makers Differ on How to Reshape Nation’s Medical Services Into Better System – washingtonpost.com.

Related posts:

1. George F. Will’s Take On Health Care…Take It Or Leave It Alone
2. Health Care Now – Paul Krugman
3. Health Care and Senator Cornyn

There’s a populist rage building in this country, as Americans see bankers getting huge bailouts while ordinary citizens suffer.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Health Care Now – NYTimes.com.

Yes, there is…

Related posts:

1. Health Care Reform
2. Health Care and Senator Cornyn
3. George F. Will’s Take On Health Care…Take It Or Leave It Alone