Rounding Out The Lineup

Richard did ABC News' Top Line show today. You can read about it here and watch the video here.

Edie Falco for HCAN

She did a great video to launch our new text messaging campaign and to invite you to join her here in DC on June 25th:



Here's what she says:

Hi. I'm Edie Falco, and I support Health Care for America Now. I spent many years without health coverage. I know the feeling of hoping your symptoms go away before you have to get money together to see a doctor. I know worrying about it makes it even harder to get better. I still have friends and family in this position. My situation is different now. I have health care. I have good doctors. I'm treated very well, and I'm grateful for this. I also know that no one person is any more worthy of such treatment than any other one person who may be sitting at home right now worried about their own health or the health of a loved one knowing they don't have the money to take care of it. In June, I am going down to Washington, DC with Health Care for America Now. Together, we are going to let Congress know that we will not wait another moment to fix our broken health care system. We have a plan. A plan that makes health care affordable to both families and businesses. It's a real plan. If you have insurance that works for you, you can keep it. You will also have a guaranteed backup plan. It's quality, affordable health care no matter what. Peace of mind.

You can join us in Washington, DC on June 25th. Text “HEALTH” to 94553.

Together we can get this done. Now is the time.

Grumpy Old Man

Put down the keyboard and step away from the computer. Seriously. You're a Senator. Get a grip.

From AP:

Grassley: Obama's "Got Nerve" To Push Lawmakers From Paris

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley says that President Barack Obama "got nerve" to go sightseeing in Paris while telling lawmakers it's time to deliver on a health care overhaul.

Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, is key to any bipartisan health care deal. Using Twitter _ the Internet-based social connection service allows users to send mass text messages called "tweets" _ the Iowa Republican issued two angry "tweets" Sunday morning as the president wrapped up an overseas tour.

(...)

Grassley's first tweet: "Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND."

A short time later: "Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on healthcare' When you are a 'hammer' u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL."

A Grassley spokeswoman verified that the senator was the author of the messages.

This is the man we're letting help craft health care reform legislation? Really?

If ever we needed evidence that Senator Baucus should just go ahead as planned and not worry so much about bipartisan agreement with Senator Grassley, this is as good as that gets.

Read 'em and Leave

Couple of Three interesting writes to usher in the weekend. First is proof I can work the public health insurance option into ANY story. From Bloomberg:

Obama health overhaul may be death knell for small insurers

(I know you're thinking,'What does that title have to do with the public health insurance option?' Just watch...)

More than 260 contractors offer Medicare Advantage plans, said Joseph Kuchler, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in an e-mail.

Perhaps half of private insurance plans depend on Medicare Advantage for most of their revenue and may be pushed out of the market if the U.S. eliminates the extra payments they get, Keckley said.

“It’s conceivable in 10 years you could be down to 70 plans nationwide,” he said.

The possibility is another argument in favor of creating a government-backed health plan to compete with private insurers, said Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, a Washington-based nonprofit supporting Obama’s efforts.

The group released a report last month that said most areas of the country meet the Justice Department’s antitrust definition for a “highly concentrated” insurance market. The report cited a 2008 American Medical Association survey that found two insurers held at least half the market share in 29 states.

A public plan “would increase competition in a marketplace that is seeing total concentration already,” said Schechner, whose organization is backed by labor unions including the AFL- CIO and the Service Employees International Union.

She shoots. She scores.

The second article is about Sebelius' support for the public health insurance option. She references the HCAN report about market consolidation without ever mentioning the actual report. Good enough. I'll take it. From the WSJ:

The government needs to create a public health insurance plan because many parts of the country are monopolized by a single private health insurer, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Friday in an interview.

Ms. Sebelius told The Wall Street Journal that a new public health insurance plan would benefit consumers by providing more competition in the market and holding down costs. Whether to create such a plan has become one of the most contentious aspects of sweeping legislation lawmakers are crafting to fix the nation's health system.

In "many areas in the country, the private market is monopolized by one carrier," Ms. Sebelius said. "You don't have a choice for consumers. And what we know in any kind of market is a monopoly doesn't give much incentive for other innovation or for cost-effective strategies."

Finally, Matt Bai's NYT Magazine piece about the White House and health care reform is now online. I haven't read it yet. I'll be doing that now.

Then I am off for the weekend. Hopefully, it will dry out sooner rather than later. Soggy is not a good look for me.

I'll check in if there's news. Otherwise, have a good one.

Exactly

Krugman nails it again in today's NYT:

Keeping Them Honest

“I appreciate your efforts, and look forward to working with you so that the Congress can complete health care reform by October.” So declared President Obama in a letter this week to Senators Max Baucus and Edward Kennedy. The big health care push is officially on.

But the devil is in the details. Health reform will fail unless we get serious cost control — and we won’t get that kind of control unless we fundamentally change the way the insurance industry, in particular, behaves. So let me offer Congress two pieces of advice:

1) Don’t trust the insurance industry.

2) Don’t trust the insurance industry.

The Democratic strategy for health reform is based on a political judgment: the belief that the public will be more willing to accept reform, less easily Harry-and-Louised, if those who already have health coverage from private insurers are allowed to keep it.

But how can we have fundamental reform of what Mr. Obama calls a “broken system” if the current players stay in place? The answer is supposed to lie in a combination of regulation and competition.

It’s a sign of the way the political winds are blowing that insurers aren’t opposing new regulations. Indeed, the president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry lobby known as AHIP, has explicitly accepted the need for “much more aggressive regulation of insurance.”

What’s still not settled, however, is whether regulation will be supplemented by competition, in the form of a public plan that Americans can buy into as an alternative to private insurance.

Now nobody is proposing that Americans be forced to get their insurance from the government. The “public option,” if it materializes, will be just that — an option Americans can choose. And the reason for providing this option was clearly laid out in Mr. Obama’s letter: It will give Americans “a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep the insurance companies honest.”

Those last five words are crucial because history shows that the insurance companies will do nothing to reform themselves unless forced to do so.

Consider the seemingly trivial matter of making it easier for doctors to deal with multiple insurance companies.

Back in 1993, the political strategist (and former Times columnist) William Kristol, in a now-famous memo, urged Republican members of Congress to oppose any significant health care reform. But even he acknowledged that some things needed fixing, calling for, among other things, “a simplified, uniform insurance form.”

Fast forward to the present. A few days ago, major players in the health industry laid out what they intend to do to slow the growth in health care costs. Topping the list of AHIP’s proposals was “administrative simplification.” Providers, the lobby conceded, face “administrative challenges” because of the fact that each insurer has its own distinct telephone numbers, fax numbers, codes, claim forms and administrative procedures. “Standardizing administrative transactions,” AHIP asserted, “will be a watershed event.”

Think about it. The insurance industry’s idea of a cutting-edge, cost-saving reform is to do what William Kristol — William Kristol! — thought it should have done 15 years ago.

How could the industry spend 15 years failing to make even the most obvious reforms? The answer is simple: Americans seeking health coverage had nowhere else to go. And the purpose of the public option is to make sure that the industry doesn’t waste another 15 years — by giving Americans an alternative if private insurers fall down on the job.

Be warned, however. The insurance industry will do everything it can to avoid being held accountable.

At first the insurance lobby’s foot soldiers in Congress tried to shout down the public option with the old slogans: private enterprise good, government bad.

At this point, however, they’re trying to kill the public option in more subtle ways. The most recent ruse is the proposal for a “trigger” — the public option will only become available if private insurers fail to meet certain performance criteria. The idea, of course, is to choose those criteria to ensure that the trigger is never pulled.

And here’s the thing. Without an effective public option, the Obama health care reform will be simply a national version of the health care reform in Massachusetts: a system that is a lot better than nothing but has done little to address the fundamental problem of a fragmented system, and as a result has done little to control rising health care costs.

Right now the health insurers are promising to deliver major cost savings. But history shows that such promises can’t be trusted. As President Obama said in his letter, we need a serious, real public option to keep the insurance companies honest.

Related: Spot On (5/22/09)

Better Left Unsaid

How to guarantee you never get a second date with me:

"I think Sarah Palin got a raw deal."

In the News

A little HCAN morning reading for you:

Obama Open to Plan Requiring Everyone to Get Insurance
New York Times - United States
But Richard J. Kirsch, the national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, a consumer group, said he was “thrilled to see President Obama's strong ...

Obama lays out health overhaul
Boston Globe - Boston,MA,USA
Richard Kirsch, head of the liberal coalition Health Care for America Now, said he was "thrilled" by the public option language in the letter: "It is now ...

Groups on the Left Are Suddenly on Top
Washington Post - United States
There are young left-leaning groups devoted to health care (Health Care for America Now), economics (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), ...

Marketplace: Insurers won't swallow competition pill
Richard Kirsch: We're looking to not have just everybody in government health insurance; we're not looking for everybody in private health insurance. We're looking to make that the choice that you and I and every American make. ...

Obama Says He Is "Open" To Health Care Mandate
CBS News - New York,NY,USA
... health insurance option," Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now, said in a statement in reaction to the letter. ...

Nelson Clarifies Position On Public Health Care Option
By The Huffington Post News Editors
Nelson shouldn't deny them that choice," said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for the reform coalition Health Care for America Now. Nelson said that when he initially said he opposed ...

HCAN "Thrilled" With Obama's "Strong, Unambiguous Commitment" To Public Option
By Brian Beutler - June 3, 2009, 5:39PM
Richard Kirsch, the national campaign director for Health Care for America Now, read Obama's letter to Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Max Baucus (D-MT), and liked what he saw

Obama wants public option in health care bill -- and wants it done by October
by Joe Sudbay (DC) on 6/03/2009 05:46:00 PM
I want health care like members of Congress and their families have. Actually, if members of Congress and their families had health insurance like most of us have, this system would have been changed years ago. But, we are where we are. And, we're ready for real health care reform legislation to pass...

...Health Care for America Now (HCAN) liked Obama's letter:

We are thrilled to see President Obama's strong, unambiguous commitment to reform that includes the choice of keeping private health insurance or joining a new public health insurance option.